Appendix B864
Extract from the Minority Report for Scotland, giving the reasons in favour of the Complete Supersession of the Poor Law
We realise that the foregoing recommendations amount to the complete supersession of the Poor Law, and, indeed, to its abolition. In its stead, we propose merely an adequate enlargement of the work already undertaken by the various existing public authorities for the prevention of destitution—for the prevention of the destitution due to neglected childhood by the Local Education Authority; for the prevention of the destitution due to preventable sickness, neglected infancy, or uncared-for infirmity by the Local Health Authority; for the prevention of the destitution due to mental defectiveness by the Local Lunacy Authority; for the prevention of the destitution of Old Age by the Local Pension Authority; and for the prevention of the destitution due to unemployment by the new National Authority of which the beginning is seen in the Labour Exchanges Act of 1909. We recommend, in fact, that the community should cease to maintain a special organ for the mere relief of destitution, however caused, and should make such relief as must be given merely incidental to the deliberate prevention of destitution, to which it has, by the creation of public authorities dealing with the several causes of destitution, already set its hand. We now proceed to summarise the main reasons for so radical a change of attitude towards the problem of poverty, and incidentally to answer the more important objections that have been made to it.
The Present Overlap and Duplication of Services in Respect of all Sections of the Destitute
The first reason for dispensing with any special Authority for the relief of destitution as such is a practical one. The work of the Poor Law Authority has to-day been largely superseded, in every branch of its duties, by the activities of the newer forms of Local Government. We have already described, in our proposal for the institution of a Common Register of Public Assistance, and the appointment of a Registrar, the beginnings in Scotland of the same costly overlap of services and duplication of work which have, in England, already reached extravagant proportions. Thus, whereas in 1845, and for some years afterwards, all the public assistance afforded to the sick poor was included in the Poor Law administration, there has gradually been built up, out of the rates, a second medical service, the Public Health department of the County or Burgh. This Public Health Department—in the Highlands, in the Hebrides, and in some of the rural districts still only rudimentary—has, in the large towns, already its own series of hospitals in which the sick poor are maintained as well as treated, entirely free of charge, yet without being paupers. To the long list of diseases already treated in these municipal hospitals, there has now been added phthisis, an illness which accounts for a large proportion of the sick at present dealt with by the Poor Law Authorities. With regard to the children, we see, more or less competing with the Poor Law for their care, on the one hand the Industrial Schools so largely maintained out of the rates and taxes, and on the other the School Boards with the new powers conferred on them by the Education (Scotland) Act of 1908 in connection with the provision of meals and medical inspection. With regard to the aged, we have since 1908 in every County and Burgh a Local Pension Committee awarding domiciliary pensions to no fewer than 70,000 persons over 70, or more than treble the number of aged persons maintained by the Parish Councils as Poor Law Authorities, many, indeed, having been saved from the pauper roll. The removal of the pauper disqualification for a national pension, which has been definitely announced as a subject for legislation in 1910, will make the overlap still more remarkable. With regard to all the persons certifiable as of unsound mind we have the District Boards of Lunacy providing asylums for some, whilst the Parish Councils still deal with others in the Poorhouses, as they do with the uncertified imbeciles, epileptics, and feeble-minded. Finally, with regard to the able-bodied men in distress, for whom the Scottish Poor Law professes not to provide (but nevertheless, as we see, in practice does so as much as the English Poor Law), we find growing up in a score of towns, comprising half the population of Scotland, an organised system of public assistance of one kind or another, under the Distress Committees established by the Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905. We see, in town after town, the vagrants, for whom the Parish Council does not provide, relieved in one way or another by the Police. Thus, there is not one section of the host of persons in Scotland who are without the necessaries of life, of whom the Parish Council, as the Poor Law Authority, is to-day left in undisturbed possession. For the care of the children, the sick, the mentally defective, the aged, and the able-bodied unemployed, Parliament has set up, in Scotland as in England, specialised public authorities which deal with the poor, not on account of their destitution, but in respect of the cause or character of their need.
Fortunately, the overlap and confusion caused by these rival services and competing Local Authorities have in Scotland not yet gone far. It is still possible to prevent a waste of expenditure and a confusion of functions that will certainly increase if the growing overlap is not stopped. To us there seems to be but two lines of reform. We may, on the one hand, ask Parliament to arrest the ever-increasing activities of the Local Health Authorities, stop the provision of more isolation hospitals, check the Health Visitors and the crusade against infantile mortality, rescind the recent order of the Local Government Board annexing to their sphere the whole range of tuberculosis, and remit all the sick poor once more to the Parish Council and its Poorhouse. We may propose to repeal the Unemployed Workmen Act and the Old Age Pensions Act, and thrust back the unemployed workmen and the aged into the Poor Law. We may recommend the withdrawal of the new powers given to the School Boards in connection with medical inspection and school meals for hungry children. We may, in fact, propose to revert to the position in 1845, when there was everywhere one Local Authority, and one Local Authority only, to give public assistance to the necessitous poor. We do not think such a course either desirable or politically practicable. We do not believe that any Minister of the Crown will have the hardihood to propose it; we do not believe that Scottish public opinion will tolerate it; we do not believe that any House of Commons will agree to it.
The other alternative seems to us to be, not to reverse but to continue the evolution that has been going on in Local Government, in Scotland as in England. Instead of seeking to curtail the work with regard to children, the sick, the mentally defective, the aged and the able-bodied unemployed, which is now being undertaken by the Local Education Authorities, the Local Health Authorities, the Local Lunacy Authorities, the Local Pension Authorities, and the Local Unemployment Authorities, what we recommend is that the remainder of each of these sections of the poor who are still being looked after by the Poor Law Authorities should be transferred to the newer specialised Authorities that have been created.
Just as it is proposed, by the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded, with the concurrence of practically all acquainted with the problem, to take the persons of unsound mind, including the epileptic and the feeble-minded, quite “out of the Poor Law,” and place them entirely in the hands of the Local Lunacy Authority, so it is suggested that all public care of the children of school age should be “taken out of the Poor Law” and transferred to the Local Education Authority; that all public care of the sick and infirm (including the maternity cases, the infants under school age, and the aged requiring institutional care) should be “taken out of the Poor Law,” and transferred to the Local Health Authority; and that all the aged who can and will live decently on their pensions should be “taken out of the Poor Law,” and dealt with by the Pension Committee—the whole under the control and direction of the Parish School Board or the District Committee, or the County or Town Council as the case may be. There would then remain, out of all the pauper host, only the vagrants and the odds and ends of genuinely able-bodied men who find their way to the Poorhouse. For these who need help to find a situation if they are merely stranded by temporary unemployment, detention colonies if they are idle or vicious, and physical and industrial training if they have to be maintained whilst waiting for a place, we recommend that there should be a new authority of national scope—the government department which is already being set up under the Labour Exchanges Act of 1909, and which should also take over the work of the Distress Committees under the Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905. We recommend, therefore, as the only practicable means of preventing a wasteful and demoralising duplication of services, the complete abolition, not only of the Poorhouse, but also of the Poor Law itself.
The Expediency of Preventing the Occurrence of Destitution, rather than merely Relieving it after it has Occurred.
What we propose is no mere change of names or of official machinery. We think the time has come when the nation should definitely adopt the principle of using all its powers to prevent the occurrence of destitution, instead of the principle of merely relieving it after it has occurred. Destitution, as we know, is a social disease, as destructive to the health of the community as phthisis is; quite as dangerous to the individual attacked, once it has gained a firm hold, but fortunately as gradual as phthisis in its attack. The Poor Law Authorities of Scotland have failed to prevent the occurrence of destitution, or even to prevent pauperism, and have been unable to provide what is required for the several sections of persons under their charge, not because the Parish Councillors are incompetent or dishonest, careless or corrupt, but because they have been set, not to this task at all, but merely to that of “relieving destitution.” They do relieve destitution much more efficiently on the whole than ever before; but we are not satisfied, nor do we think that public opinion is now satisfied, with the spending in Scotland, year after year, more than a million sterling in the relief of a destitution which never gets either prevented or cured. What the nation now asks is that men, women, and children should, by appropriate measures, be prevented from sinking to a condition of destitution; and that such as unavoidably fall into that state should be taken in hand with a view, not merely to their relief, but to their effectual cure. This is work which a Poor Law authority, by the very nature of its being, can never perform effectively. Any Poor Law authority, call it by what name you may, is necessarily confined to dealing with persons who are actually “destitute” or actually “in distress”; it cannot reach out to anticipate, at the incipient stage, what will, if not arrested in its growth, eventually become destitution or distress. Similarly, a Poor Law authority must necessarily find its operations restricted to the period during which persons are “destitute” or “in distress,” though it is precisely some disciplinary “after care” which may be needed to prevent a relapse. In short, except for the purpose of alleviating momentary suffering (for which alone it was originally intended), the money spent in the relief of the destitute, begun only when they are destitute, and discontinued as soon as they cease to be destitute, is simply wasted. If a hospital for the sick could, by the law of its being, only admit cases when “gangrene” had already set in, and had to discharge them the very moment that the “fever” had been reduced, it would effect as few cures of the sick as the Poorhouse does of the destitute. Yet no Poor Law authority, whatever its name, can, in its treatment of the disease of destitution, transcend the corresponding limits.
If we wish to prevent the very occurrence of destitution, and effectively cure it when it occurs, we must look to its causes. Now, deferring for the moment any question of human fallibility, or the “double dose of original sin,” which most of us are apt to ascribe to those who succumb in the struggle, the investigations of this Royal Commission reveal three broad roads along one or other of which practically all paupers come, namely: (a) sickness, howsoever caused, (b) neglected infancy and neglected childhood, whosoever may be in fault, and (c) unemployment (including “under-employment”), by whatsoever occasioned. If we could prevent sickness, however caused, or effectually treat it when it occurs; if we could ensure that no child, whatever its parentage, went without what we may call the National Minimum of Nurture and Training; and if we could provide that no able-bodied person was left to suffer from long-continued or chronic unemployment, we should prevent at least nine-tenths of the destitution that now costs the Poor Law Authorities of Scotland more than a million per annum. To break up the Poor Law, and to transfer its several services to the Local Education, Health, Lunacy, and Pension Authorities, and to a national authority for the able-bodied, is to hand over the task of treating curatively the several sections of the destitute to authorities charged with the prevention of the several causes of destitution from which those sections are suffering. This means a systematic attempt to arrest each of the principal causes of eventual destitution at the very outset, in the most incipient stage of its attack, which is always an attack of an individual human being, not of the family as a whole. It is one person, at the outset, who has the cough of incipient phthisis, not a whole family; though if no preventive force is brought to bear, destitution will eventually set in and the whole family will be on our hands. There may be in the family neglected infants, neglected children, or feeble-minded persons lacking proper care or control, who may not be technically destitute, who may even be dependents of able-bodied men in work, but who, if left uncared for, will inevitably become the destitute of subsequent years. Hence it is vital that the Local Health Authority should be empowered and required to search out and ensure proper treatment for the incipient stages of all diseases. It is vital that the Lunacy Authority should be empowered and required to search out and ensure proper care and control for all persons certifiable as mentally defective, long before the family to which they belong is reduced to destitution. It is vital that the Local Education Authority should be empowered and required to search out and ensure, quite irrespective of the family’s destitution, whatever Parliament may prescribe as the National Minimum of nurture and training for all children, the neglect of which will otherwise bring these children, when they grow up, themselves to a state of destitution. It is becoming no less clear that some Authority—we say a National Authority—must register and deal with the man who is unemployed, long before extended unemployment has demoralised him and reduced his family to destitution. We wish to put the issue quite clearly before the public. The systematic campaign for the prevention of the occurrence of destitution that we propose—that the community should undertake by grappling with its principal causes at the incipient stages, when they are just beginning to affect one or other members of a family only, long before the family as a whole has sunk into the morass of destitution—involves treating the individual member who is affected in respect of the cause of his complaint, even before he is “disabled” or in pecuniary distress. It means a systematic searching out of incipient cases, just as the Medical Officer of Health searches out infectious disease, or the School Attendance Officer searches out children who are not on the school roll, even before application is made.
At present, the Local Education Authorities, the Local Health Authorities, and the Local Lunacy Authorities only feebly and imperfectly grapple with their task of arresting the causes of destitution in the child, the sick person, or the person of unsound mind, partly because they have only lately begun this part of their work, but principally because they have not been legally empowered and legally required to do it. Moreover, they do not yet have forced on their attention, as they would if they had to maintain those who needed to be cured, the extent to which they fail to prevent. If the Health Committee knew that it would have eventually to maintain the sick men whom it allowed to sink gradually into phthisis, as it has now practically to maintain persons who contract smallpox, it would look with a different eye upon the Medical Officer of Health’s desire to “search out” every case of incipient phthisis whilst it is yet curable, to press upon the ignorant sufferer the best hygienic advice, and to do what is necessary in order to enable the insidious progress of the disease to be arrested. This does not entail that all diseases shall be treated free, any more than the Public Health supervision of sanitation entails that bad landlords shall have their house drainage provided at the public cost. All the increased activity of the Public Health authorities in searching out and treating sickness may coincide with a systematic enforcement of personal responsibility in respect to personal hygiene and with regard to the maintenance in health of dependents, which we, in fact, recommend. The break-up of the Poor Law implies, in short, not only the adoption of a systematic crusade against the several preventable causes of destitution, but also a far more effective enforcement of parental responsibility than is at present practicable.
It may, however, be objected that there are, at any rate, the families to be dealt with which are now in a state of destitution; and that, moreover, it must be anticipated, even with uniformly good administration of the preventive services, there will not be a few families who, as “missed cases,” will have slipped into destitution, without having had their descent arrested by the preventive action above described. We think that each member of even such a family requires, for restoration, specialised treatment according to his or her need. The infant, the child of school age, the mentally defective, the sick, the infirm or incapacitated, the boy or girl above school age, and finally the able-bodied and able-minded adult, each requires that something different should be done for him or her, if that individual is to be properly dealt with. The alternative, namely, to treat the family as a whole, means to place it in the General Mixed Poorhouse, or merely to give it a dole of Outdoor Relief. This, indeed, is to-day the dominant practice; and as such, has been condemned by Majority and Minority alike. It must, we think, be admitted that the several members of the family, with their very different needs, cannot be wisely treated without calling in the public authorities specialising on those heads, such as the Education, Health, Lunacy, Pension, and Unemployment Authorities. This does not mean that the needs of the other members of the family will escape consideration. Assuming that the cause of the destitution in which the family is plunged is the sickness of the breadwinner, and that the other members of the family are all normal, the Health Authority will, if he thinks domiciliary treatment desirable, not only give the necessary medical attendance, and look after the whole family environment by its Health Visitor, but, if there is no income, will grant (subject to the statutory rules and the Council’s own Bye-laws) the home aliment that is requisite for the family maintenance. Would any one suggest that the Health Committee, with its Medical Officer and its Health Visitor, should be excluded from this case, or that it should be precluded from treating the case at home when the doctor reports that it can properly be so treated? If there is a mentally defective person in such a family, ought the Lunacy Authority to be kept out? If there are children of school age in it, is it wise to prevent the intervention of the Education Authority and its School Attendance Officer? We suggest that it is the business of the officers of the County or Town Council—in particular the Registrar of Public Assistance whom we have proposed—to see (a) that these Authorities do not overlap, and (b) that they are all consulted as regards such members of the family as come within their respective spheres of treatment. We see no need for any general Poor Law or “Public Assistance Committee” at all.
Thus there are two main reasons for the Scheme of Reform that we propose. By breaking up the Poor Law into its component services, and transferring each of these to the organ of government which is already performing the same service for the population at large, we (a) stop the present overlapping and confusion, (b) continue the evolution which has been silently going on in Scotland for a whole generation, and (c) introduce a logical order into both Central and Local Government. But the scheme has a far larger and deeper significance than any increase in administrative efficiency or any promotion of economy and simplicity in Local Government. The reform that we advocate, by emphasising everywhere the Principle of Prevention, and especially by systematically searching out neglected infancy and childhood, preventable sickness, uncontrolled feeble-mindedness and uncared-for epilepsy, unwarded vagrancy and that hopeless worklessness that is so demoralising to mind and body, brings with it the sure and certain hope that we may, at no distant date, by patient and persistent effort on these lines, remove from our midst the intolerable infamy to a Christian and civilised State of the persistence of a mass of chronic destitution, spreading like a cancerous growth from one generation to another of our fellow-citizens.
The “Moral Factor” in Destitution
Such being the grounds for our proposals, we have sought to weigh and appreciate the various arguments that can be urged against them. The most radical objection, and we infer the most deeply felt, against the Supersession of the Poor Law Authority by the various specialised and preventive Authorities that are already at work, seems to be a conviction that, in proposing to treat the problem of destitution as one of Sickness or Mental Defect, of Infirmity or Old Age, of Unemployment or Neglected Childhood, we are ignoring the “moral factor.” It is alleged that, among all paupers, notwithstanding the different roads by which they may have come to destitution, there is a certain moral taint; and that, in view of the importance of properly treating this defect of character, all paupers, whatever their age or sex or physical or mental condition ought to be dealt with by an authority specialising on this defect; and this, it is assumed, is what the Poor Law Authority is, or should be made to become. In order that we may be quite sure that we are stating this objection fairly, we quote the exact words of the most accomplished opponent of our proposals, Professor Bernard Bosanquet:—
“The antagonism cannot be put too strongly. The Majority proceed upon the principle that where there is a failure of social self-maintenance in the sense above defined, there is a defect in the citizen character, or at least a grave danger to its integrity; add that therefore every case of this kind raises a problem which is “moral,” in the sense of affecting the whole capacity of self-management, to begin with, in the person who has failed, and secondarily, in the whole community so far as influenced by expectation and example. This relation to a man’s whole capacity for self-management, his “moral,” is a distinctive feature, I take it, which separates the treatment required by the destitute or necessitous from anything that can be offered to citizens who are maintaining themselves in a normal course of life.”865
In this cogent argument for the retention of the Category of the Destitute, and of one Authority, and one Authority only, for all classes of destitute persons, we see two distinct and separate assumptions, one as to fact, and the other as to social expediency. We have first the suggestion that, in all classes of persons who need maintenance at the hands of the State, there is, as a matter of fact, a moral defect, common to the whole class, and requiring specific treatment. Secondly, we see creeping out from behind this suggestion, a further assumption as to the policy which ought to be pursued by the Poor Law Authority. This Authority, which is to have in its charge all the heterogeneous population of infants, children, sick and mentally defective persons, the aged and the infirm, the widows, the vagrants, and the unemployed, is to treat them, not with a single eye to what is best calculated to turn them, or any of them, into efficient citizens, not even with a single eye to what will most successfully remedy the “moral defect” which they are assumed all to possess, but with the quite different object of warning off or deterring, “by expectation and example,” other persons for applying for like treatment. In other words, we must, by keeping all the different varieties of people who require State aid under one Authority, and under one that assumes the existence of this “moral defect,” retain for all alike, not only the “stigma of pauperism,” but also a method of provision which will “deter” others from coming to be treated. As this is the only philosophical argument that we have encountered, by way of justification for the existence of one Authority, and one Authority only, to which the State should indiscriminately commit the care of the infants, the children of school age, the sick, the mentally defective, the aged and infirm, the vagrants and the unemployed workmen in distress, it requires detailed examination.
Let us first examine the initial assumption that the miscellaneous multitude who, year by year, come on public funds for maintenance, are, as a matter of fact, one and all, characterised by a particular moral defect—a feature so uniform, so important, and so specific as to outweigh the differences between infants and adults, the healthy and the sick, the sane and the mentally defective, the aged and the able-bodied; and to require the aggregation of all of them together under a single Authority in each locality, which should specialise upon this common characteristic. We have, in the first place, to realise that two-fifths of all the paupers are infants or children of school age; that is to say, human beings rendered destitute, not by any action or inaction of their own, but through something which has happened to their parents or guardians. An enormous proportion of these children are destitute merely because they are orphans. What rational ground have we for assuming, without enquiry, that these little ones are suffering from any “defect in the citizen character,” or from any “moral” defect whatsoever? Their fathers may well have had defects, for they have died; though even with regard to them the more obvious inference would seem to be that they had physical defects or weaknesses; and this, in view of the frequency of mere accident, cannot be deduced with any certainty. We can, at any rate, infer nothing as to the character of the mothers from the fact that the fathers have died. Moreover, even if we could make the assumption that the children of fathers who have died prematurely, or who from some other cause have left their offspring without property, necessarily inherited some weakness of character or specific moral defect, it does not seem to follow that the best way of counteracting this inheritance would be to herd such children together, to segregate them apart from normal children, to brand them as paupers, and to commit them to the care of an Authority not specially concerned with dealing with children as children, but regarding children as only one variety of the pauper class. It seems clear that the real justification for keeping together all the infants and children whom the State has to maintain, and for excluding them from the care of the Local Education Authority, is not any consideration of what is likely to be best for such children—not even what is best calculated to counteract any disadvantageous tendencies that some of them may have inherited—but the second assumption to which we drew attention, namely, that it is expedient so to treat those whom the State must maintain that other persons will not, “by expectation and example,” be led to apply for similar treatment. The argument, in short, is really one for affixing the “stigma of pauperism” to all the children that the State has to maintain, not because this will make them grow up into efficient citizens—even, perhaps, at the cost of injuriously affecting their education and their character—but in order merely to prevent other children becoming chargeable. This policy of definitely “Poor Law treatment” for the Children of the State, the Scottish Parish Councils, to their honour, have always repudiated. But if this policy of “Poor Law treatment” of the child is repudiated—if the State is really to set itself to bring up the boys and girls whom it finds on its hands with a single eye to their development into efficient citizens—why should the State not use for them the organ which it has fashioned for this very purpose? What ground is there for treating the child as a pauper at all, when the Local Education Authority stands there, in every parish, already authorised by law to provide all that is requisite, and prepared to treat the child simply as a child?
Passing from the two-fifths of the paupers who are infants or children, we have then to realise that something like another two-fifths of all those who, in Scotland, apply for maintenance are not merely “disabled” in the technical sense, but are definitely suffering from some specific disease or chronic infirmity of body, for which they have to be medically treated. If the patient happens to be suffering from certain diseases, which are specified in an ever-lengthening schedule, the argument about the “defect in the citizen character,” and the “grave danger to its integrity” is abandoned; the sick person is then, by common consent, searched out, urged to accept State aid, freely maintained at the public expense, and—what is very significant to us in this argument—treated without the slightest pretence that he has a moral defect, and without any idea of curing that defect, or avoiding the danger to his integrity, but simply and solely with the object of restoring him at the earliest moment to physical health. Meanwhile the responsible Authority is at work effecting, by cleansing, disinfecting, draining, and improving the housing, the water-supply, and the general sanitation, alterations in the environment in which the disease has occurred, in order to prevent its recurrence, either in that patient or in any one else. The patients of the Local Health Authority, though their numbers are growing day by day, the Majority Report leaves outside the “one Authority and only one Authority” which (as it is suggested) ought to deal with all those for whom maintenance has to be provided. Whilst we on the Poor Law Commission were deliberating, the Local Government Board for Scotland added to this class all the enormous number of persons suffering from tuberculosis.866 In spite of the fact that the more enterprising of the Parish Councils are already beginning to provide extensively for phthisis patients in their Poorhouses, the work is now to be undertaken by the Local Health Authorities. We note that the Majority Report makes no protest against this enormous extension of the area of overlap between the two sets of Authorities, and expressly assumes that, to the extent that tuberculosis prevails among the present pauper host, the Poor Law is to be broken up, and its functions gradually taken over by the Local Health Authorities. Apparently it is admitted that, with regard to persons suffering from tuberculosis in any of its forms, we must give up the assumption that they have some “defect in the citizen character,” in common with the vagrants and the unemployed workmen; or at any rate we must give up any idea of treating them for this moral defect or grave danger to their integrity.
What the public welfare requires is, as is now admitted, that these sick persons should be treated with a single eye to arresting the course of their disease, and restoring them as soon as possible to physical health. Moreover, as sickness is plainly, to an undefined extent, the result of bad environment—of overcrowding, insanitation, unwholesome food, polluted water, or injurious conditions of employment—it is important that it should be in the hands of an authority officially cognisant of this environment, and empowered to alter that which is producing the sickness. The question necessarily arises whether there is any ground for dealing with any neglected sick persons who need medical treatment, in any different way from that in which we have now decided to treat phthisis patients—whether we have any more ground for assuming the co-existence of a “defect in the citizen character” or “grave danger to its integrity,” along with cancer, rheumatism, lead poisoning, hernia, or varicose veins, than along with pulmonary consumption—whether, in fact, the State has any justification for treating any sick person at all otherwise than with a single eye to arresting their diseases and preventing their occurrence in others—whether in the interests of the community as a whole we are not bound to drop the idea of “deterring” the sick “by expectation and example” from coming to be cured, and are not bound therefore to put the whole function into the hands of the organ which the State has created for the prevention and treatment of disease, namely, the Local Health Authority?
When we turn to the aged, who make up the bulk of the remainder of the pauper host, the question of whether or not we can assume the universal existence of a “defect in the citizen character” or “grave danger to its integrity” becomes irrelevant. As there can, speaking practically, be no idea of improving the character of the aged, it is difficult to see why it should be suggested that the worn-out men and women for whom the State has to provide, and whose moral defects cannot now be cured, should necessarily be merged with the persons whose assumed moral defects are still curable, and who are therefore to be placed under an Authority specialising on this business of treating the “defect in the citizen character” that always accompanies the need for State maintenance. In the case of the aged, in fact, the assumption that they should be placed under a Poor Law Authority with a view to remedying their assumed defects becomes hypocritical. In their case, it is clear, their retention in the class “pauper,” and their relegation to the Poor Law Authority, is advocated, not for their own good. They are, it is suggested, to be accorded a treatment other than that which the State would otherwise afford to them—that is to say, they are to suffer the stigma of pauperism—merely in order “by expectation and example” to deter other persons from taking advantage in their old age of the maintenance which the State affords. This policy we are relieved from having to characterise, because by the passing of the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, the community has, even whilst we were deliberating, definitely declared against it. We see, therefore, no need whatsoever, now that there is in every County and Burgh a special Authority for the aged (the Local Pension Committee), for relegating any aged persons to the Poor Law Authority.
