During a crisis this number naturally increases markedly, and want reaches its highest pitch.
Take, for instance, the crisis of 1842 , which, being the latest, was the most violent; for the intensity of the crisis increases with each repetition, and the next, which may be expected not later than 1847 , will probably be still more violent and lasting.
During this crisis the poor-rates rose in every town to a hitherto unknown height. In Stockport, among other towns, for every pound paid in house-rent, eight shillings of poor-rate had to be paid, so that the rate alone formed forty percent of the house-rent. Moreover, whole streets stood vacant, so that there were at least twenty thousand fewer inhabitants than usual, and on the doors of the empty houses might be read: “Stockport to let.”
In Bolton, where, in ordinary years, the rents from which rates are paid average £86,000, they sank to £36,000. The number of the poor to be supported rose, on the other hand, to 14,000, or more than twenty percent of the whole number of inhabitants.
In Leeds, the Poor Law guardians had a reserve fund of £10,000. This, with a contribution of £7,000, was wholly exhausted before the crisis reached its height. So it was everywhere.
A report drawn up in January, 1843 , by a committee of the Anti-Corn Law League, on the condition of the industrial districts in 1842 , which was based upon detailed statements of the manufacturers, asserts that the poor-rate was, taking the average, twice as high as in 1839 , and that the number of persons requiring relief has trebled, even quintupled, since that time; that a multitude of applicants belong to a class which had never before solicited relief; that the working-class commands more than two-thirds less of the means of subsistence than from 1834 – 1836 ; that the consumption of meat had been decidedly less, in some places twenty