from 1786, four years after the passing of Gilbert's Act, under which outdoor relief was made obligatory. The parish year seems to have begun variously—perhaps at the discretion of the overseers—in April, May, or June, and the "first month" is always one of those three months. The accounts of poor relief are kept monthly, under the headings "monthly payments" and "extraordinaries." The former are regular allowances of outdoor relief, continued over long periods, in some cases apparently indefinitely. The latter are what we should now know as casual relief, and take the shape of various articles of clothing, coals, blankets, attendance in sickness, etc. The "first month's pay" for (May) 1786, shows thirty-three monthly allowances ranging from 16s. to 4s., total £10, 15s. The first month's "extraordinaries " number twenty-seven, and amount to £ or thereabouts. The maximum total monthly expenditure under these two heads during that year was £22, and the minimum £15. The total "disbursted" (sic) in poor relief for the year was about £200. Amongst the monthly allowances we find five evidently in respect of bastardy cases. Forty rates were made at £5, 0s. 6d. per rate.
Nine years later—that is to say, in the "first month" of 1805—the monthly payments had risen to eighty-six, and the "extraordinaries" to fifty-eight, and the total amount paid for the relief of the poor was £48, 16s. 8d. By this time the practice of giving "shirts," "shifts," and other articles of clothing, which hardly appear at all in the earlier record, had grown to enormous dimensions. That of paying people to attend upon their relations in sickness and old age had also assumed formidable proportions, and there is scarcely a month in which it does not appear in some form. There are some six allowances in respect of bastard children. We shall see later that there was a