Of the non-able-bodied paupers—and it is for the non-able-bodied that the Scottish Poor Law lawfully provides—there remain only “the feeble-minded,” and the epileptic, and the persons of “unsound mind,” who make up nearly one-fifth of the whole of Scottish pauperism. Of this fifth, about two-thirds are already under the administrative care, not of the Poor Law Authority at all, but of the Local Lunacy Authority, whilst about one-third (including the epileptics, the uncertified imbeciles, and the merely feeble-minded) are still looked after by the Parish Councils. All these persons, we must admit, actually do have, co-existing with their pauperism, a “defect in the citizen character,” a mental weakness frequently “moral” in its nature, and one which is coming more and more to be regarded as susceptible to appropriate treatment. Here then, if anywhere, one might think that there is ground for assigning these paupers to the Authority which is by its supporters assumed to specialise on the treatment of the specific “defect in the citizen character,” which is asserted to be co-extensive with the need for State maintenance. But the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded, after exhaustively examining the subject and concentrating its whole attention upon it, came to the conclusion that the Poor Law Authority was inherently unsuited for treating any kind of mentally defective person, and decided to recommend the removal of all such persons from the sphere of the Poor Law, and their being placed henceforth entirely in the hands of an Authority, the Local Lunacy Authority, which had both the special knowledge and the special machinery for treating the mental defectiveness that had been actually proved to exist, rather than the hypothetical “defect in the citizen character” that their need of State maintenance is supposed to imply. Our colleagues who have signed the Majority Report, torn between their own assumption of the need for “one Authority and only one Authority” for all the destitute, and the very authoritative recommendations of the contemporary Royal Commission, have apparently been unable to come to any certain conclusion as to what they wish done with regard to this one-fifth of all the paupers. In the Majority Report for England and Wales, dated February 1909, our colleagues concurred with us in recommending the carrying out of the proposals of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded; in desiring the transfer of all provision for the mentally defective to the Local Lunacy Authorities; in urging the removal from this unfortunate class of the “stigma of pauperism,” and in so far “breaking up the Poor Law,” and departing from the idea of relegating all who needed State maintenance to “one Authority and one Authority only,” which should treat them all for their assumed common “defect in the citizen character.”867In the case of Ireland, where the lunatic asylums are at present entirely outside the Poor Law, and their inmates are not paupers, our colleagues, in their Majority Report, dated June 1909, recommended exactly the opposite course from that which they proposed for England and Wales. Instead of transferring the feeble-minded to the Local Lunacy Authority, they recommended that the Local Lunacy Authority should cease to exist as a separate Authority; and that all the lunatics and lunatic asylums should be transferred, along with the unemployed workmen and the infectious sick, to the new Authority that they wish to administer the Poor Law. When we come to Scotland, our colleagues, in their Majority Report dated October 1909, made no recommendations on the subject at all as to the Authority;868 and are therefore in the position of implicitly endorsing the status quo, which, as we have mentioned, is one of overlap between the Poor Law and Lunacy Authorities, each of which has under its administrative care a certain proportion of the lunatics, idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, and feeble-minded for whom Scotland has to provide, and with regard to some of whom very inadequate provision is now made. We cannot agree to leave the matter in this way. We do not see that the nature of lunacy or feeble-mindedness differs in the three Kingdoms to such an extent as to warrant three different policies in its treatment. We think that the first mind of our colleagues was the best. We, like the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded, see no reason why lunatics should be treated as paupers any more than as criminals. We certainly see no reason why Scottish lunatics and feeble-minded should remain paupers, when English lunatics and feeble-minded are to be relieved from this stigma. We, therefore, think that Scotland should see to it that the mentally defective of all grades are, at the earliest possible moment, wholly removed from the Poor Law and the Poor Law Authority, and placed entirely under the care of the special Lunacy Authority, which can deal with them with a single eye to the needs of their condition.
We proceed now to consider the last section of all, the adult able-bodied man or woman without means, who becomes destitute through not being in employment at wages. We think that it is invidious and unwarranted to assume that such unemployment is, in any particular case, wholly or even mainly the result of any “defect of the citizen character.” We have been unable to resist the evidence that unemployment, and even acute distress from unemployment, comes, as a matter of fact, to workmen of excellent skill and character. We have been much impressed, amid the heterogeneous crowd of “the unemployed,” by the number of worthy and capable men who have found themselves thrown out of long-held situations by the bankruptcy of their employers, by some change of industrial process, by the invention of a new machine, or by the decay of particular industries. In these cases, as has been well brought out by Mr. W. H. Beveridge,869 the very excellence of the workman, by his long continuance in the groove to which the employer has required him to fit, may have rendered him less capable of obtaining another situation, and even less able to fill it when found. Notwithstanding the frequency of cases of this sort, it is, we think, clear that a majority of those who, in any given state of trade, come into distress through long-continued unemployment or chronic “under-employment,” are—with many individual exceptions—either the less strong or the less fit, the less skilled or the less capable, the less responsible or the less regular in their industry of the wage-earning community. Hence though it is the relative defectiveness of the social environment (such as the lack of organisation of the Labour Market, or the anarchic fluctuations of trade) that in the main determine the amount of Under-employment, or the degree to which Under-employment prevails, at any given place and time, it is the relative defectiveness of one wage-earner as compared with another that in the main determines upon which individuals the Unemployment or Under-employment will actually fall. This fact, though it does not relieve us from the necessity of providing for these individuals, serves as a warning against certain proposed methods of provision. Moreover, whilst persons cannot voluntarily become infants or children, or aged or mentally defective, in order to qualify for the provision which the State makes for these sections, and are not likely to make themselves acutely sick or permanently infirm in order to get medically treated, even if this incidentally includes their maintenance, there is an obvious danger that the lower types of men will tend to become destitute through chronic unemployment, if “by expectation and example” they see any chance of maintenance without sustained effort, under conditions as pleasant to them as work at wages. Hence, in the case of the able-bodied, it is true that the result of the State provision on the amount and quality of productive effort, not only in the persons treated, but also in all those who might “by expectation and example” be led to apply for treatment, becomes the paramount consideration.
The suggestion that “where there is a failure of social self-maintenance... there is a defect in the citizen character, or at least a grave danger to its integrity,” is, indeed, in any careful analysis, seen to be true, if at all, of the able-bodied and of the able-bodied only. It is exactly because we realise the overwhelming importance to the character of the community of stimulating, in all sections of the able-bodied, the desire and faculty for self-maintenance, that we urge the necessity of having an Authority dealing with the able-bodied, and with the able-bodied only. It is, we suggest, just because the Parish Council, as a Poor Law Authority, has been required to be simultaneously a Hospital Authority for the sick, an Asylum Authority for the mentally defective, an Education Authority for the children, and a Pension Authority for the aged, that it has never been able to deal efficiently with the able-bodied. If it had been able to keep its Poorhouse exclusively for the able-bodied—even for the able-bodied whom the medical officer felt obliged to certify as temporarily disabled lest they should starve to death—it might, at any rate, by appropriate discipline, have stopped the Poorhouse from becoming a visible source of deterioration of the able-bodied inmates. The inference, therefore, that we draw from the argument as to the “moral factor” in destitution, of which, in the case of the able-bodied, we recognise the full force, is that it is imperative that there should be, not one Authority for all persons needing public assistance, whatever their age, sex, or condition, but one Authority for all the adult able-bodied persons who are not specially certified as sick or permanently incapacitated, as mentally defective, or as having attained a specified limit of age. We regard the wise treatment of all such adult able-bodied persons as have to be maintained from public funds as being of such great difficulty and complexity as to demand, not only that it should be the work of a single Authority specialising on their problem, but also that this Authority should be one free from the influences of particular localities, and able to command the highest administrative skill that the nation can supply.
There is an additional reason for not thrusting the able-bodied unemployed person into the hands of a new Poor Law Authority restricted to the function of relieving destitution. Up to the present, the Scottish Poor Law has not included any provision whatsoever for the able-bodied, the only lawful method of relief from public funds being that afforded by the Distress Committee under the Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905. Hence the famous principle of the English Poor Law reform of 1834—that the condition of the able-bodied pauper should always be less eligible than that of the lowest grade of independent labourer—has never been adopted by the administrators of the Scottish Poor Law. To transfer, as is proposed by our colleagues in the Majority Report, the whole responsibility for the able-bodied unemployed from the Distress Committees to a new Poor Law, or, as they say, Public Assistance Authority, would, we think, inevitably tend to introduce into Scotland a principle which has, in England, proved a complete failure. We now see that the condition of the lowest grade of independent labourer—whether he is chronically “under-employed” like the whole class of dock and other casual labourers, or “sweated” like the home-working chair-maker or slipper-maker—is so deplorably below the level of adequate subsistence that to make the lot of the pauper “less eligible” means to reduce him below any acceptable standard of civilised existence. It has been found, in fact, impossible to give the pauper less food, less clothing, less rest and sleep, or less eligible housing accommodation than that of the lowest grade of independent labourer without actually and obviously impairing his physical health. Hence the alternative has been to concentrate the “less eligibility” on the conditions of the pauper’s mental life. However worthy and innocent have been the able-bodied applicants for Poor Law relief, the policy of the English Poor Law has been to degrade them in their own eyes and in the eyes of the public, to exclude them from citizenship by depriving them (though not the convicted criminals) of the right to be placed on the electoral register; to subject them to hard labour of the most monotonous and useless character, such as stone-breaking or corn-grinding, or even oakum-picking; to subject them to the shameful promiscuity of the General Mixed Workhouse or the gaol-like severities of the Able-bodied Test Workhouse; and this “deterrent” treatment has, by the very principles of the Poor Law, had to be meted out to all comers, whether or not they have been found, as a matter of fact, to have any moral defect at all. This “principle of less eligibility” has been, in fact, in the English Poor Law, a mere device for mechanically diminishing, “by expectation and example,” able-bodied pauperism—meaning help from the Poor Rate. It has been found wholly ineffective (and has, indeed, stood in the way of the adoption of anything effective) for diminishing the able-bodied destitution which leads presently to pauperism, as well as for striking at the causes which bring men to this destitution. This policy of “less eligibility,” into which any Poor Law Authority is only too apt to be driven in dealing with the able-bodied, seems to us so futile and so barbarous in its inhumanity, and leads to such demoralising forms of parasitism on the labour of women and children, on begging and vagrancy, and even on a career of crime, that we should regard its introduction into Scotland, by the new Public Assistance Authorities that our colleagues propose, as nothing less than a national disaster.
We think that the time has come for the nation definitely to repudiate the policy of “deterring” persons who are destitute from coming under the care and control of the State; and this equally when the destitute persons are able-bodied and when they are sick or mentally defective. We urge the deliberate adoption of the opposite principle of searching out those who are in any respect destitute, with a view to taking hold of their cases at the earliest possible moment, when they may still be curable, and of enforcing on all able-bodied persons the obligation to maintain themselves and their dependants in health and efficiency. We consider that it is now possible to proceed with regard to unemployment on the same general lines as we proceed with regard to illiteracy in children and with regard to infectious disease. We recommend that, by the systematic enforcement of parental responsibility for the condition of all dependants by the Local Education Authority and the Local Health Authority, and by the systematic suppression of mendicity and vagrancy by the Local Police Authority, every person who is not in a position to provide for his wife and children, or who wilfully or negligently abstains from doing so, should—whether or not he applies for assistance—stand revealed to the new Authority that we propose for dealing with the able-bodied. By an organised use of the National Labour Exchange this Authority will be able to ascertain whether there are possibilities of employment for such men, and where such openings are, and what is the kind of training that they require. If resort to the National Labour Exchange becomes general among employers, and if it is made compulsory on those who take on hands for casual jobs, it will be possible for the Authority so to “dovetail” jobs and seasonal occupations as to go far towards ensuring continuous employment for those who are taken on at all. There will remain the persons who by this very “decasualisation” of labour and suppression of chronic “under-employment” are squeezed out of their present miserable partial earnings. For these it must be the duty of the National Authority to provide, and, as soon as possible, absorb them in productive industry. Fortunately there is at hand in the diminution of boy labour by the increasing absorption of the boy’s time in technical education, in the reduction of excessive hours of labour on railways, tramways, and omnibuses, and in the withdrawal of the mothers of young children from the labour market when they are required, as a condition of their aliment, to devote themselves to their family, together with the possibilities of development opened up by afforestation, etc., which we have elsewhere sufficiently described, more than enough opportunities for the absorption of this temporary surplus. But the cyclical fluctuations of trade, with the consequent waxing and waning of the aggregate demand of productive industry, must always be counted on; and these cyclical fluctuations in demand for labour, as we have shown, can be counteracted, and the volume of wage-earning employment in the country as a whole maintained at something like a constant level, by a mere rearrangement over each decade, of the Government works and orders that must in any case be executed within the decade, though not necessarily, as at present, in equal instalments year by year. All this organised attempt to prevent unemployment, which we regard as the primary duty of the National Authority, though we have reason to believe that it can obviate the greater part of the involuntary lack of work from which so many of the wage-earners now suffer, will not, of course, completely secure every individual workman in permanent employment. To provide for such cases we look, in the main, to a great extension of Trade Union insurance, rendered possible to many more industries than can yet organise “out of work benefit” by adequate subventions from public funds on the lines of the well-known Ghent system. Finally, when all this is done, the National Authority for the able-bodied will still have on its hands those who are for one reason or another uninsured, and for whom, whether from their own faults or defects or not, the Labour Exchange fails to find a situation. But even these must not be deterred from coming under care and control, and must, in the public interest, not be kept at arm’s length to degenerate or become demoralised. For them the National Authority must provide maintenance, with adequate Home Aliment for their dependants, in the way that we have described, and under the course of physical and industrial training best calculated to make them more fit than they now are for the work which the Labour Exchange will, sooner or later, be able to find for them. We see no reason for penal conditions, such as have prevailed in the English Able-bodied Test Workhouses, for any honest and willing man. Only when a man has been definitely proved to be unwilling to work for the maintenance of himself and his dependants, or persists in recalcitrancy and refusal to co-operate in his own cure, need he be committed by the magistrates to a Detention Colony, there to be treated in whatever way is found best adapted to remedy the moral defect which he will then have been actually convicted of possessing.
To sum up, we hold it untrue and unwarranted to suggest that all those whom the State finds on its hands as destitute—the infants and children, the sick and the mentally defective, the aged and the unemployed able-bodied—have necessarily any moral taint or defect in common, for which they need all to be treated by a single Authority, or can properly all be treated by such an authority, specialising on this presumed common attribute. We hold, on the contrary, that experience has demonstrated that, although individuals in all sections of the destitute may be morally defective, and this in all sorts of different ways, the great mass of destitution is the direct and (given human nature as it is) almost inevitable result of the social environment in which the several sections have found themselves; and that it can, to a large and as yet undefined extent, be obviated if the cases are taken in time, and the environment appropriately changed. We suggest that the failure of the existing Poor Law Authorities is due mainly to the fact that, as Poor Law Authorities, they are inherently incapable of getting hold of the cases in time before destitution has set in, and that they are necessarily prevented, by their very nature as “Destitution Authorities,” from changing the social environment which is bringing about the destitution, or from providing the new environment that is necessary, whether by way of treatment or by way of disciplinary supervision after actual treatment, either for the infants or for the children, for the sick or for the mentally defective, for the aged and infirm or for the unemployed able-bodied. We consider that it is proved, by the experience of the several specialised and preventive Authorities that have been established for this purpose, that the arrest of the causes of destitution, and the necessary changes in the social environment, can be effected only by making each such Authority responsible for its own special part of the work of prevention, and for providing the appropriate treatment for the particular section of persons in whom it may have failed to prevent destitution. We fully admit the importance of the “moral factor” in contributing to the production of some of the destitution in all the sections; but the moral defect is not always in the destitute person himself, and we hold that this “moral factor” can never be effectually dealt with, and can never be subjected to the disciplinary and reformatory treatment that it requires, until we give up assuming its existence where we have no actual proof, and until we are prepared to base such treatment solely upon the definite conviction, by judicial process, of particular individuals for particular offences. In no case, whether individually innocent or morally guilty, do we think that the destitute person should be refused treatment, or “deterred” from applying for it. On the contrary, we hold that every destitute person not under treatment is a menace to the commonweal; and the public authorities should therefore search out all such cases, as if they were cases of typhus, and endeavour to get hold of them at the most incipient stage of the disease. And if we are asked what we would substitute for the “deterrent” treatment of the Poor Law, in order to protect the State from being eaten up by a multitude of applicants for its aid, we reply that in no case do we suggest the provision of maintenance, or of any form of public assistance, otherwise than in the guise of the most appropriate treatment for the actual disease or infirmity or lack that the individual is demonstrated to be suffering from; that this treatment is not necessarily gratuitous, efficient provision being made for recovery of cost wherever there is ability to pay; that such treatment is never unconditional, and is from the very nature of the case disciplinary; that it necessarily includes long-continued supervision, even after treatment; and that co-operation in one’s own cure, together with willingness to fulfil all parental, marital, and personal obligations, opportunity to doing so being provided, will for the first time be really enforced, and if necessary enforced, when other means have failed, by commitment to a Detention Colony.
Summary of Conclusions
It is on all these grounds that we feel compelled to dissent from the recommendations of the Majority Report in favour of setting up a new Destitution Authority, which should administer relief only at the period of destitution, and which should have under its charge indiscriminately men, women, and children, the sick and the healthy, the infant and the aged, the unemployed workman and the incorrigible vagrant. We believe that the establishment of any such general Destitution Authority, under whatever designation, and however selected or appointed, would inevitably lead to the perpetuation of the General Mixed Poorhouse, and the customary dole of Aliment or Outdoor Relief. We cannot but fear that such a proposal means the abandonment of any hope of preventing the occurrence of Unemployment and the gradual sinking into destitution that we see going on; that it implies practically a despairing acquiescence in the daily manufacture of “unemployables,” and in the daily creation of new pauperism, which is the disquieting feature of the time. We, on the contrary, believe that destitution can be prevented, and that it is the business of the State, in its national and local organisation, to take the steps necessary to prevent it. In this dissent we have confined ourselves to argument as to the general principle. We have not attempted to make definite and detailed recommendations as to how the principle of breaking up the Poor Law, and transferring its several services to the specialised preventive Authorities, should be applied to the present machinery of administration in Scotland. We do not feel qualified, for instance, to decide whether the care of the children can be best entrusted wholly to the School Boards, or whether, with a view to an equalisation of the rates, this work might advantageously be shared in by the County Committees of districts under the Education (Scotland) Act of 1908. We do not pretend to advise whether the District Boards of Lunacy, with the new duties with regard to the feeble-minded, and the complete disconnection of all their work from the Poor Law recommended by the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded, as well as by ourselves, should or should not be modified in constitution; or whether it might not be more advantageous for Scotland, and more calculated to relieve its local administration from an onerous and unequally distributed burden, if the whole work of providing for the mentally defective were made a national service and a national charge. With regard to the Local Health organisation, which has in some parts of Scotland to cope with great geographical difficulties, we do not feel warranted in making any definite recommendation as to the constitutions, areas, and powers of the present Health Authority in Burghs and Counties respectively. Nor do we think it necessary to pronounce upon the question of whether the National Department for the Able-bodied—with its Labour Exchanges, its help towards Insurance against Unemployment, its duty in regularising the seasonal trades and “decasualising” casual labour, its work in promoting the absorption of the surplus labourers who may be thus squeezed out, its attempts to regularise the aggregate national demand for labour, and its training establishments and Detention Colonies—should be separate and self-contained for Scotland, or whether it might not, like the Board of Trade and the Factory Inspection Department, more advantageously form part of the wider organisation for the United Kingdom as a whole. All these are administrative details to be determined by those personally acquainted with Scottish Local Government, and in accordance with Scottish public opinion. We must content ourselves with suggesting that, if it is thought that the time has come when we need no longer rest satisfied with merely relieving destitution, but can start an effective campaign for its prevention; if it is felt that the children ought to be rescued from demoralisation and the sick from preventable disease and preventable suffering; if it is desired to put an end to the demoralisation and destruction of character now caused by Unemployment, and especially by Under-employment, then we must proceed generally upon the lines herein laid down.
We therefore recommend:—
1. That the Scottish Poor Law be abolished, and in its stead an entirely different method of provision for those needing public aid be inaugurated, so as to get rid of pauperism, both the name and the thing.
2. That a systematic Crusade against Destitution in all its forms be set on foot; against the destitution caused by Unemployment, the destitution caused by Old Age, the destitution caused by Feeble-mindedness and Lunacy, the destitution caused by Ill-health and Disease, and the destitution caused by Neglected Infancy and Neglected Childhood.
3. That the Local Education Authority be empowered and required to search out all children of school age within its district who are destitute of proper nurture, and to secure to them a fitting upbringing.
4. That the Local Health Authority be empowered and required to search out all sick persons within its district who are destitute of medical attendance, all infants destitute of proper nurture, and all infirm persons needing medical attendance and nursing, and to apply the appropriate treatment, either in the homes or in suitable institutions.
5. That the Lunacy Authority be empowered and required to search out all feeble-minded and mentally defective persons destitute of proper care and control, and to make appropriate provision for them.
6. That the Local Pension Authority be empowered and required to search out all persons within its district who are destitute from old age, and to provide Old Age Pensions for such of them as are able and willing to live decently thereon.
7. That a new National Authority be empowered and required to search out all able-bodied persons destitute of employment; to take the necessary steps both to diminish, as far as practicable, the social disease of Unemployment, and to supply proper maintenance and training for those who are unemployed and unprovided for.
8. That all these specialised and preventive Authorities be empowered and required to enforce, by counsel and warning, by the sustained pressure of public opinion, and where needed by process of law, the obligation of all able-bodied persons to maintain themselves and their families in due health and efficiency.
Footnotes
1 See, for instance, The English Poor Law System, by Paul Felix Aschrott, translated by H. Preston Thomas, 1888 and 1902; La Loi des pauvres et la société anglaise, par E. Chevalier, 1895; The Better Administration of the Poor Law, by Sir William Chance, Bart., 1895; The Public Relief of the Poor, by T. Mackay, 1901; L’Assistance légale et la lutte contre le pauperisme en Angleterre, par G. E. de Froment, 1905.
2 The Poor Law, by the Rev. T. W. Fowle, 1881; The English Poor Laws, by Miss Sophia Lonsdale, 1897 and 1902; Our Treatment of the Poor, by Sir Wm. Chance, Bart, 1899; The Public Relief of the Poor, by T. Mackay, 1901.
3 History of the English Poor Law, vol. iii., from 1834 to the present time, by T. Mackay, 1899.
4 The Minority Report has been separately published in book form, in two volumes, The Break Up of The Poor Law, and The Public Organization of the Labour Market, each edited, with an introduction, by S. and B. Webb (Longmans. 1909).
5 This analysis is confined to relief in all its various forms, excluding all questions of charge ability (or the recovery from other persons of the amount expended on relief), settlement, removal, assessment, rating, and mere administrative procedure.
6 p. 228 of the Report of 1834. The references are to the latest reprint (1905).
7 pp. 279-280 of the Report of 1834.
8 p. 294 of the Report of 1834.
9 p. 297 of the Report of 1834.
10 p. 47 of the Report of 1834.
11 pp. 263-264 of the Report of 1834.
12 p. 228 of the Report of 1834.
13 p. 263 of Report of 1834.
14 p. 297 of Report of 1834.
15 p. 298 of Report of 1834.
16 p. 262 of Report of 1834, made by way of comment as to the temporary policy.
17 p. 264 of Report of 1834.
18 p. 262 of Report of 1834.
19 Ibid.
20 pp. 306-307 of Report of 1834.
21 p. 324 of Report of 1834.
22 p. 340 of Report of 1834.
23 p. 306 of Report of 1834.
24 p. 350 of Report of 1834.
25 p. 307 of Report of 1834.
26 p. 262 of Report of 1834.
27 p. 338 of Report of 1834.
28 p. 43 of Report of 1834.
29 pp. 306-307 of Report of 1834.
30 p. 262 of Report of 1834.
31 p. 307 of Report of 1834.
32 pp. 42-43 of Report of 1834.
33 p. 307 of Report of 1834.
34 p. 306 of Report of 1834.
35 p. 307 of Report of 1834.
36 See pp. 305, 306, 307, 313-314 of Report of 1834.
37 p. 314 of Report of 1834.
38 p. 298 of Report of 1834.
39 p. 357 of Report of 1834.
40 p. 337 of Report of 1834.
41 4 & 5 Will. IV. c. 76, quoted as the Act of 1834; 5 & 6 Vic. c. 57, quoted as the Act of 1842; 7 & 8 Vic. c. 101, quoted as the Act of 1844; 10 and 11 Vic. c. 109, quoted as the Act of 1847.
42 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 42.
43 Ibid. sec. 52.
44 Ibid. sec. 15.
45 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 52.
46 Ibid. sec. 54.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid. sec. 52.
49 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 54.
50 5 & 6 Vic. c. 57, sec. 5.
51 7 & 8 Vic. c. 101, secs. 41 to 56.
52 Ibid. sec. 53.
53 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 52.
54 Ibid. sec. 15.
55 7 & 8 Vic. c. 101, sec. 25.
56 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 56.
57 Ibid. sec. 71.
58 7 & 8 Vic. c. 101, sec. 26.
59 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 15.
60 Ibid. sec. 19.
61 7 & 8 Vic. c. 101, secs. 40, 42-44.
62 Ibid. sec. 43.
63 Ibid. sec. 40.
64 Ibid. sec. 51.
65 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, secs. 15 and 61.
66 43 Eliz. c. 2, sec. 1; 18 George III. c. 47, preamble; 56 George III. c. 139.
67 5 & 6 William IV. c. 19, secs. 26, 29.
68 5 & 6 Vict. c. 7.
69 7 & 8 Vict. c. 101, secs. 12, 13.
70 There was a provision (since repealed), in sec. 15 of the Act of 1834, which we need not notice, as to making rules for the management of parish poor children under Hanway’s Act (7 George III. c. 39), since repealed.
71 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 15.
