Tithes and rates weren't the same thing.
Tithes were (except in the case of some privately-owned churches) the income of the church and the parish priest; they were originally paid in kind, but from the 1830s they took the form of a rent charge which was finally abolished in 1936.
Rates were originally intended to pay for poor relief and were collected by the parish until 1925 when the responsibility passed to local authorities. Poor relief was the responsibility of individual parishes until 1834 and the establishment of the poor law unions; responsibility for poor relief passed to county councils in 1930.
The local government system that we are familiar with is largely a nineteenth-century invention: borough councils were established in 1835, county councils and county boroughs in 1888 and parish councils and urban and rural districts in 1894.
Keith Ramsey
Bristol Business School,
University of the West of England
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