The Sad Tale of the Paupers Nobody Wanted : Proving the right of a British Citizen

 

In recent years, recent days even, we have heard people in this country denouncing refugees crossing from France because, “the British Taxpayer has to provide for them.”  In 1834 the government passed the New Poor Law to reduce the burden on the rate payers in England of providing for paupers with out relief by replacing it with indoor relief within the Union Workhouse.  The old rules of Settlement, where birth in a parish was necessary to receive help no longer applied so clearly but gradually the right of aid within a union of parishes was established.

However, in one sad case in Surrey and Hampshire no rights of support were legally allowed. It concerned a family where the wife, Catherine Stringer, had been born in Prussia (Germany), the daughter of a British soldier, and her husband, Michael Stringer, the son of a freed slave who had been born in Jamaica was considered a foreigner even though he received a soldier’s pension after more than 20 years’ service in the British army.

In November 1854, Catherine Stringer, who with her husband, Michael, had given birth to 14 children, presented herself at Guildford Union Workhouse, with her youngest 3 children because her husband had seduced their adopted orphan child, who at 18 was expecting his baby. Catherine was a British subject in every census record but had no right to poor relief.  Her husband was stationed in the barracks in Guildford, but when the Guildford Board of Guardians discovered she had a son-in-law in Portsmouth (where Catherine had once lived) who could take her in, they bought her train tickets so she could remove herself and her youngest children to Portsea.  Mr Ames, Master of the Workhouse took them to Guildford station and accompanied them in the carriage to Woking station where he put them on the Portsmouth train.

Subsequently the Poor Law Board in London ruled this removal from Guildford to Portsmouth was illegal.

Michael Springer is described on his pension documents as 5 ft 8 inches tall with dark brown hair, grey eyes and a swarthy complexion. He had a good military record and was a Sergeant as well as a Bugle Major. He retired aged 38 because of arthritis, probably caused by many years of service in Ireland after his upbringing in the warmer climate of Jamaica where he was born. In 1821 Michael married Catherine after meeting her in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where her father was also serving as a soldier.

Michael had served as a Bugle Major for 19 years with the 2^nd Battalion 60^th Infantry Regiment but prior to that he had enlisted in Jamaica at the age of 12. After being discharged in Ireland in 1834, where many of his children were born, he moved to the more favourable climate of Portsmouth. Unfortunately in 1851 he was convicted of the felony of larceny, which is why the 1851 census lists Catherine as Head of the house.

On finishing his sentence in 1852, Michael joined the Surrey Militia in Guildford until his discharge in 1854 when like his estranged wife he moved back to Portsmouth where some of their adult children lived. Soon his itchy feet took him back to Cork in Ireland but in 1861 Catherine is still in Portsmouth with some of her children.

I believe Michael remarried in Cork, probably bigamously but in 1875 Catherine died in poverty in the Union Workhouse on Portsea Island.

The problems the couple had in establishing rights as British citizens despite valid parentage, being born abroad as a result of her father's army service and in Michael's case owing him reward for his duty to Britain as a soldier, reflect the experiences of the Windrush generation and also of the difficulty experienced by some of my generation in obtaining a British passport because they were born in Singapore or Malaysia due to their father's military service. No wonder they had such tempestuous lives.