| Description | This sub-fonds relates to records of enrolment, registration, deposit and returns. It consists of records relating to vagrants, including:
- vagrants' examinations and passes. The passes give the following details: name, parish where arrested, parish of legal settlement, details of dependents, and order to parish constable or keeper of the house of correction to convey them on their way to their place of settlement (usually to the first first parish over the county boundary if another county). Examinations often give biographical details including place of settlement, date and origin of settlement. Mostly on printed forms [1740-1821]
- returns by poor law unions of the number of vagrants relieved during 1851, requested by a letter from the Clerk of the Peace [1852] |
| Administrative history | Under an Act of 1743 (17 George II cap. 5) Justices were empowered to commit vagrants to the house of correction, or to have them conveyed by the means of a pass with examination annexed to their place of last legal settlement, or if that could not be found, to their place of birth. A duplicate of the pass or examination was to be sent to Quarter Sessions to be filed and kept. The system of passes (except for removals to Scotland and Ireland) was abolished by an Act of 1824 (5 George IV cap. 83). |