The bulk of interesting work in social history in the past fifty years has clustered around the following topics that define a mind map at the highest level.

(1) Demography and kinship

(2) Urban studies

(3) Classes and social groups

(4) The history of 'mentalities' or collective consciousness or of 'culture' in the anthropologists' sense

(5) The transformation of societies (for example, modernization or industrialisation)

(6) Social movements and phenomena of social protest.

(7) Ecological impact of settlement and production (including the need to manage of human production to safeguard the material base of future society).

The first two groups can be singled out because they have institutionalised themselves as fields, regardless of the importance of their subject matter, and now possess their own organization, methodology, and system of publications. Historical demography is a rapidly growing and fruitful field, which rests not so much on a set of problems as on a technical innovation in research (family reconstitution) that makes it possible to derive interesting results from material hitherto regarded as recalcitrant or exhausted (parish registers). It has thus opened a new range of sources, whose characteristics in turn have led to the formulation of questions. The major interest for social historians of historical demography lies in the light it sheds on certain aspects of family structure and behaviour, on the life-curves of people at different periods, and on intergenerational changes. These are important though limited by the nature of the sources—more limited than the most enthusiastic champions of the subject allow, and certainly by themselves insufficient to provide the framework of analysis of 'The World We Have Lost'. Nevertheless, the fundamental importance of this field is not in question, and it has served to encourage the use of strict quantitative techniques. One welcome effect—or side-effect—has been to arouse a greater interest in historical problems of kinship structure than social historians might have shown without this stimulus, though a modest demonstration effect from social anthropology ought not to be neglected.

Urban history also possesses a certain technologically determined unity. The individual city is normally a geographically limited and coherent unit. It also reflects the urgency of urban problems which have increasingly become the major, or at least the most dramatic, problems of social planning and management in modern industrial societies. Both these influences tend to make urban history a large container with ill-defined, heterogeneous, and sometimes indiscriminate contents, which, economically, must be part of a larger system. It is essentially a body of human beings living together in a particular way, and the characteristic process of urbanization in modern societies makes it, at least up to the present, the form in which most of them live together. The technical, social, and political problems of the city arise essentially out of the interactions of masses of human beings living in close proximity to one another, and research moves in the direction of a view of urban history as a paradigm of social change, which recognises incompleteness of town and city as social communities.

The other clusters of concentration have not so far been institutionalized, though one or two may be approaching this stage of development.

At a local level the information to illustrate the history of society comes from communities that were organised:

along class lines (there was a gross 'unfairness' in the way opportunities of social success were distributed—with the country's underlying economic organization placing the real interests of the privileged and the non-privileged in long-term opposition).

and a capitalist economy ( the structural unfairness involved the inheritance of accumulated capital or the means of production).

A parish mind map is therefore based on the following interconnected topics for which local information tends to be in available within hundred boundaries in distinct clusters:

definition of 'the communities';

their size;

their work:

the poor;

the mortality;

the natural resources

the schools

the religion

Wherever a man lived, and whatever the particular economic make-up of his community, these eight topics defined the overriding political reality he had to face. And, equally, social reactions to them were all designed to solve in some way the problem of having to live in a capitalist society. Anyone without capital had to come to terms with the knowledge that socially he counted for nothing; and even more difficult that there was nothing he could do—at least within the law—that would make the slightest difference. Success meant capital: to the worker obviously because it meant physical well being; to the men with capital (and the power that went with it) because they had to justify their authority socially. From the eighteenth century the issues of village life were debated in terms of the size of the population, the state of the poor and the provision of education.

Until the mid 19th century the ownership of a piece of land was defined legally by detailed written descriptions of the alignment of its boundaries. The boundaries between Hundreds may now be followed on maps by following the lines of adacent parishes. Before maps were made the position of the parish boundaries were passed on from generation to generation through the village custom of 'beating the bounds'. A member of each parish was charged by the churchwardens of organising an annual procession that followed the boundaries. It was a vary important piece of conceptual knowledge to define the community as a distinct entity and was also of great practical signifcance

From ancient times, the parish existed for ecclesiastsical purposes, as an" area under the jurisdiction of a clergyman with cure of soul. It gained secular functions in later periods, the first of these being the care of the poor, under successive statutory authorities beginning with the Elizabethan poor law of 1597. The term 'ancient parish' has come to be used for a parish that existed before 1591 and which thereafter served both secular and ecclesiastical rolls.

