Roundsman System

The Roundsman System (sometimes termed the billet, or ticket, or item system), in the Elizabethan Poor Law (1601), was a plan by which a parish paid the occupiers of property to employ the applicants for relief at a rate of wages fixed by the parish. It depended not on the services, but on the wants of the applicants, the employer being repaid out of the poor rate all that he advanced in wages beyond a certain sum.