72 Ibid. c. 54.
73 Criminal Lunatics Act, 1838, 1 & 2 Vict. c. 14, sec. 2.
74 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 56.
75 Ibid. sec. 27.
76 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, secs. 15, 42.
77 Ibid. sec. 23.
78 Ibid. sec. 25.
79 Ibid. sec. 24.
80 7 & 8 Vict. c. 101, sec. 30.
81 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, secs. 92, 93.
82 Ibid. sec. 93.
83 Ibid. sec. 94.
84 Ibid. sec. 19.
85 Ibid. sec. 62.
86 4 & 5 William IV. secs. 58, 59.
87 Pensions Act, 1839, 2 & 3 Vict. c. 51, sec. 2.
88 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 42.
89 Ibid. sec. 52.
90 Ibid. sec. 15.
91 Ibid. secs. 16, 17.
92 Ibid. sec. 109.
93 Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, pp. 32-34.
94 See for instance the Order of 31st December, 1834, issued to Sutton Courtney Parish, now included in Abingdon Union, and the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, 14th December 1852, art. 1.
95 See Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 92; the Order of 26th April 1839, to Aston Union; and Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, 21st December 1844, art. 1.
96 Official Circular, No. 1, p. 8, 8th January 1840; Ibid. No. 34, p. 79, 30th April 1844.
97 p. 62 of Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839.
98 See the “Suggestions as to the most eligible modes of Providing Outdoor Employment... in cases where there is not an efficient workhouse, and preparatory to the establishment of the Workhouse System,” p. 45 of Second Annual Report, 1836.
99 Circular, 8th November 1834, p. 73 of First Annual Report, 1835.
100 Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, sec. v., art. 27, p. 92 of Second Annual Report, 1836.
101 Poor Law Commissioners to Norwich Court of Guardians, 25th July 1835; Special Order to Norwich, 29th July 1835; MS. Minutes, Norwich Court of Guardians, July and August 1835.
102 Special Order to Norwich, 21st October 1835; Poor Law Commissioners to Norwich Court of Guardians, 21st October 1835; MS. Minutes, Norwich Court of Guardians, October 1835.
103 This term, Relief in Kind, has always been limited to food, though the character of the food has been varied. Medicine and “medical extras” supplied to the paupers in their homes have been included in the term Outdoor Medical Relief. The provision of clothing and bedding to the outdoor poor—classed as ordinary Outdoor Relief—though permitted, has never been encouraged by the Central Authority. (Official Circular, 10th November 1840, No. 9, p. 117; Ibid., July 1850, No. 39 N.S., p. 108; see also Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. ii., 1880, p. 71.) The provision of tools or implements of trade was considered not to be of the nature of relief, and therefore not legal. It was expressly prohibited by the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of 1852 (art. 3). Payment of rent (except the provision of temporary lodging in urgent and sudden necessity, or for housing a lunatic) was from the outset strictly prohibited. (See Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844, art. 5, and Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of 1852, art. 3.) This prohibition of payment of rent seems to have been considered of importance by the Poor Law Commissioners. The impracticability of preventing ordinary outdoor relief from being applied in payment of the pauper’s rent seems only gradually to have dawned upon the Poor Law Board. In 1852 it was explained that although the Order “prohibits the Guardians from paying the rent for a pauper either directly or indirectly, it does not prevent them from allowing him such relief as under all the circumstances of the case his necessities may require; it will rest with the pauper to dispose of the relief afforded to him in such manner as he may think fit.” (Poor Law Board to Hemsworth Union, 19th October 1852; in House of Commons, No. 111 of 1852-3, p. 96.) A similar decision was given in 1902. (See Local Government Chronicle, 9th August 1902, p. 805.) The prohibition still remains in force, but is accordingly not now regarded as of importance.
104 MS. Minutes, Newcastle Board of Guardians, 7th October 1836.
105 Circular of 30th April 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 179.
106 Minute of Commissioners respecting the means of enforcing an Outdoor Labour Test, 31st October 1842, p. 381 of Ninth Annual Report, 1843.
107 For such Special Labour Test Orders, issued in supplement to the Out-relief Prohibitory Order, see those to Boston Union, of 3rd February 1847; Crediton Union, 21st May 1847; and Catherington Union, 2nd June 1847, which are in the most usual form; or those to Foleshill Union, 13th December 1847; Maldon Union, 7th December 1847; and Nuneaton Union, 13th December 1847, which are in a much shorter form, omitting the authority for the appointment of a superintendent of pauper labour.
108 For such Special Labour Test Orders, issued to unions not under the Out-relief Prohibitory Order, see that to Ashton-under-Lyne Union, 29th March 1847; or that, in a shorter form, omitting the authority for the appointment of a superintendent of pauper labour, to Chertsey Union, 17th December 1847.
109 Circular Letter, 14th December 1852, in Fifth Annual Report of Poor Law Board, 1852, p. 31.
110 Special Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, p. 72.
111 Poor Law Commissioners to Plymouth Board of Guardians, 25th April 1840.
112 p. 45 of Second Annual Report, 1836; Official Circular, No. 29, p. 151, 30th November 1843.
113 Minute, 31st October 1842, p. 383 of Ninth Annual Report, 1843.
114 p. 46 of Second Annual Report, 1836.
115 See Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, 1844, art. 1.
116 Ibid.
117 Minute of Commissioners, 31st October 1842, p. 381 of Ninth Annual Report, 1843.
118 p. 379 of Ninth Annual Report, 1843.
119 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 52.
120 Official Circular, April and May 1848, Nos. 14 and 15, N.S., pp. 227-8.
121 Letter, 6th September 1837, in Fourth Annual Report, 1838, p. 154.
122 pp. 135-141 of Third Annual Report, 1837.
123 p. 89 of Fifth Annual Report, 1839.
124 Instructional Circular, 12th December 1838; in Fifth Annual Report, 1839, p. 87; ditto, 7th December 1839, in Sixth Annual Report, 1840, p. 103.
125 Letter, 2nd August 1841, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 77.
126 Circular, 7th December 1839; in Sixth Annual Report, 1840, p. 104.
127 Official Circular, No. 12, 14th October 1841, p. 170; Letter, 15th February 1841, to Newcastle Board of Guardians; Letter, 12th September 1844, to Bradford Board of Guardians.
128 Official Circular, No. 12, 14th October 1841, p. 170; General Order, 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 81; Letter, 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 110.
129 Letter to Bradford Board of Guardians, 3rd October 1844.
130 p. 19 of Eleventh Annual Report, 1845.
131 p. 19 of Twelfth Annual Report, 1846; Official Circular, No. 5, N.S., p. 69, 1st May 1847.
132 p. 11 of Thirteenth Annual Report, 1847.
133 Minute of Poor Law Board on the Houseless Poor in the Metropolis, 23rd December 1863, in Sixteenth Annual Report, 1863, p. 31.
134 General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847, see arts. 97, 99 and 104.
135 We ought to state that in one of the early Orders (intended to be temporary) the Central Authority did expressly prescribe a policy for “single women not being aged or infirm.” It was evidently contemplated that they were to be dealt with quite differently from the “able-bodied male pauper,” who was to be put to “parish work.” The outdoor relief to be granted to them was to be at least half in kind (p. 85 of First Annual Report, 1835). No such clause appears in the General Orders subsequently issued.
136 Amended Forms of Order prohibiting Outdoor Relief to the Able-bodied, 1839 and 1840, in Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, p. 105, and Seventh Annual Report, 1841, pp. 99-100; Out Relief Prohibitory Order, 1844, art. 1.
137 Instructional Letter, December 1839, p. 107 of Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839; ditto, August 1840, p. 102 of Seventh Annual Report, 1841.
138 Report of House of Commons Committee on Poor Law Administration, 1837-8, p. 39.
139 MS. Minutes, Bradfield Board of Guardians, 12th October 1835.
140 MS. Minutes, Bradfield Board of Guardians, 8th, 15th and 27th February 1836; Special Order to Bradfield Union, 26th February 1836.
141 Ibid. 4th March and 31st October 1836; February, June, July and November 1839; Poor Law Board to Bradfield Union, 17th July and 7th November 1839; Special Order to Bradfield Union, November 1839.
142 See note 1.
143 p. 108 of Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839.
144 p. 102 of Seventh Annual Report, 1841.
145 Circular, 21st September 1836, p. 48 of Second Annual Report, 1836.
146 Minute on Outdoor Labour Test, 31st October 1842, p. 383 of Ninth Annual Report, 1843.
147 Outdoor Labour Test Order, 30th April 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 175.
148 p. 385 of Ninth Annual Report, 1843.
149 Instructional Letter, 17th October 1844; in Eleventh Annual Report, 1845, p. 137.
150 Instructional Letter, 21st December 1844; in Eleventh Annual Report, 1845, p. 59.
151 Official Circular, 1st June 1845, No. 48, p. 90.
152 Poor Law Commissioners to Plymouth Court of Guardians, 25th April 1840.
153 Not being soldiers, sailors, or marines.
154 Official Circular, 31st January 1844, No. 31, pp. 178-9.
155 Instructional Letter, 1838, in Fifth Annual Report, 1839, p. 76.
156 At Midsummer, 1838, the children under sixteen in the workhouses of the 478 unions then making returns numbered no fewer than 42,767, out of a total workhouse population of 97,510. (Special Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, p. 56.) In 1840 the Poor Law Commissioners estimated the total number under 16 to be 64,570, of whom 56,835 were between 2 and 16 (Report on the Training of Pauper Children, 1841, p. iii.).
157 “It would be said that we should be giving the pauper children a better education than that obtainable by the independent labourer’s child. While I allow and lament this truth, I wholly deny its force. Because the schooling of children out of the workhouse is neglected, is this a valid reason and excuse for equally neglecting those who are within it? According to this argument, not a single ray of moral or religious knowledge should be allowed to illumine the mind of a pauper child; he should be brought up a perfect brute, since it is certain that this is the lot of innumerable independent children” (E. Carleton Tufnell, in Report on the Training of Pauper Children, 1841, p. 355).
158 Official Circular, No. 5, 16th June 1840, p. 56.
159 General Order, 31st December 1844, and 29th January 1845, in Eleventh Annual Report, 1845, pp. 72-96; 15th and 22nd August 1845, in Twelfth Annual Report, 1846, pp. 60-71; and Arts. 52-74 of General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847.
160 Circular, 1st January 1845, in Eleventh Annual Report, 1845, pp. 96-7.
161 Instructional Letter, 6th May 1836, in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 50.
162 Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, pp. 73-81.
163 Minute, 27th March 1840, in Sixth Annual Report, 1840, pp. 95-96.
164 Official Circular, No. 9, 10th November 1840, pp. 113-118.
165 Instructional Letter, 6th May 1836, in Second Annual Report, 1836, pp. 50-51.
166 Minute, 27th March 1840; in Sixth Annual Report, 1840, p. 95.
167 Official Circular, No. 34, 30th April 1844, p. 76.
168 Ibid. p. 74.
169 Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, pp. 73-81.
170 pp. 129-142 of Eighth Annual Report, 1842.
171 Official Circular, No. 5, 16th June 1840, pp. 51-53.
172 Letter, 2nd August 1841, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 77.
173 (1) (3) Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 89. (2) General Order, 24th July 1847, art. 101. (4) Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 111. (5) (10) General Order, 3rd December 1841, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 183. (7) Form of Order, 1839, in Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, p. 106. (8) General Order, 30th April 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 177. (9) General Order, 5th February, 1842, in ibid. p. 80.
174 Amended Form of Order prohibiting Outdoor Relief to the able-bodied; Instructional Letter, 1839, in Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, pp. 106-107.
175 p. 177 of Eighth Annual Report, 1842.
176 Official Circular, No. 5, 16th June 1840, supplement, p. 9.
177 Letter, 2nd August 1841, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 77.
178 General Consolidated Order, 24th July 1847, art. 52.
179 Minute, 13th June 1840, in Official Circular, No. 5, 16th June 1840, p. 56.
180 General Order, 31st December 1844, art. 2, in Eleventh Annual Report, 1845, pp. 16, 72; General Consolidated Order, 24th July 1847, art. 54.
181 p. 92 of Second Annual Report, 1836.
182 Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, pp. 53, 61.
183 Official Circular, No. 5, 16th June 1840, p. 53.
184 Special Report of Poor Law Commissioners on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, p. 47.
185 p. 85 of First Annual Report, 1835.
186 p. 313 of Report of 1834 (reprint of 1905).
187 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 23.
188 Ibid. sec. 25.
189 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 24.
190 See ante, p. 19.
191 pp. 306, 307, 313 of Report of 1834.
192 Ibid. pp. 306, 307.
193 Ibid. p. 313.
194 Ibid. p. 314.
195 p. 313 of Report of 1834.
196 See the first of such “Orders and Regulations,” in First Annual Report, 1835, pp. 96-110; the Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, in Second Annual Report, 1836, pp. 81-89; the General Order, Workhouse Rules, 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, pp. 79-104; and the General Consolidated Order, 24th July 1847.
197 First Annual Report, 1835, p. 29.
198 First Annual Report, 1835, p. 16.
199 Ibid. p. 166.
200 MS. correspondence of Sir Francis Head.
201 Ibid.
202 The possibility was once barely mentioned in 1837 of the one “common workhouse establishment” consisting “of a selection of the better workhouses now existing in each union,” instead of concentrating “all the necessary accommodation in one workhouse situated in the centre of the union” (Third Annual Report, 1837, p. 27.) See also the reference to this possibility in the Instructional Letter sent in that year to each new Board of Guardians (ibid. p. 82). In June 1837, the Central Authority said that it had always preferred one central workhouse, but had sometimes allowed existing ones to remain. Its two years’ experience had now confirmed it in its belief that one central workhouse was better (Letter to Newcastle Board of Guardians, 20th June 1837).
Two years later, in describing, with praise, “the consolidation of workhouse establishments” which had been going on in Lancashire and Yorkshire, the Central Authority observes “that very few will ultimately find it desirable to retain more than one establishment” (Fifth Annual Report, 1839, p. 29). In the Special Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, it is pointed out, as evidence that the Central Authority had not yet had time to put its policy completely into execution, that there were “still about seventy unions in which a central workhouse” had “not yet been built.” (Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, p. 7.)
203 First Annual Report, 1835, p. 29, and end.
204 Eighth Annual Report, 1842, pp. 13-15, 188-190, 194-198.
205 General Order, 5th February 1842, art. 11, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 81; amended by General Consolidated Order, 24th July 1847, art. 100; still in force.
206 Eighth Annual Report, 1842, pp. 14, 188-190.
207 General Order, 5th February 1842, art. 9, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 80; General Consolidated Order, 24th July 1847, art. 98; still in force.
208 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, pp. 108-109. In 1845, after the deliberate sending to the workhouse of a smallpox patient had led to an epidemic, the Central Authority goes so far as to suggest to the board of guardians concerned “that it is of the utmost consequence that provision should be made at the workhouse by separate infectious wards for the reception of cases of this description without endangering the health of all in the house” (Letter of 25th September 1845, in Official Circular, 1st January 1846, No. 55, p. 15). But even then there was no order made on the subject; no alteration of the classificatory scheme; and no general recommendation to all boards of guardians.
The explanation of the omission to provide for the sick will become apparent at a later stage. It was no part of the policy of the Central Authority that the sick should be received into the workhouse at all. It was assumed that they would normally be relieved in their own homes. The incidental scanty references to the sick wards of the workhouses had reference only to the accommodation of such of the inmates of the workhouse as happened to fall sick. Even these were, in serious cases, to be transferred to a voluntary hospital, where such an institution existed. A resolution of the Poplar Board of Guardians, in 1842, to send “all cases requiring extraordinary surgical aid” to the London Hospital was approved (Official Circular, No. 20, 30th July 1842, p. 297). “Any reasonable subscription to a hospital or similar establishment by a Board of Guardians” would be sanctioned (ibid. No. 17, 12th April 1842, p. 250.)
209 Art. 99 of General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847; still in force.
210 Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, sec. 5; in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 89.
211 Art. 12 of General Order, 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 82; repeated in art. 101 of General Consolidated Order, 24th July 1847.
212 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 111.
213 Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, sec. v. art. 15, in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 90; art. 10 of General Order of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 82; repeated in art. 99 of General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847.
214 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842; in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 110.
215 Art. 111 of General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847.
216 Art. 10 of General Order of 5th February 1842, and Instructional Letter of the same date, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, pp. 81, 110. In 1847 “casual poor wayfarers” were to be kept in “a separate ward” (General Consolidated Order, 24th July 1847, art. 99).
217 Letter, 1st April 1839, in Special Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, p. 293.
218 Official Circular, 24th December 1840, No. 10, p. 143.
219 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 108.
220 General Consolidated Order, 24th July 1847, art. 99.
221 General Order of 5th February 1842, art. 10; in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 80. It is, we think, not incorrect to infer from the restricted terms of this rule, that the Central Authority was clinging to its former policy in the face of public pressure. Such an inference is supported by the terms in which the covering letter of 5th February 1842 refers to the new proviso, and by the broad hint therein conveyed that “the guardians can allow outdoor relief to any aged couple whom it may be inexpedient to separate” (Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 109).
222 Letter to Norwich Court of Guardians, 3rd February 1846.
223 10 & 11 Vic. c. 109, sec. 23.
224 Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, sec. v. art. 15, in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 90; repeated in General Order of 5th February 1842, art. 10, proviso 5, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 81; and in General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847, art. 99, proviso 7.
225 General Order of 5th February 1842, art. 10, and Instructional Letter of the same date, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, pp. 81, 109; repeated in 1847, in more guarded form, maintaining at any rate segregation by sex (General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847, art. 99).
226 General Order of 5th February 1842, art. 9, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 80; General Consolidated Order, 24th July 1847, art. 98.
227 Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, sec. v., arts. 9, 13-14, in Second Annual Report, 1836, pp. 89-90; General Order of 5th February 1842, art. 10, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 81; General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847, art. 99.
228 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 109.
229 Circular on Workhouse Dietaries, 1836; in Second Annual Report, 1836, pp. 64-66.
230 Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, sec. v. art. 23; in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 91.
231 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842; in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 113.
232 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 113. This instruction was made mandatory on the medical officer in 1847, but he was permitted to frame in advance, not four only, but as many different dietaries as he chose. The instructions of 1842 were not, however, superseded (General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847, art. 207, sec. 9; see also under art. 108).
233 Official Circular, 30th July 1842, No. 20, p. 301.
234 Circular on Workhouse Dietaries, 1836, in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 63.
235 Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, sec. v. art. 21; in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 91.
236 Official Circular, 2nd July 1840, No. 6, pp. 73-74.
237 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 112.
238 General Order of 5th February 1842, art. 18, and Instructional Letter of the same date, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, pp. 83, 113; repeated in General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847, art. 109.
239 General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847, art. 107.
240 Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, sec. iv. arts. 4, 5; in Second Annual Report, 1836, pp. 85-86.
241 General Order of 5th February 1842, art. 75; in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 95.
242 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842; in ibid. p. 112.
243 General Order of 5th February 1842, art. 78; in ibid. p. 97.
244 Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, sec. v. art. 17, in Second Annual Report, 1836, pp. 90, 99; General Order of 5th February 1842, arts. 13-16, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, pp. 82-83, 99; General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847, arts. 102-106, and Form (N).
245 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842; in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, pp. 115-116.
246 General Order of 5th February 1842, art. 24, and Instructional Letter of the same date, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, pp. 84, 116. This was repeated in the General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847, art. 117.
247 Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, sec. v. art. 17; in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 90.
248 Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, sec. v. art. 16, in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 90.
249 General Order of 5th February 1842, art. 22, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 83.
250 MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 15th January 1845.
251 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842; in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 124.
252 This remained so even in the General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847, art. 167.
253 General Order of 5th February 1842, art. 10, proviso 6, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 81.
254 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842; in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 109.
255 Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 91.
256 Letter of 18th February 1842; in Official Circular, 13th February 1843, No. 23, p. 43. See also the interesting letter of 5th March 1842, giving the reasons for grinding by stones rather than by a steel mill (ibid. 30th July 1842, No. 20, p. 298).
257 General Order of 8th November 1845, and Circular Letter of the same date, in Twelfth Annual Report, 1846, pp. 72-77.
258 The last instruction of the Central Authority during this period with regard to employment is the Circular of 1st April 1846, stating that the task to be exacted in oakum-picking should be 4 lb. per day for males and 2 to 3 lb. per day for females (Official Circular, 1st April 1886, No. 58, p. 57).
259 Form of Order, 1840, art. 5; in Seventh Annual Report, 1841, p. 115. This was repeated in the General Order of 5th February 1842, art. 38, and Instructional Letter of the same date, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, pp. 86, 121. But it was omitted from the General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847. And when a board of guardians had made all the unchaste women wear a yellow gown, this was in 1839 disallowed by the Central Authority, on the mixed grounds that the Poor Law Amendment Act had removed all penal consequences from incontinence, and that classification should be by present habits and character, not by past conduct (Minute of 5th March 1839, in Sixth Annual Report, 1840, pp. 98-100; see also Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 121). We are told that the slang term for workhouse wards for immoral women was “Canary Wards,” so that the distinctive dress must have been widely known.
260 Circular Letter of January 1841, in Seventh Annual Report, 1841, p. 121.
261 Form of Order, 1840, art. 23; in Seventh Annual Report, 1841, p. 118.
262 Circular Letter of January 1841, in Seventh Annual Report, 1841, p. 121.
263 Letter of 4th February 1836, in Second Annual Report, 1836, pp. 66-67.
264 Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, 7th March 1836, sec. v. art. 17, in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 91.
265 Letter of 6th November 1839; in Seventh Annual Report, 1841, pp. 230-2.
266 Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 117.
267 Special Orders, 1st February 1842, 20th April 1842, and 18th January 1845; in Eleventh Annual Report, 1845, pp. 30-1, 132-3.
268 General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847, art. 122.
269 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 117.
270 Letter of 20th December 1842, in Official Circular, 25th January 1843, No. 22, p. 31.
271 Official Circular, 1st August 1845, No. 50, p. 123.
272 Circular of 12th March 1838, in Fifth Annual Report, 1839, pp. 71-72.
273 General Order of 5th February 1842, arts. 32, 33, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 85. Moreover, women after confinement might be “churched,” and children were normally to be baptized, in the parish church (Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 117).
274 General Order of 5th February 1842, arts. 32 and 33, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 85. This was rescinded (but apparently only for 81 unions out of 542) by Order of 7th February 1843, in Ninth Annual Report, 1843, p. 378.
275 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842; in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 118.
276 Official Circular, 16th November 1841, No. 13, pp. 187-8.
277 Answer of 9th June 1842, in Official Circular, No. 23, p. 40.
278 Answer of 10th February 1843, in Official Circular, 23rd May 1843, No. 25, p. 94.
279 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, pp. 114-155.
280 5 & 6 Vic. c. 57, sec. 5, and 7 & 8 Vic. c. 101, sec. 53. See ante, p. 14.
281 Answer of 4th January 1844, in Official Circular, 31st January 1844, No. 31, p. 187; Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 107.
282 Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 107.
283 MS. letter, Sir Francis Head to S. L., 6th November 1835. It is perhaps a question whether Sir Francis Head really meant what he said; or whether he was not speaking merely of outdoor relief to the able-bodied.
284 See the preamble to Sec. 52 of the Poor Law Amendment Act. [This footnote, like the italics, is in the original.]
285 Letters addressed by the Poor Law Commissioners to the Secretary of State respecting the Transaction of the Business of the Commission, 1847, House of Commons, No. 148 of 1847, pp. 30-1.
It is therefore more correct to treat, as Mr. Mackay does, the policy of abolishing outdoor relief to all classes as a further development of the “principles of 1834,” rather than as part of them. “The administrative success of the Act of 1834,” he writes, “consists in the fact that the offer of the workhouse served quite as well as an absolute refusal of relief. It obliged the able-bodied to assume responsibility for the able-bodied period of life; and, as we shall presently see, it is now argued that an application of the same principle to the other responsibilities of life would produce equally advantageous results.... That the able-bodied period of life must be responsible for the period that is not able-bodied is an incontrovertible proposition. But the first step, at that date the only practicable step, in recreating the personal responsibility of the labourer, was to hold him responsible for the able-bodied period of his own life” (History of the English Poor Law, by T. Mackay, 1899, vol. iii., pp. 137 and 154).
286 It is a noticeable fact that certain classes of paupers are never mentioned in the legislation of this period, presumably because Parliament was satisfied with the result of giving wide powers to the Central Authority, and did not wish to interfere with its discretion. Apparently there is no single clause dealing with the treatment either of the able-bodied or of the aged. Women are almost equally ignored, wives only being referred to, and they merely in connection with questions of chargeability, and in such a way as to indicate their complete dependence on their husbands. Children, on the other hand, are the subject of numerous enactments, and the sick, lunatics and vagrants also obtain recognition.
287 Lewis to Head, 19th May 1851, in Letters of Sir G. C. Lewis, edited by Sir G. F. Lewis, 1870, p. 245.
288 Thus, under the Poor Relief Act, 1849, the Commissioners might make rules “for the management and government of any house or establishment wherein any poor person shall be lodged, boarded or maintained, for hire or remuneration, under any contract or agreement entered into by the proprietor, manager or superintendent,... with any guardians,” unless such an institution be a county lunatic asylum, a hospital registered or house licensed for the reception of lunatics, or a “hospital, infirmary, school or other institution, supported by public subscriptions, and maintained for purposes of charity only” (12 & 13 Vic. c. 13, secs. 1, 2). By the Metropolitan Poor Act 1867 (30 & 31 Vic. c. 6), they were given power to combine Metropolitan unions and parishes into districts for the provision of sick, insane, infirm or other asylums (see sections on the sick and lunatics) and to direct the erection or adaptation of the necessary buildings; what use the Central Authority made of these powers will be seen presently. Another Metropolitan Poor Act in 1871 extended the application of the former to “any ship, vessel, hut, tent, or other temporary erection which may be used by the managers, with the approval of the Poor Law Board, for the reception of paupers, or otherwise for the purposes of the asylum” (34 Vic. c. 15, sec. 1). The Central Authority was also enabled (by the Paupers Conveyance Expenses Act 1870) to “direct in what cases (other than those expressly provided for by law) and under what regulations, the guardians... may pay the reasonable expenses incurred... in conveying any person chargeable... from one place to another in England” (33 & 34 Vic. c. 48, sec. 1).
