Food as Dole

Food was one of the commonest forms of alms until the later eighteenth century. Why? There was the obvious reason that it is man's most basic need, which must be met before anything else. It quite literally has a 'dead-line'. Another reason was that money to buy food or clothing was of relatively little use, at least to the rural poor, before daily-opening local shops were common – and cash gifts were as likely to be drunk away at the tavern then as now. But there were other reasons which emerge when we examine some of the, often quaint, old 'doles' which survive.