Search Wiltshire Vagrants Passes 1702-1818

Each record includes a transcript of the original record. While details can vary for each record, you can expect to find a combination of the following facts:

<ul>
<li>First name</li>
<li>Last name</li>
<li>Year</li>
<li>Event date</li>
<li>Detail</li>
<li>County</li>
</ul>

This collection of Vagrant Passes transcripts was provided by Wiltshire Family History Society. This collection of vagrants' passes is contained in fourteen large boxes dating from 1702 through to 1838 with some breaks in dates. It has been roughly estimated that each box contains over 3000 passes which were for expenses incurred by the passing of vagrants, mostly for those from outside the county, being passed through Wiltshire and its county borders to other county borders on their way back to their parishes or supposed parishes of settlement.

There were some vagrants, of course, who were of Wiltshire and who were passed back to their parishes from places outside the county. By studying the passes, it would seem that vagrants were never passed on the Sabbath and would therefore have been maintained overnight with bed and board. It has been supposed that those passed through the southern and western bordering parishes such as Box, Donhead St. Mary, East Winterslow, North Wraxall, Martin, Marshfield, Tisbury, were passed through to counties in these regions. Similarly, those passed through Wiltshire to and from places such as Charnham Street and Hungerford on the borders of Wiltshire and Berkshire (see Wiltshire Sketch Map) would usually be passed or sent from places such as Middlesex, the City of London and eastern and northern counties. In some cases, vagrants were passed to Bristol to be sent back around the coast to their parish of settlement and, in the numerous incidences of Irish vagrants, to be transported by sea to Ireland. Other locations seemed to be typical places of apprehension of vagrants such as Bristol, Bray, Cookham in Maidenhead, co. Berks, various parishes in Middlesex, the City of London and the City of Westminster.

It is always worth considering that some wives travelling without their husbands may have been army or navy wives who had been taken up as rogues and vagabonds on their way back to their places of settlement from various military camps and/or embarkation ports. Some passes show only the various Houses of Correction to which vagrants were passed along their way back to their settlement parishes, and, where the movement of vagrants was to county borders only, as the vagrants were in the process of being passed through on their way to their final destination.