289 The episode of the Lancashire Cotton Famine, and its relief works, in which the boards of guardians were concerned only as nuisance-abatement authorities, will be dealt with under the head of Municipal Work for the Unemployed.
290 It should perhaps be said that the Central Authority sought to widen the category of able-bodied, so as definitely to include persons over sixty, but in no way disabled (Official Circular, April 1849, No. 24, N.S., p. 63); and also “Children competent to render service” (Poor Law Board to Evesham Union, 3rd April 1869, in Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, p. 5).
291 Circular of 25th August 1852 in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, pp. 21-2. Note the limitation which we have italicised.
292 Ibid. p. 22.
293 Fifteenth Annual Report, 1862-3, p. 14.
294 Sixteenth Annual Report, 1863-4, p. 15. The boards of guardians did not, in this emergency, always turn round as quickly as did the Central Authority. Thus, in December 1863, the Manchester Town Council, which was building its Prestwich Reservoir, and applying for a loan of £130,000 under the new Act, offered to the Manchester Board of Guardians to take on any able-bodied paupers as labourers. That body, instead of gladly accepting under proper arrangements, passed a series of abstract resolutions, to the effect “that this Board conceives that the payment by boards of guardians of wages in return for labour to poor persons chargeable or seeking to become chargeable upon the rates, or the holding themselves responsible for the providing of such labour for wages—thus impairing the self-reliance of the poor—is opposed to the whole spirit and intent of the Poor Law, and it is inexpedient both upon social and economical grounds.” The town council (which duly received its share of the Government loan from the Poor Law Board) persisted in its desire to be helpful in the great crisis, and let the work to a contractor, who undertook to employ only such unemployed operatives as were recommended by the board of guardians or any other body to be named by the town council, but with full control and right of dismissal. We do not find evidence that the guardians named any one (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 3rd and 10th December 1863).
295 “No work has been executed... which was not desirable as a work of permanent utility and sanitary improvement, altogether independent of the circumstances which, during the existence of the cotton famine, gave rise to the special Acts of Parliament.... During the rapid growth of these towns works necessary to health, comfort and trade, such as main sewering... had not been executed as rapidly as they were required” (Rawlinson’s Report of 12th January 1866, in Eighteenth Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1865-6, pp. 44, 46).
296 For this, the leading case in England of national relief works, see Professor Smart’s Memorandum on the Poor Law Board, in Report of the Poor Law Commission, 1909, Appendix, vol. 12; Annual Reports of the Poor Law Board, 1862-3 to 1865-6 inclusive; History of the English Poor Law, by T. Mackay, 1899, vol. iii., pp. 398-424; The Facts of the Cotton Famine, by Dr. John Watts, 1866; History of the Cotton Famine, by R. A. (afterwards Sir Arthur) Arnold, 1864; Lancashire’s Lesson, by W. T. M’Cullagh Torrens, 1864; Public Works in Lancashire for the Relief of Distress, 1863-6, by Sir R. Rawlinson, 1898.
297 MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 30th October, 20th November, and 3rd December 1862.
298 Reports and Communications on Vagrancy, 1848.
299 Minute of Poor Law Board, 4th August 1848, in Official Circular, 1848, No. 17, N.S., p. 271.
300 On Vagrants and Tramps, by T. Barwick L. Baker (Manchester Statistical Society, 1868-9, p. 62).
301 MS. Minutes, Bradford Board of Guardians, 23rd November 1849. On this, the Central Authority evidently felt that it had gone too far. It informed the Bradford Guardians that the resolution must be rescinded; that “in affording relief to vagrants the guardians should be governed by the same rule that applies to relief in other cases, namely, the nature of the destitution and the amount of the necessity of the applicant. If the guardians or their officers are satisfied that there is no actual necessity, no danger to health or life, they will be justified in refusing to give more than shelter [Mr. Buller’s circular had suggested refusing even shelter in weather not inclement]; but if the applicant appears to be really in want of food, it must be supplied” (Poor Law Board to Bradford Union, 29th November 1849; MS. Minutes, Bradford Board of Guardians, 30th November 1849).
302 Official Circular, No. 17, N.S. July and August 1848, p. 270.
303 Ibid. p. 271.
304 Mr. Sotheron Estcourt (President of Poor Law Board), 15th July 1858, Hansard, vol. 151, p. 1500. “The nightly occupants of the vagrant ward interfere with the regular inmates, harass the officers, and at some seasons and in some workhouses render it impossible to preserve the order or to carry out the ordinary regulations of the establishment” (Circular of 30th November 1857, in Eleventh Annual Report, 1858, p. 29).
305 Ibid. pp. 30-31.
306 Mr. Sotheron Estcourt, 15th July 1858; Hansard, vol. 151, p. 1500.
307 Minute of 23rd December 1863, in Sixteenth Annual Report, 1863-4, p. 31.
308 27 & 28 Vic. c. 116 (1864); 28 & 29 Vic. c. 34 (1865); Circular of 26th October 1864, in Seventeenth Annual Report, 1864-5, p. 77.
309 The first expedient was to cause the sums so expended to be refunded by the Metropolitan Board of Works. In 1867 this was replaced by the Common Poor Fund.
310 Circular of 26th October 1864, in Seventeenth Annual Report, 1864-5, p. 78. It may be added that from 1863 onward, the police acted as assistant relieving officers for vagrants in the Metropolis. The police complained of the filth and vermin brought to the police stations by applicants for relief, and they were relieved of the duty in 1872 (Report of Departmental Committee on Vagrancy, 1906, Cd. 2852, vol. i. p. 12). The police also acted for some rural boards of guardians, the police stations serving as “vagrant relief stations,” e.g. at Bakewell, where they were discontinued in 1869 (MS. Minutes, Bakewell Board of Guardians, 15th March 1869).
311 General Order of 3rd March 1866, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1867, p. 37.
312 Reports on Vagrancy made to the President of the Poor Law Board, 1866.
313 Sir M. Hicks Beach, 28th July 1868 (Hansard, vol. 193, p. 1910).
314 Sir M. Hicks Beach, 28th July 1868 (Hansard, vol. 193, p. 1910).
315 Circular of 28th November, 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 74-76. It is curious that the dietary suggested in this Circular allowed (without explanation), the guardians to give male adults eight ounces of bread and a pint of gruel, whereas the General Order to the Metropolitan Unions of the preceding year had definitely limited adult males to six ounces of bread and a pint of gruel.
316 St. George’s, Hanover Square, to Poor Law Board. The numbers of “casual and houseless poor” relieved in the Metropolis went up from 1086, on 1st July 1866, to 2085 on 1st July 1868, and 1760 on 1st July 1870 (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, p. xxiv).
317 Ibid. pp. 394-5.
318 On Vagrants and Tramps, by T. Barwick L. Baker (Manchester Statistical Society, 1868-9, p. 62).
319 Mr. Goschen (President of Poor Law Board), 13th May, 1870, Hansard, vol. 201, pp. 660-2.
320 The prohibition was made even more embracing in the Official Circular for April and May 1848 (Nos. 14 and 15, N.S., pp. 227-8), where the term “able-bodied” (though the Central Authority expressed itself as willing to consider relief by gifts of clothing in special cases) was held to include females, not sick or disabled, who were nevertheless unable to earn sixpence a day at field work; “young females” just emancipated; persons of weak constitution, or having frequent ailments, but in receipt of “full wages”; and persons not of weak constitutions, but employed at low wages from inaptitude to labour. Thus, for outdoor relief in the part of England to which this Order applied, the term “able-bodied” ceased to have any relation to any physical conditions whatsoever, but was used as a term covering a heterogeneous class of men and women, strong or weak, healthy or subject to epileptic fits, able or unable to earn complete sustenance. On the other hand, within the workhouse, as we have seen, the same term was becoming more and more definitely restricted to adult persons on normal diet, requiring no medical treatment.
321 Besides the widows and deserted wives, and the unmarried mothers, the class of able-bodied single women unencumbered by children, in receipt of relief, was not insignificant. In 1859 there were 5173 such in receipt of outdoor relief (Twelfth Annual Report, 1859-60, p. 15; see also corresponding figures in Thirteenth Annual Report, 1860-1, p. 13).
322 In 1861, indeed, when the guardians asked advice of the Central Authority, the recommendation to offer relief in the workhouse was distinctly limited to able-bodied males (Poor Law Board to St. James’s, Westminster, 19th January 1861, in Thirteenth Annual Report, 1860-1, p. 35).
323 Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xxviii, 9, 17-22.
324 Eleventh Annual Report, 1858, p. 166; see the corresponding statistics in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Annual Reports.
325 Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, p. xxi.
326 Ibid. pp. xxxii-xxxiii, 9-30.
327 Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, pp. 32-93.
328 The Central Authority observed in 1858 that “more than one-third of the paupers are children under sixteen.” The numbers at that date were 44,989 indoors, and 263,994 out of doors, or 37·4 per cent of the whole (Eleventh Annual Report, 1858, p. 166). It is not clear to us whether this total of children on outdoor relief includes in all cases the children of men in receipt of medical relief only.
In 1869, in answer to Mr. Goschen’s Minute, the Holborn Board of Guardians forced on the attention of the Central Authority the fact that they, like the other Metropolitan guardians, were allowing for each child on outdoor relief 1s. and one loaf of bread. “No one can pretend,” they said, “that this amount is of itself adequate support” (Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, p. 20). The Holborn Board of Guardians practically defied the Central Authority to find any other policy. The Central Authority did not reply to this challenge.
329 Official Circular, 31st January 1844, No. 31, pp. 178-9.
330 Ibid. 1st September 1847, No. 9, N.S. p. 131.
331 MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 1850-5.
332 18 & 19 Vic. c. 34 (Education of Poor Children Act 1855). “An enactment involving the important admission that want of education was a form of destitution, which ought to be adequately relieved” (History of the English Poor Law, by T. Mackay, 1899, vol. iii. p. 428).
333 Circular of 9th January 1856, in Ninth Annual Report, 1857, pp. 13, 15. In 1856 it was reported that there were in Lancashire and the West Riding 48,412 children on outdoor relief, of whom about 30,000 ought to be at school. Yet down to December 1855, the boards of guardians had taken no steps to get them to school, in spite of the inspector’s protests (Eighth Annual Report, 1855, p. 63).
334 House of Commons Return, No. 437 of 1856; Ninth Annual Report, p. 8. Newcastle-on-Tyne adopted it at once (MS. Minutes, Newcastle Board of Guardians, 10th October 1855).
335 Fifteenth Annual Report, 1862-3, p. 18; Circular of 29th September 1862.
336 MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 9th October 1862. The Manchester Guardians, whose early school experiment we have already mentioned, largely nullified their own action (and apparently contravened the spirit, if not the letter of the law), by insisting on the attendance of the outdoor paupers exclusively at the guardians’ own school, which gave “undenominational” religious instruction, and refusing to pay fees for children to go to any other schools (except for a short time in 1862-3 when their own schools were over-full). In vain did the Roman Catholics and the Manchester and Salford Education Aid Society protest, pointing out that the children were in consequence growing up untaught (ibid. 26th May, 23rd and 30th June, and 10th November 1864; 19th June 1865). The Central Authority does not appear to have intervened.
337 That the children should be accommodated in a separate building, under a separate superintendent, and educated by “a person properly qualified to act as a schoolmaster” (page 307 of Report of 1834, reprint of 1905).
338 The children in the Bakewell Workhouse were found, in 1855, to be in a dreadful state of health, owing to the literal application throughout the workhouse of the principles of the General Consolidated Order of 1847. The inspector protested at last, and recommended special arrangements for the children in the way of more nourishing diet and outdoor exercise. The guardians framed a new dietary, ordered “the swings, etc. recommended by the inspector,” and directed the schoolmistress “to take the girls out for a walk every day when the weather is fine” (MS. Minutes, Bakewell Board of Guardians, 1st October 1855 and 29th September 1856.)
339 From 1846 onwards the Committee of the Privy Council on Education had, as part of the nation’s educational policy, actually made grants to the boards of guardians to pay the salaries of qualified workhouse schoolmasters and schoolmistresses. In 1848 it was announced to the boards of guardians that, whereas “no comprehensive effort has hitherto been made” to raise the standard of efficiency, henceforth the inspector of pauper schools will examine the schools and the qualifications of the teachers as part of the conditions for sharing in the grant (MS. Minutes, Newcastle Board of Guardians, 31st March 1848).
340 Hansard, vol. 100, p. 1217 (8th August 1848).
341 Third Annual Report, 1850, p. 6. Few children of independent labourers’ families could at that date rise to be artisans.
342 Poor Law (Schools) Act 1848 (11 & 12 Vic. c. 82).
343 Second Annual Report, 1849, p. 13. The Central Authority, which had for fourteen years let the establishments alone, now used its influence against them. Mr. Drouet’s was closed. Another similar contractor’s establishment (Mr. Aubin’s at Norwood) was presently taken over by the Committee of the Central London School District and continued as a district school, with Mr. Aubin as salaried superintendent. Three or four other small places were discontinued. Two others at Margate, used for sick and convalescent young paupers, continued with the approval of the Central Authority. An act of Parliament (12 & 13 Vic. c. 13) was passed for their regulation (Second Annual Report, 1849, pp. 16-17).
344 The Manchester Board of Guardians had had its own boarding-school at Swinton since 1844, where, on the advice of Mr. Tufnell (assistant Poor Law inspector), the children were eighteen hours a week “at school” and eighteen hours “at labour” (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 22nd August 1844). For the next few years we see them taking great pride in this school, and receiving the highest commendation from the inspectors. But the district auditor, in 1846, complains bitterly of the “costly establishment,” warning the guardians that the expense of this school has “already reached an amount that is inconsistent with the class of children for whom the schools were designed,” and is “creating dissatisfaction amongst the ratepayers” (ibid. 25th June 1846). And in 1861 the Central Authority itself deprecates the payment of so large a salary as £250 a year with board and lodging to the headmaster, and urges the great importance of the industrial as distinguished from the intellectual training of the children (ibid. 10th and 16th January 1861).
345 In 1849, at the instance of the Committee of Council on Education, it issued a Circular extending to workhouse schools the privilege of getting at a low price the school-books of which the Government had arranged the publication for elementary schools (Circular of 25th January 1849, in the Second Annual Report, 1849, p. 25).
346 House of Commons, No. 50 of 1867, p. 158 (Letter to Guardians of the Holborn Union).
347 Thus, in 1850, it is reported with laudation that “there are workhouses, like that of the Atcham Union, in which the children receive an education beyond all comparison better than is within the reach of labourers in any part of the county. In the girls’ school of the Ludlow Union the children now receive an education in all respects superior to what the humbler ratepayers are able to purchase for their children. This high standard of workhouse education is fast ceasing to be exceptional” (Third Annual Report, 1850, p. 7).
348 Official Circular, No. 17, N.S. July and August 1848, p. 264.
349 MS. Minutes, Norwich Board of Guardians, 1845.
350 Special Order of 30th January 1845.
351 MS. Minutes, Norwich Board of Guardians, 3rd January and 7th February 1854, 1st April 1856, and 6th January 1857. We gather that the inspector’s prescience was so far justified that the Norwich Guardians managed to retain their children’s homes, which were in existence a generation later.
352 12 & 13 Vic. c. 13, sec. 1 (The Poor Law Relief Act 1849). Out of this sprang the Certified Schools Act of 1862 (25 & 26 Vic. c. 43), and the provision in the Poor Law Amendment Acts of 1866 and 1868 (29 & 30 Vic. c. 113, sec. 14, and 31 & 32 Vic. c. 122, sec. 23), enabling the Central Authority peremptorily to order the removal to a certified school of a child of non-Anglican parents, when the board of guardians refused to allow religious freedom.
353 20 & 21 Vic. c. 48 of 1857; 24 & 25 Vic. c. 113 of 1861; 29 & 30 Vic. c. 118 of 1866.
354 32 & 33 Vic. c. 63, sec. 11 (Metropolitan Poor Act of 1869); these ships were regulated by Special Orders.
355 “The vast number of the (outdoor) pauper children in London is as melancholy as it is remarkable” (Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, p. xxii).
356 See, for instance, as to the Swinton school of the Manchester Board of Guardians, Special Order of 6th July 1852; as to the Cowley school of the Oxford Board of Guardians, Special Order of 24th November 1854; as to the Kirkdale School of the Liverpool Select Vestry, Special Order of 7th August 1856.
357 Even so populous a town as Newcastle-on-Tyne refused to remove its children from the workhouse. We see the Poor Law inspector arranging a special visit to inspect them, and to confer with the guardians to urge a district school (MS. Minutes, Newcastle Board of Guardians, 10th August and 21st September 1849). He then presses for a joint conference, which does nothing but adjourn (ibid. 17th January and 14th March 1850). Nothing is done. Six years after he finds the education is still in a deplorable state (ibid. 29th August and 3rd October 1856), and gets the infants into a separate building. The guardians will not appoint a resident schoolmaster (ibid. 12th December 1856; 23rd January, 29th May, 18th August, 4th September 1857). It takes three months and three urgent appeals to get them to appoint an additional infants’ mistress (ibid. 19th November 1858; 21st January, 11th February, 25th February 1859).
358 The disfavour with which, as we have noted, the Central Authority regarded apprenticeship, seems to have continued. The Special Orders of 31st December 1844, and 29th January 1845 (issued to several hundred unions), severely restricting apprenticeship, and the amending Special Orders of 15th and 22nd August 1845, which slightly mitigated these restrictions, were continued in force. Some of the provisions were relaxed in special cases (e.g. Special Order of 11th August 1855, to Leicester Union for a deaf and dumb girl). No General Order seems to have been issued on the subject between 1847 and 1871; nor do we trace any instructions or advice to boards of guardians as to the steps to be taken to place boys and girls out in advantageous callings. A few decisions on legal points tended rather to restrict apprenticeship. The Central Authority held that a child could not be apprenticed to domestic service as it was not a “trade or business”; nor bound to a married woman, nor beyond the age of twenty-one (Official Circular, No. 54, N.S., 1856, p. 38; ibid. No. 46, N.S., February 1851, p. 17; ibid. No. 34, N.S., February 1850, pp. 17-18). In 1851, Parliament passed the Poor Law (Apprentices) Act (14 & 15 Vic. c. 11), for preventing cruelty to apprentices; and the Central Authority, in transmitting this statute to the boards of guardians, carefully abstained from any indication of policy, as to how pauper children should be placed out in life (Circular Letter, 26th June 1851, in Fourth Annual Report, 1851, pp. 19-21). As a minor instance of the merging of branches of the Poor Law into the general treatment of all classes of the community, it may be noted that this Act was repealed in 1861, its provisions being practically embodied in the Offences against the Person Act (24 & 25 Vic. c. 100, sec. 26).
359 Eighth Annual Report, 1855, p. 58.
360 Circular of 5th September 1863; in Sixteenth Annual Report, 1863-4, pp. 19, 34.
361 See the first set, in Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, pp. 128-58.
362 Home Training for Pauper Children, 1866; Children of the State, by Miss F. Hill, 1869; The Advantages of the Boarding-out System, by Col. C. W. Grant, 1869; Pall Mall Gazette, 10th April 1869; debate in House of Commons, 10th May 1869.
363 Poor Law Board to Evesham Union, 3rd April 1869; House of Commons, No. 176 of 1869; Circular of 30th October 1869; Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 25-6; House of Commons, No. 176 of 1870, pp. 123-189; Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. lii-lv and 2-8. It was explained to boards of guardians that they were at liberty to board-out children within the area of the union at their own discretion, “no orders or regulations to the contrary having been issued” (Poor Law Board to Newcastle Union, 17th March 1871).
364 Pauperism, by H. Fawcett, 1871, pp. 79-91.
365 The Poor Law, by Rev. T. Fowle, 1881, p. 144.
366 History of the English Poor Law, by T. Mackay, 1899, vol. iii. p. 434.
367 Official Circular, Nos. 14 and 15, N.S. April and May 1848, p. 228.
368 Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of 14th December, 1852.
369 General Order of 1st January 1869, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 28, 79-82.
370 Circular of 27th July 1866, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1866-7, p. 39.
371 Official Circular, No. 20, N.S. Nov. and Dec. 1848, p. 297.
372 Fourth Annual Report, 1851, p. 15; 14 & 15 Vic. c. 105, sec. 4.
373 Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, pp. 27-8.
374 Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xxiv-xxvii, 38-108; Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, pp. xliv-lii, 173-188.
375 See, for instance, The Administration of Medical Relief to the Poor—Reports by the Poor Law Committee of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, 1842; Life and Times of Thomas Wakley, by S. Squire Sprigge, 1897.
376 Mr. Baines (President of the Poor Law Board), 12th July 1853; Hansard, vol. 129, p. 138.
377 Sixteenth Annual Report, 1863-4, p. 108.
378 Circular of 12th April 1865, in Eighteenth Annual Report, 1865-6, pp. 23-24.
379 Some boards of guardians rebelled in this connection against a departure from the principle of “less eligibility” that they did not understand. When the circular of the Central Authority inviting compliance with the recommendation of the House of Commons Committee reached the Manchester Board of Guardians, it was referred to a committee. When the committee, after eighteen months’ delay, recommended compliance, its report was rejected (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 20th April 1865, and 25th October 1866).
380 Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xliv-lii.
381 Ibid. p. x.
382 Official Circular, Nos. 14 and 15, N.S., April and May 1848, p. 237.
383 Circular of 1st August 1857, in Tenth Annual Report, 1857, p. 37. The Central Authority did not, prior to 1867, face the responsibility of deciding to require boards of guardians to provide hospital accommodation even for infectious diseases. In 1863, indeed, under fear of smallpox, it got so far as to transmit to Metropolitan boards of guardians an alarmist letter by Dr. Buchanan, and to permit the taking of temporary premises for “the destitute poor attacked by contagious or infectious disease” (Circular of 30th April 1863, in Fifteenth Annual Report, 1862-3, pp. 37-9). We believe that practically nothing was done upon this. In 1866, when cholera was imminent, another Circular was sent which, significantly enough, makes no mention of temporary hospitals, but points to an increase of the outdoor medical relief, disinfectants, sustenance and clothing to meet the “great increase of destitution” to be apprehended. “As far as practicable... the admission of cholera patients into the workhouse should be prevented” (Circular of 27th July 1866, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1866-7, pp. 39-40).
384 See for all this the Eighteenth Annual Report, 1865-6, pp. 15-16; Nineteenth Annual Report, 1866-7, pp. 15-18, 39; Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, pp. 25-28; Report of Dr. E. Smith on Metropolitan Workhouse Infirmaries and Sick Wards, in House of Commons, No. 372 of 1866; The Condition of the Sick in London Workhouse Infirmaries (Association for the Improvement of the London Workhouse Infirmaries, 1867); Opinions of the Press upon the Conditions of the Sick Poor in London Workhouses (ibid. 1867); The Management of the Infirmaries of the Strand Union, the Rotherhithe and the Paddington Workhouses (1867?).
385 The provincial newspapers took up the work that the Lancet had begun. On 31st January 1865, a long report appeared in the Manchester Examiner revealing serious deficiencies in the Manchester Workhouse sick wards.
386 Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, pp. 17-21. This new departure of the Central Authority was long strenuously resisted by many of the boards of guardians who prided themselves on the purity of their Poor Law policy. Thus, the published complaints of the Manchester Workhouse Infirmary led to an inquiry by the inspector, who made various suggestions for improvement. The board of guardians, on the advice of their own medical officer, held that the existing conditions were sufficiently satisfactory. Finally, after fifteen months, the Central Authority censured the master, asked for more nurses and (while avoiding any censure of the guardians for their past policy) practically invited them to adopt the new standpoint (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 1st February 1865; 22nd February and 3rd May 1866). Two years later, Manchester was still objecting. When a conference of important North Country boards of guardians in 1862 (W. Rathbone presiding) had recommended a national grant-in-aid to improve the “pauper hospitals,” the Manchester Board of Guardians formally dissented (though now only by a majority of one), protesting: “That the much higher system of medical treatment and nursing and the other advantages sought to be introduced into workhouse hospitals by the proposed measures would tend to discourage the provident habits and self-reliance of the industrious poor by providing for them therein far better accommodation and treatment than they can usually secure for themselves in cases of sickness” (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 20th February 1868).
387 Circular of 5th May 1865; Eighteenth Annual Report, 1865-6, pp. 16, 24-5, 62-8; Nurses in Workhouses and Workhouse Infirmaries, by Miss Wilson, 1890.
388 Hansard, 8th February 1867, vol. 185, p. 163.
389 See, for instance, the Special Orders for the Poplar and Stepney Sick Asylum District, 23rd April and 16th May 1868, and 7th March 1871; and that for the Central London Sick Asylum District of 2nd May 1868.
390 Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 16-18; Circular of 30th October 1869; Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xxxvii-xli.
391 The “policy of providing workhouses for separate classes of the poor was fully recognised by the Commissioners of Inquiry into the operation of the Poor Law in 1834, who in their Report recommended ‘that the Central Board should be empowered to cause any number of parishes to be incorporated for the purpose of workhouse management, and for providing new workhouses where necessary, and to assign to those workhouses separate classes of poor though composed of the poor of distinct parishes.’ And in another part of the same Report they say that it appears to them ‘that both the requisite classification and the requisite superintendence may be better obtained in separate buildings than under a single roof. Each class then might receive an appropriate treatment; the old might enjoy their indulgences without torment from the boisterous, the children be educated, and the able-bodied subjected to such courses of labour and of discipline as will repel the idle and vicious’” (Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 16-17).
392 For a Special Order for such an Infirmary, see that of 27th June 1871.
393 Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, p. xi.
394 Ibid. p. x.
395 See the statistical inquiries summarised in the Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xxiv-xxviii; House of Commons, No. 312 of 1865; No. 372 of 1866; No. 4 of 1867-8; No. 445 of 1868; House of Lords, No. 216 of 1866.
