When I was a little lad in industrial Leeds, back in the 1950s, my grandparents had a novel way of inducing me to go to bed and calm down after a day’s play. They invented someone they called ‘The Any Kid Up Man’. This was a chap who walked the streets at dusk, tapping on windows with his long stick and calling out, ‘Are there any kids still not in bed?’ This wouldn’t be done today of course, but the fact is that they invented a job.

In our green and pleasant land, we have always had a talent for creating occupations, and often these have been created when there are no labours or duties attached to the post. In the 17th century, for instance, some Wakefield churchwarden accounts include these entries

(in £ s d):

• 1616 – paid to Gorley for whipping dogs – 0 2 6
• 1628 – paid to Lyghtowler for whipping dogs – 0 1 4

These posts were official, and the work was called either ‘dog whipper’ or ‘dog nawper’. But in the same accounts, we have ‘1740 – paid Brocklebank for waking sleepers’. So there was a related occupation to my grandparents’ invented one after all.

In Georgian England in particular, nepotism and jobs for mates were part of a widespread culture of ‘place’ and patrimony. Many of the cultural and political elements in society worked by ‘reward jobs’ we might say. Samuel Pepys, writing not long before the Georgian age, commented, ‘How little merit does prevail in the world, but only favour – and that for myself, chance without merit brought me in, and that diligence only keeps me so.’ In other words, he saw his own good fortune in landing a top job in the Admiralty, but he saw that some application was also necessary. Many sinecures did not require such application, of course.

News reports in the papers through the 18th and early 19th centuries often had announcements such as this: ‘William Hunnis was appointed toll-taker on London bridge…’ he converted this to cash by selling this back to the incumbent, Samuel Daniel, who was already Groom of the Chamber. This was a world in which posts and responsibilities proliferated, and sinecures could be created, and of course, they could be easily abused and exploited. Margaret Scott was wet nurse to George the Prince of Wales, for instance; she was appointed in September 1762, and still paid between 1793 and 1817. Her salary was the immense sum of £200 (a six-figure sum now) but in 1783 the prince was 21.

Your ancestor may well have been fortunate enough to be placed in a line of work that had no duties attached, and the detective work involved in finding these lucky people is made easier with the existence of The Extraordinary Red Book. This was published in 1819 and its title page explains exactly what is inside the covers: ‘A list of all places, pensions and sinecures, with the various salaries and emoluments arising therefrom’ and ‘the expenditure of the Civil List up to 1818’.

The word ‘sinecure’ itself means ‘an office without work’. Some of the entries in the Red Book hint at exactly how this might be applied to the Regency places, but from these, it is hard to distinguish which are actual occupations and which are sinecures:

• Law, Charles Ewen, marshal to the chief justice, executed by deputy £990.0.0
• Legard, Sir Thomas, superannuated commander £219.0.0

If we look at some posts, the real work implied by the wording is obscure, such as:
‘Alton, Countess, D, permanent warrant out of the army contingencies ,29 May, 1795, £300.0.0’.

These posts are clearly well known and are familiar parts of the system, oiled by favours, rewards and bonds of friendship and allegiance. But closely allied to this is the cultivation of the wealthy by the people of the middle ranks, such as artists and writers. The latter depended on pensions and preferments, and the royal levee, the queue waiting at the door of the sovereign for a little time to ask, peg or persuade the high personage to part with some cash, was an established feature of society.

The Red Book lists hundreds of receivers of sinecures and pensions, and your ancestor may well be there. Some of these monies were paid at the Treasury and some from royalty, but others, more precarious, were paid ‘during pleasure’.

The story of poet William Shenstone at his home, The Leasowes, clarifies what went on across the land in respect of patronage. Shenstone was something of a landscape gardener too, and in the Augustan age, when country estates were being beautified and adorned with a view to classical taste after the Grand Tour, aristocrats relished some of the new fashions, included the notion of a ‘hermit poet’. Shenstone liked the idea, which was for the wealthy patron to have a poet on the estate, perhaps living in a cave or grotto, so he could be seen by visitors taking a stroll through the scenery. He cultivated influential people as well as the landscape, and Lady Hertford and Lady Luxborough in particular took a deep interest in his career.

Shenstone was adept at telling the would-be patrons how their taste and aesthetic judgement was so excellent (and better than his), and he also used profits to fund a literary circle around the West Midlands. It was a typical case of a fashionable trend becoming something that talented people could use to rise in the world, and the Georgians knew that they had to ‘rise’ by influence and preferment.

All this could not go on without check, though. By the 1780s there were questions asked. William Pitt brought up the issue in Parliament, complaining that there was widespread corruption, and he called for an investigation into the spending of state finances. He wanted ‘fees, gratuities, perquisites and emoluments’ to be investigated. Reports on the subject began to be issued, but things moved very slowly; eventually lists were produced of recipients of sinecure cash, but it took decades for this to be effected.

The church and the army were particular targets, as certain sinecures had become widely known. After all, there were bold announcements in the press, such as ‘Wanted: a sinecure of one hundred pounds per annum. Any gentleman holding such an appointment under government and willing to resign the same… who has interest to obtain the succession, will have an adequate compensation for it.’

There is a newspaper report from 1831 that shows exactly how this process could work. It concerns a man called John Campbell who was approached by an acquaintance called Stoney. Campbell made it clear that he was in need of easy work, and the report explained what happened:

‘Stoney said… his search was at an end, for he was the man who could get him a place, as he had great interest with persons in power in the department of the Customs… he had learned that there were then two vacancies; one of them was Tide Waiter’s place… almost a sinecure.’ Campbell asked for this and it cost him £30 to be paid by instalments. What followed was a scam, and the result was that Stoney was charged with having obtained money under false pretences.

The business of sinecures, as we see it today, raises the whole issue of rising by merit, and the Georgians were constantly preoccupied by this. In Samuel Johnson’s great poem, ‘London’ we have these lines:

Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed:
But here more slow,
where all are slaves to gold,
Where looks are merchandise, and smiles are sold;
Where won by bribes, by flatteries implored
The groom retails the favours of his lord.

Johnson himself, after going to the metropolis from his native Lichfield in search of literary fame, had to work hard at what he called the drudgery of dictionary-making before he was fortunate enough to receive a pension from the king, and so he rose by merit, but all around him in the 18th century there were many who rose by cultivating the art of flattery and of making powerful friends.