Poverty and Pragmatism in the Northern Uplands of England: The North Yorkshire Pennines c. 1770-1900

Recent research into rural poverty in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has concentrated largely on the economic impact of poor relief and on issues of power struggles, particularly between central and local government. Some significant claims have been made concerning the cause, effect and relief of poverty in England. However, these claims are based largely on research undertaken in southern and eastern lowland areas. This article, by examining a neglected area, the northern uplands, demonstrates that there were different approaches to the problem of poverty and that it is inappropriate to use southern areas as a proxy for the national experience. The evidence presented here suggests that, contrary to southern-based findings, the use of informal mechanisms rather than recourse to formal poor relief was the normal manner of dealing with poverty in upland areas. Further, in so far as the act of 1601 and its later modifications were utilized by local upland communities, rather than being a cause of poverty or even acting as a spur to economic development, they provided the machinery for a flexible and pragmatic response to both sudden and long-term need. This article shows that although there are some similarities with the experience of the south and east as presented in recent studies, the features which resulted in the successful response of the case-study communities to poverty throughout the period were underpinned by landownership and landholding patterns and included the persistence of dual/multiple occupations, a pastoral economy, self-help and charitable activities, and a relatively 'flat' social hierarchy. Importantly, the interrelationship of these conditions encouraged an independence of mind and a pragmatic response to poverty.