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The Poor Law scheme was fairly short-lived but it caused a mass-migration of families to work in
northern factory towns .Work Agents were sent from northern towns , with job offers to the rural
poor and their families.Provided the children were aged 12 or over they too could get work.
Families with children below this age faced the dilemma of all going into the Union Workhouse,
because reform of the Poor law meant they would no longer get their poor relief money
( 7 shillings a week for a family with 11 children), or splitting up the family . The parents and older
children going to the north and leaving the small children behind with a relative.

The people who decided to move traveled by barge on the
canal system,because the railways were still in their infancy.
They were sent first to London, then up to Birmingham
and on into the Lancashire area via Manchester.
Some Fitzjohn families moved to Barrow in Furness
( Iron stone mining) from Whittlesey. Some went to
Worksop ( Shireoaks Colliery ) and to Stoke on Trent
(potteries) and to Haslingden (cotton Mills)
and Middlesborough. (Shipyards and iron-works)

A further blow to these migrants was a slump in the cotton trade in 1837,
which caused many of these workers to be laid off.

Some of the migrants, particularly those in cities, such as Bradford
and Manchester, fell prey to diseases such as small-pox
and typhus. The scheme was controversial and once questions
began to be asked in parliament, the government and the Poor
Law Commissioners realised it wasn't such a good idea to uproot whole
families and dump them in unsanitary cities.
The scheme was phased out towards the end of 1837.

However, people continued to migrate under their own steam. Later in the
19th century,for the first time, people were able to move around freely,
using the newly built, widespread , railway system, nearly always
trying to find work.

It is possible to trace these migrations at the Public Record Office.
You will need to call up the Overseers Account books for the parish
concerned. There may also be Select Vestry Minute books
which could contain details of the migrations. Correspondence
between parishes and the Poor Law Commission and their agents
regarding the migrations is at the National Archives at Kew in class
MH12 sorted by county.