Braybrooke, Richard Griffin, 3rd Baron — Report of the Committee Appointed to Carry into Effect a Plan for Ameliorating the Condition of the Poor at Saffron Walden… — 1830

Attributed Author: Richard Griffin, 3rd Baron Braybrooke
Title: Report of the Committee Appointed to Carry into Effect a Plan for Ameliorating the Condition of the Poor at Saffron Walden, in the County of Essex; and Some Account of the Cottage Allotments in the Adjoining Parish of Littlebury
Printer: Samuel Bentley
Date: 1830
Edition: First edition
Format: Octavo
Pagination: 15 pp.
Binding: Later burgundy cloth, gilt-lettered spine
Stock Code: 004198
Location: Bookroom

First edition of this scarce 1830 report on poor relief, cottage allotments and the condition of agricultural labourers at Saffron Walden and Littlebury, printed by Samuel Bentley and closely associated in bibliographical records with Richard Griffin, 3rd Baron Braybrooke (1783–1858). The report belongs to the important pre-1834 debate over poverty, parish relief and agricultural labour which culminated in the Poor Law Amendment Act four years later.

The work records the activities of a local committee formed to improve the condition of the poor at Saffron Walden, Essex, and supplements this with a detailed account of cottage allotments at nearby Littlebury. The scheme was based on making small plots of land available to labouring families so that they could cultivate produce for their own use and sale, thereby supplementing wages and reducing dependence upon parish relief.

The report is unusually valuable because it includes actual figures rather than merely theoretical discussion. The surviving text records the number and size of allotments, rents charged, crops grown, expenses and returns to labour. One table headed “Outlay and Profit of the Littlebury Allotments, 1830” lists individual occupiers, the rods of land held, rent, seed and carriage costs, and the value of produce in barley and potatoes. The report calculated a positive return from the scheme and argued that the allotment system could improve the condition of labourers while reducing pressure on poor rates.

The Saffron Walden experiment soon entered the wider national debate. In Parliament in 1833, speakers specifically cited Saffron Walden as an example where poor rates had fallen from about £3,000 to £2,000 a year after adoption of the plan, while also claiming that the area had remained comparatively peaceful during the agricultural disturbances that affected neighbouring districts.

The publication is also significant in the history of the allotment movement. Later scholarship on agricultural labourers and rural unrest continues to cite the 1830 Saffron Walden report as a contemporary example of attempts to use smallholdings and garden allotments as instruments of social reform.

Bibliographically, the work is documented in important institutional collections. Google Books preserves an original 1830 copy from Oxford University, digitised in 2009. The Foxwell Collection also records the exact 1830 Saffron Walden report among its economic and social-history holdings. A later 1832 issue combining two reports is preserved in the Goldsmiths’ Library tradition and is attributed in catalogue records to Richard Griffin, 3rd Baron Braybrooke, supporting the attribution of the present work.

The pamphlet was sufficiently locally important to be reprinted by the Saffron Walden Historical Society in 1974, which is a useful indication of its continuing regional and social-history significance.

The present copy is in very good indeed condition. Bound in later burgundy cloth with gilt lettering to the spine. The binding is firm and attractive. The pages are generally very nice and clean, with only light age-related evidence of use. Now housed in an easily removable clear acetate cover.

Very good indeed.

A scarce and unusually data-rich pre-1834 Poor Law tract, documenting one of the early English experiments in using cottage allotments as a practical means of reducing pauperism and improving the condition of agricultural labourers.

Stock code: 004198. Location: Bookroom.

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