ing over 6,000 persons, old and young) receiving out-relief.
What this system (and bad trade) led to at the close of the long war is
shown in the returns for 1816-17, when 36 poor rates were levied in the
twelvemonth. By various Acts of Parliament, the Overseers have now to
collect other rates, but the proportion required for the poor is thus
shown:--

Rate Amount Paid to Cost of In and Other Parochial
Year in L collected Corporation Out Relief Expenditure
s.d. L L L L
1851 4 0 78,796 39,573 17,824 21,399
1861 3 8 85,986 36,443 34,685 14,878
1871 3 2 116,268 44,293 37,104 34,871
1881 4 8 193,458 107,520 42,880 48,058

The amounts paid over to the Corporation include the borough rate and
the sums required by the School Board, the Free Libraries, and the
District Drainage Board. In future years the poor-rate (so-called) will
include, in addition to these, all other rates levyable by the
Corporation. The poor-rates are levied half-yearly, and in 1848,1862,
and 1868 they amounted to 5s. per year, the lowest during the last forty
years being 3s. in 1860; 1870, 1871, and 1872 being the next lowest, 3s.
2d. per year. The number of persons receiving relief may be gathered
from the following figures:--

Highest Lowest
Year. No. daily No. daily
1876 7,687 7,058
1877 8,240 7,377
1878 8,877 7,242
1879 14,651 8,829
1880 13,195 7,598
1881 11,064 7,188
1882 9,658 7,462
1883 8,347 7,630

Not long ago it was said that among the inmates of the Workhouse were
several women of 10 to 45 who had spent all their lives there, not even
knowing their way into the town.

~Population.~--Hutton "calculated" that about the year 750 there would
be 3,000 inhabitants residing in and close to Birmingham. Unless a very
rapid thinning process was going on after that date he must have been a
long way out of his reckoning, for the Domesday Book gives but 63
residents in 1085 for Birmingham, Aston, and Edgbaston. In 1555 we find
that 37 baptisms, 15 weddings, and 27 deaths were registered at St.
Martin's, the houses not being more than 700, nor the occupiers over
3,500 in number. In 1650, it is said, there were 15 streets, about 900