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Title: English Poor Law Policy
Author: Webb, Beatrice, Webb, Sidney
Language: English
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ENGLISH POOR LAW POLICY.
BY
SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.,
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON,
NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA.
1910. (_Second Impression, 1913_)
PREFACE
Nothing of to-day, it may be suggested, can be really understood
without its history. This, at any rate, is true of the complicated
policy of the English Poor Law, which is now (1910) costing the
public (for the United Kingdom) close upon twenty millions sterling
every year; and which is producing, on the whole, results which
led the Royal Commissioners of 1905-1909, without distinction
of political or economic party or creed, to their unanimous and
emphatic condemnatory verdict. That policy is embodied in a
bewildering chaos of Statutes and Orders, Circulars and Minutes,
general reports and official letters, the specific provisions of
which, so far as they are contemporaneously in force, and so far
as they are publicly known, the legal text-books and elementary
manuals seek to re-arrange in such a way that the Poor Law Guardian
or Workhouse Master may learn, at any rate, what is legally
prescribed. But though a precise statement of what is to-day
prescribed, in alphabetical or other order, may suffice for the
practical work of the administrator, it does not afford us any
idea of the general policy that lies behind the prescriptions, and
fails even to enable the ordinary citizen to understand what is
being done. We suggest, in short, that the English Poor Law policy
of to-day cannot be correctly appreciated, or even intelligently
comprehended, without some knowledge of the stages through which,
in the course of the past seventy-five years, it has gradually
been moulded into its present form. To any one who compares the
contents of the Annual Report of the Local Government Board of
to-day with those of the slim little volume in which the Poor Law
Commissioners of 1835 described their activity, it will be evident
that, throughout the whole range of the Poor Law, the Policy of
the Central Authority has undergone great changes. What these
changes have actually been, and at what dates and in what order
they occurred, the following chronological analysis of the action
of the Poor Law Commissioners, the Poor Law Board, and the Local
Government Board for England and Wales attempts to set forth.
The extent, the complication, and what may be thought the aridity
of this analysis may probably daunt many who ought to read it. But
if they will persevere, they will find that the severe and exact
chronological record through which they are taken with regard to
each class of paupers--the Able-bodied, the Vagrants, the Sick,
the Women, the Children, the Aged, etc.--will presently reveal to
them the current in which they are themselves moving, the stream
of tendencies down which we are all floating, with a clearness
of comprehension not otherwise to be obtained. It is here not a
question of whether we approve of this evolution of policy, or of
whether we should seek to promote or to resist it, but merely of
what exactly it has been, and therefore now is.
In view of the attention given to the Poor Law by many writers,
it is, perhaps, a matter for surprise, that no such chronological
analysis of policy has before been undertaken. Except in regard to
a few special matters, it is impossible, in any published work, to
trace the exact course of development of English Poor Law policy
since the great revolution of 1834. The most systematic books upon
the English Poor Law System, such as those by Dr. Aschrott and
Monsieur Émile Chevalier,[1] have confined themselves, in the main,
to a description of the contemporary state of things, with only
comparatively brief and general accounts of how it came about. The
popular manuals, such as the admirable little book of the Rev. T.
W. Fowle, can naturally only give such scraps of history as are
current.[2] Even Mr. Mackay, in adding a third volume to Sir George
Nicholls' _History of the English Poor Law_,[3] has limited himself
to a series of essays on particular points, without attempting
any but the briefest chronological analysis of the evolution of
policy of the Central Authority since 1834, upon which the whole
administration of the Boards of Guardians depends.
[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.
It is easy to understand this general reluctance to work out,
from the materials themselves, the Poor Law history of the last
three-quarters of a century. As with all nineteenth-century
history, the extent, the variety, and the intricacy of the
various sources are simply overwhelming. The number of official
records--Statutes, Orders, Circulars, Minutes, Reports, Letters,
etc.--dealt with for the present small volume (although we have
confined ourselves in the main to the publications of the Central
Authority itself, and have not been able to consult the manuscript
records and letter-books of more than a score of the Boards of
Guardians) runs into, literally, tens of thousands.
So great a mass of documentary material, without arrangement,
unclassified, unindexed, formless, and void of any obvious
significance, could be dealt with only by a systematic exploration.
We may here describe, as an instance of sociological method, the
plan that we adopted. What obscured the history was the manner in
which masses of heterogeneous facts were heaped together. To read,
one after another, these complicated Orders and lengthy Reports,
each dealing with all kinds of paupers and various methods of
relief, was but to accumulate confusion. They resembled a heap of
geological conglomerates which could not be assayed until they had
been broken up in such a way as to sort the different materials
into separate homogeneous parcels. We discarded all idea of making
précis, summaries, or analyses of particular statutes or orders,
believing that in this way brevity is gained only at the expense
of omitting important qualifications. After the choice of a
provisional scheme of classification, to which careful thought was
given, the expressions of policy embodied in each document were all
severally copied on loose sheets of paper of even size and shape.
Every prescription or dictum conveying an expression of policy with
regard to a particular class of paupers was placed upon a separate
sheet. Thus, a single Order or Circular might yield items relating
to women, to children, to persons on Outdoor Relief, to the sick,
to the aged, and so on. However many and however closely related
were the classes to which the same prescription applied, it was
noted on a separate sheet for each of them, with the date and place
and exact source. To deal in this way, with scrupulous accuracy
and exhaustiveness, with all the Statutes, all the General Orders,
all the Special Orders, all the Circulars, all the published
Minutes, all the official reports, and all the letters of the
Central Authority to which we could gain access absorbed something
like nine months' continuous work. But for the first time order
was evolved out of chaos. It was easy to sort the loose sheets by
subjects, and to arrange each series chronologically. This done, we
had before us, separated out from the mass, every prescription or
dictum as to the policy to be pursued, or the action to be taken
with regard to each particular class. The series of prescriptions
and suggestions with regard to children, for instance, could be
read in chronological sequence. At this stage it needed little
ingenuity to seize the salient points. The development of policy
leaped to the eyes. Another three months' work enabled the record
to be put into a series of continuous narratives, with precise
references to the original authorities.
The reader who wants merely to know what it all amounts to should
turn to the last four chapters. Here he will find, succinctly set
forth, first "The Principles of 1907," being the principles on
which, as a matter of fact, the Local Government Board was (and
still is) proceeding, in contrast with "The Principles of 1834,"
from which seventy-five years of experience have reluctantly driven
it. In subsequent chapters will be found a critical examination
of both the Majority and the Minority Reports of the Poor Law
Commission of 1905-1909, in the light of these "Principles of 1834"
and "Principles of 1907," with an attempt to appreciate what is
novel in those Reports, and to estimate how far they are severally
consistent with a due enforcement of personal responsibility.[4]
If the reader or reviewer is still more impatient he will probably
content himself with the final summary and conclusion.
[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).
It remains for us to acknowledge the help without which this work
could not have been accomplished. The task was undertaken at the
suggestion of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law; and it formed
the subject of a report circulated to the Commission in July
1907. No printed document has been quoted which is not published
to the world; and (with trifling exceptions of ancient date) no
unprinted Minute or Letter has been used which has not been issued
as a public document, or is not freely accessible in the official
archives. But we owe to the officials of the Local Government Board
and of the Boards of Guardians concerned--and among so many it
would be invidious to particularise--not only various facilities
for consulting these public documents, but also many helpful
suggestions, criticisms, and corrections of errors of fact. Above
all we are indebted to Miss Mary Longman, of Girton College,
Cambridge, and of the London School of Economics and Political
Science, for the whole of the laborious service of effecting, under
our direction, the preliminary breaking-up of the conglomerates,
and much help in the more interesting work of making the final
assay. Without this zealous, unsparing, and devoted assistance, we
could not have found time to execute the work. Mrs. F. H. Spencer,
D.Sc. (Econ.), investigated for us the records of various Boards
of Guardians up and down the country, in order to trace their
official correspondence with the Poor Law Commissioners, the Poor
Law Board, and the Local Government Board. To Miss Mildred Bulkley,
B.Sc. (Econ.), also of the London School of Economics and Political
Science, we owe not only many suggestions of value, but also the
checking of all the references, the correcting of the proofs, and
the preparing of the index.
SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB.
41 GROSVENOR ROAD, WESTMINSTER.
_January, 1910._
CONTENTS PAGE
PREFACE v
CHAPTER I
THE REVOLUTION OF 1834 1
The 1834 Report--National Uniformity--The
Able-bodied--Vagrants--Women--The Children--The Sick--The Aged and
Impotent (or Infirm)--The Workhouse--Emigration--Relief on
Loan--The Principles of 1834.
The Act of 1834 and its Amendments--National Uniformity--The
Able-bodied--Vagrants--Women--Children--The Sick--The Aged and
Impotent--The Workhouse--Emigration--Relief on Loan.
CHAPTER II
THE POOR LAW COMMISSIONERS 21
The Able-bodied (i.) on Outdoor Relief, (ii.) in the
Workhouse--Vagrants--Women--Children--The Sick--Persons of Unsound
Mind--Defectives--The Aged and Infirm--Non-Residents--The
Workhouse--Admission--Segregation--Service--Diet--Cleanliness and
Sanitation--Discipline--Employment--Sanctions--Discharge and
Detention--The Workhouse of the General Consolidated Order of
1847--The position in 1847 compared with the Principles of 1834.
CHAPTER III
THE POOR LAW BOARD 88
The Able-bodied--National Uniformity--Municipal Work for the
Unemployed--Vagrants--Women--Children--The Sick--Persons of
Unsound Mind--Defectives--The Aged and Infirm--Non-Residents--The
Workhouse--Emigration--Relief on Loan--Co-operation with Voluntary
Agencies--The Position in 1871.
CHAPTER IV
THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD 147
The Able-bodied--National Uniformity--The Workhouse Test--The Labour
Test--The modified Workhouse Test Order--The Test Workhouse--The
Provision of Employment--The Farm
Colony--Vagrants--Women--Children (i.) on Outdoor Relief; (ii.) in
Poor Law Schools; (iii.) the Workhouse Children; (iv.) The
Education of the Indoor Pauper Child; (v.) Boarding-out; (vi.)
Apprenticeship; (vii.) Adoption--The Sick--Domiciliary
Treatment--Institutional Treatment--The Municipal Medical
Service--Persons of Unsound Mind--Defectives--The Aged and
Infirm--Outdoor Relief--Indoor Relief--Non-Residents--The
Workhouse--Emigration--Relief on Loan--Co-operation with Voluntary
Agencies.
CHAPTER V
THE PRINCIPLES OF 1907 257
The Departures from the Principles of 1834--The Principle of National
Uniformity--The Principle of Less Eligibility--The Workhouse
System--New Principles unknown in 1834--The Principle of Curative
Treatment--The Principle of Universal Provision--The Principle of
Compulsion--The Contrast between 1834 and 1907--No Man's Land.
CHAPTER VI
THE MAJORITY REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION OF 1905-1909 274
The Principles of 1907--The Plea for a Single Destitution Authority--
The Reversion to 1834--The mutual Incompatibility of the Proposals
of the Majority Report--The Principle of Curative Treatment and a
Destitution Authority--The Principle of Compulsion and a
Destitution Authority--The Principle of Universal Provision and a
Destitution Authority.
CHAPTER VII
THE MINORITY REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION OF 1905-1909 296
The Principle of Prevention--The "Moral Factor" in the Problem of
Destitution--The Sphere of Voluntary Agencies in the Prevention of
Destitution.
CHAPTER VIII
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 312
APPENDIX A 321
Memorandum by the Local Government Board as to the Local Authorities
for Poor Law purposes and the Out-relief Orders in force at the
end of the years 1847, 1871, 1906.
APPENDIX B 343
Extract from the Minority Report for Scotland giving the reasons in
favour of the Complete Supersession of the Poor Law.
INDEX OF UNIONS AND OTHER PLACES MENTIONED 365
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 371
ENGLISH POOR LAW POLICY
The English Poor Law Policy, of which we present an analysis, is that
which has been from time to time promulgated for the authoritative
guidance of local authorities in the relief of the destitute, whether
laid down by Parliament or by Departments of the National Government.
This policy is to be found principally in (1) Orders, whether "General"
or "Special"; (2) circulars and other instructional communications to
officials and to local authorities, and (3) reports to Parliament. These
documents fall into three periods, 1834-1847, 1847-1871, and 1871-1907,
corresponding respectively with the Poor Law Commissioners, the Poor Law
Board, and the Local Government Board. But these are themselves governed
by (4) the Act of 1834 and subsequent amending statutes; and the Act of
1834 itself lays down no policy, and having regard to its origin, and to
its immediate connection with the recent Royal Commission, it cannot be
understood without (5) the Report of the Royal Commission of 1834. Hence
it is convenient, if not indispensable, in order to render the
subsequent analysis intelligible, to begin with an exact statement of
the proposals of the Report of 1834.[5]
[5] This analysis is confined to relief in all its various forms,
excluding all questions of chargeability (or the recovery from
other persons of the amount expended on relief), settlement,
removal, assessment, rating, and mere administrative procedure.
CHAPTER I
THE REVOLUTION OF 1834
It is unnecessary for us even to refer to the disastrous chaos into
which the Poor Law and its local administration had in 1832 fallen, or
to the events which led up to the celebrated Royal Commission appointed
in that year. Their report, presented in 1834, and the Poor Law
Amendment Act of the same year, together form the starting-point of all
subsequent legislation and administration.
THE 1834 REPORT
The proposals of the Commissioners of 1834 were either formal
"recommendations," exceptionally displayed in prominent type, or
suggestions scattered among the pages which purport to summarise the
evidence. For instance, the famous "principle" that the situation of the
pauper should not be made "really or apparently so eligible as the
situation of the independent labourer of the lowest class" is not a
"recommendation," but occurs only as an assertion in the course of an
argument.[6] We have therefore included, in the following statement of
"the principles of 1834," all dogmatic assertions of this nature, as
well as the formal recommendations.
[6] p. 228 of the Report of 1834. The references are to the latest
reprint (1905).
_A._--_National Uniformity_
The most revolutionary principle of the Report of 1834--the fundamental
basis alike of the Act of 1834 and of the policy of the Central
Authority--was that of national uniformity in the treatment of each
class of destitute persons. It was this principle that was in most
marked contrast with the previous practice, under which each parish or
union had pursued its own Poor Law policy. It was this principle that
furnished the ground for the very existence of a Central Authority. The
Commissioners recommended that there should be uniformity in the
administration of relief in the different parts of the country, in
order--
(_a_) To reduce the "perpetual shifting" from parish to parish;
(_b_) To prevent discontent among paupers; and
(_c_) To bring the management more effectually under the control of
Parliament.[7]
[7] pp. 279-280 of the Report of 1834.
For this among other reasons the recommendation seemed to the
Commissioners to follow, "as a necessary consequence, that the
Legislature should divest the local authorities of all discretionary
power in the administration of relief."[8] But they did not put this
recommendation into large type. What they put into large type was the
recommendation that there should be a Central Authority to control the
administration, _directed_ to frame and enforce regulations, "as far as
may be practicable ... uniform throughout the country."[9]
[8] p. 294 of the Report of 1834.
[9] p. 297 of the Report of 1834.
It is to be noted that the uniformity proposed by the Commissioners was
a geographical uniformity in the treatment of particular classes of
paupers, both indoor and outdoor, in different places, not an identical
treatment of all paupers, or of all the paupers in any one place. We
shall deal presently with their varying recommendations with regard
to particular classes. But in two categories they proposed a further
uniformity, a uniformity in the treatment of different individuals in a
class. They emphatically pointed out that any attempt to discriminate
according to merit, _in the award of outdoor relief_, is dangerous
and likely to lead to fraud.[10] This proposed further uniformity of
treatment among individuals in a class, it will be seen, is expressly
limited to the amount to be given as outdoor relief. It is not
repeated in that part of the Report which deals with classification
in institutions, nor does it apply to the decision as to whether
or not outdoor relief should be given at all. A further uniformity
recommended by the Commissioners was that of identity of treatment of
the able-bodied, whether deserving or undeserving. To this we shall
refer in connection with the able-bodied. It is to be noted that the
Commissioners do not explicitly apply it to any but the able-bodied.[11]
[10] p. 47 of the Report of 1834.
[11] pp. 263-264 of the Report of 1834.
_B.--The Able-Bodied_
Apart from a few stray suggestions, it might almost be said that
the Report of 1834 was entirely directed to the treatment of the
adult able-bodied labourer, with the family dependent on him. Let
us take, for example, the famous principle, already referred to,
that the situation of "the individual relieved shall not," on the
whole, "be made really or apparently so eligible as the situation
of the independent labourer of the lowest class." This proposal,
characterised as "the first and most essential of all conditions,"
occurs, as a dogmatic assertion, in the discussion of the remedial
measures to be applied _to the able-bodied_.[12] It cannot be said
to be clear from the Report whether the Commissioners wished this
principle to be understood as applicable to the relief of any persons
other than adult able-bodied wage-earners and their families. It is
followed by forty-four pages of argument and illustration relating
exclusively to the able-bodied wage-earner. These are summed up in a
sentence at p. 279 ("If the vital evil of the system, _relief to the
able-bodied on terms more eligible than regular industry_"), which
points to the same limitation. The principle is not reasserted when
the Commissioners, in quite other parts of their Report, make their
few recommendations with regard to the aged, the sick, and the orphan
poor. We have failed, indeed, even to satisfy ourselves from the
context whether the Commissioners had in their minds the case of the
adult able-bodied woman without a husband. Though there is no phrase or
definition excluding the independent female wage-earner from the term
"able-bodied," the Commissioners frequently use this term as applicable
to men only; and nowhere do they mention, in recommendation or by way
of illustration, under the category of able-bodied, the independent
woman worker.
[12] p. 228 of the Report of 1834.
When we pass to recommendations explicitly restricted to the
able-bodied, we are left in the same uncertainty as to what the term
includes. No definition of able-bodied occurs in the Report. From the
course of the argument throughout and all the illustrations from the
evidence, we infer that the Commissioners had exclusively in view
the adult man capable of obtaining employment in the labour market
at any wage whatsoever, together with his wife and children under
sixteen dependent on him. It is important to notice this ambiguity in
the Report of 1834, because it explains a similar ambiguity in the
subsequent policy of Parliament and the Central Authority.
Assuming that we understand what classes of persons were intended
by the Commissioners to be included under the term able-bodied, the
proposals of the Report of 1834 are clear and peremptory:
I. That outdoor relief to the able-bodied and their families should be
discontinued; except--
(_a_) As to medical relief; and
(_b_) Apprenticeship of children.
