Testifying for the Poor: Epistolary Advocates and the Negotiation of Parochial Relief in England, 1800–1834

3 ‘No more for Now or Praps Never’

“…Under the Old Poor Law, King and Jones have shown that few extended letter series relating to a single individual or family did not also contain advocate letters, and we too easily assume that turning to an advocate reflected lack of literacy as opposed to other strategic reasons. 22 It is much less often appreciated that advocates were also a prominent group of writers to the central authorities under the New Poor Law. The single advocate Joseph Rowntree, for instance, wrote more than a hundred thousand words of the corpus, and there are many reasons to think that poor people had input into both what was written on their behalf and how it was written, with more than two hundred instances where it was stated or implied that the subject of the letter had read and approved it.…”