Workhouses, Inns & Vestries: How Reading parishes cared for their poor in the 18C
A talk by Dr Margaret Ounsley for Reading Civic Society
In this talk, especially organised for Reading Civic Society, Dr Margaret Onsley will draw on the work she did to complete her PhD in Poor Law History
In the seventeenth and eighteenth century England developed a system of poor relief which was the first mandatory, universal, tax-based system in Europe, and, quite possibly, the world. Its implications were huge, helping to build the urban and industrialised society of the nineteenth century.
Through the mundane paperwork necessary to administer it, it is possible to build a picture of the daily lives and struggles of the ordinary people it affected. Reading is particularly fortunate in having a rich supply of such documents. By piecing them together we can study the boys who were sent to apprenticeship, the women employed to help strangers in labour, and the vagrants travelling on the Great West Road to London.
In Reading a particular set of circumstances applied which meant the system operated in a way quite different from the villages of Berkshire, or the metropolitan parishes of London. A system that had as much to do with politics and pubs as it was to do with poverty.
Come along to hear Margaret Ounsley who completed a PhD in Poor Law History in 2024. He talk will focus on what she learnt. Prior to completing her Doctorate she worked in government and lobbying for twenty-five years.
The event will be held in the Garden Hall of Watlington House, accessed from South Street. Arrive from 10:30am. The talk will run from 11am to 12 noon.
There is NO parking in the Garden. There are pay car parking spaces in Sidmouth St and in South St beyond Sidmouth St. Also a NCP car park down South St on the left side towards the South St Arts Centre.
