Graham Pollard Memorial Lecture
15 April 2025 @ 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
David Shaw: The Stationers and the Poor Law.
The Settlement Act of 1697 required that poor people wishing to move to somewhere new must obtain an indemnity certificate from their ‘settled’ parish to assure the overseers of the poor in their new location that their old parish would support them in case of need. The London law stationers quickly started to provide printed blank forms for this purpose, followed by printers in the provinces. The quantities of settlement certificates and related documents produced each year amounted to many tens of thousands.