Poor Law Removal Orders
Before the welfare state, and particularly before laws were changed in 1834, if you were unable to earn a living, the parish in which you lived would have the chief responsibility for providing for you.
To receive assistance you had to prove that a particular parish was your legal 'place of settlement' and the criteria were rigorously enforced.
If you could not prove settlement, you would be removed from the parish and sent elsewhere. Because removal orders had to be signed by two Justices of the Peace, copies form part of Quarter Sessions records.
To help you trace your Derbyshire ancestors, we have a database of removal orders in the Derbyshire Quarter Sessions archives. Please supply us with the names and dates of interest, and we will be pleased to advise you about the possibility of obtaining copies of the original entries, subject to preservation and conservation requirements.
Settlement was allowed to:
a legitimate child (who took his/her father's settlement, irrespective of the child's place of birth)
a wife (took her husband's settlement)
a widow who remarried (took her husband's settlement). Children from her first marriage retained their father's settlement
children from the age of seven and upwards in the parish where they were apprenticed, providing they lived there for more than forty consecutive days.
servants who stayed one year from date of hiring, and left with full wages, could claim settlement in the place where they were in service
a married man who rented a farm or smallholding, or set up as a tradesman in a new parish, providing he stayed twelve months, paid parish rates and £10 or more in annual rent, could gain a new settlement there
a person who inherited an estate of land and lived on the estate for more than forty days could claim a settlement there.
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