"They Must Live by Their Neighbours": Informing in the Eighteenth-Century Parish
Nina Opgen-Rhein (TU Dresden)
Introduction
In 1787, the anonymous author of A Principal Cause of the Miseries of the Poor reflected on the weak enforcement of laws against immorality and vice, especially those regulating disorderly alehouses. He observed that parish officers such as churchwardens were, in theory, "bound by oath, to inspect the behaviour of the parishioners they act for" and to make presentments when necessary. In practice, however, these officials were "if not ignorant people, (...) little attentive in general" or "too often irregular people themselves." Even when aware of misconduct, they hesitated to act, "being in many parishes but inferior people, they pretend they are not of consequence enough to call others to account." Lastly, the pamphleteer noted that their most common excuse was that "they must live by their neighbours." He extended his critique to private individuals, who were likewise unwilling to inform because they were complicit, indifferent, or "fearful of the odium incurred by informers.“[i]
Although dismissed as a disingenuous "cant-phrase," the churchwarden's justification captured a persistent dilemma of moral regulation and the enforcement of an increasing number of statute laws relying on the initiative on voluntary informers. Much earlier in the century, The Clergy-Man's Vade Mecum had similarly lamented the lack of "Spirit in the English people to put the Penal-Laws against Vice in execution," and complained that under such conditions, ecclesiastical jurisdiction would be unenforceable even "if a set of Primitive Fathers were to rise from the dead, and sit Judges in the Bishops Consistories."[ii] In 1725, The Publick-House-Keeper's Monitor complained that parish officers preferred a "supine, and as they account it, peaceable Neglect of their Duty" while private persons were willing to tolerate "the greatest Impieties (...) rather than even upon the justest and most urgent Occasions to be Informers."[iii] Such complaints highlight the tensions under which both parish officers and voluntary informers operated when they set the law in motion against fellow members of a local community where interpersonal relationships and social norms were strong.[iv] This post examines how eighteenth-century writers understood these difficulties, focusing on the social risks of local enforcement (especially relating to moral regulation), the shifting allocation of responsibility between officials and voluntary informers, and the contested role of financial incentives.
Figure 1: Title page of Instructions to Church-Wardens (1710).
Both the Canon and Statute Law obliged churchwardens to make regular presentments of offenders from their parish. The 1710 pamphlet Instructions to Church-Wardens (Fig. 1) placed the principal responsibility for the moral discipline of the parishioners on these officers, reminding them that they were "sworn (...) to INFORM of the Vices of their Parish." Alongside constables and grand jurors, they were portrayed as the "chief Means whereby publick Sins and Offences may be reform'd." The author argued that the negligence of these "sworn informers" made voluntary informers both necessary and socially suspect. If they fulfilled their duties, "private Persons would either not need to inform, or would be more generally thank'd and applauded (as they ought to be) when they do." However, their reluctance made informing "so strange and unusual a Thing, that it is look'd upon (tho' undeservedly) with Indignation and Contempt."[v]
At least by mid-century, although churchwardens remained bound to make presentments, this seems to have been the exception.[vi] In 1766, Walter Frank, minister of Chatham, questioned the diligence of churchwardens who, in a populous parish, could not find "any single Thing, that required their Regard" during the last archdeacon's visitation.[vii] The officers' defence, however, suggests a shift in attitudes towards the responsibility for enforcement: They did not deny the existence of "common swearers and drunkards," but argued instead that these were "punishable in a summary Way, by the Statute Law, at the Instance of Informers." They claimed this mode was "much more eligible to pursue" than the "expensive and tedious Method of Presentment which probably may have no Effect, if carried to its ultimate Process." They further asserted that Parliament had recognised the "imbecillity" of presentments, which appeared to have been "a long Time disused" and had intended summary prosecutions to replace them. Pointing to a large recent fine for swearing, they argued that this approach benefited the parish financially.[viii]
Penal forfeitures and the parish poor
Their response suggests that questions about the legitimacy of informing were closely linked to the distribution of penalties. In his magnum opus The State of the Poor, Frederick Morton Eden traced a long tradition of allocating fines for moral offences to parish relief. He pointed out that this "branch of supply" had "been thought worthy of notice by every Legislature during the last two centuries." He believed that the Religion Act 1580 had set a precedent in dividing penalties between the informer and the poor, which reflected a "recollection of the intimate connection" between the Church and the Poor, disrupted by the dissolution of the monasteries. After legislature had diverted from its "usual course" of allocating fines to the informer and the Crown, "other sources of penal contribution were gradually opened."[ix] In theory, this system provided both moral and financial incentives for enforcement; in practice, Eden doubted that it benefitted the parish poor. Although he admitted that "no information is to be met with" regarding the amount of penal forfeitures applied to poor relief in the past, he was convinced it was "inconsiderable (...) even amidst such complained of profligacy of modern times" and that "the Poor's Rate has never derived much aid from the punishment of immorality, notwithstanding the innumerable statutes passed of late years." Moreover, Eden noted that parliamentary inquiries in 1776 and 1786 had not even requested overseers of the poor to include information about penal forfeitures in their returns, which suggested an awareness of their insignificance.