396 See the Special Orders of 15th May, 18th June, and 17th July 1867; and 23rd December 1870.
397 Twenty-second Annual Report of Poor Law Board (G. S. Goschen, president), 1869-70, p. lii. Already in 1846 and again in 1853 the Central Authority had expressed its “decided opinion... that money judiciously expended... in the improvement of the sanitary condition of the poorer classes, and in the prevention or removal of causes of disease, has a direct tendency to diminish or prevent future destitution and pauperism; and will thus be found to be most profitably expended, even in reference to the more direct object of the duties of the guardians” (Circular of 21st September 1853; in Sixth Annual Report, 1853, p. 36).
398 Fifth Annual Report, 1852, pp. 7, 152.
399 Twelfth Annual Report, 1859-60, p. 17.
400 Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-71, p. xxiii.
401 25 & 26 Vic. c. 111, secs. 8, 20, 31 (Lunacy Acts Amendment Act, 1862).
402 Sixteenth Annual Report, 1863-4, pp. 21, 38-9.
403 Circular of 15th December 1862, in Fifteenth Annual Report, 1862-3, pp. 35-7.
404 On 1st January 1859, the number of persons of unsound mind in the workhouses was 7963 (Twelfth Annual Report, 1859-60, p. 17). This had risen by 1870 to 11,243 (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-71, p. xxiii).
405 Poor Law Commissioners, 24th December 1845; in MS. records, Manchester Board of Guardians.
406 Official Circular, No. 25, N.S., May 1849, pp. 70-1.
407 In 1868 visiting committees were recommended to see that weak-minded inmates were not entrusted with the care of young children (Circular of 6th July 1868 in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, p. 53).
408 MS. Minutes, Plymouth Board of Guardians, 28th January 1846.
409 Ibid. 5th November 1847. Some of the rooms were only 3-1/4 feet long and 7 feet wide, in fact, mere cupboards, which the Lunacy Commissioners said were unfit for any one. Yet nothing was done, and the “rooms” were still occupied in 1854 when the district auditor mildly commented on the fact (Letter Book, Plymouth Board of Guardians, August 1854).
410 Circular of 27th February 1857, in Tenth Annual Report, 1857, p. 34.
411 House of Commons, No. 50, Session 1 of 1867, p. 247.
412 Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, p. 60.
413 House of Commons, No. 50, Session 1 of 1867, p. 444.
414 Ibid. p. 426.
415 Ibid. p. 407.
416 Ibid. p. 114.
417 Circular of 21st March 1870, in Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-71, p. 3. [418] There had apparently been a doubt as to whether a husband was legally bound to contribute towards the maintenance of a wife who had been removed under legal authority to a lunatic asylum. In 1850 the Central Authority got an Act passed to require him to pay (13 and 14 Vic. c. 101, sec. 4) on the ground that “great hardship has been frequently occasioned to parishes, who have been burthened with the heavy expense of such maintenance without the means of recovering from the husband even a partial reimbursement” (Third Annual Report, 1850, p. 16).
418 There had apparently been a doubt as to whether a husband was legally bound to contribute towards the maintenance of a wife who had been removed under legal authority to a lunatic asylum. In 1850 the Central Authority got an Act passed to require him to pay (13 and 14 Vic. c. 101, sec. 4) on the ground that “great hardship has been frequently occasioned to parishes, who have been burthened with the heavy expense of such maintenance without the means of recovering from the husband even a partial reimbursement” (Third Annual Report, 1850, p. 16).
419 Special Orders of 18th June 1867, 6th October 1870, 23rd December 1870, 17th June 1871, etc. It may be noted that in 1862 the Guardians of St. George’s, Southwark, provided a separate establishment at Mitcham for their idiotic and imbecile paupers, which was regulated by Special Order of 30th April 1862.
420 On 1st January 1852, the number in the county or borough asylums was 9412, and in licensed houses 2584; making a total of 11,996 out of 21,158 paupers of unsound mind (Fifth Annual Report, 1852, p. 152). On 1st January 1870, the number in asylums had risen to 26,634, and that in licensed houses had fallen to 1589, making a total of 28,223 out of 46,548 paupers of unsound mind (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-71, p. xxiii).
421 25 & 26 Vic. c. 43, sec. 10 (Poor Law Certified Schools Act of 1862); 30 & 31 Vic. c. 106, sec. 21 (1867); 31 & 32 Vic. c. 122, sec. 42 (1868).
422 In 1849 the expenses of conveying a blind pauper to hospital were allowed to be paid under the head of non-resident relief in case of sickness (Official Circular, No. 24, N.S., April 1849, p. 64).
423 For instance, in 1861, the Central Authority, in reply to a request from the Guardians of St. James’s, Westminster, recommended the application of the workhouse test for the able-bodied males, but as regards the aged and infirm, warmly approved the policy of the guardians, to “cheerfully supply all that their necessities and infirmities require” (Poor Law Board, 19th January 1861, in Thirteenth Annual Report, 1860-1, p. 36).
424 Letter to Board of Guardians, Barnsley Union, 26th October 1852, in House of Commons, No. 111 of 1852-3, p. 17.
425 General Order of 25th August 1852, art. 1 (in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, p. 17).
426 Circular of 25th August 1852, in Fifth Annual Report 1853, p. 22.
427 MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 18th October 1852.
428 Ibid. Norwich Board of Guardians, 5th October 1852.
429 Ibid. 7th December 1852.
430 Ibid.; also Circular of 14th December 1852, in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, pp. 28-31. The Salford Union took part in a meeting of Lancashire Guardians on the subject (Salford Union to Poor Law Board, 26th October 1855, in Eighth Annual Report, 1855, p. 50).
431 Letter to Board of Guardians, Ashton-under-Lyne Union, 8th October 1852; in House of Commons, No. 111 of 1852-3, p. 14.
432 General Order, 14th December 1852, and Circular of same date, in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, pp. 24, 29.
433 Circular of 14th December 1852, in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, p. 29.
434 Out of a total of outdoor paupers on 1st January 1871 (exclusive of vagrants and the insane) of 880,709, the destitution was “caused by old age or permanent disability” in the case of 423,206, viz. 117,681 men, 265,638 women, and 39,887 children dependent on them (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, p. 378).
435 It must be remembered that, as already mentioned, it was no part of the policy of the Central Authority to relieve in the workhouse any of the aged and infirm or of the sick who preferred to remain outside, and who were (so far as the published documents show) to continue to receive outdoor relief.
436 Second Annual Report, 1849, p. 159.
437 Life and Times of Thomas Wakley, by S. Squire Sprigge, 1897. See, for a contemporary indictment, The Russell Predictions on the Working Classes, the National Debt and the New Poor Law Dissected, by John Bowen, 1850.
438 Pauperism and Poor Laws, by Robert Pashley, Q.C., 1852, pp. 364-5.
439 On 1st January 1871 we estimate that of the 55,832 children on indoor relief, only 4979 were in district schools, and some 9000 in union boarding schools, leaving about 40,000 living in the workhouses.
440 Regulations relating to the Classification of Workhouse Inmates, in House of Commons, No. 485 of 1854.
441 Mr. C. P. Villiers, Hansard, 4th May 1860, vol. clviii. p. 694.
442 Dr. E. Smith, Medical Officer to Poor Law Board, in Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, p. 43.
443 Circular of 15th June 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 48-9; Circular of 29th September 1870, in Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, p. 9. This was the more important as Dr. Smith held that “during the night at all seasons, and during a large part of the day in cold and wet weather, the windows cannot be opened with propriety” (Report of Dr. E. Smith on Metropolitan Workhouse Infirmaries and Sick Wards, in House of Commons, No. 372 of 1866, p. 53).
444 Circular Letter of 6th July 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, p. 55.
445 Circular of 15th June 1868, in ibid. pp. 48-50.
446 Ibid. p. 50.
447 Ibid.
448 Ibid. p. 51.
449 Ibid. p. 49.
450 Circular of 15th June 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, p. 51.
451 We soon see the effect of this action by the Central Authority in the rapid growth of the capital expenditure of the boards of guardians. The annual reports of the next few years record extensive new buildings. In the thirty-one years down to 1864-5, the total sum authorised for the building, altering, and enlarging of workhouses and schools had reached £6,059,571, or an average of £195,541 a year (Seventeenth Annual Report, 1864-5, pp. 328-9). Within six years this had risen to £8,406,215 (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, pp. 446-53). Of the new capital outlay in these six years of no less than £2,346,644 or £391,108 a year, half had taken place in the Metropolis, and a quarter in Lancashire.
452 Circular of 15th June 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 47-8.
453 Circular of 13th June 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 44-6.
454 Report of Dr. E. Smith on Metropolitan Workhouse Infirmaries and Sick Wards, in House of Commons, No. 372 of 1866, pp. 51-2.
455 Circular of 20th July 1866, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1866-7, p. 39.
456 It appears from a Minute of Lord Ebrington that, on entering the Poor Law Board, he was much struck by there being no physiological information available in the office as to the proper amount of food required or as to the physiological equivalents of different foods. The dietaries had apparently all been sanctioned without reference to such an inquiry. He called for a report, and, we believe, had an investigation made by Dr. Lyon (afterwards Lord) Playfair. The Report (signed Thomas Harries, and dated June 1st 1850) reveals the most astounding differences between the amounts of food, the proportions and amounts of nitrogenous materials, and the cost of the dietaries sanctioned for 529 unions. (Eighty-four unions had no dietary sanctioned.) In Berkshire, for instance, the Central Authority had approved of the pauper in the Cookham Union getting only 15-9/10 oz. of nitrogenous ingredients (per day?), whilst the pauper in the Wokingham Union was allowed 24-1/10 oz. In the Metropolis, the inmates of the West London Workhouse had been directed to exist on 14-7/10 oz. a day, whilst those in the Bermondsey Workhouse had been permitted to consume 27-6/10 oz. It was found, contrary to the common belief, that the dietaries of the workhouses in the Metropolis and the great towns were, on an average, lower than those of rural unions. There had, moreover, been a total lack of quantitative definition of the ingredients of soups, puddings, etc., with the result of extraordinary diversity. Sometimes able-bodied women were allowed the same quantities as men; sometimes much smaller quantities. We cannot trace whether any action was taken on this Memorandum. No General Order or Circular was issued on the subject at the time, or, indeed, for more than a dozen years; and the workhouse dietaries remained extremely diverse. But the Central Authority doubtless acted on the information in its possession. In September 1850, for instance, it demurred to approving a dietary proposed by the Bradfield Guardians, on the ground that it was “so decidedly less nutritious than those of other unions, in fact, only half what is given in some, and more than a quarter less than the general average.” The Bradfield Guardians triumphantly retorted that their proposed dietary for paupers provided more nourishment than the independent labouring classes of the neighbourhood got in their own homes! (MS. Minutes, Bradfield Board of Guardians, 10th September 1850); which, considering the wages of the Berkshire farm labourers, is not unlikely to have been true.
457 Circular of 14th September 1866, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1866-7, pp. 395-6.
458 Circular of 7th December 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 41-4. In the different Metropolitan workhouses the Central Authority sought to obtain absolute uniformity, and to this end had a model drawn up which was submitted to the guardians for their adoption. It is strange that this dietary allowed less bread and more meat than was recommended by the Board in the circular just described, only a few months later—perhaps because larger allowances of meat were made in the dietaries already in force in London unions. This dietary, prepared by Dr. Markham, contained tables for the able-bodied, the aged, and inmates engaged on extra labour, in each case of both sexes, but not for the other classes named in the above-mentioned circular. The points chiefly dwelt upon were the necessity of good cooking, of giving reasonable quantities of food, sufficient but not wasteful, and of obtaining materials of good quality, so as to attain the greatest possible economy (Circular of 23rd April 1868, in ibid. pp. 35-41). It is to be noted that the Central Authority issued no order on the subject. The result was that in most cases the guardians practically ignored the suggestions, and continued in their diversity. Camberwell, for instance, continued to allow the able-bodied pauper 107 oz. of bread per week, whereas the Poor Law Board had suggested 76 oz. only. The hated oatmeal porridge and suet pudding were minimised (Report of Mr. J. H. Bridges, 15th May 1873).
459 The average cost of in-maintenance throughout the Kingdom (apart from buildings, repairs, rates, salaries, etc.) appears to have risen between 1863 and 1870 from £4·340 for the half-year to £4·781, or by over 10 per cent. The 125,368 indoor paupers on 1st July 1863 cost £521,292 for the half-year ended Michaelmas 1863 (Seventeenth Annual Report, 1864-5, pp. 189 and 198); whereas, the 144,470 indoor paupers on 1st July 1870 cost £690,812 for the half-year ended Michaelmas 1870 (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, pp. 349 and 367). In the Metropolitan unions the average cost for the half-year rose from 5·077 to 5·588, or by slightly over 10 per cent. We gather that the corresponding amounts for 1905 were not much above £6 for the whole country and £7 for the Metropolis, which does not seem a great further advance for a quarter of a century.
460 Office Minute of 1873. This had been pointed out by Mr. Corbett in 1868. “In none of these workhouses is it possible to apply the workhouse as a test of destitution to single able-bodied men, nor can indoor relief be afforded to those with families in many instances in which it would be desirable” (Mr. Corbett’s Report, 4th January 1868, in Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, p. 126).
461 Mr. C. P. Villiers, President of the Poor Law Board, 4th May 1860, Hansard, vol. clviii. p. 694.
462 12 & 13 Vic. c. 103, sec. 20; Second Annual Report, 1849, p. 12.
463 “Your petitioners having had practical proof of the tendency of labour to accumulate beyond the bounds of remunerative investment for capital, consider that a well-arranged system of emigration is the present most feasible mode of preserving a correct equilibrium between the supply and demand for labour” (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 12th July 1849).
464 Second Annual Report, 1849, p. 12.
465 Fifth Annual Report, 1852, p. 7.
466 See the total given years later, in Ninth Annual Report, 1856, p. 119.
467 Sixth Annual Report, 1853, p. 6.
468 Seventh Annual Report, 1854, p. 8.
469 Twelfth Annual Report, 1859-60, p. 19.
470 Mr. C. P. Villiers, President of Poor Law Board, 27th April 1863, Hansard, vol. clxx. pp. 814-15.
471 Nineteenth Annual Report, 1866-7, p. 19.
472 Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, pp. 33, 398.
473 Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. lvi.-lvii.
474 Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, pp. xlvi., 441.
475 See the total in Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, p. 441.
476 Letter of 8th April 1850, in Official Circular, July 1850, No. 39, N.S. p. 108.
477 Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, 25th August 1852, and 14th December 1852, in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, pp. 19, 26; General Order of 1st January 1869, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, p. 81.
478 Circular of 25th August 1852, in Fifth Annual Report, 1853, p. 23.
479 Ibid.
480 Letter of May 1849, in Official Circular, No. 25, N.S. 1849, p. 71.
481 Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of 25th August and 14th December 1852, in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, pp. 19, 26; General Order of 1st January 1869, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, p. 81.
482 Official Circular, September 1850, No. 41, N.S. p. 131.
483 The policy of the Central Authority seems, down to this date, to have contemplated the supplementing of outdoor relief, not only by charitable gifts in kind, but also by money. At Poplar, in 1868, a special committee draws attention to the “instruction” of the Poor Law Board that when relief is given to persons in receipt of charitable relief, the relief given must be only so much as, with the assistance of the charitable relief, will suffice for the relief of such person’s actual necessities (MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 22nd September 1868).
484 The number of relieving officers in the Metropolis had already increased from 102 in 1866 to 161 in 1870. It now rose further to 190 in February, 1873 (Mr. Corbett’s Report of 10th August 1871, as reprinted for circulation in 1873). The number is now (1907) about 205.
485 Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xxxii-xxxiv, 9-30. Mr. Goschen directed an inspector to make a special inquiry into the administration of outdoor relief in the Metropolis, and this was followed by similar inquiries in the provinces (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, pp. ix-xxi, 32-173; First Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1871-2, pp. xv, 88-215; Second Annual Report, 1872-3, pp. xvi-xviii; Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. xx, 66-116, 136-209). The reports that resulted revealed many defects and some malpractices, but we do not find that there was any action by the Central Authority.
486 It should perhaps be mentioned that in the Third Annual Report, 1873-4 (pp. xvii. and 126-35), reports by Miss Octavia Hill and Colonel Lynedoch Gardiner, on the Co-operation of Charity with the Poor Law in Marylebone, are given and commended.
487 The Liverpool Vestry and various boards of guardians objected to the Poor Law Board being made permanent, as its very existence tended to lessen the sense of responsibility of the local Poor Law authorities (Report of Special Vestry Meeting, Liverpool, in Liverpool Mercury, 27th June 1867).
488 The sequence in the Metropolis seems to have been, first, the exceptional distress in the East End during 1866-7; then a strict administration on deterrent principles, agreed to by conferences of East End Guardians in 1869, under the influence of Mr. Corbett, who had become inspector for the Metropolis in 1866; Mr. Goschen’s Circular of 20th November 1869, and the consequent inquiries into Poor Law practice; Mr. Corbett’s powerful Report of 10th August 1871; and then the Circular of 2nd December 1871, with the conferences resulting therefrom. Mr. Longley was appointed inspector for the Metropolis in March 1872 (Mr. Longley’s Report, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp 196-7).
489 Circular of 2nd December 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, pp. 63-8.
490 The first notice that we have seen of the fact that some districts contain “a much higher proportion of the weak and old,” than others, and that some have also a much higher rate of mortality among husbands than others, which vitiates any simple comparison of their pauperism, is in a Report by Mr. Culley (inspector) in 1873 (Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 66, 72-3). But the hint was not acted on in the tables of statistics used by the inspectors.
491 Mr. Longley did definitely recommend that outdoor relief, even to the widows with families, the sick and the “disabled”—by which he meant the aged—should be discontinued, except in cases that might be found to fall outside a series of categories so defined, and so extensive, as practically to include the whole of these classes. Moreover, in his view it was to be “regarded as the next step in the advance towards improved administration that applicants for out-relief shall be called upon to show special cause why they should not receive indoor relief” (Mr. Longley’s Report in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 142).
492 E.g. MS. archives, Newcastle Board of Guardians (lithographed letter of Mr. Hedley, inspector, drawing attention to the comparative outdoor pauperism of his unions, and urging reduction).
493 History of the English Poor Law, by T. Mackay, 1899, vol. iii. p. 154.
494 Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, pp. xix-xx.
495 Mr. Dodson (President of the Local Government Board) to deputation from Newington and St. Saviour’s, Southwark, November 1881, in Local Government Chronicle, 26th November 1881, p. 951.
496 Fifth Annual Report, 1875-6, pp. xvii-xix.
497 Letter, signed by Sir John Lambert, to Mr. Albert Pell, M.P., Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, pp. 51-7.
498 It is to be noted that Mr. Longley, in 1873, drew attention to the uncertainty of practice caused by the lack of definition of “able-bodied,” and the different senses in which it was used in the official documents. He pointed out that the absence of definition seriously impaired administration, and urged that authoritative instructions should be issued (Mr. Longley’s Report in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 174). We do not find that any action was taken.
499 Circular of 2nd December 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 67. With regard to the 85,386 persons who received outdoor relief on 1st January 1873, as “able-bodied male paupers” (including, it must be remembered, 18,037 wives and 45,285 children of such men, 15,133 men relieved on account of their own sickness, 5572 on account of the sickness of wife or child, and only 1339 merely for want of work), the Central Authority observed without discrimination, that: “There would be, in our opinion, no material difficulty in enforcing, throughout all the unions, the salutary provision which forbids the allowance of relief to this class of persons except in a workhouse” (Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. xiv). But no such “provision” existed, in any Statute or Order, or even in any official Circular, so far as we can discover. Mr. Corbett had once suggested that he should “encourage boards of guardians to abstain far more than at present, from giving out-relief to able-bodied men on account of their own sickness or accident.” But even he did not propose its refusal in all cases (Mr. Corbett’s Report of 10th August 1871). We cannot find that the Central Authority had ever before formally seemed to give its approval, if it really intended to do so by this obiter dictum, to the suggestion that sick persons ought not to receive outdoor relief.
500 Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. xvii. It also received “applications from a few other unions for assent to temporary out-relief in the case of boatmen or other persons thrown out of work by the frost.” Sanction was not actually refused, but it was pointed out that the guardians should have offered the workhouse (ibid.).
501 Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. xviii.
502 Letter of Local Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p. 56.
503 Local Government Board to Bristol Union, 16th January 1879, Local Government Chronicle, 25th January 1879, p. 69.
504 Local Government Board to Bedminister Union, January 1881; in Local Government Chronicle, 8th January 1881, p. 35.
505 Letter, Local Government Board to Warrington Union, March 1878; in Local Government Chronicle, 30th March 1878, p. 253.
506 Circular of 2nd December 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 67; see Mr. Corbett’s Report of 10th August 1871.
507 Mr. Corbett’s Report of 10th August 1871.
508 Instructional letter to inspectors (?) December 1878; cited by Mr. Culley (inspector), to Newcastle Board of Guardians, see MS. archives, 28th December 1878.
509 Local Government Board letter to Holborn Union, 9th February 1886, in House of Commons, No. 69 of 1886, p. 40.
510 Ibid. pp. 40-1.
511 Special Order to Whitechapel Union, 18th April 1887. This new departure was not mentioned in the Annual Report, and the Order has not, as far as we know, been generally published.
512 Mr. Corbett’s Report of 14th January 1868, in Twentieth Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1867-8, p. 126; repeated in his Report of 10th August 1871.
513 Office Minute by Mr. Longley, 1873. Much the same words occur in his Annual Report. The “lax discipline of the workhouse” in London is described as tending “to deprive it of its function as a test” (Mr. Longley’s Report in Third Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1873-4, p. 166).
514 Mr. Longley’s Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis; in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. 49.
515 Ibid. p. 42.
516 Mr. Longley’s Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. 43.
517 Ibid. p. 47. We have not verified the statement that the intention of the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867 included the allocation of separate workhouses exclusively for the able-bodied. We see that in January 1868 Mr. Corbett was suggesting it as if it were an idea of his own. “I am more than ever convinced,” he says, “that one of the great wants of the Metropolis is the establishment of new, or the appropriation of existing workhouses for the able-bodied classes of groups of unions, in each of which one sex only should be received; a far more complete system of classification maintained than has hitherto been attempted, at least in Metropolitan workhouses; and strict discipline enforced under proper regulations and superintendence” (Mr. Corbett’s Report of 4th January 1868, in Twentieth Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1867-8, p. 126). Whether or not this was exactly in the mind of the legislature or of the Central Authority in 1867, it seems true, as Mr. Longley pointed out, that the provisions of the Metropolitan Poor Act were extensive enough to cover, “whether directly or indirectly,” not merely an improvement in workhouse sick wards, but “the reception in distinct buildings of separate classes of paupers or... classification, not in a workhouse, but by workhouses” (Mr. Longley’s Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1874-5, p. 42).
518 Special Order to Poplar and Stepney, 19th October 1871; Special Order to Poplar, 6th March 1872 (extending the use of the Poplar Workhouse to the able-bodied of any Metropolitan union); Mr. Corbett’s Report of 10th August 1871.
519 First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. xxiv; Second Annual Report, 1872-3, pp. xxvi-xxvii.
520 Second Annual Report, 1872-3, p. xxvii.
521 Letters, Poplar Guardians to Local Government Board, 4th November 1878; Local Government Board to Poplar Guardians, 19th December 1887. Even this very strict Board of Guardians had, in 1871, used, as a labour test for women, “a task of work in a needle-room... provided by the guardians,” and this had been recommended even by Mr. Corbett (Mr. Corbett’s Report of 10th August 1871). But oakum-picking had apparently been substituted for needlework, and the Central Authority, in 1878, did not see its way to any alternative. “With regard to the objection... to oakum-picking as an employment for women... very great difficulty was experienced in finding labour which shall not interfere with the market for the work of the independent poor, and... even oakum-picking is not altogether free from this objection.... Work of this description is in use in workhouses in various parts of the country, not as punishment... but as one of the most available means of employing the able-bodied indoor paupers.... General experience has shown that it is not physically injurious, and in this particular workhouse it is found that many of the female paupers can pick the prescribed quantity with ease.... It is erroneous to suppose that a particular description of work is necessarily degrading because it happens to be exacted in gaols, since there are but few kinds of menial work in all large institutions to which the same objection may not also be applied; and it should be added that, unless this kind of employment is resorted to, it would not be practicable to find sufficient occupation for the female inmates of the workhouses, and that enforced idleness is more demoralising than even disagreeable work” (Local Government Board to Poplar Union, 19th December 1878, in Local Government Chronicle, 4th January 1879, pp. 8-9). Twenty years later the official view, as we shall see, completely changed.
522 Special Order to Poplar Union, 4th February 1881; Local Government Board to Poplar Guardians, 9th February 1881; MS. Minutes, Poplar Guardians, 18th February 1881.
523 Special Orders of 13th October 1880, 24th August 1881, and 11th February 1887.
524 MS. Minutes, Manchester Guardians, July and August 1887. The Manchester Guardians did not act on this, but ten years later united with the Chorlton Guardians in setting aside (under the Poor Law Act 1879) one workhouse for the double purpose of a casual ward and “a test house for able-bodied paupers” (See Special Orders to Manchester and Chorlton, dated 20th March 1897, and 9th April 1898; Twenty-Seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, pp. 127-8). This still continues. The whole experience of these Able-bodied Test Workhouses is reviewed in the Minority Report, 1909.
525 Mr. Lockwood’s Report, in Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. 446. Already in 1898, however, the Central Authority had told its inspectors to urge that oakum-picking, which had been the staple of the test workhouse, should be given up, as an occupation for workhouse inmates, especially for women; and did not suggest any possible alternative (Twenty-eighth Annual Report, 1898-9, p. lxxxiv). “Oakum-picking by the inmates of the workhouses should be discontinued,” said Mr. Chaplin (Hansard, 23rd May 1898, vol. 58, p. 326). This was a complete reversal of policy. As recently as 1890 the Central Authority had actually invited the Poplar Board of Guardians to undertake some oakum-picking for the Government, and the board had undertaken to pick 30 tons at £3 per ton (Local Government Board to Poplar Board of Guardians, 9th July 1890). By 1904, not only oakum-picking, but also corn-grinding with a piecework task, was given up. “As regards the proposed task of corn-grinding, the board states that in cases where their consent is necessary they do not sanction a task of corn-grinding by quantity, and they consider that a time limit should be fixed for such work. As to oakum-picking, they are of opinion that, on account of its associations, it is open to objection as a task for workhouse inmates, and as far as practicable, it should be discontinued for all inmates of workhouses” (Local Government Board to Islington Union, September 1904; Local Government Chronicle, 8th October 1904, p. 1049).
