Charity and the Elizabethan Poor Law.

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

B. Kirkman Gray

Published:

2021

Publisher:

Routledge

In the early part of the sixteenth century the devout people of London, as well men as women, were accustomed, especially on Fridays, to walk out of the city and along the pleasant road by the Houndsditch, where there was then a row -of small two-storied houses with gardens in the rear. The inmates made preparation for these periodic visits, “every poor man or woman lying in their bed within their window, which was towards the street, open so low that every man might see them, a clean linen cloth lying in their window, and a pair of beads, to show that there lay a bed-rid body, unable but to pray only.” Towards the middle of the century, a gun foundry was established in this road. Brokers, sellers of old clothes, and others, set up business there; the homely cottages were in part displaced, and “ the poor bed-rid people were worn out.” 1 In all probability these bedesmen of Houndsditch are among the people of whom Brinklow was thinking in 1545. He had grown indignant at the contrast between the wealth of London, that “ flower of the world,” and the number and misery of its poor. Many, he tells us, begged from door to door, and others were not able to do this, but could only “lye in their howses in most grievous paynes and dye for lack of ayde of the riche.” 1 In any case this description suits the later condition of Stove’s bedesmen. At the one period the road had been such that kindly disposed men and women were pleased to walk along it. Their enjoyment was no doubt incre…

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