No other exceptions should be made. "Where cases of real hardship occur,
the remedy must be applied by individual charity, a virtue for which no
system of compulsory relief can or ought to be a substitute."[13] "It
appears to us that this prohibition" (of outdoor relief to the
able-bodied) "should come into universal operation at the end of two
years,"[14] Meanwhile, it was suggested--
(_a_) That there should be a gradual substitution of relief in kind
for money doles;[15]
(_b_) "That all who receive relief from the parish should work for
the parish exclusively, as hard and for less wages than independent
labourers work for individual employers."[16]
(_c_) That the able-bodied, even "of the best character," should
not be offered "more than a simple subsistence. The person of bad
character, if he be allowed anything, could not be allowed
less."[17]
[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.
That these recommendations had in view only the adult able-bodied
person, capable of obtaining employment for wages, is supported by the
explicit statement of the Commissioners that "the outdoor relief of
which we have recommended the abolition is, in general, partial relief
... at variance with the spirit of the 43rd of Elizabeth, for the
framers of that Act could scarcely have intended that the overseers
should 'take order for setting to work' those who have work and are
engaged in work; nor could they by the words 'all persons using no
ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by' have intended
to describe persons 'who do use an ordinary and daily trade of
life.'"[18]
[18] p. 262 of Report of 1834.
II. That the able-bodied should be offered maintenance in a workhouse.
It is important to notice exactly what the Commissioners here proposed,
with all the emphasis of large type. Relief to the able-bodied and their
families was to be "in well-regulated workhouses (_i.e. places where
they may be set to work according to the spirit and intention of the
43rd of Elizabeth_)."[19]
[19] _Ibid._
These workhouses for the able-bodied were to be separate from the
buildings in which the aged and the children were accommodated; they
were to be under separate officers; and were expressly not to form part
of one great establishment containing other classes of paupers.[20] The
character of the employment to be found for the able-bodied must also be
noted, as the Commissioners made this a cardinal point. It will be
remembered that the 43rd of Elizabeth directed that the overseers should
obtain "a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, and other necessaries
for the poor to work upon," _i.e._ that they should "set the poor to
work" on a normal productive enterprise. This principle is repeated and
emphasised by the Commissioners. The employment to be found for the
able-bodied "ought to be useful employment." Fictitious, artificial, or
useless labour was "pernicious," and "ought to be carefully
prevented.... The association of the utility of labour to both parties,
the employer as well as the employed, is one which we consider it most
important to preserve and strengthen; and _we deem everything
mischievous which unnecessarily gives to it a repulsive aspect_. At
the same time we believe that in extended districts the requisite
sources of employment will be easily found. The supply of the articles
consumed in workhouses and prisons would afford a large outlet for the
_manufactures carried on in the House_."[21] They even refer with
approval to outdoor employment as possible in most districts.
[20] pp. 306-307 of Report of 1834.
[21] p. 324 of Report of 1834.
_C.--Vagrants_
With regard to vagrants, the Commissioners were convinced that they
would "cease to be a burden," if they were treated like the ordinary
able-bodied pauper. The difficulty was to enforce this, and they
therefore recommended that the Central Authority should "be empowered
and directed to frame and enforce regulations as to the relief to be
afforded to vagrants and discharged prisoners."[22]
[22] p. 340 of Report of 1834.
_D.--Women_
With regard to the treatment of women, it cannot be said that the Report
of 1834 afforded much guidance to the Central Authority. Whether or not
the Commissioners meant to propose the abolition of outdoor relief to
the legally independent able-bodied woman is, as we have shown,
indeterminate. In this Report the single independent woman is nowhere
mentioned. The wife is throughout treated exactly as is the child; and
it is assumed that she follows her husband, both with regard to the
continuance of outdoor relief to the aged, the impotent, and the sick;
and with regard to its abolition in the case of the able-bodied. Such
women as entered the workhouse were apparently to be regarded as divided
into only two classes; they were to be accommodated either in the
building for "the aged and really impotent," or else in the House for
the "able-bodied females."[23] With regard to the really baffling
problems presented by the widow, the deserted wife, the wife of the
absentee soldier or sailor, the wife of a husband resident in another
parish or another country--in each case whether with or without
dependent children--the Report is silent.
[23] p. 306 of Report of 1834.
To the class of mothers of illegitimate children the Commissioners
devoted much attention. The almost universal practice had been for such
mothers to receive outdoor relief, the amount of which the parish was
supposed to attempt to recover from the putative fathers. We do not find
that the Report recommended any change in the method of relief of such
paupers. Its proposal was, in effect, to put the mothers of illegitimate
children in the same position as the widows with legitimate children. As
already mentioned, the Commissioners nowhere state whether they
recommend any change in the method of relief of such widows--unless,
indeed, it could be argued that these women were to be included under
the class of able-bodied. The revolutionary change which the Report
proposed with regard to bastardy dealt with chargeability, not methods
of relief. The Commissioners strongly recommended the exemption of the
putative father from any legal obligation to reimburse the parish. "If,"
say the Commissioners, "our previous recommendations are adopted, a
bastard will be, what Providence appears to have ordained that it should
be, a burden on its mother, and where she cannot maintain it, on her
parents."[24]
[24] p. 350 of Report of 1834.
_E.--The Children_
Apart from apprenticeship, the Report deals only incidentally with
children. It is assumed throughout that children go with their parents,
both with regard to the continuance of outdoor relief to the aged,
impotent and sick, and with regard to its abolition in the case of the
able-bodied.
On one point the Report is emphatic and clear, namely, that, where
children do enter the workhouse, they are to be accommodated in a
separate building, under a separate superintendent, in order that they
may "be educated" by "a person properly qualified to act as a
schoolmaster."[25]
[25] p. 307 of Report of 1834.
With regard to apprenticeship, all that the Report is--
(1) Expressly to except relief by way of apprenticeship from its
proposal to abolish outdoor relief to the able-bodied parent.[26]
(2) To recommend that the Central Authority should "be empowered to
make such regulations" as it might think fit; and subsequently "to
make a special inquiry" into the subject.[27]
[26] p. 262 of Report of 1834.
[27] p. 338 of Report of 1834.
_F.--The Sick_
In contradistinction to the revolutionary proposals of the Report of
1834 with regard to the able-bodied, it is extraordinary that it
suggested absolutely no change with regard to the sick. The current
practice was, in nearly every case, to deal with the sick by outdoor
relief, with or without medical attendance.[28] The Report contains no
suggestion for any alteration in this respect. When the Commissioners
came to sketch out the classification of their proposed workhouse
institutions, they did not include anything in the nature of a
hospital.[29] This explains why the Report of 1834 does not mention any
provision for indoor medical officers. Even when dealing with the
able-bodied and their families, the Commissioners explicitly except
medical attendance from their proposed abolition of outdoor relief.[30]
[28] p. 43 of Report of 1834.
[29] pp. 306-307 of Report of 1834.
[30] p. 262 of Report of 1834.
This omission of anything in the nature of proposals for indoor relief
for the sick becomes the more significant when we notice that the
Commissioners do allude with approval to a possible extension of
institutional treatment for certain classes of defectives, such as
lunatics and the blind.[31]
[31] p. 307 of Report of 1834.
_G.--The Aged and Impotent (or Infirm)_
An almost similar absence of proposals is to be noted with regard to the
aged and impotent. The current practice was to deal with these cases, as
a rule, by outdoor relief. On this the Commissioners observe merely that
"the outdoor relief to the impotent (using that word as comprehending
all except the able-bodied and their families) is subject to less
abuse.... No use can be made of the labour of the aged and sick, and
there is little room for jobbing if their pensions are paid in money.
Accordingly, we find that even in places distinguished in general by the
most wanton parochial profusion, the allowances to the aged and infirm
are moderate."[32] The Commissioners made no proposal that outdoor
relief to the aged or impotent (or infirm) should be abolished, or even
curtailed.
[32] pp. 42-43 of Report of 1834.
Such "aged and really impotent" persons as were accommodated in the
workhouse were to have a separate building to themselves, under a
separate superintendent; expressly in order that "the old might enjoy
their indulgences."[33]
[33] p. 307 of Report of 1834.
Passing now to those proposals of the Report which affected paupers
generally, these concern the organisation of the workhouse, emigration
and relief on loan.
_H.--The Workhouse_
With regard to the workhouse, the whole emphasis of the Report is upon
classification of the inmates according to their needs; and
classification, not in separate parts of one building, but by the
allocation to separate classes of entirely distinct buildings in order
that there might be separate and differing treatment under distinct
management.
The Commissioners state that "at least four classes are necessary:--
1. The aged and really impotent.
2. The children.
3. The able-bodied females.
4. The able-bodied males.
"Of whom we trust the two latter will be the least numerous classes. It
appears to us that both the requisite classification and the requisite
superintendence may be better obtained in separate buildings than under
a single roof."[34] The Commissioners were insistent that the treatment
measured out to each class should differ according to its requirements,
and "each class might thus 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 discipline as will repel the indolent and vicious."[35] The
need for separate buildings, under entirely different kinds of officers,
with different qualifications, at different rates of payments--in
contradistinction to one large building under a single officer--is
emphasised again and again at different parts of the Report.[36] It was,
indeed, largely in order to provide these specialised institutions that
the Commissioners recommended the formation of unions, it being made a
cardinal principle that the Central Authority should "assign" to the
various existing workhouses thus coming under one board of guardians
"separate classes of poor."[37]
[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.
It is interesting to notice that, apart from this cardinal principle of
classification by separate and specialised buildings, practically the
only recommendations relating to the organisation of the workhouse,
which are to be found in the Report, relate either to the character of
the employment to be provided in the buildings set aside for the
able-bodied--which, as we have seen, was expressly to be of a normal
productive character, free from repellent characteristics--or to the
enactment of a maximum diet (and no minimum). "The Commissioners should
be empowered to fix a _maximum_ of the consumption per head within the
workhouses, leaving to the local officers the liberty of reducing it
below the maximum if they can safely do so."[38]
[38] p. 298 of Report of 1834.
_I.--Emigration_
Without laying much stress upon emigration, the Report recommends that
any vestry should be empowered to pay for it out of the poor rate, in
the case of persons (apparently whether paupers or not) having
settlements in the parish and willing to emigrate.[39]
[39] p. 357 of Report of 1834.
_J.--Relief on Loan_
The Commissioners recommended "that under regulations to be framed...
parishes be empowered to treat any relief afforded to the able-bodied,
or to their families, and any expenditure in the workhouses, or
otherwise incurred on their account, as a loan," to be legally
recoverable. It is to be noted that this proposal is expressly limited
to the "able-bodied or to their families." No definition, as usual, is
given of the term able-bodied.[40]
[40] p. 337 of Report of 1834.
_K.--The Principles of 1834_
To sum up the principles of administration recommended for adoption in
the Report of 1834, omitting minor recommendations and incidental
qualifications, they resolve themselves into three. The Principle of
National Uniformity required that the relief afforded to each class of
paupers should be uniform throughout the kingdom. The Principle of Less
Eligibility demanded that the conditions of existence afforded by the
relief should be less eligible to the applicant than those of the lowest
grade of independent labourers. The Workhouse System was recommended on
the assumption that it was the only means by which the Principle of Less
Eligibility could be in practice enforced. The two latter principles
were applied explicitly only to the able-bodied and their families. To
them (but to them only) any other form of relief ought, it was urged, to
be made unlawful.
THE ACT OF 1834 AND ITS AMENDMENTS
The marked feature of this period is the paucity of statutory enactment
affecting relief. Only four statutes[41] contain any provisions on the
subject (apart from administrative detail), and these provisions are
almost entirely mere enabling clauses, permitting the Central Authority
to make such rules as it thinks fit, subject to a few specified
exceptions. We can extract from these exiguous provisions nothing in the
nature of a policy imposed by Parliament on the Central Authority. As
already mentioned, it was assumed that the Central Authority would put
into execution the proposals of the Report of 1834. Parliament contented
itself with giving the Central Authority wide powers and almost
unfettered discretion in the use of them.
[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.
_A._--_National Uniformity_
Prior to 1834 there were many authorities legally entitled to order
relief from the rates. The Act of 1834 made for national uniformity by
confining this power, subject to certain exceptions as regards special
classes, to the boards of guardians when formed; and until these were
formed, to the select vestries or bodies formed under local Acts; to the
exclusion, in these places, of the Justices of the Peace and the
overseers. The new relief-giving local authorities were made subject to
the control of a Central Authority, to be exercised by rules having the
force of law.
Two of the great classes of relief were singled out for special
reference in the Act. The Central Authority was expressly empowered to
make "rules, orders and regulations to be observed and enforced at every
workhouse."[42] The Central Authority was also expressly empowered to
make "rules, etc., to regulate the relief of the able-bodied and their
families."[43] With regard to all other classes of paupers (_e.g._ the
aged and impotent; orphan and deserted children; widows and deserted
wives, with their children; and the sick--unless any of these can be
supposed to have been included by Parliament under the term able-bodied)
the Central Authority had general powers only; the administration of all
poor relief was made subject to its direction and control; and it was
empowered and directed "to make rules for the management of the poor,
the government of workhouses and the education of the children therein
... for the apprenticing the children of poor persons; and for the
guidance and control of all guardians, vestries and parish officers so
far as relates to the management or relief of the poor."[44]
[42] 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 42.
[43] _Ibid._ sec. 52.
[44] _Ibid._ sec. 15.
_B._--_The Able-Bodied_
It was expressly provided that relief to the able-bodied should be given
only in accordance with the rules of the Central Authority. These rules
might be of any kind, including (subject to exceptions) a total
prohibition, then or at any future time. In the special preamble to this
section, Parliament pointed to the difficulty of "an immediate and
universal remedy"--doubtless referring to the proposal of the Report of
1834 that all such relief should be prohibited within two years. But
Parliament gave no direction for prohibition, nor did it expressly limit
the discretion of the Central Authority on the subject, beyond certain
specified exceptions. These exceptions were (1) that complete discretion
was reserved to the board of guardians so far as regarded the grant of
food, temporary lodging or medicine "in cases of emergency," subject
only to reporting their action to the Central Authority; and also,
subject to the approval of the Central Authority, so far as regarded the
grant of money or other relief in such cases;[45] (2) that in cases of
"sudden and urgent necessity" the overseer was required to give "such
temporary relief as each case shall require in articles of absolute
necessity but not in money";[46] and (3) that any Justice might order
medical relief in case of "sudden and dangerous illness" and relief in
certain cases to non-parishioners.[47]
As in the Report itself, no definition is given in the Act of what was
meant by "able-bodied persons." In the special preamble, however,
prefixed to this section, it is recited that it is enacted in
consequence of the prevalent practice of giving relief "to persons or
their families who, at the time of applying for or receiving such
relief, were wholly or partially in the employment of individuals."[48]
[45] 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 52.
[46] _Ibid._ sec. 54.
[47] _Ibid._
[48] _Ibid._ sec. 52.
_C._--_Vagrants_
The Act of 1834 is silent with regard to vagrants, in accordance with
the proposal of the Report of 1834 that those destitute persons who had
hitherto been deemed vagrants should be dealt with simply as other
destitute persons. It may, however, be noted that express provision was
made to enable any one Justice to order temporary relief in kind to
persons not settled in nor usually residing in the parish, in cases of
urgent necessity, in which the overseer had refused relief.[49]
In 1842, however, it was enacted that the local authority might
"prescribe a task of work to be done by any person relieved in any
workhouse in return for the food and lodging afforded to such person,"
and (implicitly) might detain such person until the task was done; but
such detention was not to exceed four hours after breakfast on the day
following admission. Refusal or neglect to perform such task, or wilful
damage to property, subjected the person to be deemed an idle and
disorderly person within the meaning of the Vagrancy Act of 1824. This
section is not expressly confined to wandering persons, but the marginal
note confines it to the "occasional poor."[50]
[49] 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 54.
[50] 5 & 6 Vic. c. 57, sec. 5.
In 1844 the Central Authority was empowered to combine parishes, in
London and five other large towns, into districts for the provision of
Asylums for Houseless Poor, that is to say, "asylums for the temporary
relief and setting to work therein of destitute houseless poor"; to
constitute Boards for such districts; with the consent of such Boards,
to direct the establishment of such asylums, at the expense of the poor
rates of such districts, up to a maximum of one-fifth of their whole
Poor Law expenditure; and to make rules, etc., for such asylums, subject
to a conscience clause and to facilities for entry by ministers of
different denominations.[51] These Asylums for Houseless Poor were to be
mildly penal establishments, supplementary to the workhouses, and
involving detention for a term not exceeding four hours after breakfast
on the day after admission; or, in the case of a person subjected to
punishment for an offence committed during his stay, for any period up
to twenty-four hours.[52]
[51] 7 & 8 Vic. c. 101, secs. 41 to 56.
[52] _Ibid._ sec. 53.
_D._--_Women_
As in the Report of 1834, so in the Act of 1834, women do not appear as
a class. It is assumed that married women follow their husbands, either
with regard to the continuance of outdoor relief to the aged, the
impotent and the sick; or with regard to its regulation or prohibition
in the case of the able-bodied.
It is, as we have shown, difficult to infer that the term "able-bodied"
was meant to include any but persons ordinarily in employment at wages,
or capable of such employment. Whether or not Parliament had in
contemplation under this term even the adult independent woman without
encumbrances seems to us doubtful. It is practically clear that the term
was not intended by Parliament to apply to the widow, however
able-bodied in the ordinary sense, nor to the deserted wife, the wife of
the absentee sailor or soldier, or the wife of a husband resident in
another parish or another country, _if any of these were encumbered with
young children_, and so did not fall under the class of persons actually
or potentially in employment at wages, cited in the preamble to the
section dealing with the able-bodied.[53] If this is so, we can only
infer from the Act, as from the Report, that no change in practice was
then suggested. With regard to such women, at least, the discretion of
the Central Authority in its "direction and control" of poor relief, and
its "management of the poor," and its power to make rules "for the
guidance and control of" the local authority "so far as relates to the
management or relief of the poor," was unfettered.[54]
[53] 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 52.
[54] _Ibid._ sec. 15.
The fact that widows were not considered by Parliament to be included
within the term "able-bodied persons and their families" may further be
inferred from a section in the 1844 Act. This provided that the wife of
a husband either (_a_) beyond the seas, (_b_) in the custody of the law,
or (_c_) confined as a lunatic or idiot, should, notwithstanding her
coverture, be treated for purposes of relief, _as if she were a
widow_.[55] This implies that a widow was not regarded as subject to the
conditions of relief to "able-bodied persons and their families."
