Pauper settlement and the right to poor relief in England and Wales

After earlier discussion by the Webbs, Dorothy Marshall, Hampson and other Poor Law historians, the administration of parish settlement has been rather neglected in recent years. And so one welcomes the recent local study in this journal by Landau, 'The laws of settlement and the surveillance of immigration in eighteenth-century Kent', as promoting further exploration of a complex subject which was of some importance to contemporaries.1 However, the characterization of pauper settlement in her article seems ill-judged, and the emphasis in her outline of the nature and purpose of settlement is misleading. To assess her arguments requires discussion of some legalistic, logical and technical problems in her article (and these may not engage all readers); but I shall also take her account as a cue for pointing the way to a more balanced analysis of settlement, which may be of wider interest.[Opening Paragraph]