ABSTRACT

Westmorland is a special case in that it seems clear that there the justices came to accept the logic of shifting the cost to the county, and by the end of the century routinely paid for medical and midwifery expenses for travelling poor as vagrants. In Westmorland the women seem to have been looked after reasonably sympathetically, although cases of harsh treatment did occasionally occur, such as the case of Cornelius Knot's wife. The 1609 Vagrant Act in making provision for the punishment of bastard bearers did nothing to change the legal situation, but the 1744 Vagrant Act did so in the case of travelling women. In 1749 Cornelius Knot, a soldier complained to Quarter Sessions that when his wife fell in labour in Bongate the constable violently and without compassionating her Circumstances forced her out of Bongate and into Appleby.