[55] 7 & 8 Vic. c. 101, sec. 25.
It may be noted that relief to the child under sixteen of a widow was to
be deemed relief to the mother;[56] and relief to an illegitimate child
under sixteen was to be deemed relief to the mother so long as she
remained unmarried or a widow.[57] Another section of the 1844 Act
allowed a widow having a legitimate child dependent on her, and no
illegitimate children, who at her husband's death was residing with him
in a place where she had no settlement, to be granted non-resident
relief.[58]
[56] 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 56.
[57] _Ibid._ sec. 71.
[58] 7 & 8 Vic. c. 101, sec. 26.
_E._--_Children_
With certain insignificant exceptions hereinafter noticed, the only
provisions with regard to children as such in the 1834 Act relate to
children in the workhouse. The Central Authority was directed to make
rules, etc., "for the education of the children" in the workhouse.[59]
It was specially enacted that no child in a workhouse was to be educated
in any creed other than that of his parent, or, if orphaned, "to which
his godparents may object." Facilities for free entry of ministers of
the child's own persuasion were to be accorded.[60]
[59] 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 15.
[60] _Ibid._ sec. 19.
In 1844 the Central Authority was expressly empowered at its discretion
to combine parishes (within fifteen miles) into school districts, and to
constitute boards for such school districts; and, subject to the consent
of a majority of such a board, to direct the establishment of district
schools at the cost of the poor rates of the district, up to a maximum
of one-fifth of the total Poor Law expenditure of the district.[61]
[61] 7 & 8 Vic. c. 101, secs. 40, 42-44.
The Central Authority was empowered to make rules for such schools, it
being, however, expressly enacted: (1) that an Anglican chaplain was
always to be appointed; (2) that facilities for visits by ministers of
other denominations were to be given; and (3) a conscience clause was
inserted.[62] Such district schools were to be for the accommodation of
pauper children under sixteen, either orphans, deserted, or having
parents who consented,[63] including such children from parishes outside
the district.[64]
[62] _Ibid._ sec. 43.
[63] _Ibid._ sec. 40.
[64] _Ibid._ sec. 51.
With regard to apprenticeship the law remained at first unchanged,
except that the Act of 1834 empowered the Central Authority to make
regulations (in significant phrase) "for the apprenticing the children
of poor persons"[65] in the execution of the then existing law. This
applied, not to those who were destitute or who applied for relief, but
to "the children of all such whose parents shall not, by the ...
churchwardens and overseers, or the greater part of them, _be thought
able_ to keep and maintain their children."[66]
[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.
In 1835, the Merchant Shipping Act incidentally authorised local
authorities to apprentice boys over thirteen, with their own consent, to
the mercantile marine, whatever the distance of the port or address of
the shipmaster; to pay a premium of £5; and to convey the boy to his new
master by a constable.[67]
In 1842 the Parish Apprentices Act made it clear that all the previous
Acts applied also to cases in which no premium had been paid.[68]
[67] 5 & 6 William IV. c. 19, secs. 26, 29.
[68] 5 & 6 Vict. c. 7.
But the first substantive alteration of the law was made in 1844, when
the Central Authority was expressly empowered to make regulations
prescribing the duties of masters and the other conditions of
apprenticeship; the power of apprenticing was confined to the boards of
guardians; and the former compulsory obligation on householders to
receive apprentices was abolished.[69] The class of children to be
apprenticed remained unchanged.[70]
[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.
_F._--_The Sick_
Parliament made no enactment with regard to the sick as a class; did not
therefore seek to interfere with the existing practice under which the
sick usually received outdoor relief; and did not even empower the
Central Authority to make any regulations for the relief of the sick as
such, except in so far as they were either inmates of workhouses or
belonged to the indeterminate class of the "able-bodied and their
families." Its only power in this connection lay in the general words
placing the administration of all relief under its direction and
control, and in the general authority to make rules, etc., for the
guidance and control of local officers as far as related to the
management or relief of the poor.[71]
[71] 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 15.
The only provision relating to the sick as such was an express sanction
of the existing power of any Justice to order medical relief in cases of
sudden and dangerous illness without any restriction whatever.[72]
[72] _Ibid._ c. 54.
With regard to lunatics, the only provision was one in 1838, that the
Justices might commit a dangerous or criminal lunatic to an asylum, at
the cost of the Poor Rate.[73]
[73] Criminal Lunatics Act, 1838, 1 & 2 Vict. c. 14, sec. 2.
We may note a provision, declaring that relief to a blind or deaf and
dumb wife or child under sixteen should not be deemed relief to the
husband or the parent.[74] This apparently prevented these (together
with their husbands or parents), from falling into the class of the
"able-bodied and their families."
[74] 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, sec. 56.
_G._--_The Aged and Impotent_
The only provision relating to the aged and impotent as such was the
express retention of the Justices' power to order outdoor relief without
limit of amount or period. This was made subject to the conditions that
the person should be (1) wholly unable to work, (2) entitled to relief
in the union, and (3) desirous of outdoor relief; and that (4) the order
should be given by two Justices "usually acting for the district," one
of whom had satisfied himself of his own knowledge that the conditions
were fulfilled.[75]
[75] _Ibid._ sec. 27.
_H._--_The Workhouse_
The conditions and character of the relief to be afforded by admission
to the workhouse were to be subject to rules etc., which the Central
Authority was empowered and directed to make.[76] The power of the
Central Authority was subject to an important limitation. Any order for
the building of a new workhouse was made conditional on obtaining the
consent either of a majority of the guardians or of a majority of the
ratepayers and owners.[77] The Central Authority could, however, without
such consent, order the local authority "to enlarge or alter" any
existing workhouse or building capable of being converted into a
workhouse up to a limit of £50 or one-tenth of the average Poor Rate for
the past three years.[78] Moreover, the local authority was not to
expend on the building, alteration or enlargement of any particular
workhouse (whether by way of loan or out of rate) more than the annual
average of the poor rate during the three preceding years.[79] These
limitations were removed, so far as regards the cost of sites in the
Metropolitan Police District and the parish of Liverpool, in 1844.[80]
It was also expressly provided that no person was to introduce alcoholic
liquor into a workhouse without the written order of the master, under
penalty of a fine not exceeding £10; nor was the master to do so save
for domestic use of the officers, except in conformity with the
rules.[81] Confinement beyond twenty-four hours, and the corporal
punishment of adults, were expressly forbidden.[82] Notices of the law
on these subjects were to be publicly displayed.[83] A conscience clause
protected workhouse inmates, and they had also the right to receive
visits by religious ministers of their own persuasions.[84]
[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.
_I._--_Emigration_
The Act carried out the proposal of the Report, by enabling the
ratepayers (including rated owners) to emigrate, at the expense of the
poor rates, with the approval of the Central Authority, "poor persons"
having settlements in the parish whether paupers or not.[85]
[85] _Ibid._ sec. 62.
_J._--_Relief on Loan_
It was enacted that any relief that the Central Authority might declare
or direct to be by way of loan should be legally recoverable by the
local authority, even by attachment of wages.[86]
[86] 4 & 5 William IV. secs. 58, 59.
Five years later the local authority was given power to attach Army and
Navy pensions, in repayment of the cost of relief, even without such
relief having been declared to be on loan.[87]
[87] Pensions Act, 1839, 2 & 3 Vict. c. 51, sec. 2.
CHAPTER II
THE POOR LAW COMMISSIONERS
It had, as we have seen, been left to the Poor Law Commissioners to
formulate their own policy, with the guidance of the Report of 1834.
This policy is, during the ensuing thirteen years, to be found in (1)
the orders issued under the Act of 1834 and subsequent statutes; (2) the
circulars and other explanatory or instructional communications to the
local authorities, inspectors, auditors, etc., and (3) the reports to
Parliament.
Under the term "order," we include, as is customary, all the "rules,
orders, and regulations" issued in pursuance of statutory powers. With
whatever parts of poor relief these dealt, they had the force of law;
either under the specific powers relating to workhouses,[88] or relief
to the able-bodied,[89] or under the general powers authorising the Poor
Law Commissioners to make "rules, orders, and regulations ... for the
guidance and control of all guardians, vestries, and parish officers so
far as relates to the management or relief of the poor."[90] According
to the Act of 1834 some of these orders were to be "General Rules," and
were not to take effect until they had been submitted to a Secretary of
State, and by him laid before Parliament for forty days; and they were
disallowable by the Privy Council.[91] A "General Rule" was to be "any
rule ... which shall, at the time of issuing the same, be addressed ...
to more than one union or to more parishes and places than one."[92]
Other orders, known first as "Particular Orders," and subsequently as
"Special Orders," and now simply as "Orders," were subject to no such
conditions. There was, however, no distinction between them as to
validity, force of law, or sanction. It was therefore open to the Poor
Law Commissioners to issue all its orders as particular or special
orders by addressing them successively to separate unions or parishes,
even if they were identical in their terms. For reasons explained in the
Poor Law Commissioners' Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law,
1839, this was the course adopted.[93] No general order was issued prior
to 1841.
[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.
With circulars so-called we include all explanatory or instructional
communications to local authorities or to the officers of central or
local authorities, or to Parliament. These, though embodying the policy
of the Central Authority, had not the force of law. Moreover, as they
were issued for particular emergencies, and were never withdrawn or
expressly abrogated, _they_--unlike any unrepealed orders--_must not be
considered as necessarily laying down general policy for all time_.
Subject to consideration of this limitation, we propose to include the
circulars, letters, etc., along with the general and special orders, in
our analysis of the policy laid down for each of the several classes of
destitute persons.
_A._--_The Able-Bodied_
(i.) _On Outdoor Relief_
The ambiguity that existed, alike in the Report and in the Act of 1834,
as to the meaning intended to be given to the term "the able-bodied"
was, to a large extent, reflected in those documents of the Central
Authority which expounded its policy with regard to the kind and
conditions of relief to be given to this class. Once more there is no
definition of the term able-bodied, which is used sometimes as an
adjective and sometimes as a substantive. From the context it must be
inferred, as we shall presently show, that the term is used in different
senses in the orders relating respectively to outdoor relief and to the
management of the workhouse. What proved in the event more inimical to
the principle of National Uniformity was the fact that in the orders
relating to outdoor relief to the able-bodied, there was no consistency
as to whether any class of women was or was not to be included among the
able-bodied. There are, as we shall presently describe, two distinct
streams of regulations affecting outdoor relief to the able-bodied, one
permitting such relief under conditions, culminating in the Outdoor
Relief Regulation Order of 14th December, 1852 (still in force), and the
other prohibiting it subject to exceptions, culminating in the Outdoor
Relief Prohibitory Order of 21st December, 1844 (still in force). In the
former series of regulations, beginning with the first orders issued in
the autumn of 1834 to particular unions, the term "able-bodied" is
_expressly qualified by the adjective "male"_ ("able-bodied male
persons").[94] In the other series, beginning in 1836 with the
Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions, the
category of the "able-bodied," _if we are to go by the actual wording of
the orders_, clearly comprises both sexes; at first by excepting widows
only from a universal rule, and presently by specifically including
"every able-bodied" person, "_male or female_."[95] That this differing
interpretation of the category of the "able-bodied and their families"
was actually intended by the Central Authority in 1840, and 1844, and
that it was not merely accidental, is shown by cases in which it was
decided that outdoor relief to single women having illegitimate children
was illegal, as being in contravention of the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory
Order in force in those unions;[96] thus proving that, under this order,
the category of "the able-bodied and their families" included
independent women with children; although in the other kind of orders,
contemporaneous in date, the same category included men only (and their
families). This is the more puzzling, in that we find the Central
Authority, in 1839 at least, regarding these very outdoor relief
prohibitory orders as practically, if not literally, applicable only to
able-bodied males. In the comprehensive defence of its action, when
pleading for a renewal of the Act, the Central Authority expressly
describes these orders as "_prohibiting outdoor relief to able-bodied
male paupers_"; and as having attained the object aimed at, that of
destroying the allowance system or relief in aid of wages, "_so far as
respects able-bodied male paupers and their families_."[97]
[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.
To sum up this question of definition, in one series of outdoor relief
regulations applicable to the able-bodied, in force in certain unions,
the category of "the able-bodied" expressly excludes independent women;
in another series of regulations, in force in other unions, the category
of "the able-bodied" includes such women. There is actual evidence that
the Central Authority enforced these differing determinations so far as
to include as among "the able-bodied" unmarried women having
illegitimate children in those unions in which one set of Orders was in
force. Whether it ever actually enforced this interpretation as regards
single women without children is not apparent in the published
documents, but would be seen from its records. The fact of variance
between the two interpretations of the category of "the able-bodied"
becomes important when the two series of regulations are consolidated
into two orders embodying distinct policies, one or other of which is
made applicable to every union in the country.
Once having determined what was included in the category of "the
able-bodied," the ground becomes more clear. With regard to outdoor
relief, there are the two streams of contemporaneous regulations already
alluded to--the one permitting it subject to conditions, the other
prohibiting it subject to exceptions.
The first series was, it is clear, regarded (at any rate down to 1842)
as temporary, only "to be sanctioned as a palliative for a time, and
until adequate and efficient workhouse accommodation shall be
provided."[98] These regulations were, in the autumn of 1834, issued
separately to certain unions pending the introduction of "proper
regulations";[99] but we also find them, between 1835 and 1842, included
as a matter of course in orders prohibiting outdoor relief, by way of
exception, but still only as providing a temporary alternative, until
accommodation can be obtained for the reception of such persons in the
workhouse.[100]
[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.
There was even a third series of Orders, which may perhaps be regarded
as even more provisional and temporary than the first series. To
various local authorities in large towns (such as Norwich), and in
the Metropolitan parishes, Orders were issued from 1835 onwards,
simply requiring that any outdoor relief to the able-bodied should
be, to the extent of one-third[101]--sometimes to the extent of
one-half[102]--"relief in kind," that is to say, in loaves of
bread.[103]
[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.
It has been assumed that it was the intention of the Central Authority
from the outset to replace these temporary orders permitting outdoor
relief to the able-bodied by some permanent injunction substituting
relief in the workhouse as the only method. But the documentary evidence
indicates that the Central Authority either never entertained the
idea--or else very quickly abandoned it--of issuing the Prohibitory
Order to the manufacturing towns of the north. Thus, in October 1836,
after nearly two years' experience, the Poor Law Commissioners, as their
Assistant Commissioner reported, were disposed to leave "the
contemplated workhouse system ... very much to the board of guardians,
and they did not feel it necessary to lay down those strict rules that
they had in some instances laid down for the government of unions in the
south of England."[104]
[104] MS. Minutes, Newcastle Board of Guardians, 7th October 1836.
In 1842 the Central Authority, perhaps unwittingly, took a new
departure. In the northern counties there were districts for which no
orders "concerning the outdoor relief of the able-bodied" had been
issued. The Central Authority had failed to induce the Local Authorities
to provide "adequate workhouse accommodation," and it was found that
"large numbers of able-bodied persons are often suddenly thrown out of
employment by the fluctuations of manufacturers" (_sic_).[105] To meet
this situation, a new General Order was issued (the Outdoor Labour Test
Order, 13th April 1842); on the ground that it was impracticable "to
issue the Order prohibiting outdoor relief to able-bodied persons."[106]
This order is historically of two-fold significance. It has had, as will
subsequently appear, a long and continuous career of its own, in force
in combination with the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order in particular
unions.[107] But between 1842 and 1852, standing by itself in other
unions,[108] it was the temporary embodiment of an alternative policy of
the Central Authority. This alternative policy was, in 1852, definitely
adopted by the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order (still in force), as the
one permanently appropriate for the circumstances of many unions,
covering a large part of England and Wales.
[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.
This policy of leaving to the discretion of the local authorities the
grant of outdoor relief to the able-bodied on certain conditions was, as
already mentioned, confined to men. We can find no explanation of, or
reason for, the entire absence of any provision for independent women
who were able-bodied. It can only be inferred that, in those districts,
the Central Authority meant the unlimited discretion of the local
authorities with regard to outdoor relief to able-bodied independent
women to continue. The outdoor relief sanctioned for able-bodied men was
strictly limited to persons who were not in employment for hire. This
limitation was expressly intended to prevent the old "Rate in Aid of
Wages." But it was subsequently expressly allowed that outdoor relief
might be given, in respect of the particular days in a week or the
particular weeks in a month during which persons were unemployed, whilst
they were in remunerative employment on other days of that week, or
other weeks of that month.[109] In the case of persons partially
disabled, and able to earn only partial maintenance, the Poor Law
Commissioners recommended that they "should be entirely supported by the
guardians"--not, be it noted, by being admitted to the workhouse--but
either by their being "set to work by the guardians in such manner as
may be suitable to their condition," or else by their being prohibited
from doing any work on their own account.[110]
[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.
It should be said that (with an exception to be hereafter noted in the
case of women) the Central Authority stood rigidly on the position taken
up by the 1834 Report that no regard was to be paid to character, in
judging applications for relief. "If a person," said the Poor Law
Commissioners in 1840, "be in a state of destitution, such person is to
be relieved, without reference to the moral character of such person.
Relief from the poor rates can only lawfully be given in cases where
persons are destitute of the means of support. And the fact that the
destitution may have been caused by the immorality or improvidence of
the party who seeks to be relieved does not alter or vary the duty of
guardians to administer relief proportional to the necessity of the
case."[111]
[111] Poor Law Commissioners to Plymouth Board of Guardians, 25th
April 1840.
The outdoor relief, where given, had to be subject to two conditions. It
was to be at least half in kind, and conditional on the recipient being
set to work by the local authority, the time, mode and conditions of
work being fixed by the Central Authority.
With regard to the kinds and conditions of "parish work," it was
repeatedly laid down by the Central Authority that none would be
sanctioned unless (_a_) the work was "hard," not of a kind usually
performed by independent labourers or competing with them, nor "much
regarded as to profitable results," strictly supervised, "of a laborious
and undesirable nature in itself," and "of such a nature as to
discourage applications from all who are not really necessitous"; (_b_)
paid "less than would be paid for work of equal quantity if performed by
independent labourers";[112] or as it was later stated, the payment
"ought to assume the form of relief, not of wages.... A single man or a
man with a wife and one child ought not to receive as much as a man with
a wife and eight children."[113]
[112] p. 45 of Second Annual Report, 1836; _Official Circular_,
No. 29, p. 151, 30th November 1843.
