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Studying the Stayers – an investigation of the immobile population of Long Melford, Suffolk 1550-1861

The topic

Mobility and migration are crucial aspects of economic and demographic history and historical geography and they have been much studied, but some people spent their lives in the area where they were born. Until relatively recently, little attention has been paid to the immobile, those who were life-time stayers. There is now more interest in residential and geographical stability but most studies have concentrated on either the local elite or the poor. This project aims to study all the people from long established families in Long Melford, looking in detail at the later seventeenth century, the mid-late eighteenth century and the period 1830-61. What can be discovered about their social status and about their role in the community? Is that community always that of the individual parish or township?

This project, being undertaken by Lyn Boothman, follows her MSt dissertation which used a reconstitution of both families and others in the local population, using both parish registers and a wide variety of other record sources, along with a series of listings, to look in depth at the Melford population. Results included higher levels of both stability amongst the non-servant adult population and of kinship links to others in the community than shown in other studies in the early modern period.

The main topics:

• Intergenerational continuity. Questions include: what proportions of families are long established, does this change over time, does it vary with social status, what proportion of children from long-established families move away, are they more likely to marry locally-born people? How do continuity and mobility relate?
• Kinship links. Some studies of early modern England have shown very low levels of kin links between families in the same community. The MSt dissertation showed much higher levels of kinship link in Melford. Does this continue into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Can kinship links be shown to have any implication in relation to the payment of poor relief?
• Residential location and propinquity. The MSt dissertation showed that in the later seventeenth century some parts of Long Melford were more likely to house people from long-established families, and to have higher levels of kinship links between residents. I will now look at the later eighteenth century and the 1835-61 periods to find out if these patterns persist.
• Immobility and the poor. The poor are often thought to be amongst the most mobile in this period. Are the poor less likely to come from long-established families? Were they more or less likely to have kin links in the parish? Did these factors change over time? Were there families with a continuing pattern of receiving poor relief? Are there observable differences, in social, economic or residential terms between the established and the mobile poor?
• One of the problems of parish based studies is they stop at the parish boundary. I hope to be able to study a wider area for one 25 year period, to examine movement in and out of Melford from that wider area and movement of Melford inhabitants within it. Can we identify that movement in the local area which is said to account for most mobility?