At the Philadelphia City Archives

At the Philadelphia City Archives today looking at the minutes kept by the Overseers of the Poor and the Managers of the House of Employment. Interesting stuff. There are, admittedly, pages and pages of tedious accounting: so much money for this expense, so much interest paid on that debt, so many people admitted to Alms House this month, so many people discharged, so many people died...etc. (Lots of people died). But there are also some remarkable stories or, rather, bits and pieces of stories strewn throughout. You only get snapshots of people's lives, and usually at their lowest ebb, but even so it can be engrossing. You get just enough to make you wonder what happened to these people. Just enough to make you want to look at the next page to see if you can find another reference to them. Almost invariably you cannot. These are the poor, the afflicted, the invisible. Historically they exist primarily as a group entities: "the common people," "the lower sort," "the mob." They surface as individuals only for brief and obscure sightings, like those contained in the minutes of the Alms House Managers or the Daily Occurrence Docket.

Here's one example:

(click the image to see a version large enough to read)

Her name is Ann Britton. She's an indentured servant, legally bound to serve another for a period of years. She might be an immigrant who accepted servitude in order to afford passage to America. Or perhaps her parents were very poor and the state took her from them and made her a servant until the age of 18 (this was not unusual). We don't know. Servants, like slaves, can be bought and sold, and Ann has been passed around quite a bit. She was first a servant of a mariner named Moses Rankin. Rankin sold her to a Mr. Penrose, but neglected to fill out all the paperwork. Penrose later sold her to a Capt. Hazelton, but also failed to make the exchange official. Somewhere along the line, Ann married another servant whose name we don't know. She also got pregnant. Masters are responsible for the care of their bound servants; they must feed them, shelter them, care for them when they are sick and, when necessary, care for them when they become pregnant. This can occasionally make having a servant more trouble than it's worth and Capt. Hazelton apparently decide that such was the case with Ann. He first sought to return her to Penrose but Penrose wouldn't take her back. Undeterred, Hazelton struck up a deal with Overseers of the Poor. In exchange for a fee, they would accept her into the Alms House and tend to her pregnancy there, freeing him of any further expense or trouble. And so Ann Britton entered the public poor relief system of Philadelphia, had her name and story recorded in the minutes and then disappeared again into the mists of history.

Did her being repeatedly sold keep her and her husband apart or did they find ways to remain connected? Did her child survive in the Alms House (many did not)? How did she feel about being passed from person to person like a used overcoat, only to have her last master pay an additional fee simply to be rid of her and her 'undesirable' condition? We don't know.

Ann was not part of the research I was conducting; she was just an intriguing distraction, one of many. Today I was looking for evidence of how the Managers of the House of Employment felt about the poor people they cared for and what they thought the purpose of poor relief was.

It's a valid question and still quite relevant today. Why do we provide for those who cannot provide for themselves? What's the objective? Is it simply to keep people from starving in the street or is it to make them self-sufficient, upwardly mobile citizens? What causes poverty: misfortune, an inadequate economic system, or the apathy and dissolution of individuals? Do the poor just need material assistance or do they need to be "reformed" into more frugal, industrious, and self-restrained individuals? Such questions were the topic of debate in the late 18th century just as they are today; 1760s Philadelphia had its own mental image of the "welfare queen" to contemplate. Americans of the 18th century never came up with a satisfactory answer to these questions; neither have we, it seems.