It is not explained how payment on the last principle could be made
consistent with the former principles. But the intention of the Central
Authority is clear. In the words quoted with approval in the circular of
1835, the parish was to be "the hardest taskmaster and the worst
pay-master."[114]
[113] Minute, 31st October 1842, p. 383 of Ninth Annual Report,
1843.
[114] p. 46 of Second Annual Report, 1836.
An important exception was made by a separate clause in the Order
providing that the guardians might depart from any of these regulations
in particular instances, and thus give outdoor relief to able-bodied
males on any conditions, subject to their reporting each such instance
within fifteen days to the Central Authority, and obtaining its
subsequent approval. With that approval, outdoor relief to able-bodied
men, without any conditions, was lawful. The records of the Central
Authority between 1842 and 1847, which have not been published, would
show how frequently application was made for this approval, and whether
the Central Authority pursued any definite policy in approving or
disapproving the cases, or merely approved all that were reported to it.
The second series of outdoor relief regulations, beginning with the
Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions of
1836, and culminating in the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844
(still in force), proceeds on the basis of forbidding outdoor relief to
the "able-bodied and their families." But from the outset we find a
series of express exceptions made in particular Orders, gradually
increasing in number and definiteness. The most numerous and the most
important of these exceptions relate to women, and will be subsequently
dealt with. For the male able-bodied person himself (and his family)
only three exceptions were to be made. The local authority had
discretion to allow him outdoor relief (_a_) in case of sudden and
urgent necessity; (_b_) in case of sickness, accident, or mental
infirmity in his family; or (_c_) for the burial of any member of his
family.[115]
[115] See Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, 1844, art. 1.
Another series of exceptions allowed outdoor relief to the families of
able-bodied persons (_a_) in gaol, or otherwise in custody; (_b_) absent
as soldiers, sailors or marines; or (_c_) otherwise residing outside the
union.[116]
[116] _Ibid._
A third exception empowered the local authorities (as in the analogous
case of the Outdoor Labour Test Order) to depart from these regulations
in any particular instance, and thus to give outdoor relief to the
able-bodied, whether men, women, or their families, on any conditions,
subject to their reporting each such instance within fifteen days to the
Central Authority and obtaining its subsequent approval. With that
approval outdoor relief to the able-bodied, without any conditions, was
lawful. The records of the Central Authority between 1842 and 1847 would
show what policy it pursued in approving or disapproving the cases of
unconditional outdoor relief to the able-bodied, which were reported by
those local authorities to which this Order had been issued. What
appears from the published documents is that the Central Authority,
between 1835 and 1842, "in cases where this Order had been issued ...
had been obliged to sanction large exceptions to its provisions."[117]
[117] Minute of Commissioners, 31st October 1842, p. 381 of Ninth
Annual Report, 1843.
On this, among other grounds, the Central Authority in 1843 took to
modifying the operation of the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Orders by
supplementing them, in certain of the unions in which they were in
force, by an Outdoor Labour Order, practically identical in terms with
the Outdoor Labour Test Order of 1842, which we have already mentioned
as being alone in force in other unions.[118] Similar Orders--in effect
modifying the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order--have ever since
continued to be issued to particular unions; but, from 1852 onward, in
the form of applying to the particular unions concerned the Outdoor
Labour Test Order of 1842, which had theretofore been issued alone.
[118] p. 379 of Ninth Annual Report, 1843.
We are now in a position to sum up the policy of the Central Authority,
with regard to outdoor relief to the able-bodied, as it stood in 1847,
embodied in documents applicable to three different parts of England and
Wales. In thirty-two unions the Labour Test Order of 1842 was alone in
force, whilst in twenty-nine others the regulations were essentially
similar to this. In this part of the country the discretion of the local
authorities to give outdoor relief to able-bodied independent women (as
to other independent women) was unfettered by any regulation, and not
directed by any instructions. Outdoor relief to able-bodied men and
their families was within the discretion of the local authorities, if it
was accompanied by test work by the man and subject to certain
conditions. In other parts of the country, comprising 396 unions, the
Prohibitory Order was alone in force, and outdoor relief to the
able-bodied, whether men or women, and their families, was, with
limited and precise exceptions, prohibited; unless, in particular
instances, the local authority subsequently reported it to, and got it
sanctioned by, the Central Authority. In yet other parts of the country,
comprising eighty-one unions, the Prohibitory Order and an Outdoor
Labour Test Order were jointly in force, and outdoor relief to the
able-bodied, whether men or women, and their families, was, so far as
general rules went, prohibited. But such outdoor relief was lawful if it
was in each case subsequently reported to, and approved by, the Central
Authority; with this difference between that given to able-bodied men
(and their families) and that given to independent women (and their
families) that the former had to be, and the latter had not to be,
accompanied by test work. This requirement of test work by the man, in
certain unions, as a condition of the outdoor relief to be thus
sanctioned by the Central Authority, appears at first sight to impose on
those unions an additional restriction on the grant of outdoor relief,
as compared with those unions in which outdoor relief could be
sanctioned by the Central Authority without test work. The practical
result may have been exactly the opposite. The records of the Central
Authority between 1843 and 1847 would show to what extent and in what
kind of cases its sanction to these cases of outdoor relief was given or
refused; and whether, according to the statistics, it was not given more
frequently and even as a matter of course, where test work was
obligatory as a condition, as compared with cases in which test work was
not required. If this was so, not only did union differ from union in
the extent to which outdoor relief to the able-bodied was sanctioned by
the Central Authority, but it may be that the statistics would show that
in this respect, sex differed from sex--such outdoor relief being freely
granted and lightly sanctioned to able-bodied men from whom test work
was exacted; and sanctioned with greater stringency in the case of the
able-bodied independent women from whom no such test was exacted.
(ii.) _In the Workhouse_
When "the able-bodied and their families" entered the workhouse, we find
the Central Authority prescribing a classification altogether different
from that applied to outdoor paupers. The very category of the
"able-bodied and their families" disappears. It was, of course,
inevitable that this should happen. In any institution, infants, boys,
girls, sick and healthy adults, male and female, required different
treatments. But, to the confusion of every one concerned, the Central
Authority retained, for its workhouse classification, as for the
entirely different classification of outdoor paupers, the same adjective
of "able-bodied," without even explaining that it was here used in an
altogether different sense. As usual in the documents of this period,
there is no definition of the term. But whenever it occurs in the
regulations affecting the workhouse, the term "able-bodied" was
apparently intended by the Central Authority to denote all persons not
being either children, "the aged and infirm," or "the sick." If the
draughtsman of the General Consolidated Order of 1847 had been aware of
the need for a definition clause, he would presumably have said that in
that Order the term "able-bodied" should denote those persons above the
age of childhood, and below that of "the aged," who for the time being
were in the enjoyment of normal health. This class, it will be seen,
differs considerably from that referred to in the preamble of the
section in the 1834 Act under which outdoor relief to the able-bodied
was to have been abolished; namely, persons (with their families) "who
at the time of applying for or receiving such relief were wholly or
partially _in the employment of individuals_."[119] The Act thus pointed
to the capacity to obtain employment for hire, at any wages whatsoever,
whatever may have been the state of health, as the essential
characteristic of being "able-bodied." This, too, was the construction
placed on the term when used in the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order,
1844, where the Central Authority expressly held that "poor persons who
have frequent ailments, who are ruptured and are generally of weak
constitutions" but who are "in receipt of wages"--however low such wages
might be--must be treated, for outdoor relief, as being "able-bodied
persons."[120] When such persons entered the workhouse, not merely would
the several members of their families pass into different categories,
but they themselves, if the doctor so decided, would, in the view of the
Central Authority, on crossing the threshold, cease to be "able-bodied
persons,"--and become members of the diametrically opposite category of
"the sick." If such persons, without being cured, subsequently left the
workhouse, we must infer that, according to the policy of the Central
Authority, their characteristic of physical or mental infirmity ceased
to be relevant, as they passed, on crossing the threshold, into the
ranks of "able-bodied persons."
[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.
Inside the workhouse, the "able-bodied" (in the workhouse sense) are
divided simply into male and female. We can find no regulations
specially affecting relief to them, as apart from other inmates of the
establishment, except some modifications in the amount of food allowed,
or of labour exacted. As even these modifications are inextricably mixed
up with the general regulations affecting all inmates, and are contained
in the same long series of Orders, culminating in the General
Consolidated Order of 1847, we relegate them to the subsequent section
on the workhouse.
_B._--_Vagrants_
We have seen that the policy of the Report and Act of 1834, with regard
to vagrants, was to ignore them as a class, to relieve them only in the
workhouse, and to deal with them exactly as with other workhouse
inmates. What the Central Authority seems to have contemplated was that
the strict application of the "workhouse test" would not only prevent
vagrants coming on the rates at all, but that it could be used to
prevent almsgiving. It was apparently with this view that the Central
Authority, in 1837, sanctioned a code of regulations for the admission
to the workhouse of the "casual poor," meaning "wayfarers" or homeless
"persons in a state of destitution ... who ... belonged to distant
parishes."[121] These regulations included admission by tickets
distributed by any ratepayer, and the performance of a task of work
before the grant of a meal.[122] In diet, discipline, and other
treatment, they were to be dealt with "as the other paupers in the
workhouse."[123] In other unions the regulations included the
establishment of a separate vagrant ward, which was equally sanctioned
by the Central Authority. A similar plan was strongly pressed on the
local authorities of the Metropolis in 1838 and 1839.[124] Such vagrants
must, however, if destitute, not be refused relief.[125] The Central
Authority hoped that "if these arrangements be adopted ... casual
almsgiving in the streets, by which vagrancy and imposture are
encouraged, will be materially checked."[126]
[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.
The first sign of discontent with this policy that we find is in 1841,
when the Central Authority is asked by the local authorities of Lambeth
and Colchester "whether the workhouse is to be a lodging house and to be
inundated with these trampers" who habitually "make the union house a
lodging house," greatly to the annoyance of the establishment. The
Central Authority admits that its policy of a mere application of the
"workhouse test" to vagrants has proved unsatisfactory, and declares the
only effectual remedy to be a separate semi-penal establishment.[127] In
the absence of adequate statutory powers, the Central Authority pours
out, between 1841 and 1844, a stream of regulations and suggestions to
local authorities, based on the idea of making the night's stay of the
vagrant more unpleasant to him. There was to be everywhere a separate
vagrant ward; without a fire; smoking and card playing were to be
strictly prohibited; they were to be bathed; their bedding was to be
inferior to that of other inmates, and so on. Above all, they were to be
prosecuted under the Vagrant Act on the slightest provocation.[128]
[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.
Yet the Central Authority was not yet convinced of the need for a
vagrant ward in every union. When the Bradford Board of Guardians
pointed out in 1844 that the average number of their vagrants was only
twelve a week, the Central Authority at once acquiesced in the
abandonment of the proposed vagrant ward, and said that arrangements
should be made to set the vagrants a task of work in the workhouse
itself.[129]
[129] Letter to Bradford Board of Guardians, 3rd October 1844.
In 1842 and 1844, as we have seen, slightly increased powers over
vagrants were obtained (including, but only by implication, statutory
authority for the four hours' detention in the morning), together with
powers to establish district asylums for the houseless poor in certain
large towns.
The Central Authority "framed a scheme for division of the whole of the
Metropolitan district" into areas corresponding "to the great lines of
roads along which mendicants and vagrants" entered London,[130] which
were to have separate establishments for vagrants, and so entirely
relieve the Metropolitan workhouses of their care.[131] What Orders were
issued to this effect is not clear. Meanwhile the House of Commons
appointed a Select Committee to consider the whole conduct of the
Central Authority; and no further action was taken. Orders were issued
to the boards of management of the newly created vagrant districts,
telling them that they need not meet.[132] How far these vagrancy
districts ever came into existence we have not yet discovered. One of
them, the North Eastern Metropolitan District, had got so far as to
enter into a contract for the purchase of a site and to borrow £3500 to
pay for it. "Owing to various causes, the chief of which was a want of
co-operation on the part of several of the boards of guardians, that
scheme, after an inquiry by a Committee of the House of Commons, was
abandoned."[133] Beyond this somewhat obscure episode, all that happened
was that when the General Consolidated Order of 1847 systematically
codified the regulations affecting workhouses, it included, scattered
among its various sections, a few provisions relating to the treatment
of the "casual poor wayfarers," such as the requirement of a separate
ward, and the express regulation of their diet and employment.[134]
[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.
_C._--_Women_
We have shown, in the preceding analysis of the Report and Act of 1834,
that neither the "principles of 1834" nor the enactment of Parliament
had prescribed the policy to be pursued with regard to women; except
that it was implied or assumed that wives were to follow their husbands
exactly as if they were infants. With regard to the widow, the deserted
wife, the wife of the absentee soldier or sailor, the wife of a husband
resident in another parish or another country--above all, with regard to
the independent able-bodied woman--the Central Authority had either to
let the existing practice of outdoor relief continue, or to discover a
policy for itself.
With regard to the able-bodied independent woman, we have shown that the
Central Authority developed, between 1834 and 1847, two distinct
policies which became applicable to two different geographical areas. In
the thirty-two unions in which the Outdoor Labour Test Order was alone
in force, the discretion of the local authorities to give outdoor relief
to able-bodied independent women was left unfettered by any rule,
instruction or advice of the Central Authority.[135]
[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.
In the 477 unions in which the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order was in
force (either with or without an Outdoor Labour Test Order), outdoor
relief to able-bodied independent women was prohibited, with certain
exceptions, which, between 1835 and 1844, steadily increased in number.
As crystallised in the Out Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844 (still in
force) outdoor relief was allowed to such able-bodied independent women,
(1) On account of sudden and urgent necessity;
(2) On account of the sickness, accident, or bodily or mental
infirmity of any member of their families (unlike a father in like case,
the independent mother was not required to produce a medical
certificate);
(3) For defraying the expenses of burial of any of their families;
(4) If a widow, for the first six months of widowhood or, without
limit of time, if, unable to earn a livelihood, and having one or more
children dependent on her, she had had no illegitimate child since her
widowhood.[136]
[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.
In the Circulars issued with these Orders, the only instructions with
regard to any class of able-bodied independent women relate to widows.
In these instructions the grant of outdoor relief during the first six
months of widowhood, without any mention of its being considered whether
they had children or not, or whether they were employed for wages or
not, is specially and repeatedly brought to the notice of the local
authorities as laudable.[137]
[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.
It was, indeed, insisted by the House of Commons Committee in 1838 "that
a power should be continued to the board of guardians, taking into
consideration the character of the parties, to relieve, out of the
workhouse, widows with young children left dependent upon them."[138]
[138] Report of House of Commons Committee on Poor Law
Administration, 1837-8, p. 39.
This is the more significant in that the Central Authority, in one case
at least, had tried a harsher expedient. In the Bradfield Union, which,
under Mr. Stevens' chairmanship, had adopted an ultra-rigorous policy,
the board of guardians itself passed a rule forbidding outdoor relief
"to any widow or single woman, not being aged or infirm, who is of
ability to work," except in sickness, accident or urgent necessity.[139]
This was much criticised but was maintained by the majority, who asked
the Central Authority to support them by issuing an Order prohibiting
all outdoor relief to able-bodied women not being aged or infirm. The
Poor Law Commissioners in reply said that they "most willingly confirm
the resolution, and in so doing they desire to state that they consider
the workhouse to be the best description of relief for all cases, and
they are always glad to perceive that the guardians of any union view
outdoor relief as the exception to the general rule, to be administered,
with caution, in cases of sickness, infirmity and particular distress
only."[140] But even the Bradfield Guardians found this Order, for which
they had themselves asked, quite unworkable; and they were reduced to
asking sanction for successive departures from it. They generally
granted outdoor relief to widows for the first few weeks of their
widowhood, and were often driven to extend it. They then asked for an
alteration permitting outdoor relief to able-bodied "widows of good
character with more than one child under eleven, if a boy, and under
thirteen if a girl." The Central Authority was loath to let go, but had
eventually to issue another Special Order as desired.[141]
[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.
The grant of outdoor relief to widows having children, apart from this
six months' term, is, "_so far as it relates to able-bodied women in
employment_," regarded as of doubtful policy, to be made with
circumspection, as likely to excuse contributions from relatives, to
discourage insurance, and to have all the evils of the rate in aid of
wages. It is suggested, moreover, that a widow can usually earn enough
to support one child.[142] It may be understood from a bare reference in
the Instructional Letter of 1839 to "able-bodied women themselves" as
well as to widows, that the Central Authority was alive to the effect
upon women's wages of the grant of outdoor relief to single independent
women in employment.[143] But in the revision of this Instructional
Letter in 1841--though its terms remained almost identical--the slight
reference to the single able-bodied woman wage-earner was silently
omitted.[144]
[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.
With regard to married women, the policy laid down by the Central
Authority differed according to the particular kind of Order in force,
and thus according to the locality in which they resided. In all but
specially excepted cases, relief to a woman under coverture was deemed
to be relief to her husband, and came thus within all the various
regulations and conditions limiting outdoor relief to the able-bodied
man.
In the thirty-two unions to which Outdoor Labour Test Orders were
applied by themselves--these culminating in the Outdoor Relief
Regulation Order 1852 (still in force)--the policy of the Central
Authority was to leave the discretion of the local authorities
unfettered, with regard to the grant of outdoor relief to married women,
except the wives of those men ("the able-bodied and their families") to
whom outdoor relief was only to be granted in return for labour. In
these latter cases the measure of the relief was to be the needs of the
family, not the work done by the husband. In 1835 the Central Authority
had even urged that, where the families were large, they "should be
furnished with provisions according to their numbers and necessities in
the same way as other paupers" by way of "additional relief" to the man
for the "wives and children, as far as shall be actually
necessary."[145]
[145] Circular, 21st September 1836, p. 48 of Second Annual
Report, 1836.
As the policy became settled, the phrase "additional relief" was
dropped; but the amount given to the husband was to depend, not on the
amount or value of the work that he did, but was to be "proportioned to
the wants of the applicant and his family, and should not be deemed
remuneration for the work done."[146] In these cases half, at least, of
the relief given to the husband was to be in kind; whilst, _according to
the Orders_, no labour was required from the wife.[147] In spite of the
absence from the Orders of any requirement that the wife should render
any task of labour, we find the Central Authority in 1842--concerned at
the earning of money by the wives (and children) of men at "parish
work"--making an inconsistent suggestion. In the Minute of 31st October
1842, it is suggested that, "if it be practicable, some employment, such
as picking up or carrying stones, should be provided for the wives and
children. The latter precaution is peculiarly important in the
manufacturing districts."[148] This requirement of labour from the wife
had, up to 1847, found no embodiment in any Order.
