Clements Hall Local History Group’s current project, ‘Making ends meet on Nunnery Lane: revealing local poverty in the Victorian period’  investigates poverty and hardship in the mid-19th century in a part of the area of York to the south of the City Walls, Nunnery Lane. 

Dick Hunter has written an update report for the Poverty Project: April 2020 'Paupers and York Poor Law Union, 1837-42'.  His research provides a case study of Ann Shipton, 43 and single, who lived in Swann Street. She was unable to support herself as a char and washerwoman due to an accident in 1841 and applied for welfare, or relief as it was known. She was awarded four shillings a week for eleven weeks; and two shillings for the twelfth week. Relief was then discontinued as she had improved sufficiently to earn again. This account looks at how she applied for relief. Who was responsible for its provision? And how did the system work? 

The article provides a background to the circumstances affecting the lives of many convicts transported from all parts of Britain in the 19th century. It researches circumstances that would have eventually contributed to transportation, and the affect transportation of the wage earner would have had on those left behind.