The character of an informer
Other commentators shared Eden's assessment that many penal laws did not provide sufficient incentives for enforcement. In their texts, a deeply entrenched stigma associated with informing appears as the central obstacle. When William Fleetwood, Bishop of St Asaph, declared in 1710 that he "should not be ashamed to be [himself] an Informer to the Magistrate," he implicitly acknowledged prevailing associations with disreputable social groups and questionable motives.[x] For instance, a 1719 pamphlet entitled Parochial Tyranny portrayed informers as "the Spewings of lousy Jayls and Bawdy-Houses" whose "infamous Lives, and daily Perjuries, render them hateful to God and all good Men."[xi] Later writers echoed these concerns. Multiple reprints of The Publick-House-Keeper’s Monitor (1725, 1769, 1781, 1793) continued to express - seemingly unfulfilled - hopes that the "odium" of the character of informer "might by a prudent Management be entirely prevented."[xii] In 1784, the author of The Heads of a Plan for the Raising the Money for Maintaining Paupers thought it a point of "absurdity (...) too clear to need a comment" to entrust the control of alehouses to informers who were "themselves at one time or another the offenders." More generally, he argued that "the character of an informer is known to be such, as to make almost all those laws that depend for their execution on information null and void."[xiii]
The persistence of these views is evident in repeated attempts to counter this stigma by distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate forms of informing. John Scott, promoting his plan for reducing vagrancy and poverty in 1773, claimed that although "the vulgar" were quick to label others with the "opprobrious appellation of informer," this title would "reflect dishonour on no man" if his plan was adopted.[xiv] The author of A Principal Cause of the Miseries of the Poor argued that "the title of informer; a name generally held by a generous public in detestation" was deliberately deployed by "abettors of vice“ to shift blame from offenders to their accusers. However, it was only because informations were "often made by people of bad characters, and to dirty purposes" that this endeavour could be successful. He thus proposed a moral typology: those motivated by spite, ambition, or greed were despicable, even when their actions benefited the public, whereas anyone driven by genuine zeal against immorality "deserves well of his country, and is as much an object of esteem and applause, as the base informer is of contempt and detestation."[xv]
The legitimacy of financial incentives
Other writers focused on the role of financial incentives in shaping this stigma. In 1783, Thomas Gilbert held that while "the character of an informer has hitherto been odious" and the execution of penal laws "much neglected" on this account, the recovery of statutory forfeitures would be "useful and laudable" if they were applied to the relief of the poor.[xvi] Matthew Decker had advanced a similar argument in the first half of the century concerning his proposed tax reform: As his scheme allowed "no private Reward to Informers, no Scandal can be incurred." Instead, the exposure of fraud would become to every parishioner a matter of "Interest with regard to himself, and Honour with regard to his Neighbour" if it forced offenders to contribute fairly to the poor rate.[xvii] Fellow economist Josiah Tucker endorsed this as the "master key" to Decker's proposal, adding that "the idea of an Informer would be very far from being considered in that contemptible and detestible Light it is at present, when the best, the greatest, and those who make the most splendid Figure in each Parish, would be of the Number."[xviii]
Fig. 2: John Collett, Untitled, c. 1770 © The Trustees of the British Museum. The enforcement of statutes concerning alehouses and tippling and the allocation of penalties was a question of considerable debate for late eighteenth-century pamphleteers. This peasant, tempted by the landlord but held back by his wife, would have escaped a fine.
By contrast, several contemporaries insisted that direct monetary incentives to informers were indispensable. They argued, for instance, that they should receive a reward for the regulation of disorderly alehouses (Fig. 2). One pamphleteer urged in 1774: "Since there is not virtue enough amongst individuals to make them volunteers (...) let it be made profitable to do so; (...) let the clerk, the informer, and their whole suit, have their rewards."[xix] A few years later, a "Gentleman of Lincoln’s Inn" explicitly criticised the allocation of penalties to parish poor, even if it was "very humane of the legislature" to appropriate them to "so laudable a purpose." However, informers -"seldom men of any considerable property" - refrained from giving "necessary intelligence to the magistrates because they have no advantage by the offenders conviction." These conflicting assessments reveal uncertainty about the legitimacy of financial incentives: they could be seen, either as a necessary compensation for social risks, or as corrupting and the principal cause of the moral discredit that amplified these very risks.
