Census of a Reception Centre

Abstract

In the second half of the fourteenth century, the whole problem of poverty became in England for the first time a matter of government concern. The contractual relationship between landlord and villein which had prevailed during the Middle Ages, was breaking down, and the Black Death hastened this process. Statutes dealing with vagrancy and poverty were promulgated in 1349, 1351 and 1388: the able-bodied beggar was punished in the stocks and generally repression was the keynote, but despite harsh laws vagrancy increased. In a series of statutes from 1531–1601 the Tudor sovereigns initiated a system of local relief based on the Parish unit. In 1576, Houses of Correction were established:“to the intent youth may be accustomed and brought up in labour and work, and then not likely to grow to be able rogues, and to the intent that such as be already grown up in idleness and so rogues at this present, may not have any just excuse in saying that they cannot get any service of work”.(De Schweinitz, 1943).