They did this under a removal order which gave them the power to send anyone who had settled in the parish without permission back to the place of their birth. It was a straightforward piece of economics which was designed to root out anyone who might make a claim on the parish for support in a time of need.
And Mary may well have been just such a person. In 1765 after arriving back in Chorlton she gave birth to the first of three children all born out of wedlock.
In a period of heightened debate about benefits and the drain on the public purse the actions of St Matthew’s Parish authorities might seem all too familiar.
The years just before and after Waterloo** were hard times and the parish of St Matthew’s responded to requests for help. So in the year 1810-11, James Mee the overseer regularly paid out between £40 and £90 a month in relief, with the highest sums in the winter months when little work could be done on the land.
But it was always the bastardy payments which feature prominently.
For women like Mary Crowther who had done penance and had had three illegitimate children between 1765 and 1782 there was a greater recognition of the father’s responsibility. Mary could turn to the law for help and although we have no records for Mary there are other recorded cases.
And it is those from Stretford which throw a light on how unmarried mothers were treated. These are the Orders for Maintenance of Bastard Children, and Bastardy Bonds which identified the adult male who would support the child as well as other miscellaneous Orders Relating to Bastardy. ***for , and across the country many of these records have survived in greater quantities.
They reveal a straightforward system designed to identify the father and bring him to court. This might begin with an examination of the mother by a magistrate or if she was already in labour by a midwife. These Bastardy Examinations were common in the early eighteenth century. Having achieved the information a Bastardy Warrant was issued ordering a Constable to bring the father before the Magistrate. If the case was successfully made then a Bastardy Order was issued which identified the man and stipulated the amount he was to pay.
Often the sum was decided on a yearly basis which would then be paid quarterly. This amount varied and may have been based on circumstances.
The figure of 26 shillings [£1.30p] for the year payable until the child was fourteen appears in some of the Stretford documents but others set an initial payment to cover the birth ranging from £2 down to 10s. [50p] and specify that further payments should be made weekly.
These also varied from 30d [7p] to 7d [3p]. In some cases the mother was expected to contribute and this could be 18d [7p].
Attempting to make sense of these awards is fraught, but some idea of their monetary worth can be gauged by making a comparison with wage rates and some examples of the cost of living. Just twenty years later in 1830 Mary Bailey and Higginbotham the farmer agreed an annual salary of £7.10s [£7.50] from which she bought in January a pair of stays which cost 10s.6d, [52p], in May a new cap worth 1s.8d [7p] and in July repaired her shoes for 2s.8d [14p]. The cost of renting on the Row for a farm labourer varied from 10d [8p] to 5s [25p] a week. Finally the day rate for women workers in the south west was between 7-10d [3p].
Against this backdrop of wages, and spending the magistrates determined that the cost of maintaining an illegitimate child was 7d [3p] a day and this was slightly more generous than the 26 shillings {£1.30p].
So in the year 1807 which seems typical, Catherine Ashcroft received 5/- on April 28th, the widow Pinnington 2/6d and Margaret Thompson 3/-
But the system was flawed and there were many in the early nineteenth century who said so. The moralists argued that payments to a single mother only encouraged illegitimacy and they may even be evidence to suggest they were partly right. Both here in the township and in the Parish of Ironville in Derbyshire and no doubt many other areas, some woman gave birth to a number of children out of wedlock. Their story is also covered in my book.
I suspect that their stories will be like many of the women from Chorlton, who went on to get married, although in the case of Mary Crowther she did not, living out her days with one of her sons in a wattle an daub cottage on the site of the Trevor arms on Beech Road.
And as ever I stand by a correction from Bill Sumner who wrote "The Stretford records you allude to were not in the Parish of St Matthew as that church was not then built, they are the records of Stretford Old Chapel and much more can be read of similar cases in The History of the Old Chapel of Stretford by Sir Bosdin Leech. Charles Walker of Barlow Hall settled later in Longford House Stretford and became Poor Law Guardian for Sretford, he ruthlessly cut down on the number of persons receiving benefit from the town excluding all who were originally from elsewhere".
Pictures, Mary Crowther's gravestone from the collection of Andrew Simpson, map of Stretford from Greenwoods map, courtesy of Digital Archives, 1818, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ Bastardy Orders, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council
*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson 2012, the History Press, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton
**The Battle of Waterloo 1815
*** St Matthew Overseers of the Poor, Manchester Archives L89/9/14
