Series 6 > Perth Kirk Session books, 1577-1590

INTRODUCTION
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As for ‘outdoor relief’, many poor folk lived in the town rather than in an
institution and received either regular or occasional doles from the kirk box,
which included fines as well as alms collected by deacons at the kirk door.224
Some were licensed to beg, though they had to wear the town’s mark (a
lamb, in reference to the burgh’s patron saint of St John the Baptist) in a
badge sewn on their sleeves.225 Others received weekly doles and were not
permitted to beg.226 ‘Strange’ beggars, from outwith the town, were expelled,
and those who entertained them were fined, lest the town’s own poor suffer
by having their alms given to unworthy outsiders.227 The First Book of Disci¬
pline required that a register be kept of all poor persons receiving stipends,
and the regular lists of hospital inmates were to be recorded in this volume;
unfortunately, Perth’s is not extant.228 But the session minutes do list people
on the dole, and because their names and the amounts they received are
given, we actually know a bit more about them than we do about the
hospital inmates. Those on the dole included men and women, young and
old, and both the chronically infirm and people only temporarily disabled
by accident or illness. George Scot, for instance, ‘presendy lying sick’ was
awarded rehef‘according to his necessity’, with an upper limit of £4 set,
and his name does not recur in future poor lists; but ‘Robert Cuming the
cripple’, or ‘Robert in the Cart’, was a regular recipient. Assistance was
generally given as a weekly cash dole, but we occasionally find annual gifts
and gifts in kind, as ‘straw and clothes’ in 1580, or in 1587 ‘Bobbie the
cart a new coat’.229 Pecks of grain and creels of coal replaced cash doles in
the winter of 1584.230 There were also singular gifts apparently designed to
prevent a poor person from becoming dependent on alms: James Quhyt
received money to help him purchase a horse in 1578, presumably to keep
him employed and so not further dependent on parish alms.231 Some services
could be required of those who received regular alms: two were assigned to
sweep the kirk on Saturday evenings.232 Unusual payments like the 14s 4d
224 Alms were collected at the kirk doors on Sunday and Thursday preaching days: 2 June
1587. The 20 July 1590 entry, recording that when the box was opened on that day it
contained only eleven shillings, suggests that collections were paltry.
225 3 June 1586, 6 Mar. 1587, 13 Oct. 1588. The statutory requirement of parish tokens or
badges for the poor is APS hi, 86-89 (1574).
22* 3 Jan. 1586.
222 8 May 1587,17 Mar. 1589.
228 First Book, 110-11.
229 25 Apr. 1580,6 Feb. 1587; see also 15 Aug. 1583,14 Dec. 1584,18 Jan. and 6 Aug. 1585, and
23 Jan. 1587 for other instances of‘Robert Cuming in the Cart’ receiving his aid, either in
kind or as a weekly gift of 12d and/or grain. The weekly dole of 1584 was in grain; Jan.
1585’s list offers both grain and cash.
230 14 and 21 Dec. 1584.
231 4 Aug. 1578.
232 20 May 1586.