[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.
In the 477 unions to which the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844
applied, three extensive classes of wives were, by the policy of the
Central Authority, to be treated as if they were widows.
(_a_) A wife deserted by her husband and having only legitimate children
dependent on her could, under the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order,
1844, be given Outdoor Relief as a widow having a child dependent on
her. As a matter of fact, the position of any wife living apart from her
husband was better than that of a widow. The wife living apart from her
husband (whether technically deserted by him or not, and whether or not
he was within the union) could insist on the relief of her children,
without applying for relief for herself; and if the child was below the
age of seven, it could not be separated from her, _even with her own
consent_; and thus the relief had to be outdoor relief. She could,
moreover, send her children over seven into the workhouse without
herself accompanying them, or herself becoming a pauper. On the other
hand, though the local authority might, if it chose, grant outdoor
relief to a widow having a child dependent on her (if she had had no
illegitimate child born since her widowhood), it need not do so, and it
could not relieve her dependent children, whether under seven or over,
without making her a pauper.
(_b_) The wife of a husband--
(i.) Beyond the seas;
(ii.) In custody of the law; or
(iii.) Confined in an asylum as a lunatic or idiot was to be
treated, for indoor and outdoor relief alike, as if she were a widow (a
widow beyond the six months' term, though this is not so stated). By
"beyond the seas," the Central Authority understood "out of Great
Britain."[149]
[149] Instructional Letter, 17th October 1844; in Eleventh Annual
Report, 1845, p. 137.
(_c_) In the case of the wife of an able-bodied soldier, sailor, or
marine in His Majesty's service (wherever he might be situated), the
Central Authority expressly stated that it felt it to be "desirable to
give great latitude" to the local authorities.[150]
[150] Instructional Letter, 21st December 1844; in Eleventh Annual
Report, 1845, p. 59.
In all other cases, within those parts of the country to which this
Order applied, wives residing with their husbands had to follow them,
and were not to be relieved, either in or out of the workhouse, without
them. A more difficult question was whether a man could continue to
receive relief in the workhouse if his wife insisted on leaving it. The
Central Authority, on being appealed to by a local authority actually
confronted with such a case, decided that the wife could not be
prevented from leaving the workhouse. It hazarded the opinion (of which
we do not admit the legal validity), "that a woman may be restrained by
the control of her husband from leaving the workhouse, and if he
declines to use his marital control, it is in the power of the guardians
to dismiss the husband. But whether it is expedient or judicious to
pursue such a course must depend on the peculiar circumstances which
each individual case presents. One consideration is particularly
important in dealing with any case of this description, that is, whether
the husband is in a condition practically to exercise his control over
his wife. Where he is not, it would be very unadvisable, in the opinion
of the Commissioners, to make it a condition of the relief of the
husband or of his children (if he have any) that he should exercise an
authority over his wife which practically he cannot exercise."[151]
[151] _Official Circular_, 1st June 1845, No. 48, p. 90.
It is interesting at this point to sum up the policy of the Central
Authority, so far as embodied in its published documents between 1834
and 1847, with regard to outdoor relief to women, especially as
affecting the "Rate in Aid of Wages." The policy differed fundamentally
in the two different areas of the country governed respectively by the
two kinds of Orders. Where the Outdoor Labour Test Order (continued,
after 1852, by the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, which is still in
force) was alone applied, the discretion of the local authority to give
outdoor relief to women of any status, married or unmarried, with
children or without, was unfettered by any Order. The only rule made by
the Central Authority in the matter was that if the woman was the wife
of an able-bodied man who was himself employed on "parish work," and
residing with him, at least one-half of his relief should be in kind. No
rule was made or Order issued by the Central Authority against the grant
of outdoor relief to women employed for wages, even in respect of the
very days on which they were earning wages.
We have mentioned that the Central Authority, so far as men were
concerned, stood rigidly to the position of the 1834 Report that the
moral character of the applicant was to be absolutely disregarded in
considering the relief to be granted to him. With regard to women,
however, it took up a different position. We find it advising that the
mothers of illegitimate children should, on this ground alone, not be
granted outdoor relief.[152]
[152] Poor Law Commissioners to Plymouth Court of Guardians, 25th
April 1840.
Where the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order was in force, neither
spinsters nor wives residing with able-bodied husbands[153] could, apart
from sudden and urgent necessity, receive outdoor relief, unless they
were sick. But with regard to widows and wives living apart from their
husbands, the exceptions to the prohibition were so numerous that both
these classes may almost be said to have been expressly allowed to
receive outdoor relief. The fact that such women were in employment for
wages was not regarded by the Orders of the Central Authority as
relevant: nor was it prescribed that any task of labour should be
exacted in return for the relief. And although if we look closely, it is
possible to find, in the circulars, instructional letters and published
decisions of these thirteen years (1834-1847), two or three bare
incidental allusions to the possibility of outdoor relief to women
having the effect of a "Rate in Aid of Wages," even these occur only in
the earlier years, and presently die away entirely. It is, therefore,
not incorrect to say that an objection to outdoor relief to women in
employment formed during these years no part of the declared policy of
the Central Authority.
[153] Not being soldiers, sailors, or marines.
When women entered the workhouse, the policy of the Central Authority
(as in the analogous case of "the able-bodied") was to classify them in
quite other categories than those which governed their outdoor relief.
The woman's status, with regard to a man, so fundamental as long as she
remained outside, was, in the workhouse, entirely irrelevant. What
became important was whether or not she was sick, "able-bodied" (in the
workhouse sense), or "aged and infirm"; whether or not she was a nursing
mother, or a mother of children under seven years old; whether or not
she was of "good character" or of "dissolute and disorderly habits" or
the mother of an illegitimate child. These considerations--leading to
classifications inconsistent with each other--affected the women's
segregation in the workhouse, the employment provided for them, the
dietary and the amount of their freedom. With all this we deal in
subsequent sections.
_D._--_Children_
The policy of the Central Authority with regard to the relief of
children rested on the general rule that children, residing with their
parents (or surviving parent) and dependent on them for support, had to
follow them for relief. This was not limited by any condition as to the
age of the child, the essential fact being the dependence of the child
for support. Looked at from the standpoint of the child, this involved a
great and complex difference in policy in the two different areas of the
country to which we have had so often to refer. In unions governed by
the Outdoor Labour Test Order (afterwards the Outdoor Relief Regulation
Order, 1852), all such children might be relieved in their homes, the
only limitation placed on the discretion of the local authority being
that, if they were the children of able-bodied men, at least half the
relief granted to the father for their necessities had to be in kind.
In unions in which the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order was in force,
the children (although not sick) of certain classes of parents might be
relieved in their own homes, whilst those of certain other classes of
parents could be relieved only by admission to the workhouse (unless, in
particular instances, the grant of outdoor relief was specially
sanctioned by the Central Authority). This determination by the Central
Authority of the method of relief of such children did not depend on
their age, their sex, their characteristics, or their needs, but on the
artificial categories in which their fathers (or mothers) were placed.
We need not follow these intricacies once more in detail. They can
easily be unravelled from the foregoing sections on "The Able-bodied"
and on "Women."
Whatever outdoor relief was given to the parent in respect of the child,
the policy of the Central Authority was one of absolute non-intervention
with regard to its treatment. No directions were given, either for its
education or for any other of its needs. The only direction that we find
is a decision that the local authority must not pay the school fees for
any such child; and must not even add with this view 2d. per week per
child to the outdoor relief granted to the parent.[154]
[154] _Official Circular_, 31st January 1844, No. 31, pp. 178-9.
When the child entered the workhouse it passed out of its former
classification and entered into an entirely different one. For outdoor
relief, as we have seen, the policy of the Central Authority was to
distinguish among children only according to the kind of parents they
had. Inside the workhouse, the policy of the Central Authority was to
regard this classification as irrelevant, and to place all children, of
whatever parentage, in categories, dependent on their own age, sex and
health. They were either sick or well; and also either (1) Children
under seven; (2) Boys between seven and fifteen; or (3) Girls between
seven and fifteen. The treatment of these categories is so inextricably
mixed up with that of the other inmates of the workhouse that we
relegate the matter to our subsequent sections.
The Central Authority gave no direction to change the system under which
some local authorities sent their pauper children to establishments kept
for private profit. In 1838, this system was implicitly sanctioned by a
long instructional letter, dealing with "Mr. Aubin's establishment for
pauper children at Norwood," where the children were employed in the
workshop on alternate days, and were under the special care of a
chaplain.[155]
[155] Instructional Letter, 1838, in Fifth Annual Report, 1839, p.
76.
But the Central Authority was evidently uneasy about the quarter of a
million pauper children, of whom it was gradually getting some tens of
thousands in the great general workhouses on which it had insisted.[156]
Reports on the training of the workhouse children were called for, and a
valuable series was published in 1841, in which the establishment of
separate boarding schools was suggested, where the children could
receive both elementary schooling and industrial training. This proposal
united the opposition of the boards of guardians, who objected to a new
authority, to that of those who demurred to giving the pauper children
any better education than the children of the lowest independent
labourer.[157]
[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).
In 1844, as we have seen, the Central Authority obtained statutory power
to direct the establishment of district schools; but no Order on the
subject appears to have been issued prior to 1847.
We pass now to the children of an age to be started in life. Though the
Central Authority had been expressly empowered to issue regulations as
to apprenticeship, it did not, during its first decade, issue any Order
on the subject. The only indication which we can find of the policy
which it wished pursued during this decade with regard to such children
is a comment on the proposed Bill for the Amendment of the Poor Law in
1840. This comment is strongly adverse to the payment of apprenticeship
premiums, and suggests that premiums are only needed in "occasional"
cases of lame or blind children.[158] Not until 1845 does the Central
Authority issue any directions on the subject. By the Apprenticeship
Orders of December 1844, and January 1845, amended in August 1845, and
included and amplified in the General Consolidated Order of 1847,
elaborate conditions of apprenticeship were prescribed for the
protection of the apprentice; limits of age were fixed; the duties of
the masters were made more onerous and definite; and the payment of
premiums, whilst still allowed for children between nine and sixteen,
was expressly prohibited, at first for all over fourteen, but
subsequently for all over sixteen, unless physically deformed or
defective, except in the form of clothing.[159] But the Central
Authority does not advocate apprenticeship. On the contrary, in issuing
the Order of 1845, it wrote a special letter to accompany it in which
the local authorities were pointedly reminded that it had hitherto
refrained from issuing any regulations on the subject; that as
Parliament had not abolished the system of apprenticeship it would
"doubtless continue to be practised in those districts where it has
hitherto prevailed"; that "there are not wanting authorities of weight
against the system"; and that local authorities were not to infer that
the Central Authority entertained "any desire to promote its
introduction."[160]
[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.
Apart from this severe discouragement of apprenticeship we can discover
no indication of the policy of the Central Authority as to starting the
children in life. No advice was given to the local authorities on the
subject.
_E._--_The Sick_
We have seen that neither the Report nor the Act of 1834 laid down any
policy for the sick--suggesting, in fact, no change in the existing
practice under which they were both maintained and medically attended in
their homes. During the whole of the period, 1834-47, there is nothing
in the Orders laying down any other policy so far as the maintenance of
the sick is concerned. Both the two streams of regulations, the Outdoor
Labour Test Orders (culminating in the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order
of 1852) and the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844, expressly
excepted, from all their prohibitions or restrictions on the grant of
outdoor relief, cases of "sickness, accident, or bodily or mental
infirmity." In all these cases the policy of the Central Authority was
to leave the local authorities the same absolutely unfettered discretion
with regard to the grant of outdoor relief that they had before
possessed. In the Instructional Letter of 1836 as to medical attendance
the practice of granting outdoor relief to the sick in "food or
clothing" is mentioned, without criticism.[161] So much was this the
accepted policy that, when the Central Authority referred to the sick,
in the comprehensive defence of its action in 1839, it only mentioned
the steps that it had in view with regard to the better organisation of
medical attendance, which did not seem to call "for any immediate
general change"--without even alluding to the almost universal practice
under which the sick received also outdoor relief in money.[162] In a
Minute of 1840 it is pointed out that members of friendly societies in
receipt of a money allowance whilst sick were only to be granted such
amount of outdoor relief as, together with their allowances, would make
up the sums which the local authority would have granted if they had had
nothing. It is not even hinted that the grant of outdoor relief at all
was against the policy of the Central Authority, although it is
suggested that in these cases it should be granted on loan.[163]
[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.
The first suggestion that we have found of this policy not being wholly
satisfactory occurs in 1840, in the Central Authority's comments on the
case of a boy who had died, it was asserted, from privation whilst his
father was actually in receipt of outdoor relief. No blame was imputed
to the local authority, which, it was said, had been "acting under a
recognised mode of relief"; but it was suggested that the case showed
the dangers of "partial relief"; that illness was likely to be more
quickly cured "with the advantages of the superior cleanliness and the
better regulated warmth and ventilation of the appropriate rooms or a
sick ward" of the workhouse together with the superior nursing, dietary,
and doctoring there possible; and that, especially where there was
likelihood of the outdoor relief or other family income being unwisely
applied, it was better to relieve by admission to the workhouse.[164]
But this first suggestion of an alternative policy stands alone; and it
was not embodied in any Order.
[164] _Official Circular_, No. 9, 10th November 1840, pp. 113-118.
What the Central Authority was concerned about, with regard to the sick
poor, was not their outdoor relief, but the extent to which they took
advantage of the services of the parish doctor. Already in 1836 it was
laid down by an Instructional Letter (which expressed no criticism on
the practice of granting relief "in food or clothing") that medical
attendance could be allowed only in cases of destitution. As, however,
sickness quickly involved destitution, it was suggested that provident
sick clubs should be promoted, to provide for medical attendance when
needed.[165] Four years later it is pointed out that members of friendly
societies, entitled as such to medical attendance, must not be allowed
the services of the parish doctor.[166] This was repeated in 1844.[167]
"Medical extras," such as "meat, milk, wine, and porter," could not be
ordered by the doctor, but could be granted, on his recommendation, by
the local authority; and it is to be noted that the Central Authority
adds no words in any way discouraging such grant.[168] The Central
Authority became even more concerned about the organisation of the
medical attendance, the area of each medical officer's district, the
method of selecting him, his qualification, and above all the mode of
his remuneration, so that he might not be tempted to increase the number
of cases.[169] Its views on this subject were embodied in the General
Medical Order of 12th March 1842, and explained in the accompanying
letter of the same date.[170] We omit this, along with other
administrative questions; but it must be noted that the whole policy of
the Central Authority in the matter rested on the assumption, on which
no criticism was expressed, that the sick would, as a matter of fact, be
relieved in their homes.
[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.
When the sick entered the workhouse they were dealt with as a class by
themselves, in the general establishment which alone was then in
existence. We shall deal with the policy with regard to them in a
subsequent section.
It may be noted that in 1840 the Central Authority supported the
proposal of the Government Bill of that year for the establishment of
district infirmaries, but these were not for the sick, but for the
infirm.[171] The proposal was never proceeded with. In 1842 the local
authorities are incidentally reminded that they have power to send sick
persons to hospitals outside the union.[172]
[171] _Official Circular_, No. 5, 16th June 1840, pp. 51-53.
[172] Letter, 2nd August 1841, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p.
77.
_F._--_Persons of Unsound Mind_
A separation of lunatics from the other inmates of the workhouses had
been suggested in the Report of 1834. But it was in the course of this
period 1834-47 that persons of unsound mind became recognised as a
distinct class. It was, however, long before any settled term was used.
We read of "idiots" (1), dangerous (2), or not dangerous (3), curable
(4), or not curable; "the insane" (5), "persons of weak intellect" (6),
or suffering from "mental infirmity" (7), or from "mental imbecility"
(8), or from "disease of mind" (9), or merely "persons of unsound mind"
(10).[173]
[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.
Persons suffering from "mental infirmity" (explained to mean "insane")
were repeatedly excepted from the prohibition of the grant of outdoor
relief.[174] In the Outdoor Labour Test Order a similar exception allows
outdoor relief, without work, and even if the applicant is in
employment, on account of the mental infirmity of a member of his
family.[175] Finally, a similar exception was definitely incorporated in
the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844 (still in force) and the
Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of 1852 (still in force).
[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.
We are not here concerned with the increasing statutory powers, and the
practical application of them, for the compulsory removal to asylums or
other licensed houses of persons certified to be dangerous; or with the
question of their chargeability. When persons of unsound mind found
their way to the workhouse they were to be detained. It should be noted
that the Central Authority supported the Government proposal to enable
unions to combine for the establishment of district asylums for the
insane poor, a proposal which was not proceeded with.[176]
[176] _Official Circular_, No. 5, 16th June 1840, supplement, p.
9.
_G._--_Defectives_
We must note the beginning of a new class, only just mentioned in the
Report and Act of 1834, viz. that of the physically defective, at first
only those who were blind, or deaf and dumb. The Act of 1834 had
implicitly sanctioned the grant of outdoor relief to such of these
defective persons as were either wives or children, by regarding such
relief as not made to the husbands or fathers, even if these were
able-bodied and in employment. Within the period 1834-47 we find no hint
of a new policy. The Central Authority issues no Order dealing with the
suggestion, made in the Report of 1834, of institutional treatment for
the blind. In 1842, however, the local authorities are incidentally
reminded that they have power to send the blind or deaf and dumb to such
voluntary institutions as existed for them even if they were outside the
union.[177] Beyond this there is no suggestion of policy, either for the
blind or for the deaf and dumb, except as regards apprenticeship. The
deaf and dumb did not need to be taught to read and write before being
eligible for apprenticeship.[178] Premiums were admitted to be necessary
in binding as apprentices lame or blind children;[4] and might be given
even for children over fourteen or even over sixteen, if they were
unfitted for the trade by permanent bodily infirmity.[179]
[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.
_H._--_The Aged and Infirm_
As with the sick, so with the aged and infirm, neither the Report nor
the Act of 1834 had suggested any change in the current policy of
outdoor relief. Nor did the Central Authority prescribe any new policy
with regard to this class.