526 34 & 35 Vic. c. 108, sec. 4; Circular of 18th November 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 54.
527 Mr. Chamberlain to Metropolitan Board of Works, 19th February 1886, in House of Commons, No. 69 of 1886, p. 44.
528 The Circular incidentally criticised the character of the labour test usually imposed on the able-bodied applicant for poor relief, as being unfit for skilled artisans. Spade labour was suggested as “less objectionable”; and “the board will be glad to assist the guardians by authorising the hiring of land for the purpose” of setting a task of work to able-bodied paupers on outdoor relief (Circular of 15th March 1886, in Sixteenth Annual Report, 1886-7, p. 6). This has now been done at Leicester, where the board of guardians hires land on which to set the able-bodied to dig (Thirty-third Annual Report, 1903-4, p. 205).
529 Circular of 15th March 1886, in Sixteenth Annual Report, 1886-7, pp. 5-7.
530 Mr. Ritchie to deputation as to children in workhouses, see Local Government Chronicle, 17th December 1887, p. 1058.
531 Circular of 16th January 1891, in Twentieth Annual Report, 1890-91, p. 206; Local Government Board to Poplar Board of Guardians, 21st January 1891 (see for the action thereon of Boards of Guardians, MS. archives, Poplar Board of Guardians, January 1891).
532 Circular of 14th November 1892, in Twenty-second Annual Report, 1892-3, p. 38.
533 Circulars of 27th March and 30th September 1893, Twenty-third Annual Report, 1893-4, pp. lxiv-lxv; Board of Trade Report on Agencies and Methods for dealing with the Unemployed, 1893 (C. 7182), pp. 187-206.
534 Twenty-fourth Annual Report, 1894-5, pp. lxxi-lxxiii. The local authorities were taking action before the Circular was sent; see, for instance, MS. Minutes, Bradford Board of Guardians, 4th February 1895, showing that they had decided on a deputation to the town council on 23rd January; and that the town council, on 25th January, had agreed to find work in clearing away snow.
535 Ibid. p. lxxiii; First, Second, and Third Reports of the Select Committee on Distress from Want of Employment, 1895.
536 Twenty-fourth Annual Report, 1894-5, p. lxxiv.
537 Third Report of Select Committee on Distress from Want of Employment, 1895, p. 560.
538 The Lord Mayor of Manchester, in reply to deputation from the Chorlton Board of Guardians, 1895; see Second Report of Committee on Distress from Want of Employment, 1895, p. 54.
539 Third Report of Committee on Distress from Want of Employment, 1895, p. v. The Committee also recommended the abolition of the penalty of disfranchisement, on persons in receipt of poor relief, so far as “the deserving man forced to become dependent on public aid” was concerned (Ibid.).
540 Ibid. p. iv. See Mr. Shaw Lefevre’s answer in House of Commons 18th February 1895 (Hansard, vol. 30, p. 969). The Central Authority persisted in its attitude with regard to these powers, and the rules, without which they cannot be used, have not in fact been issued; see Mr. Gerald Balfour’s answer in House of Commons, 19th July 1905 (Hansard, vol. 149, pp. 1179-80). Similar powers were, however, granted to distress committees of local municipal authorities by the Unemployed Workmen Act 1905, under which the necessary rules have been issued.
541 5 Edw. VII. c. 18 (Unemployed Workmen Act 1905); Local Government Board to Metropolitan Mayors, 20th October 1904, and Circulars of 24th and 31st October 1904, 20th September, 10th October, 8th and 22nd December 1905, 13th January 1906; Orders of 20th September, 10th October, 6th December 1905, 13th January 1906. Thirty-fourth Annual Report, 1904-5, pp. cxxii-iii, 150-6; Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, pp. clxxx-cxcii, 349-438.
542 In answer to an inquiry in 1887, as to what action had been taken on the Circular of 1886, the Poplar Board of Guardians replied that no exceptional measures had been taken, and that they had found it unnecessary even to open a labour yard (Local Government Board to Poplar, 11th January 1887; Poplar to Local Government Board, 12th January 1887).
543 Local Government Board to Poplar Board of Guardians, 15th January, 6th June, 17th August, and 4th October 1895; MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 1895-1900.
544 No Order appears to have been issued, sanctioning or regulating this new experiment, the Local Government Board’s approval being apparently conveyed, partly by a brief letter, partly by verbal communications through the inspector MS. archives, Poplar Board of Guardians, 8th and 22nd July, 16th and 30th September, 21st October, 25th November 1903; 13th April 1904; Local Government Board to Poplar Union, 16th and 28th July 1903, and 11th April 1904. The Central Authority refused to modify the General Dietaries and Accounts Order 1900, which had prescribed model dietaries for inmates of workhouses, but had not included any for men engaged all day out-of-doors at agricultural labour, but it sanctioned the extra expenditure illegally incurred for a more appropriate dietary (Local Government Board to Poplar, 10th January 1905; MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 11th January 1905).
545 Special Order to Poplar of 4th February 1905 (modified workhouse test). It is not clear whether: (i.) the men at the farm colony; or (ii.) their families, were in 1904 included in the statistics of indoor, or in those of outdoor, pauperism; nor whether any change in the actual statistical classification was made on receipt of the Order of February 1905.
546 MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 30th March, 18th May, 15th June 1904; Local Government Board to Poplar Board of Guardians, 25th March and 2nd June 1904.
547 Local Government Board to Bradford Board of Guardians, 14th January 1905. The Bradford Board had asked the Central Authority in vain, two years before, to get powers to enable Boards of Guardians to combine to form labour colonies of their own, especially for vagrants (MS. archives, Bradford Board of Guardians, February 1903).
548 Local Government Board to Poplar Board of Guardians, 1st December 1903.
549 34 & 35 Vic. c. 108, secs. 5, 6, 9.
550 Circular Letter on Vagrancy of 18th November 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 55.
551 This Circular was issued after the passing of the Pauper Inmates Discharge and Regulation Act, and a few days before the General Order, of which the provisions will shortly be described. In the next year the Board reported a diminution in the number of vagrants, and allowed some of the less stringent of the Metropolitan casual wards to be closed, an action which caused difficulties in later years. In the unions where there were no casual wards, ordinary vagrants were referred to that of a neighbouring union, but the workhouse officials were bound to admit any applicants who, from sickness or other cause, were unable to proceed farther, and generally any case of urgent necessity (Second Annual Report, 1872-3, pp. xxii-xxiii). In 1872 also the Board advised guardians to dispense with the services of police constables as assistant relieving officers, and appoint the superintendents of the casual wards instead (Circular on Vagrancy in the Metropolis, of 30th May 1872; in ibid. p. 17). No reason is given for this change, and thirty years later the co-operation of the police in this manner is still assumed, for the board sanction a subscription by the guardians towards the cost of providing a mid-day meal for vagrants when proceeding from one workhouse to another, “where the superintendent of police is appointed assistant relieving officer for vagrants” (Local Government Chronicle, 29th November 1902, p. 1203).
552 45 and 46 Vic. c. 36 (Casual Poor Act 1882); General Order of 18th December 1882, in Twelfth Annual Report, 1882-3, pp. 64-71. The Metropolis was now deemed to be one town for the purpose of punishing resort to the casual ward more than once in a month.
553 Circulars of 16th April 1885, 7th November 1887, and 18th January 1888; see Fifteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Annual Reports.
554 Circular of 13th June 1892; Order of 11th June 1892; Twenty-Second Annual Report, 1892-3, pp. 14-15.
555 See its Report, Cd. 2852 of 1906.
556 By the Divided Parishes and Poor Law Amendment Act 1876, the law which had for poor relief purposes put a woman whose husband was beyond seas in the same position as a widow was extended to a married woman living separate from her husband (39 & 40 Vic. c. 61 sec. 18; Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. iii. 1888, p. 186). It is also to be noted that under the Married Women’s Property Act, 1882, a married woman having separate property was made liable to maintain her husband, and, concurrently with her husband, also her children and grandchildren if they became chargeable to the poor rate (45 & 46 Vic. c. 75, secs. 20, 21).
557 Circular, 2nd December 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 67.
558 For the “Manchester Rules” see Fifth Annual Report, 1875-6, pp. xvii-xix, 130-133. Somewhat similar rules were at the instance of the inspectorate adopted by the Cheshire Unions as late as 1891 (Twenty-first Annual Report, 1891-2, pp. 164-5).
559 Circular of 2nd December 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 67. This suggestion we trace to Mr. Corbett, in 1869, though in the milder form of limiting the grant of outdoor relief to recently deserted wives, to two or three weeks only (Mr. Corbett’s Report of 10th August 1871, as reprinted by the Central Authority for official circulation, February 1873). Ten years later the Central Authority found that this policy was not justified by the law, so far as regards deserted wives having children under seven (as is the case with most of them). In such cases it was found necessary in 1880 to advise that outdoor relief could, in case of destitution, not be refused, even if the woman was able-bodied, and irrespective of her character, the cause or duration of the husband’s absence, possible collusion with him, etc. The Central Authority decided that, “assuming that the applicant in this case is a married woman, whose husband, though living, is not residing with her, she would not be liable for the support of the children, who, being within the age of nurture, cannot lawfully be separated from her; and the guardians would not be justified, under these circumstances, in withholding out-relief for the children” (Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. ii. 1880, p. 71).
560 Local Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p. 56.
561 Circular, 30th August 1882, in Twelfth Annual Report, 1882-3, pp. 43-4.
562 “Widows and their dependent children [on 1st January 1873, 25,740] constitute 33 per cent of the total outdoor pauperism of London, and 57 per cent of so much of that pauperism as is caused otherwise than by age and permanent infirmity” (Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 179).
563 Circular of 2nd December 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 67. The injurious results of this policy were reported by Mr. Culley, see his Report in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 74. On the other hand Mr. Longley preferred the “offer of the House” to widows, in order to make their deceased husbands provident. “The condition of a widow with a large family,” said Mr. Longley, “however deplorable it undoubtedly is, is one of the ordinary contingencies of human circumstances, which may, in some degree or other, be provided against equally with sickness, or accident, or other bereavement.... A man in receipt of regular weekly wages may be fairly called upon to secure his widow if [un]able to work for her living, against dependence upon Poor Law relief” (Mr. Longley’s Report, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 183, 185).
564 Local Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p. 56. Some of the inspectors altogether disapproved of the policy of taking the children into the workhouse (see, for instance, Mr. Culley’s Report, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 74). One inspector, at least, realised the connection of the destitution due to widowhood with the absence of compensation for accidents and industrial diseases among workmen. “Male life, at least, is longer in the rural than in the manufacturing, mining, and seaport unions. In the latter... male life is more frequently cut short by illness or accident arising from the nature of the employment.... The proportion of children (exclusive of orphans) to widows... varies from 0·48 in the purely agricultural union of Bedale to 2·30 in the manufacturing and shipbuilding district of Jarrow.... I found... on examining the returns from the different relief districts that the highest rate of mortality amongst husbands prevailed in the inland portion of the union, a state of things which the relieving officers attributed to accidents in shipbuilding yards and the unwholesome nature of the employment in chemical works. In the same manner, in Tynemouth Union, I found that the proportion of widows with young families was considerably higher in the mining district than in the town of North Shields.... In Teesdale the rate of mortality amongst the leadminers is very great, owing, I was informed, to the bad ventilation of the mines” (Mr. Culley’s Report, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 72-3). We do not find that the point was followed up until the Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1900.
565 Local Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, pp. 55-6. We find the policy of reducing “the widow’s six months” suggested by Mr. Corbett in 1869. At the Conference of East End Guardians summoned by him, it was agreed “that the widows without children should, as a rule, after a period not exceeding three months from the commencement of their widowhood, be relieved only in the workhouse” (Mr. Corbett’s Report of 10th August 1871; as reprinted by the Central Authority for official circulation, February 1873).
566 Ibid.
567 Twenty-third Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1870-1, p. 374.
568 Third Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1873-4, p. 588; Twenty-first Annual Report, 1891-2, p. 365.
569 It is, however, to be noted that in the model rules which the most zealous inspectors were pressing on Boards of Guardians in 1902—herein differing from the much commended Manchester rules of 1875—the widow with only one child is recognised as a fit case for outdoor relief (Mr. Preston-Thomas’s Report, in Thirty-Second Annual Report, 1902-3, p. 100).
570 Twenty-third Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1870-71, p. 378.
571 On 1st January 1892, the 336,870 children of 1871 had fallen to 177,245, probably the lowest figure of the whole seventy years (Twenty-first Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1891-2, p. 365).
572 36 & 37 Vic. c. 86, sec. 3 (Elementary Education Act 1873); 39 & 40 Vic. c. 79, sec. 40 (Elementary Education Act 1876); 43 & 44 Vic. c. 23, sec. 5 (Elementary Education Act 1880). It was held in 1877 that the guardians might, if they chose, pay, besides the school fee, also for books and stationery (Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. i. 1880, p. 49).
573 39 & 40 Vic. c. 79, sec. 10 (Elementary Education Act 1876).
574 Circulars of 30th December 1873 and 30th December 1876, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 4-7, and Sixth Annual Report, 1876-7, pp. 23-6; MS. Minutes, Bakewell Board of Guardians, 12th January and 9th February 1874.
575 Ibid. 30th August 1880.
576 31 & 32 Vic. c. 122, sec. 37 (Poor Law Amendment Act 1868).
577 Circular of 31st December 1888, in Eighteenth Annual Report, 1888-9, p. 105.
578 52 & 53 Vic. c. 44, secs. 1, 12 (1889); 57 & 58 Vic. c. 41, sec. 1 (1894); Circular of 30th September 1889, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1889-90, pp. 92-5.
579 4 Edw. VII. c. 15, sec. 5.
580 Mr. Davy’s Report, in Twenty-Second Annual Report, 1892-3, p. 72.
581 Ibid.
582 Mr. Baldwyn Fleming’s Report, in Twentieth Annual Report, 1890-1, p. 222.
583 Mr. Kennedy’s Report, in Twenty-eighth Annual Report, 1898-9, pp. 168-9.
584 Mr. Corbett’s Report of 10th August 1871, as reprinted by the Central Authority in 1873 for official circulation.
585 Bradford Union to Local Government Board, 26th January 1901 (MS. archives, Bradford Board of Guardians).
586 Circular of 27th April 1905, in Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, pp. 317-20.
587 Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. cxxxi.
588 Twenty-third Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1870-71, p. 374.
589 There are few statutory provisions of this period which affect the institutional treatment of children, and these few deal simply with financial questions. It is worth noting, however, that they tend to improve accommodation, as they facilitate increased expenditure, by allowing a larger sum to be raised for building, fitting up, and furnishing Metropolitan District Schools (Poor Law Loans Act 1872, 35 Vic. c. 2, sec. 1), and by allowing the expenses of maintenance in a certified school to be paid up to any limit to be fixed by the Local Government Board; and provide against overcrowding by allowing no repayment from the common poor fund in respect of children in a school in excess of a maximum number fixed for the school by the board. The special provisions for the education of defective children will be considered under the heading “Defectives.”
590 In his Report for 1898, the inspector of Poor Law schools for the six northern counties describes the changes of the preceding thirty-seven years. In 1871-5 there were seventy-four unions, having considerable numbers of children, which educated them all in schools within the workhouse walls. Four had distinct schools, but on the workhouse premises; and four only had entirely separate schools. In 1898, only one union had workhouse schools for girls and two for boys; three had distinct schools, but on the workhouse premises; with half-a-dozen others with similar arrangements for part of the children, or for the children awaiting transfer only. Elsewhere the children were in entirely separate schools or cottage homes, or removed to certified schools; or in scattered homes or boarded out (Mr. Mozley’s Report, in Twenty-eighth Annual Report, 1898-9, p. 183).
591 The last in the published documents seems to be the incidental reference in the Circular of 4th August 1900 as to the aged and deserving poor (Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p. 18).
592 Mr. Corbett’s Report of 10th August 1871.
593 Hansard, 1st February 1897, vol. 45, p. 904.
594 Ibid. 2nd June 1899, vol. 72, p. 258. The process of discovery of the evils of these large schools may be interestingly traced in the annual reports of the L.G.B. Inspectors of Poor Law Schools from 1871 to 1895; the Report on the Health of Metropolitan Pauper Schools, by J. H. Bridges, 1890; and Report of the Committee on Poor Law Schools, 1896.
595 The “cottage homes” required special orders widely differing from those for the “barrack schools”; see, for instance, that for the Marston Green Cottage Homes of the Birmingham Union of 8th November 1879.
596 Local Government Board to Camberwell Union. The Sheffield “Scattered Homes” were described in Mr. Kennedy’s Report, in the Twenty-third Annual Report, 1893-4, p. 138. They were (as “isolated homes”) regulated by Special Orders of 4th November 1896, 23rd February 1898, and 7th February 1906.
597 Mr. Hervey’s Report, in Thirty-first Annual Report, 1901-2, p. 80.
598 Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. cxxxi. The policy of placing children out in private venture homes run for profit (the old “farming” system) was not wholly given up. In 1874 the Central Authority decided to “withdraw from the almost nominal supervision” which it had exercised over the private venture seaside homes for children; and to leave these, as certified schools, entirely to the supervision of such boards of guardians as chose to make use of them, the payments being classed as non-resident relief (Circular of May 1874, in Local Government Chronicle, 23rd May 1874, p. 334). Yet a Special Order of 17th September 1879 regulated the admission of pauper children to the Metropolitan Infirmary for Children, Margate (John Weekly, proprietor). Others of 29th November 1880 and 30th June 1886, did the same for the Downlands Seaside Infirmary for Children, Rottingdean (J. F. Landguist, proprietor). In 1889, the North Surrey School District established a Convalescent Home of its own at Broadstairs (Special Orders of 8th February 1889 and 17th October 1891).
599 Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. cxxx. This includes a comparatively small number of sick children in Poor Law infirmaries.
600 General Order of 22nd July 1889 (as to Metropolis); and of 10th February 1899 (to all unions). In 1878, indeed, the North Surrey District School had refused to receive children under four, and the Central Authority had declined to interfere (Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. i. 1880, p. 178).
601 Memorandum, “Duties of Visiting Committees,” June 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 122.
602 Ibid.
603 Circular Letter, 29th January 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 110.
604 June 1897, in Twenty-seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, p. 24.
605 Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. ii. 1883, p. 258.
606 Ibid. vol. iii. 1888, p. 55; Hansard, 13th March 1883, vol. 277, p. 365.
607 Circular, “Supply of Books, Newspapers, etc.,” 23rd January 1891, in Report of Royal Commission on the Aged Poor, 1895, vol. iii. No. C. 7684, ii. p. 967; Twentieth Annual Report, 1890-1, p. xc.
608 Circular Letter of 29th January 1895, on “Workhouse Administration,” in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 110.
609 Local Government Chronicle, 18th August 1900, p. 841.
610 Ibid. 14th June 1902, p. 614.
611 Mr. Jenner Fust’s Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p. 147.
612 Local Government Chronicle, 22nd June 1878, p. 489.
613 Hansard, 6th September 1886, vol. 308, p. 1316.
614 Local Government Chronicle, 2nd July 1904, p. 707.
615 Ibid. 8th November 1902, p. 1126.
616 Hansard, 21st June 1888, vol. 327, pp. 809-10; Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol ii. 1883, p. 139.
617 We ought perhaps to add that the Central Authority is found putting pressure on boards of guardians who refuse to make any adequate provision for their children. In 1898 it is reported that, because the Darlington Board of Guardians refused to make such provision, the Central Authority had refused to sanction any alteration of the workhouse whatsoever until such provision had been made (Local Government Chronicle, 19th February 1898, p. 175).
The 21,526 workhouse children appear to be made up of: (a) infants under three; (b) children between three and fourteen, scattered in groups of a dozen to as many as seventy in the workhouses of the unions having no separate schools of their own (in the York Workhouse there are usually about seventy children); and (c) children temporarily in the workhouse on their way to separate schools, boarding-out, being apprenticed, etc. In another classification they are: (a) the newly-born infants of the women in the lying-in ward; (b) children between three and fourteen, who are orphans or deserted; (c) children of indoor paupers, who are either (i.) permanent residents; or (ii.) “ins-and-outs.” We cannot find any expression of policy of the Central Authority with regard to any of these classes. In the Metropolis, it should be said, provision has been made for the relegation to special institutions of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, not only of children suffering from ophthalmia, etc., but also of children temporarily remitted to the care of the guardians by the police (“remand children”), who had heretofore been sent to the workhouses (Circulars of 19th January and 5th April 1897, and General Order of 2nd April 1897, Twenty-seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, pp. 8-9). We do not gather that any corresponding provision has been made for such children outside the Metropolis.
618 Mr. Baldwyn Fleming’s Report in the Thirty-first Annual Report, 1901-2, p. 91.
619 There was not much pretence of technical instruction in the earlier Orders. What was aimed at was putting the children to work, chosen for its utility, not for its instructiveness (i.e. digging rather than gardening, mending the shoes of the establishment rather than learning the art of shoemaking). In the Special Order to the Walsall and West Bromwich School District of 1st July 1871, it was laid down that the children might be employed (under certain circumstances, wholly employed) “upon works of industry.” In an amending Special Order of 20th July 1893, the age was raised, but the phrase was retained.
620 Order of 30th January 1897 in Twenty-seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, pp. 5-8; see for its effect Thirty-third Annual Report, 1903-4, p. 256.
621 General Order “prescribing attendance” as regards workhouse schools, 30th October 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p. 204.
622 Circular Letter, 1st February 1897, in Twenty-seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, p. 5.
623 Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. i. 1880, p. 224; Local Government Chronicle, 30th January 1904, p. 113.
624 By a General Order of 20th May 1881, corporal punishment is absolutely forbidden in Poor Law Schools as regards “any female child” of any age. This rule has not yet been made by the Board of Education for the schools attended by non-paupers nor by most local education authorities.
625 Thirty-third Annual Report, 1903-4, p. 256.
626 Circular Letter of 4th August 1900, on Aged Deserving Poor, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1901, p. 18.
627 Hansard, 8th May 1894, vol. 24, p. 598.
628 10th September 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, pp. 193-200.
629 Macmorran and Lushington’s Poor Law Orders, second edition, 1905, p. 1331.
630 Local Government Chronicle, 16th August 1902, p. 825.
631 Ibid. 27th April 1889, p. 338; Hansard, 2nd July 1897, vol. 50, p. 966; Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. ii. 1883, p. 94. On the other hand, a contrary decision seems to have been given in 1885 (ibid. vol. iii. 1888, p. 187).
632 Boarding out without the Union Order, 1889, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1889-90, p. 49. The “within the Union Order” contains some modifications for the case where there is no committee.
633 Circular Letter, 9th December 1905, in Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. 328.
634 Memorandum of the Local Government Board, June 1900. See Local Government Law and Legislation, by W. H. Dumsday, 1900, p. 126.
635 Local Government Chronicle, 31st October 1903, p. 1070.
636 Memorandum of the Local Government Board, June 1900, Local Government Law and Legislation, by W. H. Dumsday, 1900, p. 126.
637 Local Government Chronicle, 12th March 1904, p. 290.
638 The rate of 1s. and one loaf for the support per week of each child on outdoor relief was deliberately sanctioned, in 1869, by a Conference of Metropolitan Guardians, presided over by Mr. Corbett (Mr. Corbett’s Report of 10th August 1871, as reprinted for official circulation in 1873 by the Central Authority). The dividing line between children merely on this outdoor relief, and those “boarded out” at 4s. or 5s. per week, it must be remembered, is not kinship, but whether or not the person with whom the child lives is legally liable for its maintenance. Thus, the policy of the Central Authority has been that children living with a stepfather and stepmother, with a widower stepfather, with a widowed stepmother, or even with a brother, a sister, an uncle, or an aunt (none of whom is legally liable for their maintenance) require all this elaborate supervision and protection; whereas if the children live with their own mother and father, with their widowed mother, with their widower father, with any or all of their grandparents, or exposed to the tender mercies of a father and stepmother, no such supervision and protection is insisted on. But although this is the rule, we are informed that the Central Authority, in practice, now makes no difficulty, if applied to, in sanctioning the transfer of children living with grandparents, uncles and aunts, or brothers and sisters, from the category of ordinary outdoor relief to the more regulated and more richly endowed category of boarding-out. It still objects in the case of parents (Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. iii. 1888, p. 187; Decisions of the Local Government Board, 1903-4, by W. A. Casson, 1905, p. 78).
639 Hansard, 8th August 1898, vol. 54, p. 576.
640 Circular Letter, 29th May 1889, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1889-90, pp. 36-41.
641 Mr. Ritchie, President of the Local Government Board, Hansard, 4th July 1887, vol. 316, pp. 1598-9.
642 Circular Letter, 29th May 1884, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1889-90, p. 44.
643 Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. cxxxii.
644 Circular on “Outfits for Children sent to Service,” 14th July 1897, in Twenty-seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, p. 26.
645 Local Government Chronicle, 18th October 1902, p. 1051.
646 Ibid. 31st October 1903, p. 1070.
647 Local Government Chronicle, 31st January 1903, p. 102.
648 Ibid. 15th October 1904, p. 1072; Decisions of the Local Government Board, 1903-4, by W. A. Casson, 1905, p. 118.
649 Circular Letter of 31st May 1873, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 3-4.
650 See ante, p. 17.
651 Circular of 2nd March 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 118.
652 Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, pp. cxxx, cxxxi.
653 Omitting children receiving medical relief only; and the casuals and insane (ibid. p. cxxxi).
654 Hansard, 28th May 1887, vol. 315, p. 857. The policy of the Central Authority was apparently against allowing the guardians to assume parental responsibilities. In 1889 Mr. Ritchie had prepared a Bill “to provide that, on application to the justices, an Order might be made detaining a child already under the care of the guardians or boarded out” (Local Government Chronicle, 23rd March 1889, p. 238), but not extending the duties or responsibilities of the guardians.