A civil parish served only civil roles. It was common to define parishes in this sense as areas (up to 1930) to which a separate poor rate is or can be assessed. The existence, alteration or abolition of these units made no effect on the ecclesiastical arrangement of the identical geographic area. Many civil parishes were in effect areas at first subordinate to a mother parish which came in time to enjoy independence. These units were variously called hamlets (small settlements), tithings or townships (generally subdivisions for poor law purposes), chapelries, (areas with a clergyman dependent upon the Incumbent of the mother parish), liberties or lordships (areas with an early dependence upon a secular ot ecclesiastical lord), or were called by a variety of other names with local importance. If a separate poor law rate was levied in the subordinate unit, it was then called by its own 'rank' such as hamlet and/or as parish. To avoid this confusion the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1866 stipulated that these areas should thereafter be called 'parishes'. Many areas not within the parochial framework also became civil parishes, particularly in 1858.

These units came into existence after 1597 to serve only ecclesiastical rotes. The number of these was much greater than for civil parishnes, particularly as efforts were made to build new churches in increasingly populated urban areas, Many ecclesiastically subordinate areas within parishes, such as chapelries, were raised to parochial rank, and many were formed with no earlier status. The Commissioners of Queen Anne's Bounty provided financial assistance to clergymen with inadequate financial resources, after which the benefice was styled a "perpetual curacy'. This had no effect on the independence of previously separate parishes, but Augmentation of revenues for hitherto subordinate units gave them new independent status, and many ecclesiastics parishes therefore date from that augmentation.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a. number of statutory provisions allowed the creation of many different types of ecclesiastical parishes, alike only in the newly independent status. It was thus not unusual for a parish to be 'refounded to gain privileges, and rights according to newer statutes which it had not earlier enjoyed as a perpetual curacy.

The various types of ecclesiastical parishes may be defined by reference to the original order which will make the status clear; an exception is made for particular districts because their creation often rested on the authority of the particular bishop or other agency and because these orders were not generally published m the London Gazette.

Making maps

The following example dates from the 1840s, when the first detailed maps were produced in order to define parish boundaries and the ownership and occupation of land within each parish. It refers to a dispute regarding the exact position of the boundaries dividing up a relatively small area of recently reclaimed coastal marsh at the edges of the parishes of Leiston, Theberton and Aldringham. The problem arose because the pieces of land were not marked by obvious markers such as trees or ditches. The task of the Assistant Commissioner of Tithes was to reconcile a dispute between the conflicting claims of three local landowners.

" John Maurice Herbert esquire, Barrister at Law and Assistant Commissioner, acting under and by virtue of an Act of Parliament made and passed in the sixth and seventh years of the Reign of King William the fourth entitled ' An Act for the Commutation of Tithes in England and Wales' passed in the first year of the reign of her present Majesty Queen Victoria entitled 'An Act to Amend an Act for the Commutation of Tithes in England and Wales'; having in pursuance of the powers and provisions of the said Act or any of them by my award and hearing date of the fifth day of July Inst, and as contained and set out in that portion of the Boundary separating the parish of Leiston cum Sizewell in the County of Suffolk from the parish of Theberton in the same County, which extends over a pice of marsh land called East Bridge Marsh, belonging to Edward Fuller Esq. and now in the occupation of James Barber. And also that other portion of the said boundary which extends from the North Eastern Angle of a piece of arable land called The Swamp, also the property of the said Joshua Lord Huntingfield, and also that other portion of the said Boundary, which extends over a piece of land called Bush Grove, belonging to the said Lord Huntingfield, and now in the occupation of Willam Last. And also that other portion of the Boundary line separating the said parish of Leiston cum Sizewell from the parish of Aldringham with Thorpe in the said County, which extends from the Northern Angle of a piece of land called The Folley, belonging to and in the occupation of Mr Francis Hayle to a point where the said Boundary enters the German Ocean Do Publish and Declare the following to the a correct description of the several portions of the said boundary lines.

There then follows a detailed description of the boundaries with measurements and maps of the four pieces of land.

Where boundaries of land could be defined by watercourses, hedgerows, and tracks, etc. the cartographers only had the job of making accurate maps of the features. Where a boundary ran across an open piece of land with no intermediate markers, the process of arbitration outlined above had to be initiated. The outcomes of the joint work of the assistant commissioners and surveyors were published by the Tithe Commissioners and are the basis for all subsequent mapping of parish boundaries in England and Wales. The tithe maps revealed the actual boundaries of parishes for the first time in history. Portions of the boundary that zig zag along the edges of fields were defined in relation to those who owned fields land at that time. Boundaries that run across fields are the outcomes of the kind of local disputes that faced John Maurice Herbert at Leiston.