It is to be noted that there is the usual absence of definition. The
aged and the infirm are always referred to as forming one and the same
class. (The word "impotent," used in the Report of 1834, seems to have
been silently dropped.) It should be noted also that the class of the
"aged and infirm" was not restricted to the infirm aged. The question of
age did not enter in at all. What was meant was the class of persons
permanently incapacitated, whether from old age, physical defect, or
chronic debility, from obtaining any paid employment. The essential
characteristic of "the aged and infirm" (like that of "children") was
indeed the precise opposite of that of "the able-bodied." The latter
always meant (for outdoor relief) those who were actually or potentially
in employment for hire. The "aged and infirm" were those (not being
children) who could not possibly get employment for any hire, however
small; and together with the "children" and "the able-bodied" they made
up in the eyes of the Central Authority the whole pauper universe.
It was, as we have seen, universally assumed that the various
prohibitions or regulations of outdoor relief to the able-bodied did not
apply to "aged and infirm persons." These persons were, indeed,
expressly made exceptions from the first universal rule prohibiting
outdoor relief to any one, in the "Form of Consolidated Order for the
Administration of Relief in Town Unions."[181] In the succeeding Orders
prohibiting or regulating outdoor relief, all mention of them is
omitted, as not falling within the class of "the able-bodied and their
families" to which alone these orders applied. In 1839 the Central
Authority definitely laid it down "that we do not require aged and
infirm paupers to be relieved only in the workhouse," and that "it is
not our intention to issue any such rule."[182] The discretion of the
local authorities in the matter of outdoor relief to this class was thus
left as absolutely unfettered as before; and we can find in the
published documents of this period of 1834-47 no direction or advice by
the Central Authority on the subject, and no indication that it had any
new policy.
[181] p. 92 of Second Annual Report, 1836.
[182] Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, pp.
53, 61.
When the aged and infirm entered the workhouse they (like the
able-bodied) were put into entirely new categories, though without a new
terminology. Those who, whilst in receipt of outdoor relief were merely
"aged and infirm," found themselves classified in the workhouse
according to sex, age and bodily health. Those who were under sixty, and
were not ordered by the doctor to be put on special diet, found
themselves classed as "able-bodied" (in the workhouse sense). These
varieties of treatment in the general workhouse will be dealt with in a
subsequent section. It is to be noted that in 1840 the Central Authority
supported the Government proposal to enable "district infirmaries" to be
established apart from the general workhouse for such of the aged and
infirm as received indoor relief. The class to be therein accommodated
was to include "every person applying for or receiving relief who shall,
by reason of any bodily defect, or of any permanent ailment, or of the
permanent effects of any ailment or bodily accident, be incapable of
supporting himself."[183] The proposal was never proceeded with.
[183] _Official Circular_, No. 5, 16th June 1840, p. 53.
It is clear that, although there is no indication of this policy in the
Report of 1834, or in any of the statutes, the Poor Law Commissioners,
between 1834 and 1847, had it occasionally in their minds to apply the
"deterrent" workhouse test to the aged and infirm, as well as to the
able-bodied. In 1839, indeed, they expressed this intention. It will be
remembered that the 1834 Report had talked of the aged enjoying "their
indulgences" in workhouses set apart for them. "With regard to the aged
and infirm," say the Commissioners of 1839, "there is a strong
disposition on the part of a portion of the public so to modify the
arrangements [of the workhouses] as to place them on the footing of
almshouses. The consequences which would flow from this change have only
to be pointed out to show its inexpediency and its danger. If the
condition of the inmates of a workhouse were to be so regulated as to
invite the aged and infirm of the labouring classes to take refuge in
it, it would immediately be useless as a test between indigence and
indolence and fraud, it would no longer operate as an inducement to the
young and healthy to provide support for their later years, or as a
stimulus to them whilst they have the means to support their aged
parents and relatives. The frugality and forethought of a young labourer
would be useless if he foresaw the certainty of a better asylum for his
old age than he could possibly provide by his own exertions, and the
industrious efforts of a son to provide a maintenance for his parents in
his own dwelling would be thrown away and would cease to be called
forth, if the almshouse of the district offered a refuge for their
declining years, in which they might obtain comforts and indulgences
which even the most successful of the labouring classes cannot always
obtain by their own exertions."[184]
[184] Special Report of Poor Law Commissioners on the Further
Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, p. 47.
_I._--_Non-Residents_
A new class of persons arises in the documents after 1834, namely those
who are not residing in the parish or union to which they apply for
relief. There had grown up a custom under the old Poor Law by which, in
order to save the expense and hardships of removal, parishes agreed to
grant outdoor relief to persons belonging to them by settlement, who
were residing elsewhere. The Central Authority set itself to restrict
this practice. By various of its early Orders it prohibited it
altogether, and at once (with the usual exceptions of sickness,
accident, and urgent necessity) in the case of able-bodied male persons
between sixteen and sixty. It prohibited it as regards all new cases for
all other persons with the same exceptions.[185] Between this date and
1844 we find the same series of exceptions allowed to this general
prohibition as in the case of outdoor relief to the able-bodied and
their families; and these exceptions became stereotyped in Art. 3 of the
Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844 (still in force).
[185] p. 85 of First Annual Report, 1835.
_J._--_The Workhouse_
As we have shown, the Act of 1834 and the subsequent legislation left to
the Central Authority complete discretion as to the kind of indoor
maintenance to be provided for the destitute by the local authority. In
view of the fact that the action taken between 1834 and
1847--culminating in the General Consolidated Order of 1847, which is
still in force--determined, in the main, the character of the modern
workhouse, it is necessary to analyse in some detail exactly what the
policy was which the Central Authority in these years imposed from one
end of England to another. The common understanding at the time was, we
believe, that the policy to be carried out was that of the 1834 Report.
Two limitations only were imposed on the power of the Central Authority
in this respect. The building of entirely new workhouses--which the
Report had thought would not be requisite in many instances[186]--was
dependent on the assent either of a majority of the board of guardians
or of a majority of the rated owners and occupiers.[187] The Central
Authority was, however, empowered, without any local consent,
peremptorily to order a local authority to enlarge or alter any
existing workhouse or building capable of being converted into a
workhouse; subject to the limitation that the principal sum to be
raised on any parish could not exceed £50, or one-tenth of the average
Poor Rate of the last three years.[188] As every board of guardians
in the United Kingdom found itself in possession of several parish
workhouses--sometimes of a large number of such buildings--it was
within the statutory power of the Central Authority, even without
local consent, to have given directions for the moderate enlargement
and adaptation of any or all of these, which Parliament seems to have
contemplated. The second limitation seems at first sight more serious.
The Central Authority could not order any greater expenditure, on
building or enlarging any workhouse, or sanction the borrowing for
this purpose of any larger sum, than the average amount of the last
three years' Poor Rate[189]--a limitation which, as we have seen, was,
in 1844, repealed so far as the purchase of sites in the Metropolitan
Police District and the parish of Liverpool was concerned.[190] But
there was at no time any limitation to the aggregate amount of the
expenditure out of Poor Rate that might be incurred by the local
authority, or that might, with or without its consent, be ordered by
the Central Authority to be spent, on the enlargement or adaptation
of its various existing workhouses, provided that not more than the
statutory maximum was spent on any one of them. In view of the strong
objection expressed in the 1834 Report to the mixing of different
kinds of paupers in a single institution,[191] and the positive
recommendation, in preference, of distinct institutions, in separate
buildings, with specialised rules and under different managements, for
the several kinds of paupers[192]--for which it was expressly pointed
out that the existing buildings were to be adapted[193]--these sections
of the Act of 1834 indicate an intention of Parliament (as it certainly
was the intention of the authors of the Report of 1834) that each union
should have several small institutions, and should assign to those
workhouses "separate classes of poor."[194]
[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.
It is startling to find that the Central Authority, between 1834 and
1847, pursued an entirely different policy. The published documents for
this period do not afford any explanation of this difference. They do
not show, for instance, whether it meant the deliberate adoption of a
new policy, or whether it resulted merely from a discovery that the
recommendations of the Report were impracticable in the rural unions.
The documents simply assume the necessity for the establishment in each
union, not of a group of specialised workhouses for the different
classes, but of one institution, to be called "The Union Workhouse," for
the paupers as a whole.
In no Special or General Order, in no Circular or published Minute, can
we find any recommendation that a board of guardians should carry out
the emphatic recommendations of the 1834 Report in favour of
classification by institutions, and the adaptation of the existing
buildings into specialised workhouses, "assigning one class of paupers
to each of the houses comprehended within each incorporation."[195] Nor
was the unity introduced and insisted on by the Central Authority one of
structure only. That the policy was to have, under the one roof, for all
the various kinds of paupers, only one institution and one _régime_, is
revealed in every part of the workhouse code. In the elaborate series of
Special Orders and General Orders which culminated in the General
Consolidated Order of 1847 (still in force), we find a minutely
particular body of rules, referring always to "the" workhouse of the
Union, applied with practical identity to all unions, providing for the
reception under a single roof and subject to a single officer of every
kind of pauper, applying to all the inmates, and (with quite
insignificant variations, presently to be noted, for the aged, the sick
and the infants), treating all the kinds of paupers alike.[196]
[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.
It was possibly connected with this policy of one general workhouse for
each union that we find the Central Authority assuming that the grouping
together of a score or more of parishes almost inevitably involved
building a new workhouse. At first, indeed, the Assistant Commissioners
were directed to examine to what extent existing poorhouses or
workhouses could be "made useful for only one class of paupers."[197] In
August 1835, the Central Authority could write of its year's experience
that "it has also been proved that the expense and loss of time in
building new workhouses may, in many cases, be saved, by a union of
parishes and the combination of their existing workhouses and
poorhouses, by assigning one or two classes of the paupers to one of the
separate workhouses within the district."[198] But already by that time
the contrary policy was being carried out by the most energetic
subordinate of the Central Authority, who (as his private reports show)
had quickly satisfied himself, and was rapidly convincing his superiors,
that the policy of utilising as specialised institutions the existing
parish workhouses was, with the boards of guardians of that time,
administratively impossible. Already by August 1835, Sir Francis B. Head
was reporting that "with the exception of Romney Marsh, the whole of
East Kent, comprehending an area of 590 square miles, is now grouped
into compact unions of parishes; these unions are all very nearly of the
same size--all contain very nearly the same population--_all have
voluntarily adopted for their workhouse the same low, cheap, homely
building--all have agreed in placing it in the centre of their
respective unions_."[199]
[197] First Annual Report, 1835, p. 29.
[198] First Annual Report, 1835, p. 16.
[199] _Ibid._ p. 166.
It is interesting to see the arguments by which this flagrant departure
from the policy of the 1834 Report was attacked and defended. In 1835 we
have a magistrate of Kent, belonging to a union where they had so far
adhered to the recommendations of the Report, writing very graphically
on the subject to Sir Francis Head. "There is one point," he said, "upon
which our practice differs materially from most of our neighbours, and
it is one upon which I entertain a strong opinion that ours is the
correct system. It is the adaptation of existing workhouses to different
classes, instead of building new ones.... In the first place upon our
system there is a great saving of expense; our homes altogether have
cost us under £300.... I dislike the appearance of these new houses all
over the country.... I dislike the outward and visible sign of the
change that is being operated. I am alarmed at the irritation. I fear
the consequences. When we have eight workhouses there is hardly an
inducement to pull down one only, and to pull them all down is next to
impossible, from the wide surface over which they are spread. Our
system, I might almost say, eludes the grasp of insurrection. Besides
this, how much more perfect is the classification! How secure are our
separate schools from all contamination. How small are the masses of
pauperism which we bring together, compared with the congestion of one
vast House. With us, our Houses are not like prisons, for we require no
high wall to separate the classes; eight or ten miles distance is far
more effectual than the highest walls."
To this Sir Francis Head seems to have replied to the following effect.
He did not at all agree with his correspondent that eight classified
workhouses were better than one general establishment. "The very sight,"
he said, "of a well-built efficient establishment would give confidence
to the board of guardians; the sight and weekly assemblage of all
servants of their union would make them proud of their office; the
appointment of a chaplain would give dignity to the whole arrangement,
while the pauper would feel it was utterly impossible to contend against
it. In visiting such a series of unions, the Assistant Commissioner
could with great facility perform his duty, whereas if he had eight
establishments to search for in each union, it would be almost
impracticable to attend to them. I would, moreover, beg to observe that
in one establishment there would always be a proper governor, ready to
receive and govern any able-bodied applicants, whereas in separate
establishments this most important arrangement (the Able-bodied House)
during harvest, etc., would constantly be empty, and consequently would
become inefficient in moments of emergency."[200]
[200] MS. correspondence of Sir Francis Head.
Sir Francis Head, as we have seen, had his way. In writing a farewell
letter to the Kentish boards of guardians at the end of 1835, he urges
them to stick to the dietary, and to appoint a chaplain "to your central
house, which will shortly be the sole establishment in your union.... As
soon as this important object has been gained--as soon as you find that
the whole of your indoor poor are concentrated in one respectable
establishment--under your own weekly superintendence--when you see
yourselves surrounded by a band of resolute, sensible, well-educated men
faithfully devoted to your service--you will then, I believe, fully
appreciate the advantage which you, as well as your successors, will
ever derive from possessing one strong, efficient building, instead of
having, from false economy, frittered away your resources among your old
existing houses."[201]
[201] _Ibid._
After this we hear no more of the policy of specialised institutions for
particular kinds of paupers, as recommended in the Report of 1834. The
policy of the Central Authority settles down definitely to that which
provided each union with one general workhouse, almost invariably built
for the purpose, near the centre of the union.[202]
[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.)
It is not easy to discover what policy was laid down as to the site and
character of the new general workhouse thus prescribed. There was no
Special or General Order, and apparently no paper of rules or
suggestions, giving any direction as to the position to be chosen, the
surroundings to be preferred, or even the area to be obtained. Nothing
was prescribed as to the character of the building, the cubic space to
be provided for each inmate, the sanitary arrangements, or the
structural provision for classification by sex, age, character or
condition. To some extent this lack of any statement of policy may have
been supplied by oral explanations in the process of sanctioning the
building plans. This hardly applies, however, to the choice of a site;
and we cannot discover from any published document whether the Central
Authority thought it preferable that the union workhouse should be
located in the crowded streets of a populous city or in a pleasant rural
district. The only help that seems to have been afforded was the
publication in 1835 of some pictures and diagrams of suggested
workhouses.[203] From these we may infer that the Central Authority had
adopted as its policy the erection of the same "low, cheap, homely (?)
building"--bearing no little resemblance to the prison plans of the
period--with which Sir Francis Head was covering East Kent.
[203] First Annual Report, 1835, p. 29, and end.
It was not until 1842, after illness due to serious over-crowding had
occurred at the Sevenoaks Workhouse,[204] that the Central Authority
began to incorporate in its policy some elementary sanitary regulations.
We have first the requirement that a maximum number to be accommodated
in each workhouse should be fixed. Even then it was left to each board
of guardians to suggest whatever number it chose, after consultation
with its medical officer, subject to approval and to the final fixing of
the number by the Central Authority.[205] In 1847 the phrase with regard
to approval drops out, and the Central Authority merely fixes the
number.
[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.
In 1842 the medical officer of the union is required to report to his
board any defects in drainage, ventilation, and warmth.[206] Beyond
these somewhat exiguous forms no policy was even suggested to the local
authorities with regard to the structural arrangements of the workhouse.
[206] Eighth Annual Report, 1842, pp. 14, 188-190.
We have now to consider how the Central Authority exercised its power to
determine the character of the one general workhouse which it had
imposed on each union. Let us take the policy laid down with regard to
each phase of the indoor pauper's life.
(i.) _Admission_
The door was to be always open. In cases of "sudden or urgent necessity"
any person in a state of destitution, applying at any hour, with or
without an order or any other formality, was to be immediately relieved
by admission, and by the supply of food, clothing, medicine, and other
necessaries. Where the necessity was not urgent, the applicant had first
to get an order for admission, which (unless some other mode of relief
was adopted) could not be refused to any destitute person. The pauper
admitted was to be cleansed, clothed, medically examined, and searched
for prohibited articles, in a "probationary" or "receiving" ward. The
pauper was then, if free from disease, to be assigned to his particular
section of the workhouse, according to a sevenfold classification by
sex, age, and physical condition.
(ii.) _Segregation_
The character of the workhouse of 1835-1847 was principally determined
by the practice as to the segregation of its inmates. To discover
exactly what the Central Authority intended this segregation to be is
surprisingly difficult. We have first a rigid and logical classificatory
scheme, imposed with the force of law. To this there came both a series
of exceptions to the classification and a series of directions as to the
practical segregation in daily life, additional to or inconsistent with
the classification; some of them permissive and others mandatory.
The seven classes insisted on by the classificatory scheme of the
Central Authority were (i.) aged or infirm men; (ii). able-bodied males
over thirteen; (iii.) boys between seven and thirteen; (iv.) aged or
infirm women; (v.) able-bodied women and girls over sixteen; (vi.) girls
between seven and sixteen; and (vii.) children under seven. This
classification, imposed in 1836, was confirmed, with only the slightest
of modifications, by the General Orders of 1842 and 1847 (the latter
still in force). As therein finally settled, it provided for "(i.) men
infirm through age or any other cause; (ii.) able-bodied men and youths
above the age of fifteen years; (iii.) boys above the age of seven years
and under that of fifteen; (iv.) women infirm through age or any other
cause; (v.) able-bodied women and girls above the age of fifteen years;
(vi.) girls above the age of seven years and under that of fifteen; and
(vii.) children under seven years of age." Explicit rules are made that
each class is to remain in the separate apartments or buildings assigned
to it, without communication with any other class.[207]
[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.
The modern student is struck at once by the omissions in this compulsory
classificatory scheme. There is no class for the sick, either those
suffering from infectious or contagious diseases, or from others. There
is no class for the lying-in cases. There is no class for the lunatics,
idiots, or imbeciles. There is no provision for infants at the breast,
who, by the classificatory scheme, were ordered to be separated from
their mothers. There was no class for the vagrant intending to stay only
one night. Finally, there was no provision made for any segregation by
character--not merely none by past character, but not even for any by
present character or conduct, which would have effected a separation
between quiet and orderly inmates and the turbulent prostitute or
semi-criminal.
Some of these omissions were partly remedied by new Orders or
recommendations between 1836 and 1847, which were embodied in the
General Consolidated Order of 1847, but never found their way into the
classificatory scheme itself.