655 Poor Law Act 1889, 52 & 58 Vic. c. 56. sec. 1.
656 Circular of 28th September 1899, in Twenty-ninth Annual Report 1889-1900, p. 48.
657 Custody of Children Act, 54 Vic. c. 3, secs. 3, 4.
658 Poor Law Act, 1899, 62 & 63 Vic. c. 37, secs. 1-3.
659 Thirty-second Annual Report, 1902-3, pp. lxii-lxiii.
660 Decisions of the Local Government Board, 1903-4, by W. A. Casson, 1905 p. 45.
661 Twenty-second Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1869-70, p. lii.
662 Mr. Longley, indeed, in his Report on the Administration of Outdoor Relief in the Metropolis, seems to allude to the official dictum of the Poor Law Board under Mr. Goschen, in favour of “free medicine to the poorer classes generally.” He sternly condemns “any gradual drifting into a system of medical State charity,” and deprecates the fact that this tendency “has received higher sanction than that of the prevalent belief of the poor, or even of the practice of Boards of Guardians” (Third Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1873-4, p. 161).
663 “The dispensary system should be regarded, in common with every improved form of out-relief, not as a final object of Poor Law administration, but merely as a means of administering with greater efficiency that legal relief which, as I have attempted to show elsewhere, is most safely and effectually given in the form of indoor relief. It would, of course, be idle, and worse than idle, to stifle all attempts to reform the administration of out-relief, on the ground that it is desirable, and may, at some remote period, be possible to abolish, or at least greatly to curtail it; and no reform of the practice of relief was probably more urgently needed, or has proved more effectual, than that now under consideration. It must not, however, be forgotten that side by side with Poor Law dispensaries, has grown up, also under the sanction of the Metropolitan Poor Act, a system... which by encouraging and affording special facilities for the grant of indoor relief to sick paupers, must, if the policy of the Act be unflinchingly carried out, eventually tend... to the gradual abolition of out-relief to the sick, other than those incapable of removal from their homes. If this be so, Poor Law dispensaries... must ultimately be found to have had for the most part a merely temporary place in the system of relief in London.... The character of permanence should not be hastily affixed to the system which they represent” (Mr. Longley’s Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, pp. 41-42). In spite of this criticism, the Central Authority continued to sanction Poor Law dispensaries. Elaborate institutions on the London plan were established in other unions under the general powers of the Act of 1834; see, for instance, the Special Order of 9th June 1873, to Portsea Island Union; those of 4th March and 28th August 1880, to Birmingham; those of 30th November 1885, and 9th January 1895, to Plymouth.
664 Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. xxi.
665 See the statistics in Twenty-second Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1869-70, p. xxiv.
666 Circular of 2nd December 1871; in First Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1871-2, p. 67.
667 Mr. Salt, as Secretary of the Local Government Board, on Disqualification by Medical Relief Bill, Hansard, 11th December 1878, vol. 243, p. 630. In 1876 the disqualification had been explicitly re-enacted in the Divided Parishes and Poor Law Amendment Act (39 & 40 Vic. c. 61, sec. 14), promoted by the Central Authority itself, whose Parliamentary representatives continued for years to resist all proposals for its abolition or attenuation. In 1883 it was incidentally undermined by maintenance and treatment in the infectious diseases hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board being declared not to be parochial relief (Diseases Prevention Act 1883, 46 & 47 Vic. c. 35). Not until 1885 did the Central Authority consent to its abolition, as regards persons in receipt of medical relief only, in the Medical Relief Disqualification Act 1885 (48 & 49 Vic. c. 46). Even then the “stigma of pauperism” was preserved, by omitting to repeal sec. 14 of the 1876 Act above cited, so that persons in receipt of medical relief only are still nominally disqualified from voting at an election of a Poor Law guardian, “or in the election to an office under the provisions of any statute.”
668 Local Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877; in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p. 55.
669 Ibid. p. 54.
670 Local Government Board decision, in Local Government Chronicle, 11th June 1904, p. 635.
671 Circular of 23rd May 1879, in Ninth Annual Report, 1879-80, p. 92.
672 Hansard, 13th June 1876, vol. 229, p. 1780 (in Committee on Poor Law Amendment Bill).
673 Local Government Board to Dr. Mortimer Glanville (Lancet Memorial on Poor Law Medical Relief Reform), 12th November 1878; in Eighth Annual Report, 1878-9, pp. 91-2. In spite of this official answer, we may infer a certain internal conflict of policy with regard to these salaried outdoor Poor Law nurses. Though the Central Authority expressed itself as “desirous of encouraging” the experiment, we cannot find that it issued the Order, without which no board of guardians could create a new salaried office, for nearly fourteen years. The District Nurses Order, which was merely permissive, and which, therefore, could not have been delayed merely because there were, in 1878, not enough trained nurses to supply every union in the Kingdom, was not issued until 27th January 1892 (Twenty-second Annual Report, 1892-3, pp. 12-13). We cannot find that any “paid nurses in the treatment of the poor at their own homes” were sanctioned before that date. Moreover, even then, it is difficult to feel sure that the Central Authority was still, to use its words of 1878, “desirous of encouraging this arrangement as much as possible.” In sending the Order to boards of guardians, it accompanied it by a circular, which can scarcely be deemed encouraging. It was of opinion that “it can only be under exceptional circumstances that a sick pauper, whose illness is of such a character as to require that the services of a nurse should be provided by the guardians, can, with propriety, be relieved at home. At the same time it appears... that where circumstances render it desirable the nurses employed in such attendance should be duly appointed officers of the guardians, having recognised qualifications for the position, and being subject in the performance of their duties to the control of the guardians, and the Board have consequently decided to empower boards of guardians to appoint such officers” (Circular of 1st February 1892; in Twenty-second Annual Report, 1892-3, p. 9). Fifteen more years have elapsed; but we do not gather that the experiment, which the Central Authority in 1878 was desirous of encouraging, has been very strenuously pressed by the inspectors, or the power made publicly known. The result is that we cannot find that it has yet taken shape even to the extent of as many as a dozen salaried Poor Law nurses for the outdoor sick from one end of the Kingdom to the other.
674 “The sick” were held to include not only acute cases, but also cases of “chronic disease requiring regular medical treatment and trained nursing” (and also venereal and skin diseases, including the itch). (Local Government Board to Poplar Union, October 1871; MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 6th October 1871).
675 Local Government Board to Dr. Mortimer Glanville (Lancet Memorial on Poor Law Medical Relief Reform), 12th November 1878; in Eighth Annual Report, 1878-9, p. 91.
676 The more old-fashioned guardians failed to keep pace with the Central Authority in its ignoring of the principle of “less eligibility” with regard to the sick; see, for instance, The New Pauper Infirmaries and Casual Wards, by a Lambeth Guardian, 1875, in which the elaborate hospital requirements are objected to as being far too good for paupers. Where the guardians persisted in refusing to provide the elaborate and expensive new infirmary accommodation considered necessary, the Central Authority at last issued a peremptory Order requiring them to submit plans within a month, under penalty of having plans “prepared at the expense of the union” and of being deprived of “the benefit of participation in the Common Poor Fund” (Local Government Board to St. Olave’s Union, June 1873; see Local Government Chronicle, 5th July 1873, p. 379).
677 For unions out of London we have to note an extraordinary provision of 1879, proposed by the Central Authority itself. Boards of guardians in rural districts were empowered to transfer any of their buildings (into which only destitute persons could legally be received) from themselves as Poor Law authorities to themselves as public health authorities (in which case the buildings became available, without the stigma of pauperism, for all classes of the population) (Poor Law Act 1879 (42 & 43 Vic. c. 54, sec. 14)). We cannot discover in which cases, if any, this provision was acted upon, and the necessary confirmatory Order issued by the Central Authority; or what difference it made to the buildings.
678 This was, in effect, to hold that inability to secure isolation, when isolation was required, amounted to destitution, so far as this kind of medical relief was concerned, just as a man requiring an expensive surgical operation was legally within the definition of destitute for the purpose of the operation if he could not pay the market price of it, even if he had ample food, clothing, and shelter. We cannot discover, however, that this explanation was actually given in an official document. Under it, not merely “a considerable portion of the population,” but practically five-sixths of it would, in cases of infectious disease, have to be deemed destitute.
679 Order of 10th February 1875, art. 4.
680 Circular of 8th July 1887, in Seventeenth Annual Report, 1887-8, p. 9.
681 Circular of 2nd January 1877, in Sixth Annual Report, 1876-7, p. 33.
682 Poor Law Act 1879 (42 & 43 Vic. c. 54, sec. 15).
683 46 & 47 Vic. c. 35.
684 The Central Authority was apparently loth to accept the situation. The statute was deliberately made only a temporary one, expiring in a year. But it was annually renewed, and in 1891 the provision was made permanent in the Public Health (London) Act of that year. Meanwhile the Poor Law Act 1889 (52 & 53 Vic. c. 56, sec. 3), had expressly authorised the admission of non-paupers, entitling the guardians to recover the cost from the patients if the guardians chose; but making their expenses, in default of such recoupment, chargeable (as were the expenses of the pauper patients) on the Common Poor Fund. We cannot discover that any attempt was made to recover the cost from the patients; and in 1891 the very idea was abandoned.
685 Annual Reports of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, 1889-1906. In 1888, in anticipation of the necessary amendment of the law, the Central Authority authorised the admission of diphtheria cases (Local Government Board to Metropolitan Asylums Board, October 1888; Local Government Chronicle, 27th October 1888, p. 986; Poor Law Act 1889 (52 & 53 Vic. c. 56, sec. 3); Order of 21st October 1889, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1889-90, p. 96). The boards of guardians outside the Metropolis failed, we believe everywhere, to respond to the invitations of the Central Authority to provide similar accommodation for infectious diseases. In 1876 the inspector was doing his utmost, by special Order of the Central Authority, to induce the Manchester, Salford, Chorlton, and Prestwich Boards of Guardians to unite in establishing out of the poor rates a hospital for infectious diseases, which should admit non-paupers on payment (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 17th February 1876).
686 In 1889, for instance, the Central Authority provided that, in cases of sudden or urgent necessity, the medical superintendent or his assistant should admit patients on his own responsibility, without order from the relieving officer (Special Order to Mile End Old Town, 10th October 1889).
687 Under the Metropolitan Poor Amendment Act 1870, the cost of the maintenance of adult paupers in workhouses and sick asylums, to the extent of 5d. per head per day, was thrown on the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund. To two-thirds of the Metropolitan unions, including all the poorer ones, this operated as a bribe in favour of indoor (or infirmary) treatment as against domiciliary or dispensary treatment. Mr. Longley wished to go much further. In order practically to compel all the Metropolitan boards of guardians to provide these elaborate and expensive hospitals, he recommended that the whole cost of indoor maintenance of the sick, when in infirmaries separated in position and administration from the ordinary workhouses, should be made a charge on the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund (Mr. Longley’s Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. 54).
688 Memorandum on Nursing in Workhouse Sick Wards, April 1892; in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 114.
689 Decision of Local Government Board in Local Government Chronicle, 18th October 1902, p. 1051.
690 Hansard, 8th February 1867, vol. 185, p. 163; see ante, pp. 120-21.
691 Metropolitan Poor Act 1867 (30 & 31 Vic. c. 6); Special Order to Central London Sick Asylum District, 13th May 1873.
692 Special Order to Lambeth, 25th August 1873.
693 MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 14th August 1879. Some of the inspectors seem to have shared this objection. As late as 1901 we find one reporting that “the admission into our workhouse infirmaries of persons above the pauper class, and not destitute, is, I fear, increasing” (Mr. J. W. Preston’s Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p. 97).
694 Mr. Preston-Thomas’s Report, in Twenty-eighth Annual Report, 1898-9, p. 135.
695 “The curtailment of the stage of convalescence,” urged the medical inspector in 1875, on a hesitating board of guardians, “alone rapidly covers any additional outlay that may have been incurred in structural arrangements, whilst the increased chances of recovery to the sick and afflicted are not to be measured by any mere money standard” (Dr. Mouat, medical inspector of Local Government Board, in Report on Infirmary of Newcastle Union; MS. archives, Newcastle Board Of Guardians, 26th November 1875). Already by 1891 the Central Authority is able to inform Parliament that the number of “sick beds” provided in Poor Law institutions throughout the country—irrespective of the mere infirm aged—is no less than 68,420 (House Of Commons, No. 365 of 1891; Twenty-first Annual Report, 1891-2, p. lxxxvi). In 1896 there were 58,551 persons occupying the workhouse wards for the sick, of whom 19,287 were merely aged and infirm, whilst there were in attendance 1961 trained nurses, 1384 paid but untrained nurses (probationers), and 3443 pauper helpers, of whom 1374 were convalescents (Twenty-sixth Annual Report, 1896-7, p. lxvi; House Of Commons, No. 371 of 1896).
696 Special Orders to West Derby, Liverpool and Toxteth Park, 5th April 1900 and 25th January 1901. In 1888 two other Boards of Guardians were even urged and authorised to combine in the taking over and maintenance of a specialised hospital for a particular class of diseases, and to conduct it as a Poor Law institution with the aid of a small annual subsidy from national funds, on the understanding that all local cases were taken. There was to be no sort of “deterrent” influence. Patients, suffering from these diseases, were to be admitted on the authority of the medical superintendent of the hospital, without there being necessarily any order from the relieving officer; and without any express restriction to the destitute. The well-understood object of this Poor Law institution was, in fact, positively to encourage all persons suffering from the diseases in question to come in and be cured. There was to be no obvious sign that it was a Poor Law institution. It was especially ordered that it should be styled “The Aldershot Lock Hospital” (Special Orders to Farnham and Hartley Wintney Unions, 19th September 1888 and 16th November 1894). This went on for seventeen years, and was given up in 1905 (ibid. 30th December 1905).
697 Special Order to Croydon, Kingston, and Richmond, of 27th December 1904. We gather that this institution has not been established. A similar one exists at Manchester.
698 By some Revising Barristers under the Medical Relief Disqualification Removal Act 1885 (48 & 49 Vic. c. 46).
699 Decisions of the Local Government Board, 1902-3, by W. A. Casson, 1904, p. 7. The Poor Law Act 1879 had, in fact, expressly authorised boards of guardians to subscribe to charitable institutions to which paupers might have access. It was held, for instance, that boards of guardians may, if they choose, send their sane adult epileptics to an epileptic colony, and pay the cost of their maintenance there (Local Government Chronicle, 29th October 1904, p. 1123). In 1901, the Central Authority sanctioned the payment of £70 by the Bramley Board of Guardians for a cot in the sanatorium of the Leeds Association for the Cure of Tuberculosis (Local Government Board to Bramley Union, February 1901, in Local Government Chronicle, 23rd February 1901, p. 184).
700 In 1903 it sanctioned the expenditure involved in the setting up of Röntgen Ray apparatus in a Poor Law infirmary (Decisions of the Local Government Board, 1902-3, by W. A. Casson, 1904, p. 10).
701 Decisions of the Local Government Board, 1903-4, by W. A. Casson, 1905, p. 39.
702 Hansard, 24th July 1879, vol. 248, p. 1173.
703 Local Government Board decision, in Local Government Chronicle, 1st November 1902, p. 1102.
704 General Order of 8th March 1894, in Twenty-fourth Annual Report, 1894-5, pp. xcix, 4-5.
705 Circular of 29th January 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. iii.
706 Mr. Long in House of Commons (23rd June 1904; Hansard, vol. 136, p. 971).
707 Circular of 23rd January 1891; Twentieth Annual Report, 1890-1, p. xc; Report of Royal Commission on Aged Poor, 1895, vol. iii. p. 967, (Cd. 7684 II).
708 See the references to nursing in Circulars of 29th January 1895 and 7th August 1897; and the General Order (Nursing of the Sick in Workhouses) 6th August 1897; Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, pp. 109-110; Twenty-seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, pp. 27-31.
709 Mr. Hervey’s Report, in Thirty-second Annual Report, 1902-3, p. 69. The total cost of Poor Law medical relief in 1904-5 was £518,994 indoor (to which might be added £640,833 for what are now called the “public health purposes” of the greatest of all Poor Law authorities, the Metropolitan Asylums Board); and £268,537 outdoor (Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, pp. 251, 589, 590). This aggregate total of £787,531 (excluding the fever hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board) omits the maintenance of the sick themselves, but includes, however, some items not previously included. For comparative purposes we must take the figure for 1903-4 (£423,554), which includes only doctors’ salaries and drugs. This may be compared with the corresponding figure for 1881 of £310,456; for 1871, of £290,249; and for 1840 of £151,781 (Twenty-second Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1869-70, p. 227; Eleventh Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1881-2, p. 237).
710 Sec. 131 of Public Health Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55).
711 Sec. 133 of ibid. This had been already included in the Sanitary Act of 1868 (31 & 32 Vic. c. 115, sec. 10).
712 Circular of 17th August and 12th November 1872, in Second Annual Report, 1872-3, pp. 19-20, 41-52.
713 See, e.g. the letters of Mr. Hedley, in September 1872, in MS. archives of Newcastle Board of Guardians.
714 Mr. Bagenal’s Report, in Thirty-first Annual Report, 1901-2, p. 139.
715 Mr. Preston-Thomas’s Report, in Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, pp. 471-2.
716 It seems to have been entirely as an exception that the Rochdale Guardians fitted up what was practically a lunatic asylum in their workhouse, adequately equipped, staffed, and isolated; and took in a number of Lancashire chronic lunatics (Special Order of 13th April 1893; Twenty-third Annual Report, 1893-4, p. xcii).
717 Lunacy Act, 1890, 53 Vic. c. 5, sec. 26.
718 Ibid. sec. 25; cf. Lunacy Act 1889, 52 & 53 Vic. c. 41, sec. 22.
719 Lunacy Act 1890, secs. 20, 21; cf. Lunacy Act 1885, 48 & 49 Vic. c. 52, secs. 2 and 3.
720 Ibid. sec. 24.
721 Lunacy Act 1889, sec. 40.
722 Ibid. sec. 42.
723 Eighth Annual Report, 1878-9, p. xli.
724 First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. xxix.
725 Circular Letter, “Metropolitan Asylums for Imbeciles,” 12th February 1875, in Fifth Annual Report, 1875-6, p. 3.
726 Circular Letter, “Age of Children sent to Imbecile Asylums,” 24th July 1882, in Twelfth Annual Report, 1882-3, p. 17.
727 Local Government Board to West Ham, January 1885; Local Government Chronicle, 24th January 1885, p. 77.
728 Special Order of 21st March 1900 (apparently not published); referred to in Thirtieth Annual Report 1900-1, p. ci.
729 Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. clxxi.
730 Ibid. p. clxx.
731 Mr. Preston-Thomas’s Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, pp. 122-3.
732 Circular of 4th August 1900, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p. 18.
733 Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. i 1880, p. 53; vol. ii. 1883, p. 281; vol. iii. 1888, p. 102.
734 Ibid. vol. iii. 1888, p. 101.
735 Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act 1893 (56 and 57 Vic. c. 42).
736 Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act 1899 (62 and 63 Vic. c. 32).
737 Special Order of 4th March 1903; Thirty-third Annual Report, 1903-4, p. ci.
738 Mr. Courtenay Boyle’s Report, in Eighth Annual Report, 1878-9, p. 120.
739 Local Government Chronicle, 29th November 1902, p. 1203.
740 Ibid. 6th December 1902, p. 1225.
741 Decisions of the Local Government Board, 1902-3, by W. A. Casson, 1904, p. 14.
742 Report on the Administration of Outdoor Relief in the Metropolis, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 136-209.
743 “One of the chief defects,” he said, “in the present administration of the law in respect of the disabled class, and especially of that large section of it which consists of the aged and infirm... is its failure to relieve the rates from the burden of the maintenance of paupers whose relatives, whether legally liable or not, are able to contribute to their support. It is, I believe, within the experience of many boards of guardians, that while there are persons who, even when in prosperous circumstances, readily permit their aged relatives to receive out-relief, an offer of indoor relief is frequently found to put pressure upon them to rescue themselves, if not their relatives, from the discredit incident to the residence of the latter in a workhouse” (Ibid. p. 188). Another inspector expressly reported that he urged guardians with regard to the aged “to apply the workhouse test in order to put a pressure on relatives who are not legally liable” (Mr. Culley’s Report in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 76). So again, in 1875, Mr. Longley argued that the “deterrent discipline” of the workhouse was “the keystone of an efficient system of indoor relief,” not merely for the able-bodied, but also for the aged (“directly on the able-bodied, and more remotely upon the disabled class of paupers,” the term he always used for the aged) (Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. 47). It may, however, be noted that Mr. Longley never pretended that this was the policy of the Report of 1834, or of the Act of 1834. To him it was “a further and special development... of the principles of the Poor Law Amendment Act” (Ibid. p. 41).
744 Mr. Longley’s Report in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 144.
745 Ibid.
746 We ought, perhaps, to mention that, already in January 1895, under Sir Henry Fowler’s presidency, we find the Central Authority writing to a board of guardians, to bespeak greater consideration for the aged and infirm, who needed outdoor relief. The Bradford Guardians had been in the habit of requiring their outdoor paupers to come every week to the workhouse to receive their doles. The Central Authority, far from deprecating this outdoor relief, spontaneously pointed out that the system involved very long walks for many infirm people, and suggested that the guardians should institute four local pay stations (Local Government Board to Bradford Union, 8th January 1895; in MS. archives, Bradford Board of Guardians).
747 Circular of 11th July 1896; in Twenty-sixth Annual Report, 1896-7, pp. 8-9. No mention is made of this Circular in the Annual Report itself.
748 Ibid. p. 9. In September 1896, under Mr. Chaplin’s presidency, the Central Authority “saw no objection” to a proposal of the Poplar Guardians to “board out” an aged married couple in a country cottage at 12s. a week, and added that its sanction was not required, if the case fell within “exception 2 to art. 4” of the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order. It was simply “non-resident relief.” But the Central Authority declared that it was impossible for such relief to be made chargeable on the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund, as “boarding-out” was outdoor relief (Local Government Board to Poplar Union, 25th September 1896; MS. archives, Poplar Board of Guardians). The expenses of “boarded-out” children had been placed upon the fund by statute, the Metropolitan Poor Amendment Act 1869.
749 Some of them hardly concealed their dismay. “In some instances,” says Mr. Davy, “where Guardians have been for years endeavouring with patient care to administer the Poor Law strictly... the opinion of the [Local Government] Board with reference to outdoor relief to certain classes of paupers, has been the cause of some change, if not of opinion, at all events of practice, with the result that the amount paid weekly as outdoor relief has increased largely.... This has been notably the case in the Faversham Union.... During the last six months the expenditure has increased about 25 per cent.... In some other Unions... the effect of the Circular has been still more marked, for the recommendation that adequate relief should be given has been made the occasion for increased grants of outdoor relief all round, the word “adequate” being taken to refer to the amount of money given only.... It cannot be too strongly insisted that adequate relief means not only that the relief should be sufficient for the wants of the pauper, but that it should be the most suitable form of relief for each particular case.” Mr. Davy went on to intimate pretty plainly that, in his view, normally and typically, “the only adequate form of relief is an offer for the workhouse” (Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, pp. 87-9).
750 To Boards of Guardians “outside the Metropolis” only.
751 It seems, at any rate, not to have affected their practice of compiling statistical tables in which the Unions were contrasted one with another, according to the percentage of the paupers on outdoor relief—irrespective, as we have already observed, of the relative proportions of the aged, among their several populations; and (as must now be added) of the policy of the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor, which the Central Authority had promulgated.
752 Circular of 4th August 1900; in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, pp. 18-19. This momentous new departure is not referred to in the Annual Report itself. Returns published in the previous year had shown that of the 286,929 paupers over sixty-five on 1st January 1900, only 74,597 were indoor paupers, and of these, only 40,809 were in the workhouses as distinguished from infirmaries, etc. The other 212,332 had outdoor relief. Outside the Metropolis, indeed, eight out of every ten had outdoor relief; one was in the infirmary, and there was only one in the workhouse (Twenty-ninth Annual Report, 1899-1900, p. lvii).
753 Mr. Bagenal’s Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p. 154.
754 Mr. Wethered’s Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p. 133.
755 Mr. Baldwyn Fleming’s Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, pp. 112-113.
756 Mr. Bagenal’s Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p. 154.
757 Local Government Board to Bradford Union, 10th January 1901; Bradford Union to Local Government Board, 26th January 1901; in MS. archives, Bradford Board of Guardians.
758 It was not so much that the “offer of the House” increased the aggregate population of the workhouses. Between 1871 and 1891, this only rose, outside the Metropolis, from 131,334 to 139,736. (In the Metropolis, owing to the development of the infirmaries into general hospitals, and the working of the Common Poor Fund, the rise was more considerable, viz. from 36,739 to 58,482). But the workhouse population gradually changed in character, the able-bodied being replaced by the aged. On 1st January 1900, there were found to be, in the workhouses themselves, no fewer than 40,809 persons over sixty-five, and in the workhouse infirmaries, etc., 33,788 more, making a total over sixty-five of 74,597; being more than 38 per cent of the total inmates (Twenty-ninth Annual Report, 1899-1900, p. lvii).
759 “Able-bodied people are now scarcely at all found in them during the greater part of the year.... Those who enjoy the advantages of these institutions are almost solely such as may fittingly receive them, viz. the aged and infirm, the destitute sick and children. Workhouses are now asylums and infirmaries” (Dr. E. Smith, Medical Officer to the Poor Law Board; in Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, p. 43).
760 Office Minute of 1873.
761 “Directly on the able-bodied, and more remotely, upon the disabled class of paupers,” the term he always used for the aged (Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. 47).
762 See ante, pp. 54-82.
763 Special Order of 18th April 1892; Twenty-second Annual Report, 1892-3, p. lxxix. The only item of policy as regards the aged in the workhouse, to be noted between 1871 and 1892, seems to be the insistence by Parliament in 1876 that married couples (who if both persons were over sixty could not since 1847 be made to live separately) might, if the guardians chose to allow it, live together if either person were over sixty, infirm, aged, or disabled (39 and 40 Vic. c. 61, sec. 10). This was communicated to the boards of guardians in 1885 (Circular of 3rd November 1885, in Fifteenth Annual Report, 1885-6, p. 23.) No great attempt was made to get the guardians to provide the necessary separate accommodation, or to make it decently habitable. Thus, at Poplar, there were no rooms for married couples until 1884, and then they were left for fifteen months without any means by which they could be warmed. At last the Central Authority called attention to it (Local Government Board to Poplar Union, 27th May 1886; MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 4th June 1886). It should be noted, too, that it was held that newspapers and periodicals might be provided (Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. iii. 1888, p. 134); and the employment of old men in three workhouses in northern counties in teazing hair, which was excessively distasteful to them, and liable to be injurious to their health, was discontinued at the instance of the inspector (Twentieth Annual Report, 1890-1, pp. 245-6).
