Friends of Perth and Kinross Archives: Perthshire’s Rural Poorhouses

In our next Friends of Perth & Kinross Archive talk, Morag Black will explore the fascinating history of Perthshire’s rural poorhouses, as revealed through their original records held in Perth & Kinross Archive.

In 1845, the Poor Law Amendment (Scotland) Act was passed. For the first time, Scottish paupers had the legal right to poor relief, and its administration was taken out of the hands of the Kirk. All parishes – or combinations of parishes – were encouraged to build a poorhouse to provide indoor relief for certain classes of pauper.

Perthshire had three poorhouses. Unfortunately, there are no records for Perth Poorhouse (Rosslyn House.) However, the two rural poorhouses based in Logierait (Atholl, Weem and Breadalbane Poorhouse) and Auchterarder (Upper Strathearn Poorhouse) both have extensive archives.

This talk will give an overview of how these two institutions were financed and managed and look at the lives of the paupers who used them. Almost all of the archival material centres on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, newspapers of a later period will complete the story of what happened to these poorhouses after 1930.