Index to

Commissioners for Inquiry into Charities:

Returns made to the Honourable the House of Commons of Charitable Donations for the Benefit of Poor Persons within the County of Devon,

Containing the Hundreds of Ermington, Lifton, Plympton, Roborough, Tavistock, Black Torrington and Winkleigh,
and the Boroughs of Barnstaple, Ashburton, Dartmouth and Totness.

Plymouth: John Commins. Extracted from the large Work, printed by order of the House (1817), 60 pp.

Prepared by Michael Steer

Poverty, homelessness and unemployment are not exclusively the product of the modern age. References to these problems can be found as far back as the Middle Ages, where responsibility for dealing with them lay mostly with religious houses or individual parishes. In 1818, as a result of debates and arguments that even now remain obscure, Parliament launched an elaborate investigation into the activities of charitable trusts in England and Wales called The Charity Commission or The Brougham Commission. This first inquiry lasted 19 years, and 32 reports were published. Traditionally, charities have been actively involved in poor relief. Some charities were operated by parishes, others through donations or trusts laid down by wealthy individuals. This rare book was produced from a digital copy held by the Bodleian Library that can be downloaded from Google Books. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. Those on which copyright has expired are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.