Civil parishes have been created and aboloished and their boundaries altered by parliamentary statutes and by orders of a succession, of governmental agencies (the Local Government Board, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and the Department of the the Environment), The census has been the main source for these changes because the orders published in live intercensal periods are recapitulated in every new census.

The archive of the Church Commissioners (originally Ecclesiastical Commissioners) may be used to trace the ecclesiastical changes. For the period to 1939 the orders in council making the change were, published as an appendix to the Commisiioners' report to parliament, so that one need not work through the bulky London Gazette, nor sort through the files of copies of the records in the diocean record offices. Since 1939 the London Gazette is the principal source, although lately the orders have been published by name only, so that one must consult the originate.

Full details of all parishes affected by creations and abolitions of civil and ecclesiastical parishes we provided, with a footnote reference to the authority. Boundary alterations we cited by date with footnote reference to the authority, without further details, except when the alteration affected the boundaries of the county (civil parishes) or diocese (ecclesiastical palish), in which cases full particulars are included.

A particularly complicating element arises because many parishes consisted of two or more geographically separate portions. The elements of a parish existing apart were galled 'detached parts', and conversely elements of other parishes included within a parish were called 'foreign parts', A determined effort was made in the 1880s to eliminate these for civil purposes, notably in the statute 45 & 46 Vict., c55 (effective 1883), which ordered that detached parts be incorporated into the parish which surrounded them or with which they enjoyed the longest common boundary, A series of orders was needed, however, to implement the principle fully; orders in the 1880s changing civil boundaries are nearly all of this type. These changes had no effect whatsoever on the ecclesiastical constitution of the parish, unless separate orders in council to that purpose were issued later.

Poverty was an ancient problem in Britain. Long before the nineteenth century Parliament had recognized that private charity was inadequate and had required village authorities to relieve their own poor and deal with vagrants likely to endanger peace and property.

By the end of the eighteenth century, however, rapid agrarian and industrial changes, the expansion of population and a long and expensive war were producing a social upheaval. The system of poor relief almost broke down under the weight of numbers at a time when the "classes" in Britain feared a revolt of the masses similar to the recent French Revolution. Thus there developed the great debate on poverty which has continued to the present day and is the principal theme of this chapter.

The debate has been concerned with the nature of poverty and its causes and with the kind of measures taken from time to time to deal with the problem. The debate has been conducted by economists, historians, sociologists, members of Parliament, radicals, conservatives, trade union leaders, administrators, socialists, clergymen and missionary societies. Undoubtedly the most important collections of opinion on the subject have been made in three great national

The first of these was the report of the Royal Commission "inquiring into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws", 1832-1834; the second was the report of the Royal Commission on The Poor Law and Relief of Distress, 1905-1909; the third was the report of the special (Beveridge) Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services, 1942. These reports have special significance not only because of their influence on public policies—Acts of Parliament, the activities of national and local authorities concerned with welfare policies — but because they summarise prevailing attitudes to poverty at different periods.

These reports group the national attack on poverty into four main periods.

In the first period, to 1847, the basic principles of the old Poor Law system were closely examined and challenged; and the Royal Commission of 1832-1834 recommended drastic changes, most of which were carried out in the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. Criticism of the Poor Law Commission, set up to direct the administration of Poor Relief, led to the transformation of the Commission into a Board directly responsible to Parliament in 1847.

In the second period, 1847 to 1905, the nation's wealth multiplied, supporting a rapidly increasing population, but poverty remained a national scandal. The comfortable laissez-faire theory that "self- help" was the principal remedy for poverty was now challenged by painstaking social investigations and new economic theories. A mass of evidence demonstrated the complexity of the problem and reawakened public sympathy for the poor.

The third period, 1905 to 1939, begins with a four-year investigation of poverty by a Royal Commission, and the passing of radical liberal legislation (old age pensions, national health and unemployment insurance) which laid the foundations of the welfare state. Welfare policies were extended throughout this period and many features of the Poor Law system of 1834 were abolished. The debate on poverty was sharpened by the presence of a vast army of unemployed in the depressed areas (from 1920) and by the experiences of the great depression of 1931-1934. Economic theories and attitudes to poverty expressed in this period prepared the public for policies of social reconstruction developed during and after World War II.