With regard to the sick, the Central Authority imposed no requirements
at all. It was incidentally mentioned in the Order of 1836, and repeated
in those of 1842 and 1847, that the sick were, on admission, to be
placed in "the sick ward," or in such other ward as the medical officer
might direct. We have incidental references during the ensuing decade to
the existence of sick wards in workhouses. But there was no provision in
any Order requiring a "sick ward" to be provided, still less any
provision requiring properly classified accommodation for the sick of
different ages, sexes, conditions, or diseases. When these workhouse
rules were issued in 1842 as a General Order to practically all the
unions then in existence, they were still left without any mention even
of infectious diseases. The utmost that the Central Authority could
bring itself to do was to declare, in the covering letter, but not in
the rules themselves, that it was the duty of the master, under the
direction of the medical officer, to isolate an infectious case in a
separate apartment.[208]
[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 small-pox 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.)
When the rules were finally consolidated in 1847, they still ignored the
sick in their scheme of classification, and actually omitted all mention
either of infectious diseases, or of lying-in cases, merely laying it
down in general terms that it was the duty of the guardians, "after
consulting the medical officer," to "make such arrangements as they may
deem necessary, with regard to persons labouring under any disease of
body or mind."[209]
[209] Art. 99 of General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847;
still in force.
No provision whatever was made for the segregation of paupers of unsound
mind, whether lunatics, idiots, or imbeciles. In an Order of 1836 we do
indeed find "the ward for lunatics and idiots" incidentally mentioned,
as existing in some workhouses;[210] but such a ward was never required
by the Central Authority, nor even suggested by it.
[210] Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town
Unions, 7th March 1836, sec. 5; in Second Annual Report, 1836, p.
89.
In 1842, it was ordered that, if such paupers were dangerous, they were
not to be retained in the workhouse, but sent to an asylum within
fourteen days.[211] It was even suggested in an Instructional Letter in
1842 that curable cases, even if not dangerous, should be sent to
asylums; and that even incurable, harmless idiots were inconvenient
inmates of a workhouse. But no hint is given of the desirability of
their segregation whilst they are there.[212]
[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.
With regard to infants at the breast, no special provision was ever
made by rule. But it was allowed that children under seven might be
placed (though only if the guardians thought fit) in any part of the
female wards; and the mothers were at any rate "to have access to them
at all reasonable times."[213] The Central Authority remarked, in a
covering letter of 1842--which was not repeated when the rules were
re-issued in 1847--"that so long as any mother is suckling her child,
she ought to have access to it at all times _except when she is at
work_, and that the child ought not, even then, to be completely beyond
the mother's reach."[214]
[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.
In 1847, still without amendment of the classificatory scheme, the
guardians were allowed to permit a mother and her infant children to
occupy the same bed.[215]
[215] Art. 111 of General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847.
With regard to vagrants, the first departure from the policy of merely
including them as able-bodied paupers came in 1842, in a rule requiring
"casual poor wayfarers and vagrants" to be kept "in the Vagrant Ward,"
or other separate ward--presumably separate for each sex, though this
was not explicitly required.[216]
[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).
With regard to segregation by character, the first relaxation from the
classificatory scheme is to be found in a letter of 1839, in which the
Central Authority permits married women of good character to be placed
with the aged women, in order that they may avoid the contamination of
bad characters, but only _provided that their daily employment is not
interfered with_.[217] We can find no contemporary document even
allowing the guardians to protect from a like contamination unmarried
women or young girls of good character.
[217] Letter, 1st April 1839, in Special Report on the Further
Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, p. 293.
In 1840, however, the _Official Circular_ referred to "the separation of
certain abandoned persons from the other inmates," explaining that it
rested "not on the consideration of their past conduct, but on that of
their present habits and character."[218]
[218] _Official Circular_, 24th December 1840, No. 10, p. 143.
In 1842 the central authority incidentally observed in an instructional
letter that the guardians were _permitted_ to subdivide any of the seven
classes of the scheme imposed on them, and that it was "very desirable
that females of dissolute and disorderly habits should be separated from
those of a better character."[219]
[219] Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual
Report, 1842, p. 108.
Not until 1847 do we find a rule providing that, "as far as
circumstances will permit," the guardians were to "further subdivide any
of the classes enumerated" in the classificatory scheme, "with reference
to the moral character or behaviour or the previous habits of the
inmates, or to such other grounds as may seem expedient."[220]
[220] General Consolidated Order, 24th July 1847, art. 99.
Meanwhile, however, the Central Authority was breaking down by
inconsistent provisions the classificatory scheme which it left still
figuring in the forefront of its Consolidated Orders. We may cite first
the provision as to aged married couples. The Central Authority had for
seven years eloquently justified its insistence on the strict separation
of all married couples, however aged. In 1842, however, it made a rule
"that, if for any special reason it shall at any time appear to the
board of guardians to be desirable to depart from the regulations
contained in Art. 9, in respect of any married couple," who were infirm
through age or any other cause, "the guardians shall be at liberty to
resolve that such couple shall have a sleeping apartment separate from
those of the other paupers," subject to obtaining in each case the
consent and approval of the Central Authority.[221]
[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).
In 1846, on the vehement objection and practical rebellion of the
Norwich Court of Guardians, it went much further and agreed to sanction
"an arrangement by which a separate room shall be assigned to each
married couple of whatever class,"[222] that the guardians thought fit.
In 1847, however, Parliament swept the original policy away so far as
legislation could do so, by enacting, unconditionally, that no married
couple over sixty should be compelled in the workhouse to live
separately and apart from each other.[223]
[222] Letter to Norwich Court of Guardians, 3rd February 1846.
[223] 10 & 11 Vic. c. 109, sec. 23.
A second inroad into the classificatory scheme was made by the provision
that children under seven might be placed in any female ward, whether
that of the sick women, that of the aged and infirm women, or even that
of the able-bodied women.[224]
[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.
Yet another, and possibly a more important inroad into the scheme was
made by a rule of 1842, which permitted the guardians in particular
cases to classify boys and girls over ten in any way they thought
fit.[225]
[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).
(iii.) _Service_
But it was in its rules as to the services to be rendered by the
workhouse inmates that the Central Authority most effectually undermined
its own classificatory scheme, and practically destroyed any real
segregation. That scheme, as we have shown, expressly forbade the
paupers in any class to leave the particular "ward or separate building
and yard" assigned to such class, or to hold any communication with any
other class.[226] Nevertheless the Central Authority had, from the
first, a policy of workhouse organisation inconsistent with any such
segregation. Practically all the workhouse service was to be performed
by the paupers themselves, and every pauper who was capable of work was
to be incessantly occupied in that service. The able-bodied women who
formed Class V. might be supervised by the aged and infirm women of
Class IV. The children under seven who formed Class VII. might be
supervised either by the able-bodied women of Class V., or by the aged
and infirm women of Class IV., or by the girls of Class VI. The boys
over seven who formed Class III. might be supervised by the aged and
infirm men of Class I. The girls over seven who formed Class VI. might
be supervised by the aged and infirm women of Class IV. These girls, so
far from being confined to the premises assigned to their class, were to
be employed in the able-bodied women's wards, in the aged and infirm
women's wards, in the wards for the children under seven, and in
household work generally, provided only that they were somehow kept from
communicating with able-bodied men or boys. The sick, whether male or
female, whether of good character or of bad, had necessarily to be
waited on, and no paid nurses were required to be appointed.
Consequently the provision allowing all the sick wards to be attended by
the able-bodied women, by the girls between seven and sixteen, by the
aged women, or by any combination of these that the master might direct,
in itself necessarily destroyed all real segregation. By 1847 this
permission had been so far restricted as to confine the attendance on
the sick males to the aged and infirm men and the aged and infirm women;
though such girls over seven, such able-bodied women, and such aged or
infirm women as the master might deem fit might still be employed
indiscriminately in the service of any of the wards except those for men
and boys, and generally for household work throughout the
workhouse.[227]
[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.
(iv.) _Diet_
It is significant of the unity of _régime_ insisted upon in the one
general workhouse that the Central Authority laid constant stress on the
uniformity to be observed in the dietaries of all the classes of paupers
in the workhouse, except only by order or on the advice of the medical
officer, which might be either for the sick, for those requiring a
change of diet, for the nursing mothers, or for the infants.
Even to those paupers who were employed as servants only the common fare
was "in general" to be given.[228] The first dietaries issued to the
boards of guardians for them to choose from were drawn up avowedly for
the able-bodied, with no other variation for other classes than were
contained in a few footnotes referring (apart from the sick and children
under nine) to extras which the guardians might, if they thought fit,
allow to persons over sixty. Thus, practically the only difference in
the food to be allowed to the able-bodied males, the able-bodied
females, and the children over nine, was one of quantity. Even the aged
and infirm had the same diet, with nothing else prescribed for them, and
with no greater indulgence allowed, even if the guardians wished it,
than an ounce of tea per week, with milk and sugar, and the possible
addition, in one out of the six dietaries among which the boards of
guardians might choose, of meat pudding once a week instead of bread and
cheese; and, in four of these dietaries, also of butter for
breakfast.[229] There was, of course, to be no alcoholic drink for any
class of pauper except by written medical order.[230] No presents of
food to individual paupers or classes of paupers were to be allowed, as
they would produce inequality and discontent.[231] Even the sick, who
were originally to be dieted case by case at the discretion of the
medical officer, were, in 1842, to be fed with absolute uniformity as
among the different classes of paupers and among the different
individuals in a class, it being urged on the guardians that the medical
officer should be restricted for his patients to a choice among four
fixed dietaries which he was to draw up once for all, and hang up in the
sick wards for permanent reference. These were described as "high,
middle, low, and fever"; and he was expressly to be instructed "that the
quantity of articles to be allowed for each should be minutely
specified."[232]
[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).
Finally, as it had been found that the old men and women who were
allowed weekly ounces of tea and weekly allowances of butter would not
take their teas simultaneously or consume their little pats of butter
evenly, this distressing deviation from the dietetic uniformity led the
Central Authority to suggest the withdrawal of the privilege, in favour
of a simultaneous service of "a certain quantity of liquid tea" and of
portions of bread and butter.[233]
[233] _Official Circular_, 30th July 1842, No. 20, p. 301.
With regard to the quantities of food to be supplied, the policy of the
Central Authority passed through three phases. In 1836 the boards of
guardians were expressly directed that the diet in the workhouse (which,
as we have shown, was to be practically uniform for all classes of
paupers) was not to be "equal"--that is to say, was actually to be
inferior--"to the ordinary mode of subsistence of the labouring classes
of the neighbourhood."[234] This was perhaps more tactfully expressed in
the Consolidated Order for the Administration of Relief in Town Unions,
in saying that the diet was "in no case to exceed in quantity and
quality of food the ordinary diet of any class of able-bodied labourers
living within the same district."[235] All the contemporary warnings of
the Central Authority were against giving too much; and there was no
provision for ensuring that each pauper got even the quantity prescribed
in the dietary chosen by the local authority. No extra dinner was
allowed on Christmas or other feast days, unless, indeed, this was
supplied by private individuals.[236] In 1842 a change was made. The
Central Authority fixed a separate dietary for each workhouse, and there
was no longer any reference to these dietaries being inferior to the
subsistence of the independent labourer; on the contrary the intention
of the Central Authority was avowedly "to assimilate them as much as
possible to the ordinary food of the working classes in the
neighbourhood"[237]--in Kent and Sussex mainly bread and cheese, in the
northern counties meat, potatoes, and porridge, and in Cornwall
including fish. Moreover, it was provided that any pauper might, on
demand, have his prescribed portion weighed out to him.[238] Finally, by
1847, we gather that the principle had been silently adopted of fixing
such a dietary as was calculated to keep the paupers in physical health,
irrespective of the amount or kind of food that might ordinarily be
obtained by the lowest class of non-pauper labourer in particular
districts or at particular periods. Even extra food on Christmas Day was
allowed at the expense of the Poor Rate, at the unfettered discretion of
the boards of guardians.[239]
[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.
It should, however, be added that, although the policy of the Central
Authority passed, as stated, through these three phases, the actual
dietaries prescribed by it, even in the first phase, seem (in the light
of modern physiology) to have been ample for health, if the paupers
always got what was prescribed and knew how to eat it.
(v.) _Cleanliness and Sanitation_
It was part of the policy that the utmost cleanliness and good order
should be maintained throughout the workhouse; and (to the limited
extent of the hygienic knowledge of the time) that sanitary conditions
should be insisted on. It was expressly made the duty of the master and
matron to enforce "industry, order, punctuality, and cleanliness" on all
the inmates; every day to "see that each individual is clean and in a
proper state"; daily to inspect and see that all the sleeping wards are
"duly cleaned and properly ventilated," and "to take care that the
wards, kitchen, larder, and other rooms and offices be kept clean and in
good order." All paupers were compulsorily to be cleansed on admission.
All the workhouse inmates were to be supplied with clean linen and
stockings every week, whilst their beds were to have clean sheets
monthly.[240] This latter requirement was superseded in 1842 by the more
general provision that the beds and bedding were to be kept in a clean
and wholesome state.[241] Food was to be given out as required for each
meal, not once for the day. It was to be eaten only in the dining-room,
and not (except as ordered for the sick) elsewhere in the house. All
remnants were to be removed from the dining-room by the officers after
each meal.[242] It was compulsory on each board of guardians to appoint
a qualified medical officer, as part of the very first business. It was
expressly made part of his duty to attend regularly at the workhouse,
and come whenever sent for; to examine all the sick and give all
necessary directions for their care; to give all necessary directions
for the meals of the aged and infirm, and the children; and (from 1842
onwards) "to report in writing to the board of guardians any defect in
the diet, drainage, ventilation, warmth, or other arrangement of the
workhouse, or any excess in the number of any class of inmates which he
may deem to be detrimental to the health of the inmates."[243]
[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.
(vi.) _Discipline_
The same desire for uniformity of treatment for all workhouse inmates is
seen in the Orders of the Central Authority with regard to the hours to
be observed. A fixed time-table was imposed, to be rigidly observed by
all classes of paupers, in all workhouses, at all seasons of the year.
The whole of the day from getting out of bed to retiring to rest was
definitely allotted. All classes of paupers were to observe precisely
the same hours, except (1) the sick, who were never recognised in the
classificatory scheme; (2) the aged and infirm; and (3) the children
under seven, all of whom had to rise, go to bed, take their meals, and
work at whatever hours the master might appoint, subject to any
directions of the board of guardians. Thus, it was peremptorily ordered
by the Central Authority that the able-bodied men, the able-bodied
women, and the boys and girls over seven should, whatever their several
strengths and conditions, all rise at five in summer and seven in
winter; that they should all work for uniformly ten hours in summer and
nine hours in winter; that they should all eat three simultaneous meals;
that they should all have during the day exactly one hour of unallotted
time and no more, and this between 7 and 8 p.m., winter and summer
alike; and that all, whatever their ages or physical strength, should go
to bed uniformly at 8 p.m. all the year round. This remained unchanged
in 1847, except that the hours of rising had been altered in 1842 to
5.45 in summer and 6.45 in winter, with corresponding breakfast
times.[244] Besides the remarkable uniformity of this scheme of daily
life, which was absolutely enforced on paupers of all ages from seven to
sixty (or such other age-limit as might be adopted for "the aged"), one
is struck by its omissions. There was no provision for going out in the
open air, and no time during which it was possible; unless the Central
Authority meant that the several classes of paupers might be allowed in
the various yards between 7 and 8 p.m., in summer and winter alike. No
pauper was to be allowed to go outside the workhouse walls except for
"urgent or special reason," and it was expressly laid down that they
were not to be permitted, whether their conduct was good or bad, to go
out "at stated intervals."[245] A slight relaxation in this latter
respect was permitted (though not prescribed) in 1842, in the case of
children under fifteen, when the master was allowed, if he chose, to
send any of them out for exercise under the charge of the schoolmaster
or other officer.[246] There was equally no provision (at any rate for
any but "boys and girls") for any exercise of the mental faculties,
either in the form of recreation or in the form of education or
training. From 1836 to 1842 it was even ordered that the meals were to
be taken in silence, even by the children.[247]
[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.
No provision was made for the supply of any books for the use of the
inmates, whether sick or well--not even Bibles and prayer-books; and it
was thus made unlawful for the boards of guardians to have provided
these, even if they had wished to do so--unless, indeed, it would have
been held by the Auditor that they were "reasonably necessary." The
point seems never to have been raised. The education provided for the
children was of the scantiest. It was confined to "boys and girls,"
without definition of age, and it was thus left to the boards of
guardians to begin it as late and to terminate it as early as they
chose. It was to consist of instruction for three hours a day "at
least," in "reading, writing, and the principles of the Christian
religion," together with "such other instructions" as were "calculated
to train them to habits of usefulness, industry, and virtue."[248]
Apparently arithmetic was thought not to come under this definition, as
it was added in 1842.[249] Shoe making was approved in 1845 in the case
of Poplar.[250] A schoolmaster or schoolmistress needed only to be
appointed "if the guardians shall think fit"; and the Central Authority
thus left it open to guardians to impose the task of instruction on the
porter or matron--this being actually mentioned in the Instructional
Letters[251]--or on an aged pauper--a course which was frequently
adopted without rebuke. If a schoolmaster or schoolmistress was
appointed no qualification was required.[252] No provision was made for
playrooms, playthings, or even playing time for children of any age.
[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.
With regard to the adults, well or sick, it was apparently part of the
policy to ignore, and even to prohibit, recreation. Playing at cards and
all other games of chance were absolutely forbidden to all classes of
inmates at all hours and seasons. Smoking was peremptorily prohibited in
any room in the workhouse, except by the special direction of the
medical officer, and the boards of guardians were told that they might
prohibit it in the yards if they chose. No visitors were allowed
(otherwise than to the sick) except at the will, and actually in the
presence, of the master or matron. It even required a special exception,
not made until 1842, to enable parents to see their children who were in
the same workhouse "at some one time in each day."[253]
[253] General Order of 5th February 1842, art. 10, proviso 6, in
Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 81.
