Sarrum neighbourhood associations

Subscription bodies of the housing districts, funded at about fourpence a week, whose funds carry burial (burning), short sickness, street drainage, an unarmed watch and a reserve against stoppage. Their speakers are admitted to the Mayoral Manor as mediators only.

The self-organised associations of Sarrum's housing districts, which bury their own and keep readings and books of the city's dates. In the Water Days of 4551 five of them combined for the first time and their spokesmen sat at the negotiating table. The neighbourhood associations of Sarrum, which the belt thinks its own invention but which are modelled on the burial clubs of London's eastern parishes.

Named with it

Fuller Alice Stint · Fleecegate yards association book

Ties

counterweight to the Sarrum halls
signatories' counterparts at the negotiation of 4551
two seats on the wage panel
cold truce with the hall bands
variously above, beside or under the district gangs
negotiated the Bill with the halls, Bank Council and council in 4551
include the Ninefields and Hollowgate associations

In the chronicle

At the table

They read aloud the account of the Water Days, to show that disorder once ended in a bill. The county treats with them as it treats with the drovers and the pit villages. Only twice have they combined, once in 4551, and they have no joint body. Their sanction is exclusion. To shield those they have taken in they will lie to proctors and to bailiffs, and they keep copies of the Bill and read it every year. Four public houses in Sarrum are held under bond by the associations themselves, so that no brewer or hall can 'tie' them, which is to say bind them to its own drink and its own terms; in the back room of each, its association holds its weekly meeting, and a stranger who drinks in the right one for a month will be spoken to. The halls take quiet care to keep the associations divided. The associations hire seldom and pay little, but confer a standing money cannot buy, and association work commits a company to the district's side. The Brethren attend them and take no fee. In their account of 4489 the failed wool years stand first among the causes.