The Boston Workhouse Act, 1735
The Overseers of the Poor attempted to amass a full transcription of the provincial legislation and Town Meeting instructions regarding the official status of the Workhouse and so replicated by hand the pertinent material. This file, taken from the Overseers’ manuscript records, box 13, folder 1, is 40 pages long. It is not clear when it was compiled by the Overseers, but it ranges from 1735 to 1803 and is the work of several hands. The following selection identifies the main features of the Act. The Act itself is published in Acts and Resolves, 2:757ff.
Source:
The Eighteenth-Century Records of the Boston Overseers of the Poor (Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts). Edited by Eric Nellis and Anne Decker Cecere. Charlottesville: University Of Virginia Press, 2001.
Leave a Reply