The fourth period, 1940-1960, began in the first years of World War II. This was a decisive factor in the nation's determination to end poverty. A series of war-time investigations, of which the most important was the Beveridge report, presented the public with blue-prints for the reconstruction of British society and the elimination of want. Reconstruction policies of the Labour government established what has been described as the "Welfare State"; however this itself is now the centre of a vigorous argument in terms of how to provide adequate state funds from taxation.

The history of the first three periods in Suffolk is related to the old hundredal divisions of the county, there being a gradual shift from a dominant parochial system to a system of poor law unions where union workhouses were built to serve the poor of an entire hundred.

The Elizabethan approach to the relief of village poverty was to charge the village authorities, churchwardens and overseers, with providing 'out-relief to the poor in their own homes. This consisted of money, clothing, fuel and medical assistance. A major cause of poverty was lack of work, and the 1601 Act also empowered parishes to provide a stock of raw materials 'to set the poor on work'. Market towns had been encouraged to invest in such stocks by an earlier Act of 1576. A further option given by an Act of 1597 was to provide 'Abiding and Working Houses for the Poor' where the poor were both accommodated and put to work,. In Suffolk, Bury St Edmunds had a 'working house' as early as 1597 while East Bergholt in the same county was left a legacy for a similar building in 1624.

18th Century

The Workhouse Test Act of 1722 positively encouraged the foundation of parish workhouses, and stipulated that anyone refusing to enter such an institution was ineligible for relief. It also allowed two or more parishes to combine in running a workhouse. Thus, in 1747 James Vernon left Weathercock Farm at Great Wratting to be used as a workhouse by three contiguous parishes.

Returns sent to Parliament in 1776 reveal, for the first time, the number and distribution of parish workhouses. Suffolk had 89 such institutions, scattered fairly widely but showing two major concentrations. The first was a group of twelve workhouses in Ipswich, the largest town in the county. The second was in the south- west of Suffolk-roughly from Haverhill to Hadleigh. This area had specialised in the making of woollen cloth since the 13th century, but by 1776 was in serious economic decline while its population was again growing. Faced with accumulating problems, most parishes in the manufacturing district had decided, at varying dates before 1776, to provide a workhouse. Another return in 1803 shows that 46 more parishes had created workhouses since 1776, noticeably in the middle and north- east of the county. Another ten parishes followed suit between 1803 and 1815.

These trends, however, were overtaken by another major development. Since the late 17th century, major towns had tended to establish Corporations of the Poor by unifying their parishes and running single workhouses: thus Sudbury was incorporated in 1702 and Bury in 1747. However from the 1750s onwards, the magistrates and principal inhabitants of a wide rural area in eastern Suffolk decided to set up Incorporated Hundreds to run large 'Houses of Industry', each capable of accommodating paupers from a large area.7 The first House of Industry was opened at Nacton in 1757, to serve the hundreds of Colneis and Carlford. By 1766, similar institutions had appeared at six other places (see map). The purpose of this enterprising new system, well before Gilbert's Act of 1782 officially encouraged larger administrative units, was to make relief more efficient and less costly.8

The competing of two systems, one parochial and the other hundredal, led to a curious anomaly visible on the map. Although most of eastern Suffolk had followed the lead of Colneis-cum- Carlford, the hundred of Plomes- gate did not. Indeed, its parishes were still busy creating their own new workhouses between 1776 and 1803, while their neighbours in Blything and Wilford-cum- Loes were building larger Houses of Industry, and abandoning the parish workhouses which had previously existed.

In the rest of Suffolk, where Houses of Industry were not being built, about fifteen parishes apparently abandoned their workhouses between 1803 and 1815. This surprising fact may be connected with the adoption of other radical policies-such as supplementing labourers' wages, giving allowances of flour or paying subsidies to employers.

Henry Stuart, whose report on poor-relief in East Anglia was published in 1834, thought the smaller parish workhouses were often 'abodes of misery, depravity and filth', but conceded that those in larger parishes, for example at Saxmundham and Framlingham, were 'most comfortable places of abode' (meaning too comfortable). He found three main groups of inmates: the old and infirm, orphaned and illegitimate children, and unmarried pregnant women. Much more research is needed on individual parish workhouses, before the quality of their relief can be estimated.

Finally, we must not forget that over two thirds of Suffolk's parishes, particularly the smaller ones, never did establish their own workhouses, but relied on other methods of relief.