Caring for the Poor, Treating Chilblains, and More!

What exactly was nurse Sarah treating when she was called back into service? What was the difference between a nursery maid and a nanny? And what were the responsibilities of the gentry towards the poor? Learn the answers to these questions and more in this episode of My Cousin Jane.

Welcome back to My Cousin Jane. Today we’re going to be talking about Persuasion, Volume 2, Chapter 1. Some printings refer to this as Chapter 13, but we’ll stick with tradition and call it Volume 2, Chapter 1.

We’re not talking about this like your English lit teacher might discuss it, but more like the behind-the-scenes and bonus features of your favorite movie.

Chapter Summary

Nursery Maids and Nannies

First of all, Crewkerne is a town. That’s the town where they go to rent the chaise, and it’s a little town in southwest Somersetshire, which was apparently close enough to Uppercross that someone could drive over there and rent a chaise.

Speaking a little bit about Sarah: in Regency times, parents of the upper class didn’t spend much time with their children, at least not nearly as much time as in most families in our day. Babies were fed by wet nurses, and then they and young children were supervised by nannies. Nannies were assisted by nursery maids, and nursery maids were usually teenage girls.

Sometimes they were the daughters of other household staff, or they could be local girls from the village, or daughters of tenants on the family’s land. The most affluent families would have their older children looked after by a governess. Sometimes the governess would be employed full-time, sometimes only during the holidays, and sometimes the older children would be sent off to school.

Most of the time, it was only the wealthy families that would use a governess, and children were typically supervised by a nanny for most other cases, and then sent off to school at some point.

I don’t get the impression that the Musgroves were particularly affluent. They were probably pretty wealthy compared to your average tenant farmer, but not compared to, say, the Bertrams in Mansfield Park. You can infer this given how they’re ranked compared to the Elliots.

It’s possible that Sarah was not just the “nursery maid” in the strictest sense, but also the head nanny, especially since it says in the text that she looked after Master Harry until he was sent off to school. It would be weird to have a nanny and a nursery maid, and have the nursery maid be in charge of an older child like that. I think nursery maid here is being used as a generic term. Maybe they only had one woman who was looking after the children, and it was Sarah, and so they referred to her as a nursery maid.

We can make some interesting conjectures here. A nanny would be expected to have certain qualifications and to be paid at a certain level. A nursery maid would be considered to have other sets of qualifications and be paid at a lower level. It could be that Sarah was all they could afford in terms of child care. Maybe they really like Sarah. I don’t know. Sarah is probably the only one taking care of the children.

Chilblains

Another interesting note here, especially for American listeners, is the description of what Sarah had been doing lately. It says that she was living in the deserted nursery “to mend stockings and dress all the blains and bruises she could get near her.”

Some of you may be more versed in medical lingo than I am, but blains, or chilblains, are a red inflammation that occurs on your skin in very cold air, most commonly on your toes. I’d never heard of blains until I was living in the UK, and one of our children went to the doctor with some sore toes, and she was diagnosed with blains. I was like, “What are blains?” They’re like, “Oh, it’s just cold toes.” Fortunately, healthcare is free, so I didn’t have to pay for the diagnosis of cold toes.

If you’ve heard the term “COVID toes,” this is an uncommon side effect of COVID-19, and it’s another term for chilblains. Sarah would have been treating people for their bruises and their blains. Cold toes was a common ailment in Regency-era times.

Modern treatment for blains is pretty straightforward: make sure you’re not vitamin B deficient, and soak your feet in warm water and Epsom salt until they feel better. In nurse Sarah’s days, they probably would have used the remedy prescribed in Bald’s Leechbook, or passed down from generation to generation, originally coming from Bald’s Leechbook, which was a medieval text about different remedies for common ailments. It prescribed for blains a mixture of eggs, wine, and fennel root. I’m assuming you soak your feet in that and you don’t drink it.

The Poor Laws

Another thing that takes place in this chapter is that after Anne and Lady Russell are together for a while, Lady Russell decides she needs to go to Kellynch Hall to pay a call on the Crofts. They go there, and during the visit, Anne is reflecting on the difference it makes having the Crofts in Kellynch Hall compared to her own family. Let’s listen to this clip:

At the end of that period, Lady Russell’s politeness could repose no longer, and the fainter self-threatenings of the past became in a decided tone, “I must call on Mrs Croft; I really must call upon her soon. Anne, have you courage to go with me, and pay a visit in that house? It will be some trial to us both.”

Anne did not shrink from it; on the contrary, she truly felt as she said, in observing—

“I think you are very likely to suffer the most of the two; your feelings are less reconciled to the change than mine. By remaining in the neighbourhood, I am become inured to it.”

She could have said more on the subject; for she had in fact so high an opinion of the Crofts, and considered her father so very fortunate in his tenants, felt the parish to be so sure of a good example, and the poor of the best attention and relief, that however sorry and ashamed for the necessity of the removal, she could not but in conscience feel that they were gone who deserved not to stay, and that Kellynch Hall had passed into better hands than its owners’. Persuasion, Chapter 13

I want to talk a minute about this comment that Anne makes about the poor benefiting from “the best attention and relief” because the Crofts were there.

