The Poor Beggar's Feast

What is a feast to a poor beggar is it bacon and  eggs? Is it a kettle full of stew? or is it a   crust of bread from The Keeper of the Poor House?  Poverty is a fact of life in the 18th century it's   very difficult on adults and children alike whole  families were in destitution whether they're in   Europe Great Britain or North America. Today I want a victory for this poor   beggar we are going to make them a feast. When I think of beggars in the 18th century   I see the artwork in my head and they're all  European Beggars sometimes walking through   the countryside or in the big cities of Europe  especially London but when I think about North   American colonies I can't Envision any beggars  in fact if we read a lot of the writings from   the time period we don't really hear many  people talking about poverty in fact they're   saying oh it's wonderful in North America and  there isn't any great quantity of poverty.  Well nothing could be further from the truth  there is a lot of poverty in colonial America.  Many people are coming to the colonies as  transported criminals and they have to work   for seven or 14 years before they're free and  other people are coming as indentured servants so   many of these transported criminals and indentured  servants even if they survive their indentureship   never get out of poverty and a large quantity  of people along the coast they're Sailors.  Sailors are are some of the lowest paid workers  in colonial America these people again never make   it out of poverty for the most part. So there is a  lot of poverty going on whether it's people in the   cities which actually they're probably more like  big towns to us or people out on the frontier.  Yes, the vast majority of people out on the  frontier we would probably call very poor.   Now how did they deal with the poor either  in Great Britain or in colonial America? Well   they had poor laws so they took up taxes and it  was part of the local government's job to take   care of the destitute the people that really  needed to be fed that might starve to death.  There are three different main ways that these  local governments would try to deal with poor   people they had what was called out help where  they would just basically give little amounts   of money or particular care to save families  they they would supply them with a little bit   of firewood or a little bit of money to buy food. Then they had a concept of sort of inside help   that they would take these people that were  destitute and they would put them into an   institution, maybe they would call it a workhouse  or a bettering house or an alms house they all had   the same kind of concept that it was easier to  take care of these people if they brought them   into an institution rather than giving them funds. The third method of helping people was   indenturing them out into the community so  they would basically come up with contracts   and then someone in the community would use  their labor would be in charge of taking   care of that person and that happens a lot. Sometimes there's a mixture of these happening   within individuals so they'll start working in  an outside help way but if that family isn't   really getting back up on its feet then they'll  bring part of the family into an institution and   then the children they will bind out or they  will send them out into the community to work   as servants in other households and so many times  this was a a family destroying kind of situation.  They were doing their best to feed these people  but this was the only way they knew how to help   them. If you were assigned to the workhouse  if that's where you were put because you were   poor what would you expect to eat? So many  times these workhouses their rules were they   just had to feed the people properly and that  means whoever's in charge of the workhouse   would just figure out how to feed people as  inexpensively as they possibly could. We do   have some descriptions of workhouse food. Now a typical breakfast well it's going to   be something like bread and cheese possibly  a little oatmeal some milk porridge the same   thing is happening for your evening meal but  the main meal of the day sometimes that's a   little more substantial. After all this was  many times called a workhouse they wanted   people to be able to do some work so they're  feeding them boiled beef with root vegetables   as a main dish or possibly peas pudding maybe  some bread maybe even a little bit of beer.  So what we're going to make today for our  Beggar's Feast are three different things   we're going to be making a boiled beef sort  of soup we're going to have a suet pudding   which is almost like a dessert for our time period  we'll also make a very simple brown bread and   we'll have a little bit of beer. We're going  to start with our suet pudding because that's   going to take the largest quantity of time that  needs to kind of go in and start boiling right   away and a suet pudding is very very simple  it's flour it's suet which gives it that kind   of nice texture it's got some very inexpensive  spice in it which is a little bit of salt and   some ginger and then we mix up a few  eggs and a little bit of milk and we   bundle that up into a pudding cloth off it  goes and we start that boiling in our water.  