Helping the Poor of Thames Ditton

From Dittopedia

Responsibilities of Churchwardens and Overseers

Overseers and Churchwardens had a wide variety of duties in relation to the poor. Overseers had much to do with:

administering the poor rate (e.g. applications to other parishes for financial support of certain paupers unable to travel),
settlement (e.g. dealing with vagrants stranded on the local section of the highway),
removal (e.g. making removal orders), and
bastardy cases (e.g. examinations concerning parentage of bastard children). ^[1]

Churchwardens sometimes paid for primitive medical treatment for some poor people, both adults and children. Bearing the costs of small amounts of elementary education also sometimes came their way, as did some of the costs of law and order. ^[1]

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The Workhouse

The Old Workhouse (c. 1879) by J. Jessop Hardwick -- in Workhouse Lane (now Thorkhill Road) 31-Oct

For desperately poor people, there was the workhouse. Thames Ditton probably had a workhouse by 1706, the workhouse master being Thomas Collier. The evidence for this is a Bill of Fare signed by Collier which was found in St Nicholas Church. The Bill indicates a monotonous diet: bread, butter, cheese, broth and beer, with the occasional serving of mutton, beef and vegetables. Beer was served twice a day. The location of the workhouse is not known. ^[1]

The Overseers of the Poor occasionally rented additional accommodation for the poor -- for example, John Hunter's house, barns and orchard (which were probably at Weston Green) for seven years from 1741. ^[1]

On 11th July 1760, the Overseers made an agreement at the Angel Inn with Thomas Keel, a local labourer, to become master of the workhouse for three years. He took control of a building in Thorkhill Road, which at the time was called Workhouse Lane. The cottages in Rythe Terrace -- or more likely 115 Thorkhill Road -- indicate the location of Keel's workhouse more precisely. ^[1]

A 1781 inventory shows nine bedrooms, kitchen, parlour, cellar and brewhouse. There would have been about 30 inmates, many of them old or infirm. ^[1]

The master received £180 a year to cover the needs of all the inmates, plus heating and lighting. The master also received the proceeds of the inmates' work. The inmates received three meals a day, with additional beer on Wednesdays and Friday afternoons. At Christmas, the brewhouse brewed extra ale. (A few years later, the parish would provide additional fare such as Christmas puddings.) ^[1]

A note from a Vestry meeting of 28th October 1782 shows one way how the villagers monitored the conditions in which inmates lived: a Select Committee of '12 gentlemen and four officers' was appointed. Six members of this committee would be selected in rotation to inspect the workhouse at 9 o'clock every Sunday morning. And the inmates would gain if the committee wasn't punctual: they were 'to forfeit sixpence if not there by half an hour after nine. All forfeits to be laid out in the Winter for the benefit of the poor at the discretion of the Committee'. ^[1]

In 1800, the workhouse governor received four shillings per head per week for keeping the poor fed, clothed and fit. ^[1]

This was certainly no convalescent home. Occupants were expected to work in the house, the gardens or the parish which kept them. For example:

making up St. Leonards Road (the replacement for Wharf Road) in 1771,
digging gravel and putting it on the Portsmouth Road. In 1807 the workhouse was given a gravel cart. ^[1]

The law was changed in 1834, and by 1836 the workhouse was closed. Ditton's inmates were transferred to Kingston upon Thames, where they merged with a large concourse from many parishes. ^[1]

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