In the early 1600s, there were a series of laws known as the Poor Laws that were created by Parliament. There was a lot of nuance to these laws, and a bunch of revisions made over the years. The general idea was that the Poor Laws—and these were known as the Old Poor Laws—said that the parish was responsible for caring for its own poor. That system of poor laws lasted through a bunch of different forms up until the end of World War I, when centralized government welfare took over in its place.

In case we haven’t mentioned this yet—I can’t remember if we have—a parish is like the smallest level of local government in England. It can mean something slightly different if we’re talking about ecclesiastical terms, like what it means in the Church of England, compared to what it means in government. However, since in Regency-era England there was a lot of overlap between church governance and civil governance, we have this unified term of parish, meaning this local area of governance, whether it’s at a church level or a civil level.

The parish leadership would be composed differently from area to area. Sometimes it might simply be that the largest landowner was the de facto leader in the area, or the highest-ranking nobleman. Other times, it might be a council of smaller landowners or lower-ranking landowners that would get together to vote on things.

Among other things, they were responsible for appointing what were called overseers of the poor. Their job was to figure out how many of what were called the “impotent poor” there were in the parish. The impotent poor were people who were poor through no fault of their own, either through injury or disability or some other reason, and they wanted to work but couldn’t.

They would then calculate how much relief they needed and compare that to how well they expected the harvest to do that year, and they’d use those figures to determine the parish’s “poor rate” or “poor tax,” which would be levied on all property owners and tenants in the parish. Then that money would be used to support the poor of the parish.

The impotent poor were distinguished from what were called the “idle poor,” which were people who were considered poor due to their own desire to avoid work. Sometimes people would derisively refer to the idle poor as the “undeserving poor.” You can see this if you watch My Fair Lady. Eliza Doolittle’s father refers to himself as the undeserving poor, and he plans to go on remaining undeserving.

The idle poor were people who were considered poor because they didn’t want to work, rather than because they couldn’t work, so they were not given access to funds and resources provided by the poor rate.

Proponents of the law saw that local administration was the major benefit, because parishes at the time were small enough that everyone knew everyone else who lived there. It would be pretty easy for someone to say, “Oh, well, Bob here, he’s poor because he broke his leg, but Steve is poor because he just hates farming, and so tough luck, Steve.” However, this became increasingly difficult as population increased pretty exponentially over time.

There were some other aspects of this law that were looked upon pretty negatively by most people, but positively by others. Things like the creation of workhouses, that we’ll discuss in a future episode, as well as almshouses, which we’ll discuss in just a couple episodes from now.

Regardless of whether you think welfare should be handled at the local or national level, in Regency-era England it was handled at the parish level, and Anne felt that the Crofts would do a better job of that than her father. Which is understandable, considering her father was deeply in debt and had to rent out his own house in order to make ends meet. Not exactly the person you want in charge of the financial management of those who are less fortunate.

Duty to the Poor

Even beyond what was required by the Poor Law, the prevailing belief at the time, which was reinforced through church teachings, was that those who were well-off, those members of the upper class and the gentry, had a natural, God-given obligation to assist the poor. This was something that many Regency-era landowners, and their wives and daughters especially, took very seriously.

This practice and belief began to wane considerably as we get into later Victorian times, especially as industrialization starts to take hold in force. Philosophers and government leaders in the mid-1800s were trying to think of new ways to deal with, rather than help, the poor—which they thought was helping, but was really dealing with. It was a more punitive approach.

This led to the Poor Law Amendment of 1834, which won’t affect anything in Austen’s writings. It’s interesting that this happened, because this was known as the New Poor Law. Charles Dickens was a major critic of many of these changes. You can see that they formed a theme of his writings in things like Oliver Twist and The Christmas Carol, among others: his criticisms of many of the aspects of the New Poor Law.

There was also a difference in culture between the north of England and the south of England about the interactions between the gentility and the lower classes. You can see something of this in Margaret Hale’s awkward conversation with Higgins and Bessy in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South.

It’s played up a little more in the BBC movie version than it is in the book, but it’s still pretty interesting. You can tell there’s a little bit of awkwardness there in what Margaret thinks her responsibility is to the poor, compared to what the poor are expecting or willing to accept from Margaret.

Our Own Best

I want to end today’s episode with one of my favorite quotes from Persuasion. This is Admiral Croft talking to Anne about the changes he’s made to Kellynch Hall, and whether she likes his changes or would prefer her own ways. This is a fun quote:

Ay, so it always is, I believe. One man’s ways may be as good as another’s, but we all like our own best. Persuasion, Chapter 13

Conclusion

That wraps up this episode of My Cousin Jane. As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to help support us, please consider clicking the little donate button or subscribing to our newsletter. Either way, thanks so much for listening.