The biggest driver of poverty in our time  period are health problems good Medical Care   in the 18th century almost impossible. And if someone is sick with a long-term   illness not only are they expensive to take  care of but they're not earning any money.  So any kind of health issue can immediately push a  family into poverty and they have to go to inside   help they take them out of their home and they  put them into an institution a workhouse and   alm's house they of course can't get them to work  if they're not healthy so all these institutions   almost immediately had to become hospitals and in  fact those are the forerunners of modern hospitals   they all started off as some kind of Institutions  for the poor what's interesting today is we think   about hospitals as high tech we think about them  possibly as as expensive institutions in our time   period they're for the poorest of the poor so  the rich people they never went to a hospital   they would generally have their health care  done in their homes their doctors would visit   them and they would do whatever they could there. But these institutions in the time period these   hospitals were the training facilities for doctors  they could interact with the most amount of   people and do the most learning in those  kinds of situations the next thing we're   going to work on for our Beggar's Feast is  our main broth soup we have a little bit of   beef here and we're going to start it boiling  in some water. Many times you see these menus   and they say broth and it could be that they boil  this beef and maybe for breakfast you don't even   get any meat in your soup it's just the broth  that came off of something you boiled earlier.  After a little while we're going to put  in our root vegetables some carrots some   potatoes again very inexpensive and most  likely that the cuts of beef that they   would use in something like this beef broth or  we would call it a beef soup would be the least   expensive cuts possible sort of shin bone cuts or  whatever we've just got some regular stew meat.  Many families would do whatever it took to stay  out of the workhouse or the poor house and there   were different kinds of jobs people could do you  could go around you could collect ashes or you   could collect night soil or urine at different  times of the day you could have some of the   dirtiest jobs but the jobs needed to be done they  they could earn enough money to keep you out of   the Poor House. One of the reasons why you wanted  to stay out of the Poor House was because even   though it was sort of like a hospital in one  way it was also like a prison in another way.  They would get a criminal element in the  workhouses and they would also treat them like   criminals you couldn't necessarily you know leave  whenever you wanted to and you had to do certain   menial jobs when you were inside the workhouse. Maybe you would have to work up junk which is   taking apart old ropes and fraying them and  working them or doing something like trying   to make shoes they also tried working on a  linen industry where they had people both   spinning and weaving in the workhouse. Now it turns out that no matter how much   they tried to make these workhouses pay  for themselves they never did they were   always a money losing proposition. Early on in the concept of these   workhouses they thought hey this is going  to be great we're going to get these poor   people back to work and they'll actually  pay for themselves well that never worked.  In certain communities they would have to wear  a badge it had a red PE on it it might have the   initials of your town on it and you had to  wear that on your clothes at all times. They   were trying in the towns to discourage this  outside help as much as possible you were   supposed to be ashamed if you had to wear the P  badge around town because you got outside help.  For our last recipe we'll be doing the  classic workhouse bread this is a nice   brown bread inexpensive no special  ingredients and very simple to make.  As I was researching this topic I thought it was  interesting it's a difficult topic yes colonial   America has a lot of very very poor people in it  people that were in a begging kind of situation   destitute people in difficult situations and  the people in the 18th century that weren't   poor were trying to find a solution for this  and they tried a lot of different things I   think they had most of them the right kind of  intention even if today we look back on their   methods and see them as unworkable or cruel. The reality though is is that all those people   whether they were trying to fix the problem or  the poor themselves were real people in a real   time. The 18th century isn't a fairy tale that  we tell ourselves or some perfect world like   sometimes they wanted to say it was no. It was real life and they had the same   kind of problems that we do today and I  think their stories need to be told and   understood even if it might be sometimes a  bleak story or one that's difficult to hear.  This is the poor Beggar's  feast and it is very good.

Channel: Townsends

Views: 342,024

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking

Id: wJiPehLzhUE

Length: 11min 15sec (675 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2024