764 It is not clear from the published documents at what date, or in what unions, the Central Authority had first allowed tobacco. In 1880, it decided that it could not legally be given to workhouse inmates (not being sick), if it had not been specially ordered by the medical officer under arts. 107 and 108 of the General Consolidated Order of 1847 (Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. ii. pp. 3, 72). Yet, by 1885, at any rate, the allowance of tobacco or snuff to non-able-bodied paupers, or to such as were “employed upon work of a hazardous or specially disagreeable character,” with permission to smoke in such room as the guardians might determine, had been exceptionally granted in particular cases; see, for instance, Special Order to Carlisle of 22nd June 1885, not published in the Annual Report.
765 “It is the invariable practice,” said Mr. Ritchie approvingly, “to provide for the aged paupers a better diet than that for the other classes” (Mr. Ritchie in House of Commons, 6th May 1892; Hansard, vol. 4, p. 277).
766 Local Government Board to Bourne Union, August 1892 (Local Government Chronicle, 13th August 1892, p. 678); Local Government Board to Caistor Union, September 1892 (Ibid. 8th October 1892, p. 859).
767 General Order of 3rd November 1892: Circular of 9th November 1892; Twenty-second Annual Report, 1892-3, pp. lxxxv, 35-6.
768 General Order of 8th March 1894; Twenty-fourth Annual Report, 1894-5, pp. xcix, 4-5.
769 Special Order to Gateshead, 15th February 1896; see also the “Specimen Order” given in Macmorran and Lushington’s Poor Law Orders, second edition, 1905, p. 1061.
770 Circular on Workhouse Administration of 29th January 1895; Memorandum on Visiting Committees of June 1895; Circular on Classification in Workhouses of 31st July 1896; Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, pp. lxxxv, 107-112, 121-3; Twenty-sixth Annual Report, 1896-7, pp. lxxxviii-lxxxix, 9-10.
771 Memorandum on the Duties of Visiting Committees, June 1895; in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 122.
772 Sunday morning, and one day a month, was held to be not sufficient outing. “In the case of aged inmates of respectable character,” said Mr. Chaplin “leave of absence might well be allowed on weekdays more frequently than is now the case” [at Old Gravel Lane Workhouse] (Hansard, 23rd May 1898, vol. lviii, p. 326).
773 Circular of 4th August 1900, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p. 19.
774 Ibid. p. 20. Nor was this merely a formal expression. We see, in the next few years, the Central Authority cordially sanctioning the provision, at no small extra expense in capital and annual maintenance, of new old people’s wards in some unions, of specialised old men’s and old women’s homes in others; even to the extent of permitting (as at Woolwich) the location of the most respectable and best conducted of the aged in a comfortable private mansion conducted with the minimum of rules, and without outward sign of pauperism.
775 See, for instance, Local Government Board to Bradford Union, 10th January 1901, in MS. archives, Bradford Board of Guardians. There were then, in the Bradford workhouse, twenty aged paupers of the first class, and seventeen of the second class. Both these day wards had cushioned arm-chairs, lockers with keys for each inmate, carpets on the floor, curtains to the windows, and were made comfortable with cushions, coloured table-cloths, pictures, and ornaments. The inmates had special dormitories (Bradford Union to Local Government Board, 26th January 1901). The General Consolidated Order of 1847 was still nominally in force.
776 Circular of 11th October 1900; Workhouse Regulations (Dietaries and Accounts) Order, 1900; in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, pp. 65-6. But the Central Authority struck at afternoon tea! The St. George’s, Hanover Square, Guardians were informed that it was “not prepared to assent to the proposal of the guardians for the infirm men, and all men over the age of sixty-five years to have half a pint of tea daily at 3.30 P.M., between the mid-day and evening meals” (Local Government Board to St. George’s, Hanover Square, November 1900; see Local Government Chronicle, 17th November 1900, p. 1147).
777 Local Government Chronicle, 27th August 1904, p. 898; Decisions of the Local Government Board, 1903-4, by W. A. Casson, 1905, p. 97.
778 Local Government Board’s Decision, Local Government Chronicle, 1st November 1902, p. 1102; Decisions of the Local Government Board, 1902-3, by W. A. Casson, 1904, p. 72.
779 Local Government Board to St. German’s Union, December 1898; Local Government Chronicle, 24th December 1898, p. 1192.
780 Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 78.
781 Memorandum relating to the Administration of Out-relief, February 1878, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p. 224. “The suggestion that non-resident relief should be absolutely abolished is one in which the president is quite disposed to concur, with perhaps, some reservation regarding existing cases” (Local Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p. 56).
782 Bradford Union to Local Government Board, 13th September 1901, forwarding resolution: “That... the prohibition of non-residential relief to the widow and children of a person who may have died in the union of his settlement is harsh and totally out of keeping with the spirit of the times; and that the provisions of the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, 1844, and the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, 1852, call for urgent revision.” This received only an acknowledgment (Local Government Board to Bradford Union, 16th September 1901).
783 Decisions of the Local Government Board, 1903-4, by W. A. Casson, 1905, p. 26.
784 If guardians wish to make use of the Margate Homes for Sick Paupers, they may do so (as the Central Authority expressly informed them in 1874) by granting non-resident relief (Circular of 1874; see Local Government Chronicle, 23rd May 1874, p. 334).
785 Local Government Chronicle, 15th October 1904, p. 1072.
786 Local Government Board to Woodbridge Union, 26th April 1898; in Local Government Chronicle, 14th May 1898, p. 474.
787 Dr. E. Smith, in Twentieth Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1867-8, p. 43.
788 We may gain an idea of the energy put into the provision of improved accommodation for the indoor poor since 1868, by the total capital expenditure sanctioned for workhouses, etc., by order or letter of the Central Authority. The total so sanctioned during the thirty-four years, 1835-1868, including the initial provision of workhouses after 1834, was £7,079,126 (Twenty-first Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1868-9, pp. 316-17), or no more than an average of £208,209 annually. For the thirty-seven years, 1869-1905, the corresponding sum was no less than £24,609,035 (Thirty-fifth Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1905-6, p. 608), or an average of £665,109. To this must be added the expenditure of the Metropolitan Asylums Boards for Poor Law purposes only, sick asylums, district schools, etc., which in the first period of thirty-four years was only £571,401, and in the second period of thirty-seven years was £6,810,140 (Twenty-first Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1868-9, pp. 317-18; Thirty-fifth Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1905-6, p. 609). The total capital outlay sanctioned by the Central Authority for Poor Law purposes during the last thirty-seven years has, therefore, amounted, on an average, to nearly £1,000,000 annually,—the amount for 1905 being £789,373—as compared with little over one-fifth of that sum in the first thirty-four years of the new Poor Law.
789 Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. xxv-xxvi.
790 Pauper Inmates Discharge and Regulation Act 1871, 34 & 35 Vic. c. 108, sec. 4.
791 Poor Law Act, 62 & 63 Vic. c. 37, sec. 4. The guardians are not obliged to adopt these periods of detention, and if they do so, provision is made for cases of hardship by allowing them, or in the intervals between their meetings the visiting committee, to “exempt, either wholly or partially, any pauper from the operation of this section.” The master of the workhouse, too, “may, if the board of guardians be not sitting or the visiting committee be not in attendance, discharge any pauper to whom this section shall apply before the expiration of any such period as aforesaid, if any circumstances shall, in his opinion, require this to be done.”
If a pauper escapes from the workhouse during his detention, or while an inmate refuses or neglects to work or to observe the rules, he may be prosecuted as idle and disorderly under the Vagrancy Act of 1824 (5 Geo. IV. c. 83, sec. 3); for a repetition of the offence, or for destroying or damaging his own clothes or any property of the guardians, he becomes liable to the heavier penalty of the rogue and vagabond. The same penalties attach to the wilfully giving a false name or making a false statement for the purpose of obtaining relief, and this clause has been twice revised, so that since 1876 (Divided Parishes and Poor Law Amendment Act, 39 & 40 Vic. c. 61, sec. 44) any person who so obtained relief may be proceeded against at any time while he continues to receive it, and since 1882 (Casual Poor Act, 45 & 46 Vic. c. 36, sec. 5) the provision applies equally, whether the person attempts so to obtain relief for himself or for any one else. If a pauper escapes from a workhouse or asylum while suffering from bodily disease of an infectious or contagious nature, the justice convicting him of the offence may order that he be taken back to the workhouse or asylum and kept there till cured, or otherwise lawfully discharged, and that the warrant of commitment then be put in execution.
792 Hansard, 9th May 1902, vol. 107, p. 1276.
793 Local Government Chronicle, 21st December 1889, p. 1051. This was with the Chester Board, which refused “to allow the workhouse inmates knives and forks at dinner except on Christmas Day.” The Central Authority peremptorily required them to be provided for “all the inmates.”
794 Mr. Preston-Thomas’s Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p. 126.
795 Circular on Workhouse Dietaries, 11th October 1900, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, pp. 63-4.
796 Local Government Board to Hackney Union, January 1877, in Local Government Chronicle, 13th January 1877, p. 31.
797 Special Order to Wirrall Union, 11th June 1886; Special Order to Drayton Union, 2nd September 1892. On the other hand, in 1901 the Keighley Guardians, for harvest work, were only allowed to give extra “food and drink other than fermented liquor” (Special Order to Keighley Union, 1st August 1901).
798 Local Government Chronicle, 7th November 1903, p. 1091.
799 Local Government Board to Hexham Union, April 1902; Local Government Chronicle, 19th April 1902, p. 413; Decisions of the Local Government Board, 1902-3, by W. A. Casson, 1904, pp. 14, 23.
800 Local Government Chronicle, 13th June 1903, p. 577; Decisions of the Local Government Board, 1902-3, by W. A. Casson, 1904, p. 162.
801 Memorandum of June 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 121.
802 Circular of 29th January 1895, in ibid. p. 108.
803 Memorandum of June 1895, in ibid. p. 122.
804 Circular of 29th January 1895, in ibid. p. 111.
805 It had been ordered already in 1886 that, as regards the bath, every person “should have the right to demand water which has not been previously used” (Minute of Instructions, Bathing of Workhouse Inmates, 2nd February 1886, in Sixteenth Annual Report, 1886-7, p. 1).
806 Memorandum of June 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 122.
807 Ibid. p. 121.
808 Workhouse Regulations (Dietaries and Accounts) Order, 1900, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, pp. cvii. 62-72.
809 Knight’s Official Advertiser, 21st October 1871, p. 196.
810 Thirteenth Annual Report, 1883-4, p. lii.
811 Circular of 15th December 1892, in Twenty-second Annual Report, 1892-3, p. 43.
812 MS. archives, Chorlton Board of Guardians, 1895, etc.; Local Government Chronicle, 11th January 1896, p. 33; 8th February 1896, p. 121.
813 This was also permitted by letter to the Grantham Board of Guardians (Local Government Board to Grantham Union, November 1901; Local Government Chronicle, 7th December 1901, p. 1209); and doubtless to others. The Central Authority had, in fact, intimated its willingness “to consider applications” for a similar concession “from the guardians of large unions” (Local Government Board to Association of Poor Law Unions, 13th March 1901; Local Government Chronicle, 23rd March 1901, p. 295).
814 Local Government Board to Association of Poor Law Unions, 13th March 1901; Local Government Chronicle, 23rd March 1901, p. 295. We cannot find that, down to the present day, any such permission has been given.
815 On no account are the paupers, if allowed “milk,” to be put off with “skim milk” or “scald milk”; by a decision of 1903, “milk” means always new milk (Decisions of the Local Government Board, 1902-3, by W. A. Casson, 1904, p. 11.)
816 Memorandum on Emigration at the cost of the poor rate, in Local Government Chronicle, 26th October 1889, pp. 884-5.
817 In 1883-4 there were 296 persons emigrated; in 1885-6, 133 persons; between 1887 and 1898 the number fell from 301 to 12; it began to revive in 1903, when it was 66; in 1905 it was 317 (see Thirteenth, Fifteenth, Twenty-sixth, Thirty-third and Thirty-fifth Annual Reports).
818 Mr. Long in House of Commons, 2nd March 1905 (Hansard, vol. 142, p. 184).
819 Memorandum on Emigration, in Local Government Chronicle, 26th October 1889, p. 885.
820 Memorandum of April 1883; Thirteenth Annual Report, 1883-4, pp. xlvii.-xlix. 32-3; Fifteenth Annual Report, 1885-6, pp. xxxvi.-xxxvii. 61-5; Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. cxxxv.
821 Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. 587.
822 Mr. Corbett’s Report of 10th August 1871. Mr. Longley repeated the suggestion (Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 156).
823 Letter to Chairman of the Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, p. 54.
824 Ibid.
825 Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. ii. 1880, pp. 70, 110.
826 Ibid. vol. i. 1880, p. 15; ibid. vol. iii. 1888, p. 271.
827 Local Government Board to Bradfield Union, February 1893; Bradfield Union to Local Government Board, 21st March 1893; MS. archives, Bradfield Board of Guardians; The Better Administration of the Poor Law, by Sir. W. Chance, 1895, pp. 123-4.
828 General Order of 26th April 1905, in Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, pp. 321-2.
829 Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 126-30.
830 Mr. Culley’s Report, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 75.
831 Minutes of Poor Law Commissioners, 1840; Poor Law Board to Mr. R. H. Paget, M.P., 5th January 1870, in Twenty-second Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1869-70, pp. 108-11.
832 Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. iii. 1888, p. 77.
833 Once or twice it is mentioned by the inspectors; e.g. by Mr. Baldwyn Fleming in 1889 (Eighteenth Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1888-9, p. 115), and again in 1891 (Twentieth Annual Report, 1890-1, p. 225).
834 Thus, in 1901, sanction was obtained by the Bradford Guardians for the grant of non-resident relief in certain specific cases into which they had made careful inquiry. Among the cases thus accidentally reported for sanction, because they happened to be those of “non-resident paupers,” were those of grants of 2s. to 6s. a week, in supplement of family incomes of 7s. to 26s. (Bradford Union to Local Government Board, 30th November 1901; MS. archives, Bradford Board of Guardians).
835 57 & 58 Vic. c 25.
836 Local Government Board decision in Local Government Chronicle, 6th June 1903, p. 552.
837 4 Edw. VII. c. 32, sec. 1 (Outdoor Relief Friendly Societies Act 1904).
838 It was expressly held that boards of guardians may, if they think fit, pay for the maintenance of paupers in private hospitals, including “caution money” if demanded (Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board, vol. ii 1883, p. 165).
839 Or migration or emigration.
840 Either under the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, or under a Labour Test Order.
841 In unions under the Prohibitory Order, also able-bodied single women.
842 It is interesting to note that the Poor Law provision of emigration was always of this nature. The guardians were authorised to emigrate poor persons, whether in receipt of relief or not.
843 Twenty-second Annual Report of Poor Law Board, 1869-70, p. lii.
844 The Reports of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Unemployment may be had, in the official editions published by Wyman & Sons, in one volume folio for 5/6 (Cd. 4499), or in three volumes octavo for 4/- (vols. i. and ii., the Majority Report, etc., 2/3; vol. iii., the Minority Report, 1/9). A descriptive analysis of the Majority Report, by Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet, entitled “The Poor Law Report of 1909,” is published by Macmillan & Co., price 2/6 cloth. The Minority Report, without footnotes or references, in large type on good paper, bound in cloth, with introductions by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, is published by Longmans, Green & Co. (vol. i., “The Break-up of the Poor Law,” price 7/6; vol. ii. “The Public Organisation of the Labour Market,” price 5/-). A special cheap edition of the Minority Report, alone, without introduction, footnotes, or references, is published by the National Committee to Promote the Break-up of the Poor Law, 5 & 6 Clement’s Inn, London, in two volumes (price 1/-each, postage 4d.).
845 Par. 337 of Part VI. of Majority Report.
846 Par. 150 of Part IX. of Majority Report.
847 Par. 609 of Part VI. of the Majority Report.
848 Par. 420 of Part IV.; and pars. 92, 99-100 and 148a of Part IX. of Majority Report. To this principle of placing all forms of public assistance under a general Public Assistance Authority (and thus classing all the recipients as paupers) the Majority make a remarkable exception. They acquiesce, so far as England and Wales are concerned, in the proposed taking out of the Poor Law of all the various grades of the Mentally Defective—the lunatics, the idiots, the feeble-minded, and the chronically inebriate—and the treatment of this great class, amounting to 20 per cent of the present pauper host, not in respect of their destitution, but, whatever their pecuniary circumstances, in respect of their mental defect, by an authority specialising on that branch of administration.
849 Par. 143 of Part IV. of Majority Report.
850 “The Majority Report,” by Professor Bernard Bosanquet (Sociological Review, April 1909).
851 Ibid.
852 The Minority Commissioners took up the discussion on this fundamental point in the Minority Report for Scotland (Cd. 4922); and we give in an appendix to the present volume (Appendix B) the detailed answer there afforded to Professor Bosanquet’s argument.
853 “It had been suggested,” explained one of the signatories of the Majority Report, “that the Majority Report was a C.O.S. report from beginning to end.... The C.O.S. might be proud to feel that they had set their mark upon that report.... The idea was that, before the Public Assistance Authority undertook the cases, they should make themselves perfectly certain that charity was incapable of dealing with them, and that charity should always have the first attempt at a remedy, that charity should act as a sieve through which the cases should pass before they came to the Public Authority” (Lecture by the Rev. L. R. Phelps at Norwich, Eastern Daily Press, 30th June 1909).
854 Majority Report, Part VII. par. 198, 236.
855 Ibid. par. 613 of Part VI.
856 Ibid. par. 623 of Part VI.
857 That this interpretation is not unwarranted is shown by the explanation given by one of the signatories of the Majority Report. “Charity should be properly organised to deal with these cases.... This was the position of the Majority Report.... Their motto should not be ‘Help the deserving,’ but ‘Help the hopeful cases,’ and leave State action for that section of the community which needed the bridle, the curb, and the spurs to be disciplined” (Lecture by the Rev. L. R. Phelps at Sheffield, Sheffield Independent, 15th December 1909).
858 “We do not recommend any alteration of the law which would... bring within the operation of assistance from public funds classes not now legally within its operation” (Par. 4 of Part IX.).
859 It may be objected that, in thus directing attention to the fact that it is always an individual who is attacked, not, at first, the family as a whole, we are ignoring the fact that there are, at any rate, the families to be dealt with which are now, as whole families, in a state of destitution; and that, moreover, it must be anticipated, even with uniformly good administration of the preventive services, there will be not a few families who, as “missed cases,” will have slipped into family destitution, without having had their descent arrested by the preventive action above described. We suggest that each member of even such a family requires, for restoration, specialised treatment according to his or her need. The infant, the child of school age, the mentally defective, the sick, the infirm or incapacitated, the boy or girl above school age and finally the able-bodied and able-minded adult, each requires that something different should be done for him or her, if that individual is to be properly dealt with. The alternative, namely, to treat the family as a whole, means to place it in the General Mixed Workhouse, or merely to give it a dole of Outdoor Relief. This, indeed, is to-day the dominant practice; and as such, has been condemned by Majority and Minority alike. It must, we think, be admitted that the several members of the family, with their very different needs, cannot be wisely treated without calling in the Public Authorities specialising on those heads, such as the Education, Health, Lunacy, Pension, and Unemployment Authorities. This does not mean that the needs of the other members of the family will escape consideration. Assuming that the cause of the destitution in which the family is plunged is the sickness of the breadwinner, and that the other members of the family are all normal, the Health Authority will, if it thinks domiciliary treatment desirable, not only give the necessary medical attendance, and look after the whole family environment by its Health Visitor, but, if there is no income, will grant (subject to the statutory rules and the Council’s own Bye-laws) the home aliment that is requisite for the family maintenance. Would any one suggest that the Health Committee, with its Medical Officer and its Health Visitor should be excluded from this case, or that it should be precluded from treating the case at home when the doctor reports that it can properly be so treated? If there is a mentally defective person in such a family, ought the Lunacy Authority to be kept out? If there are children of school age in it, is it wise to prevent the intervention of the Education Authority and its School Attendance Officer? It is the business of the officers of the County or Town Council—in particular the Registrar of Public Assistance whom the Minority Report proposes—to see (a) that these Authorities do not overlap, (b) that they are all consulted as regards such members of the family as come within their respective spheres of treatment. We see no need for any general Poor Law or “Public Assistance Committee” at all; unless, indeed, merely for registration and co-ordination.
860 Here, it need hardly be said, lies the sphere for the “Guilds of Help” and “Councils of Social Welfare” which are springing up in so many towns of Great Britain, and which the proposals of the Majority Report would destroy. The “human element,” so essential to all effective preventive action, can, in our judgment, be raised to a higher effectiveness, not only by its intimate association with the different departments of the public authority responsible for actually preventing the occurrence of destitution in the city, but also, at any rate in the large towns, by an improved voluntary organisation in each locality on a federal basis. Such an organisation might usefully include, in a federal union for mutual assistance, any local Health Societies, Children’s Care or Apprenticeship Associations; Fresh Air Funds or Country Holiday Societies; the local charitable almshouses, hospitals, infirmaries, or convalescent homes; such orphanages, industrial schools, and such institutions for the physically or mentally defective as are available; the charitable agencies connected with the various Churches; any systematic visitors or workers among the poor; and, in fact, all the benevolent agencies in the locality concerned with those in need or in distress. A voluntary federal organisation, such as is here suggested, has already proved to be of great use, in one city after another, in (a) enlisting and allocating to specific services new recruits for personal work; (b) helping to organise, for each branch of the work of the Town or County Council its own necessary fringe of volunteer workers; (c) placing in touch with these workers and with the public officials and committees all the available voluntary institutions dealing with particular kinds of cases; (d) making representations to the Town or County Council on any point in the public service in which improvements can be effected; and (e) initiating the provision of whatever additional institutional accommodation is found to be required.
861 See Appendix B (extract from the Minority Report for Scotland).
862 There have, of course, been very numerous alterations of union boundaries, by the transfer of parishes or parts of parishes, which it has not been practicable to take into account.
863 See the proviso to sec. 43 of the Divided Parishes, etc., Act 1876.
864 The Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, etc., relating to Scotland is issued as Cd. 4922, price 2/8. The Minority Report for Scotland is published separately by the Scottish National Committee to Promote the Break-up of the Poor Law (180 Hope Street, Glasgow), price 6d. net.
865 “The Majority Report,” by Professor Bernard Bosanquet, in Sociological Review, April 1909 (vol. ii. No. 2).
866 Circular of 10th March, 1906, of Local Government Board for Scotland.
867 “With regard to this class, their case is fully dealt with in the Report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded. If, as we hope, the recommendations of that Commission are carried into effect, a system of control over the feeble-minded will be initiated which will free the Poor Law Administration from one of its greatest difficulties. Meanwhile, we think that, as a provisional measure, the Poor Law Authorities should be given power to detain feeble-minded persons who come under their care” (Majority Report for England and Wales, Part IX. par. 151, Class II. (a)).
868 We find merely a recommendation that powers of detention of unmarried mothers be given to the Poor Law Authority. “We think that if they can be medically certified as feeble-minded, they should be detained by a judicial warrant authorising such detention, and we approve the recommendations to that effect made by the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded” (Majority Report for Scotland, Part III. ch. xii. sec. 323). In a later section of the Report, in describing the cases in which it is recommended that the Poor Law Authority should exercise powers of “detention or continuous treatment,” we read that “All feeble-minded persons, whether unmarried mothers or others, should, we think, be subject to complete control on the lines laid down by the Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded.”—Ibid. Part VII. ch. v. sec. 66. We can only infer that our colleagues wish to retain these persons in Scotland under the Poor Law Authority, and to continue to include them as paupers.
869 Unemployment, by W. H. Beveridge, 1909.
The Prevention of Destitution
ADVERTISEMENT
In this volume the authors propound a constructive policy, worked out in considerable detail, by the adoption of which they believe that the nation could, within a very few years, progressively get rid of the great bulk of the involuntary destitution in which so large a proportion of our population is now plunged. They analyse the several causes of this destitution, and show how these can severally be arrested in their operation. The extensive ravages of preventable sickness are shown to be productive, directly and indirectly, of probably half the whole mass of destitution; and the authors give us the outlines of a national campaign against sickness. The evil effects of child neglect, from infancy to adolescence, are traced in their resulting adult destitution; and the authors describe the methods of securing, from one end of the kingdom to the other, what may be called a “National Minimum” of child nurture. The dependence of destitution on feeble-mindedness and mental deficiency leads to an examination of the bearing, upon the problem, of the doctrines of Eugenics. The effects of “Sweating” and Unemployment in producing destitution are specially dealt with; and a full exposition is given of the striking plan for actually preventing the great bulk of unemployment, and for maintaining under training those whose unemployment cannot be prevented, with which the authors’ names are associated. The experiments and proposals in Insurance, whether voluntary or compulsory, against sickness or against unemployment, receive elaborate analysis and criticism; and the experience both of the Friendly Societies and of the German Government is invoked to indicate in what way Insurance may safely be made use of as part of the provision for Old Age, Invalidity, Industrial Accidents, Sickness, and Involuntary Unemployment. The proper sphere of voluntary agencies in connection with the action of the public authorities, and as a part of the national campaign against destitution, is described at length. The grave social evil of the “overlapping” and duplication of relief at present resulting from the multiplicity of unco-ordinated authorities and agencies is described at some length; and proposals are made for preventing it by a Common Register. Finally, an elaborate chapter is devoted to “the Moral Factor,” and a full examination is made of the direct and indirect effects on personal character and on family life, both of the present system of dealing with those who are in need, and of the proposed campaign of prevention. “The universal maintenance of a definite standard of civilised life is the joint obligation of an indissoluble partnership between the individual and the community.”
In order to keep the page free from footnotes and references these are relegated to an appendix following each chapter.