Poor Act 1697

The Poor Act 1697 (8 & 9 Will. III, c. 30), formally titled An Act for supplying some Defects in the Laws for the Relief of the Poor of this Kingdom, was a 1697 welfare statute, operating within the framework of the Act for the Relief of the Poor 1601, also called the Elizabethan Poor Act. This Act is perhaps best remembered for its expansion of the requirement that welfare recipients be marked to indicate their status, in this case by wearing a prominent badge.

This Act required that all welfare recipients, including the wife and children of the head of a household receiving welfare, wear badges prominently on their right shoulders. These badges would contain the first letter of their parish name, followed by the letter "P". Thus, a recipient from Ampthill parish would wear a badge reading "AP". In her Curious Punishments of Bygone Days, Alice Morse Earle noted that this practice was also seen in Colonial America, though the badge format might be different. For instance, a badge for a New York pauper would read "N.Y.", while in Virginia, the badge might contain the parish name rather than an abbreviation, and in other cases might simply read "P.P." for "public pauper". A similar law also existed in Pennsylvania.

This badging practice was distinct from the earlier practice of issuing beggars badges, which predated the Elizabethan Poor Act. One Act which authorized this was the 1555 Poor Act, 2 & 3 Ph. & M., c. 5.

An earlier statute, 3 Will. & Mary, c. 11, required the overseers of the poor to record the names of all those receiving welfare in their parishes. This statute was intended to limit abuse of funds by overseers. The 1697 Act added the badging requirement for the same reason. The penalty to paupers who did not wear badges was whipping and imprisonment, and overseers providing relief to such paupers were to be fined 20 shillings. One change to the badge requirement came with the Relief of the Poor Act 1782 (also called Gilbert's Act), which allowed "paupers of good character" to leave off the badge. Badging continued to be practiced until 1810, when it was repealed by 50 Geo. III, c. 52, though by the end of the 18th century it was noted as "almost universally neglected".

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