Agricultural History Review, Volume 70 Part 1 (2022), p. 137

The Records in Social and Economic History series provides a great service to historians in collecting, publishing and, crucially, contextualizing material often located in disparate local record offices, and Norfolk pauper inventories is no exception. Pauper inventories, as Joseph Harley notes, are notoriously difficult to locate in archival collections, as they are not always individually catalogued within broader collections of material relating to the operation of the poor law, leaving the historian to sift through boxes of papers in an often-fruitless search. Once located, 1 David Hey, ‘What landscape means to me’, Landscapes, 9 (2008), p. 77. they must also be distinguished from inventories taken for other purposes, before one begins the task of deciphering the list of household goods – often hurriedly recorded, using archaic or local terminology for the objects described – and attempting to trace the fate of the pauper in question. The publication here of 230 transcribed inventories is therefore in itself a gift to historical researchers. These are grouped by the relieving parish and each inventory is accompanied by valuable information regarding the amount of relief provided to the pauper in question and any other relevant and available biographical information. To the rear of the book is a glossary of terms explaining the less familiar names for household items, and this will prove a useful reference for all historians of domestic material culture in Norfolk and beyond. Harley also provides detail about the inventories as material objects themselves, noting their placement within the wider archive and their physical condition. He is honest regarding any uncertainty about items listed, allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions about ‘Dubious Terms’ and highlighting cases where damage such as smudging and fading have obscured the text.

In addition to contextualizing the published inventories, Norfolk pauper inventories provides a rich and accessible introduction to pauper inventories as a historical source in the four chapters that precede the sources themselves. The first chapter explains the research contexts in which pauper inventories can be of use to the historian, demonstrating Harley’s familiarity with histories of poverty and consumption, and the debates over industrialization and standards of living in the long eighteenth century. The extensive references in this section signpost the reader to further work in these fields while making a strong case for using pauper inventories to redress the relative lack of scholarship on the poor’s own experiences of the industrious, industrial, and consumer ‘revolutions.’

The second chapter goes into more technical detail about the operations of the poor law and the dubious legality of taking an inventory of a pauper’s goods. Different parishes varied in how they exercised their responsibility to distribute relief, so that the poor law in practice was a complex patchwork of provision. There was no legal basis for taking pauper inventories, so the practice depended on local customs which could differ starkly. Harley argues that the taking of an inventory could be seen as a benevolent act where it guaranteed a pauper regular assistance, as the goods were usually only removed and sold or redistributed after their death. However, the awareness of local variations in practice is crucial in making such judgements. Harley points out that in Northern England the parish might require that goods were sold before relief could be provided, suggesting a much more draconian operation. He also points to temporal shifts in attitudes to providing relief, suggesting that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries concerns about pressures on the poor law system may have led to inventories being used as evidence of material sufficiency to deny relief to applicants.

The third chapter is therefore dedicated to outlining the specific local context for the creation of the pauper inventories in the volume. Norfolk had high levels of poverty during the long eighteenth century due to the decline of the worsted industry, resulting in a reliance on low agricultural wages at the same time as enclosure was limiting access to the commons as a supplementary resource for the poor. As a result, Norfolk has the largest collection of pauper inventories of any single English county, enabling Harley to draw out trends in the provision of relief relating to the gender and lifecycle stage of paupers whose goods were assessed, and the extent of relief they were likely to receive. He is, however, cautious of generalizing from the sample, given its distinct local character.

The final chapter guides the reader through the process of reading an inventory, pointing out areas where researchers might exercise caution, for example by highlighting the multiple reasons why an inventory might underrepresent the goods of a given household. One of the great strengths of the book is its generous, accessible style, making it a helpful starting point for non-specialists or historians new to using inventory evidence, though the rigorous detail makes it a similarly worthwhile read for experienced researchers. As Harley’s own extensive publications on the material culture of the poor demonstrate, pauper inventories have considerable potential to challenge simplistic portrayals of eighteenth-century poverty. They can reveal the agency of poor people in negotiating with the parish overseers, and the potential to ‘make home’ with small comforts even in challenging economic circumstances. They can highlight the ways in which the experience of poverty differed between individuals and at different life stages, humanizing the poor by complicating their portrayal as an amorphous mass. As Harley notes, though pauper inventories were produced ‘from above’ by those with power in the parish, they nonetheless offer intimate insight into domestic lives that might otherwise fade into obscurity. In this book, he has provided a tremendously valuable resource to equip historians to research the stories pauper inventories can tell.