Badging the Poor
The 1697 Act also required the "badging of the poor" — those in receipt of poor relief were required to wear, in red or blue cloth on their right shoulder, the letter "P" preceded by the initial letter of their parish. Badging was taken up by some parishes and not by others, and the procedure was eventually discontinued in an Act of 1810 (50 Geo. III c.10).
Pauper's badge for Ampthill parish
The operation of the Settlement Act, and its subsequent amendments, proved complex, confusing and contentious. Expensive legal battles often took place between a parish attempting to remove a pauper whom it claimed it had no duty to support, and the parish that it claimed did have responsibility. For example, early in 1837 a man called William Withers was travelling from Bristol to London when he became stricken with severe rheumatism and had to spend six weeks in the parish workhouse at Walcot in Bath. Eventually, Walcot decided to remove him to Clerkenwell and at 6pm he was put aboard the outside of a coach open to the wind and snow. After seven hours, at the halfway point at Newbury, he had to be lifted off the coach and revived with a little brandy and water. When he arrived in Clerkenwell, he had lost virtually all use of his hands and feet and was a bedridden invalid. A court then decided that, due to a technicality, his removal from Walcot had been illegal. However, to rectify matters, he would have to return there for removal proceedings to be reconducted. In the meantime, Clerkenwell could pass on the cost of Withers' upkeep to Walcot, and so treated him like a king, to the tune of five shillings a week. The ratepayers of Walcot had had to stump up £500 in legal costs plus the initial removal expenses and the cost of his keep until he was fit to return to Bath whereupon he could be removed again — legally — back to London.
Although various amendments continued to be made to the settlement and removal laws, notably an 1846 statute (9&10 Vic. c.66) which granted settlement after five years' residence, and the 1865 Union Chargeability Act (28&29 Vic. c.79) when all settlement powers were placed in the hands of the Poor Law Union and its Board of Guardians, the law was not finally abolished until 1948.
.Bibliography
- Slack, Paul. The English Poor Law, 1531-1782, 1990, CUP.
- Webb, Sidney and Beatrice English Poor Law History, 1927, Longmans, Green & Co., London.
- Webb, Sidney and Beatrice English Poor Law Policy, 1910, Longmans, Green & Co., London.
For US readers 
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