The eighteenth-century vagrant contractor

This article traces the salient developments in poor law and vagrancy law that led to the counties of England and Wales being obliged to shoulder the financial burden of the mobile poor throughout the eighteenth century. It shows that despite the lack of statutory authority many, probably most, counties contracted with a new type of official to implement the conveyance of vagrants under vagrancy legislation in an attempt to counter suspected negligence and profiteering by constables. It shows, with particular reference to Middlesex and the West Riding, that the terms and conditions of these contracts varied considerably, and describes arrangements for the vagrants. The article also suggests reasons why the mobile poor formed an increasing segment of the population well into the nineteenth century and finds that by then the contractors were suspected of the same faults as the constables before them, leading to the abandonment of the contractor system.