| Description | Under the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, all Unions were required to have at least one clerk and in many of the larger unions the role was shared amongst several individuals. The clerk's main duties were to take minutes at the meetings of the Board of Guardians, deal with any in-coming correspondence to the Union, particularly from the central governing authority, keep up-to-date financial records and ledgers showing all income and expenditure within the Union, maintain the Relief Order Book, which detailed the names of applicants for poor relief, and the Order Check Book, containing all orders given by the Guardians re: provisions and stores for the workhouse and to conduct the elections for the posts of Guardian. The clerk was also responsible for keeping records relating to those children who had been apprenticed by or were under the care of the Union.
For Birmingham Union, the vast majority of the collection is made up of committee minutes which would have been kept by the clerk and/or his assistants. Also included are some financial records, and some material relating to the paupers and union staff themselves. |