The annual Poor law reports are full of interesting information.

The 1841 report explains why people seeking relief were “removed” to their place of origin, which led to many Irish being transported back from England to Ireland.

Reasons for removal
The main reason given for removal was that providing relief to someone who came from elsewhere, increased the burden on local wage earners, while potentially depressing their wages (by adding to the pool of workers). One can imagine that if there was a large influx of people who could not all find jobs and who were either prepared to work for less or ask for relief, the locals would be unhappy. And this did happen during the great famine, when many thousands of Irish fled to England. In Manchester, the number of Irish on relief exploded from 3,000 to 12,000 during 1847.

From other reading, I’m aware of additional issues, too, such as paupers flocking to the areas with the best relief conditions, or local authorities actively encouraging their poor to move into neighbouring districts to reduce their own costs.

Removal to a “settlement”
Removal was designed to put the financial burden for paupers back on the area that had responsibility for them – usually their birthplace, and referred to as a “settlement” – by transferring them back to it.

The Rules
So this is how the rules worked.

1. People were unconditionally entitled to relief (food, shelter, clothing, within the local workhouse) wherever they lived
BUT
2. if they had a “settlement” (see above), they could be removed back to it, with some hardship exceptions (eg recent widows, or illness). If a person had no known “settlement”, eg someone from Germany, they could not be removed, and would receive relief.

3. Irish and Scottish people were always assumed to have settlements in their native countries, and could be removed there. Often, they were sent by the shortest and cheapest route, because the cost fell on the union that was doing the removing, so they landed in ports that might be far from their native county, leaving the local authorities to deal with an influx of needy people and the logistics of getting them to their birthplaces – because those ports couldn’t bear the financial burden.

4. In 1846, people who had been residents of an area for 5 years were made “irremovable”, so they couldn’t be removed to their settlement location. This wasn’t the same as making their current residence their “settlement” place – as an example, if an Irish family lived in Liverpool for five years, they could claim relief there and not be removed, but if they moved to Birmingham and needed relief within the following five years, they could be removed to Ireland (not Liverpool).

Complexity
In practice, the whole business of relief and removal was complex, as shown by several detailed case studies in old reports. Sometimes, wage earners would travel to look for work and their family would look for relief in the workhouse while he was gone. Should they be removed if he was expected to return soon? At other times, people would deliberately feign poverty in order to get a free removal back to their birthplace. The authorities had to deal with every kind of complication.

I have a large set of documents to share, if you wish to explore further.

Footnote – one of my ancestors was threatened with removal from Plymouth in 1827 – part of his removal notice is shown below. Fortunately(?) he was too ill to travel.