Blog post written by Lucile Berset (27 November 2020)
Most of the pauper petitions of the LALP corpus have a similar form. They consist of one letter motivating a request for financial relief, signed by one, sometimes two people of the same household, but usually written by a single hand. In some rare cases however, writings by more than one hand can be seen within this letter. This is the case with a three-page letter sent in June 1830. In addition to the main application, two other sections of text are found on the second and on the third page. Each of them is written and signed by a different person, the first by the applicant, the second by his tenant, and the last one by his doctor. Having access to writings from various authors on the same document is valuable for two main reasons. First, it is a specific case where other people of a higher social status support the applicant by validating their claim. Second, it allows for direct comparison between a mechanically schooled hand and well-schooled hands.
A man named John Morris applied for relief on June 3rd, 1830 from Darlington in the North East of England. In the first part of his letter, he explains to the overseer of his home parish of Kington that his poor state of health has prevented him from working for a “Quarter of a year” and that he is consequently not able to support his family anymore. He writes “please to be so Kind as send me some emedeate Relefe(…)”. The main letter ends at the bottom of the first page with John Morris’s signature. Another short paragraph is added by Morris at the top of the next page. He contextualises the six upcoming lines, written by his landlord, Mr. Walters. In his testimony, Mr. Walters clearly depicts his lodger as a reliable man, who has been regularly paying his rent. He adds that Morris has a wife and three children “dependant upon him”. Finally, on the third and last page, three lines signed by Arthur Strother, Surger[on], certify Morris’s bad state of health and the necessity for him to stay in bed. Both paragraphs by Walters and Strother are dated June 3rd, the same as the main letter.
The extra paragraphs rhetorically strengthen Morris’s application in two ways. On the one hand, Walters describes the applicant in positive terms and highlights the fact that his family relies on him. The mention of the dependent wife and children highlights the vulnerability of Morris’s family, more likely to trigger the overseer’s charity. It can be classified as social testimony. Obviously, Walters has an interest in supporting his lodger’s claim if he wants his rent to keep being paid. However, accepting to write and testify for Morris in his application process lets us think that the two men may have had a friendly relationship. On the other hand, Strother uses his medical expertise to confirm Morris’s inability to earn money. This can be considered a medical testimony. More generally, both Walters and Strother are from a higher social class than Morris, which gives his application more weight.
As already briefly discussed in a previous blog post, pauper handwriting was highly heterogeneous both in terms of spelling and graph design since compulsory education was only introduced in 1870. This can be seen in Morris’s letter, which provides a typical example of mechanical writing resulting from basic literacy training. According to Tony Fairman (2015), mechanical writing implies drawing and copying graphs rather than freely producing words as part of a broader grammatical and syntactical logic. Although Morris’s writing is neat and easy to read, spelling variation is significant, and the initial capitalisation of each word is random. Moreover, the graphs are rarely attached to each other within the same orthographic unit. They usually stand alone or in pairs, which is typical of a mechanically schooled hand. In contrast, Walters and Strother show what more advanced writing skills look like. Their higher social rank suggests that they likely completed more formal education than Morris. The graphs forming orthographic units are linked, spelling is mostly standardized, and capitalisation is used for proper nouns only. Having Morris’s handwriting alongside Walters’s and Strother’s highlights some obvious differences between trained and less trained writers. Morris’s application document is of special value as the three parts of the text were written in the same context. It is of course possible to compare different writing styles by taking unrelated documents. However, here is a case where the writing was produced on the same day and at the same place.
This is the only letter related to Morris’s case in the LALP corpus. As often, we do not know if help was granted to the applicant or if the extra efforts to have other people testifying for him were in vain. In any case, this three-hand letter is still helpful to understand how other actors such as landlords and doctors, can play a positive role in pauper application. The social differences between members of lower and higher ranks of society are not only visible in their status but also clearly materialised in the handwriting levels of the different individuals.
Fairman, Tony. 2015. Language in print and handwriting. In Anita Auer, Daniel Schreier & Richard J. Watts (eds.), Letter Writing and Language Change, pp. 53-71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.