Reassigning responsibility?
A different line of argument suggested that stigma derived less from the association of informing with monetary motives then from a distrust of private persons "meddling" when they were neither personally affected by an offence nor entrusted with a particular obligation to enforce the law. John Scott thus proposed that the apprehension of vagrants "had better be made more immediately the business of the overseer," who should receive a premium for every person committed."[xx] The author of A Principal Cause of the Miseries of the Poor went further, advocating that effective alehouse regulation required "some subordinate agents, especially appointed in every parish." Given the vulnerability of churchwardens and voluntary informers to local pressures, he believed that they could provide for more effective enforcement if they were even "half as trusty" as excise officers.[xxi]
Taken together, these examples from the early to the late eighteenth century show that debates about moral regulation at the parish level, and the enforcement of penal laws more generally, revolved around the social risks involved, the negotiation of responsibility between officeholders and voluntary informers and unresolved questions about the implications of financial incentives.
Biographical note
Nina Opgen-Rhein is a doctoral researcher at Dresden University of Technology where she forms part of the Emmy Noether Research Group „Common Informing“ (DFG). More generally, her interests focus on policing, popular participation and notions of justice at the local level. In the autumn term of 2025, she was a visiting student at Warwick, where she continued the longstanding exchange programme with TU Dresden.
Endnotes
[i] A Principal Cause of the Miseries of the Poor, and of their Great Expence to the Public, London 1787, pp. 10-12.
[ii] John Johnson, The Clergy-Man's Vade Mecum, London 17072, p. 246.
[iii] The Publick-House-Keeper's Monitor: Being a Serious Admonition to the Masters and Mistresses of those, commonly called Publick-Houses, of what Kind of Denomination soever, London 17252, pp. 33f.
[iv] On such pressures in general see, for instance, Keith Wrightson, ‘The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England’, in: Paul Griffiths/Adam Fox/Steve Hindle (eds), The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England, Basingstoke 1996, pp. 10-46 (esp. 11), for informers in particular see Hannes Ziegler, ‘Customs Officers and Local Communities: Informing in Late Seventeenth-Century England’, in: Maria Ángeles Martín Romera, Hannes Ziegler (eds.): The Officer and the People: Accountability and Authority in Premodern Europe. Oxford 2021, pp. 325-348 (esp. 328), for parish officials e.g. Mark Knights, ‘The Ambiguities and Vagaries of Popular Control: Trust and Parochial Corruption in Early Modern England’, Journal of Social History 58 (1/2024), pp. 144-165 (esp. 146).
[v] Instructions to Church-Wardens for the Better Discharge of Their Office, London 1719, pp. 12f.
[vi] See Rebecca Probert, The Changing Legal Regulation of Cohabitation: From Fornicators to Family, 1600–2010, Cambridge 2012, pp. 31-33.
[vii] Walter Frank, Letters, and Instruments, Relative to the Dispute About the Register-Book at Chatham, London 1766, p. 4.
[viii] John Cazeneuve and William Witheridge, A true state of the case, relative to the dispute about the parish register-book, of Chatham in Kent, London 1766, pp. 22f.
[ix] Frederick Morton Eden, The State of the Poor, Vol. 1, London 1797, pp. 137-139.
[x] William Fleetwood, Articles of Enquiry, Exhibited by the Right Reverend Father in God, William, By Divine Permission Lord Bishop of St. Asaph, 1710, p. 32.
[xi] Parochial Tyranny, Or, Select Vestries Become the Plague of the People, London 1719, p. 22.
[xii] The Publick-House-Keeper's Monitor, p. 34.
[xiii] The Heads of a Plan for the Raising the Money for Maintaining Paupers by a New Method, London 1784, p. 22f.
[xiv] John Scott, Observations on the Present State of the Parochial and Vagrant Poor, London 1773, p. 101.
[xv] A Principal Cause of the Miseries of the Poor, p. 10.
[xvi] Thomas Gilbert, Plan to Amend and Enforce the Act of 23 Geo. III. for the Better Relief and Employment of the Poor, 1783, p. 12.
[xvii] Matthew Decker: An Essay on the Causes of the Decline of the Foreign Trade, London 1744, p. 85.
[xviii] Joisah Tucker: A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages, Which Respectively Attend France and Great Britain, With Regard to Trade, London 1749, p. 70.
[xix] Observations on the Power of Climate Over the Policy, Strength, and Manners, of Nations, London 1774, p. 138; see also Powell, A View of Real Grievances, With Remedies Proposed for redressing them, London 1772, p. 41.
[xx] John Scott, Observations on the Present State of the Parochial and Vagrant Poor, p. 102.
[xxi] A Principal Cause of the Miseries of the Poor, p. 20.