(vii.) _Employment_
We may infer from the scheme of daily life just described, which the
Central Authority imposed on all classes of workhouse inmates, that it
laid great stress, as a matter of policy, on the ten hours of work which
it exacted from all who were neither physically disabled nor below the
age of seven. The bulk of the inmates, especially the aged and infirm,
the women and children, and, we may add, the defectives, were evidently
to be employed on the ordinary household service and attendance of the
workhouse and its inmates. It was expressly ordered that all the paupers
so employed were to be under "the strictest superintendence," not to be
given "offices of trust"; and confined to "offices of mere labour which
can be performed under trustworthy superintendence."[254] But this
household service did not suffice to find occupation for the
able-bodied, especially the men. The Report of 1834, it will be
remembered, had been emphatic in recommending that all pauper employment
should be in accordance with the spirit of the Act of Elizabeth, useful
to "the employer as well as to the employed," and that everything which
gave to labour a repulsive aspect was to be avoided as mischievous. The
Central Authority did not adopt this policy, even at the beginning of
its work, and by 1847 had adopted a contrary one. From the outset the
policy laid down was that the pauper was not to work on his own account,
was not to be remunerated for his labour, and was not to obtain any
personal advantage from working harder or more skilfully than the
prescribed minimum. But the policy of the Central Authority, at first,
was that the work should be useful, and for the benefit of the union.
Thus, in 1836 it was ordered that the clothing of all the paupers
should, "as far as possible, be made by the paupers in the
workhouse."[255] This project promptly disappears from the documents,
presumably on the discovery that tailoring and bootmaking were skilled
occupations, beyond the capacity of ordinary workhouse inmates.
[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.
In 1842 the central authority declares itself unable to suggest for the
able-bodied men in the workhouse "any kind of labour which is likely to
be productive of profit"; and remarks that "stone-breaking under proper
superintendence is generally found to answer." other occupations which
are named to the guardians as being frequently adopted are grinding
corn in hand mills, pounding or grinding bones for manure, and
oakum-picking.[256] the horrors revealed in the inquiry into the
andover workhouse scandal led to a summary prohibition of the
employment of paupers in pounding, grinding, or otherwise breaking
bones, or preparing bone dust.[257] this left practically only
stone-breaking, hand-grinding, and oakum-picking at the disposal of the
boards of guardians--occupations, as it seems to us, combining in the
highest degree the characteristics of monotony, absence of initiative,
toilsomeness, and inutility--giving, in fact, to labour, in flat
contradiction of the recommendation of the report of 1834, an aspect as
repulsive as could be devised.[258]
[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).
(viii.) _Sanctions_
As the policy of the Central Authority was to exclude from the life of
the workhouse inmates everything of the nature of reward, encouragement,
stimulus, responsibility, or initiative, the question arises by what
means the monotonous discipline was to be maintained. The documents
indicate that the Central Authority relied on the two forces of
punishment and religion.
The discipline of the workhouse was to rest primarily on the fact that
the master, either with or without the prior sanction of the board of
guardians, had summary powers of instant, though carefully limited,
punishment of any pauper inmate. Any disobedience of the regulations or
of any order of the master might be punished, sometimes at his sole
discretion, sometimes by order of the board of guardians, by confinement
not exceeding twenty-four hours in a separate room or cell, and by
reduction to a diet of bread and water only for not more than two days.
Between 1840 and 1847 the disorderly or refractory pauper might also, by
order of the guardians, be made to wear a special dress for not more
than forty-eight hours.[259] But elaborate precautions were taken
against abuse. The greatest care was to be taken that no injury to
health was caused by any punishment.[260] Corporal punishment was
strictly confined to boys under fourteen. And, as some protection to the
paupers against tyranny or oppression, the rules as to discipline and
punishment were to be put up in the dining-halls, school-rooms, and
board-room;[261] it was expressly provided that any pauper who had been
punished or who was reported as refractory was (whether this was
requested or not) to be brought before the board of guardians at its
next meeting, and given an opportunity of complaining; and the visiting
committee was to ascertain the truth of every complaint made to them.
Under no circumstances was the master to lay hands on a pauper. If force
was absolutely needed, he should call in the porter or other
officer.[262] For graver offences the pauper had to be proceeded against
before the magistrates under the Vagrant Acts and the ordinary criminal
law.
[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.
Passing from punishment to religion, we may note that the main
preoccupation of the Central Authority was, in accordance with the 1834
Act, to protect the pauper from proselytism or from being compelled to
attend services contrary to his religious feelings. The basis of this
protection was the compulsory creed register. No pauper was to be
obliged to attend--or so placed that he could not avoid being present
at--any religious service contrary to his principles. Children were not
to be educated in any creed other than that of their parents. On the
other hand, it was expressly laid down that a chaplain should be
appointed and prayers and services should be officially provided,
although these were only to be those of the Established Church.[263] But
provision was made for what promptly became the holding of Nonconformist
services in the workhouse, by the permission that any pauper might be
visited at any time of the day by a licensed minister of his own
persuasion, for religious assistance or the instruction of
children.[264] Those who were registered as members of the Established
Church, whether adults or children, were not to be permitted, even with
their own consent, to receive religious assistance or instruction from
ministers of other denominations.[265] This, however, was altered in
1842, when the Central Authority, whilst still thinking it
"objectionable," announced that it would not interfere to prevent the
attendance of such persons as desired it at any Nonconformist service
performed in the workhouse.[266] In one union (Royston), where the board
of guardians refused to appoint a chaplain, and sought to induce the
inmates to receive the voluntary ministrations of Nonconformists, the
Central Authority was driven peremptorily to forbid, by three successive
special orders, any pauper inmate, whether child or adult, belonging to
the Established Church being even allowed to attend Nonconformist
services in the workhouse.[267] Finally, the Central Authority reverted,
for all unions, to its policy of 1839, restricting the ministrations of
Nonconformist ministers to members of their own denomination only,
except in so far as the guardians might choose to allow inmates
belonging to any sect of Protestant Dissenters to receive, if they
chose, the ministrations of any Protestant Dissenter.[268]
[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.
For all who did not conscientiously object, there were to be public
prayers daily before breakfast and after supper; and Divine service
within the workhouse every Sunday, at which attendance was compulsory on
all members of the Church of England, not being children or sick. It was
obligatory to appoint a chaplain, whose duty it was to preach every
Sunday, to examine and catechise the children at least once a month, and
to visit the sick. It is, however, to be noted that it was directed that
"the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper" was not to be administered in the
workhouse, except to "the sick and disabled inmates": though the
chaplain was allowed to permit any other inmates to communicate along
with the sick, if he thought fit.[269] Gradually, however, workhouses
got regular "chapels" within their walls, though without any express
direction or sanction of the Central Authority for their establishment
or equipment; and the Central Authority then allowed, when a chapel
existed, the administration of the Sacrament, if the bishop sanctioned
it.[270] No labour, except household work and cooking, was to be
performed on Sunday; nor (as was added in 1842) on Christmas Day and
Good Friday. The Anglican children were to be prepared for confirmation
by the chaplain, who might be assisted by the schoolmaster or
schoolmistress.[271] Originally no provision was made for permitting any
of the paupers ever to leave the workhouse to attend Divine service
outside, and the Central Authority long held to this position. Presently
it began to consider possible relaxations for the aged, the widows with
families, and the children.[272] In 1842 it was expressly left open to
the guardians to allow such inmates as they thought fit, to whatever
class they belonged, to go out to church or chapel, in the custody of
the master or porter, on Sunday, Good Friday, and Christmas Day.[273] In
strange contradiction of the dictum that the workhouse was not to be
looked on as a place for the punishment of past misconduct, this
privilege of going out to church or chapel was to be forbidden to any
woman who had an illegitimate child,[274] a disqualification not
incorporated in the General Consolidated Order of 1847. And as the
master or porter could not be required to go to a Dissenting chapel,
some other regulation was to be made by the guardians for the case of
Dissenters, "such as inducing the ministers of the different
congregations to certify the attendance," with "the times of the
commencement and end of the service."[275]
[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.
(ix.) _Discharge and Detention_
It was an essential part of the policy of the Central Authority that any
workhouse inmate over sixteen could leave the house on giving reasonable
notice--at first defined as three hours, and then left more vague, but
explained to mean sufficient to enable the master to make the necessary
entries, return the pauper's own clothes, etc., and to let the discharge
take place in working hours. The option was, however, with the head of
the family in each case; and if the head was "able-bodied"--it is not
clear whether this was to be in the "indoor" or the "outdoor" sense of
that term--the whole family had to leave with him (or her), unless the
board of guardians chose to allow an exception. In particular an
able-bodied man was not to be allowed to leave his wife and children in
the workhouse, whilst he sought work. If he insisted on going out, the
wife and children were also to be discharged with him.[276] It was, in
fact, to be a cardinal feature of the workhouse that so far as any
person over sixteen was concerned there should be no power of detention.
Even if paupers persisted in repeatedly passing in and out at short
intervals--it might be "for improper purposes"; even if "persons of weak
intellect" or of "confirmed vagrant habits" made it "a practice to
return again after a short absence, generally in a most abject and
loathsome state";[277] even if women persisted in returning to the
workhouse year after year to be confined of a succession of illegitimate
children;[278] or if sick paupers demanded their discharge at a time
when to go out would "damage their own health," or even, if they had an
infectious disease, "endanger the health of others,"[279] they were
still, after a warning, to be permitted freely to leave when they chose.
To this total lack of power to detain there were only three exceptions.
Children who were doubly orphaned, or deserted by both parents, might
be detained if under sixteen; the guardians (though without statutory
authority) being assumed to be _in loco parentis_. A person of unsound
mind, duly certified as such, could be detained; but this power did
not apply to persons of merely defective intellect or feeble-minded.
Finally, as we have already mentioned, the practice of four hours'
detention of vagrants in the casual wards was introduced by the
Central Authority, under the implicit authority of the Acts of 1842
and 1844.[280] On the other hand, although no person could insist on
admission to a workhouse, and the board of guardians could (subject to
their obligation to relieve him in some way, if actually destitute)
legally turn a pauper out of the workhouse who did not wish to leave,
the Central Authority advised that, as "persons who are not really
destitute would be unwilling to remain" in any workhouse that was
"properly regulated," this legal power ought not to be exercised,[281]
except, as above explained, in the case of dependents where the head
of the family insisted on taking his own discharge; or except for
the purpose of immediately prosecuting the pauper under the Vagrant
Acts.[282]
[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.
(x.) _The Workhouse of the General Consolidated Order of 1847_
We will now attempt to summarise the policy of the Central Authority as
it stood in 1847 with respect to indoor relief. The workhouse for each
union was to be one centrally situated, plain building; designed to
house all sorts and conditions of paupers, under one head, and according
to a single code of rules. There was to be complete separation of the
sexes, with the one nominal exception in favour of aged married couples
who demanded it. But the regulations made association among inmates of
the same sex practically unrestricted. For although the elaborate
classificatory scheme of 1836 depending on the respective ages was duly
incorporated in the General Consolidated Order of 1847, this was
hindered from ensuring any effective segregation by exceptions and
inconsistent provisions; and was, in fact, rendered practically nugatory
by requiring all inmates capable of service to perform the household
work of all the wards and to supervise or serve all the other inmates of
the same sex. On the other hand, all the workhouse inmates were to be,
as far as possible, restricted from intercourse with the outside world,
and thus confined to the atmosphere of pauperism. The policy with regard
to treatment was to insist on cleanliness and order; to provide food,
clothing, and sleep ample for health (even, to modern ideas, excessive);
and to balance this by rigorous discipline, complete subjection to the
master, and suppression of all individual impulse. Above all, the
paupers were to be kept constantly occupied in toil, persistent and
monotonous, with every element of encouragement, stimulus,
responsibility, initiative and skill deliberately eliminated. Everything
in the nature of recreation, mental exercise or training was (except for
a minimum of teaching to the young children) avowedly excluded. The only
forces appealed to were the fear of punishment and a modicum of
religious exhortation. It was a fundamental principle that the _régime_
of the workhouse should apply uniformly to all the pauper inmates
whatever their past character, or present conduct, with the
indispensable minimum of deviation for senility, infancy, and actual
infirmity from sickness or otherwise. Even the sick are almost entirely
ignored in the Orders of the Central Authority, and there is the very
minimum of recognition of any hospital provision. The policy of the
Central Authority at this date, in short, deliberately excluded any use
of the workhouse for the curative, reformatory, or educational treatment
of any class whatsoever. There was only to be one institution in each
Union for all classes of paupers. It was to be a place which, whilst it
provided the full requirements of physical health, starved both the will
and the intelligence, and forced the pauper into a condition of
blank-mindedness. By this means it was intended that no destitute person
still capable of exerting or of enjoying himself, with the merest shred
of mental faculty or mental desire, would consent to remain in the
workhouse a day longer than he could help. Hence it was a part of the
policy to avoid all obligatory detention, and to persist in regarding
the workhouse as a place of merely temporary sojourn, in which no
inmate, of whatever age, sex or condition, need be permanently
domiciled.
_K._--THE POSITION IN 1847 COMPARED WITH THE PRINCIPLES OF 1834
The proposals and recommendations of the Report of 1834 fall under five
heads, though opinions may differ as to the relative weight intended to
be given to each. These five heads are:--
(i.) That there should be national uniformity in the treatment of
each class of paupers, so that every applicant of any class might
receive identical treatment wherever he happened to reside.
(ii.) That outdoor relief to the able-bodied and their families
should be abolished--it being left ambiguous whether or not this
applied to any woman not legally dependent on an able-bodied man.
(iii.) That each local authority should have a workhouse in which
able-bodied applicants for relief should be received and set to
work under strict discipline, in order to test their destitution.
(iv.) That the condition of the able-bodied pauper should be less
eligible than that of the lowest class of independent labourer.
(v.) That, in so far as the aged and infirm or the children were
given indoor maintenance, this should be in separate institutions,
under distinct management, in which the old might "enjoy their
indulgences" and the children be educated by "a person properly
qualified to act as a schoolmaster."
Dealing separately with each of these, we see, with regard to national
uniformity, that the Poor Law Commissioners had failed to embody this in
their Orders even with regard to able-bodied men; and had, by 1847,
wholly abandoned it in regard to other classes. In over 100 places the
Poor Law Commissioners had practically failed to introduce their new
principles at all. The rest of the country was divided for some purposes
into two, and for others into three geographical areas of uneven size.
In 396 unions outdoor relief to the able-bodied and their families was
prohibited. In thirty-two unions under one set of regulations, and in
eighty-one and twenty-nine unions under others, it was permitted on
conditions. But it was with regard to the relief of women and children
dependent on able-bodied persons that the two geographical areas
differed most markedly. In the 396 unions, these dependents of
able-bodied persons could not be relieved otherwise than in the
workhouse. In the thirty-two, and also in the eighty-one and twenty-nine
unions, they could be relieved in their homes. A similar geographical
difference prevailed with regard to the relief to be given to the
independent woman. For all the other classes of paupers, whether these
were the specific exceptions to the classes above mentioned, or the much
more numerous "aged and infirm," "sick," or orphan or deserted children,
no uniform method of relief was prescribed or even suggested. Each of
the local authorities was left to devise its own policy.
Passing now to the second head, the abolition of outdoor relief to
able-bodied persons and their families, we note that the Poor Law
Commissioners had, by 1847, in regard to 142 unions (comprising over
one-fifth of the whole number), practically abandoned the hope of
prohibition. In its stead, the Commissioners had sanctioned the opening
of stone-yards, etc., for the employment of men receiving outdoor
relief.
With regard to the third head, the use of admission to a workhouse as a
test of destitution of the able-bodied, this was not prescribed by the
Commissioners to the 142 unions just mentioned.
The fourth head, making the condition of the able-bodied pauper less
eligible than that of the lowest class of independent labourer, the
Commissioners strove incessantly to insist upon. But by 1847 they had
given up attempting to secure this less eligible state by giving less
food, inferior clothing, worse accommodation, or shorter hours of sleep
than those enjoyed by even the average labourer. The Commissioners were
now attempting to secure this less eligible state by monotonous toil,
lack of all recreation, a total absence of any mental stimulus, and,
where possible, by confinement within the workhouse walls.
But it was under the fifth head that the Commissioners had, by 1847,
departed most widely from the principles of 1834, viz. in the kind of
institutional treatment to be provided for such aged and infirm persons,
or children, as the local authority chose to refuse outdoor relief to,
and to receive in the workhouse. Following the lead of the Report of
1834, the Poor Law Commissioners took no steps, so far as we can
ascertain, either to encourage or to discourage the relief of the aged
and infirm, and of the sick, by money allowances in their own homes. But
where these classes were admitted into the workhouse, the
Commissioners, instead of the separate, specialised institutions
recommended in the Report of 1834, prescribed one general workhouse to
contain these classes together with the able-bodied and their families,
and, we may add, also the orphan and deserted children. This involved,
in spite of the elaborate classification nominally imposed, an
indiscriminate, common establishment, with a uniform _régime_ for all
classes alike. This _régime_ was, with the minimum of exceptions, that
devised for the able-bodied adults. The workhouse of 1847 was, above
all, to serve as a test of destitution, and as a place which the
able-bodied would find less eligible than the worst independent
existence. Hence when it was used for all classes--the aged and infirm,
the sick, the dependent women, the young children, the defectives of
various kinds, and those whom accident or sudden emergency had thrown
within its walls--it was necessarily, to all of them alike, an
institution which, whilst providing the full requirements of physical
health, starved both the will and the intelligence, and forced the
pauper into a condition of blank-mindedness.
It must be said that, between 1834 and 1847, there seems to have been
entertained by some persons of authority and repute a simpler and most
drastic view of the policy intended by the Report and Act of 1834,
namely, the abolition, as soon as practicable, of all outdoor relief to
all classes of paupers; and the substitution, in all cases, of the offer
of admission to the workhouse. This was intended to ensure that the
condition of the persons relieved should be "less eligible," so as to
induce them and their relatives to avoid maintenance out of the poor
rate. It is clear, as we have shown, that neither the Inquiry
Commissioners of 1834, nor Parliament, nor yet the Poor Law
Commissioners themselves between 1834 and 1847, ever took that view.
They were too fully conscious of the impossibility of so dealing with
the great mass of the sick and the aged and infirm, and they had not at
all made up their minds about widows with children, or even about
unencumbered independent women. Harriet Martineau, indeed, who had not
before her the statistics showing to what an enormous extent the
pauperism--even that of 1834--was made up of the aged and infirm and the
sick, could naïvely depict, in her _Poor Law Tales_, the complete
success of an absolutely inflexible offer of "the House" to every
applicant without exception; the result being an entirely de-pauperised
parish, and the overseer turning the key in the door of an absolutely
empty workhouse. What is more remarkable is to find even able
subordinates of the Poor Law Commissioners talking as if they took this
view. "It appears to me," wrote Sir Francis Head in 1835, "that we have
no discretion allowed to us to deliberate whether the workhouse system
is good or bad. Our Poor Law Amendment Act is physic which the
legislature, in the character of physician, has prescribed to remedy an
acknowledged evil. We are called upon to administer it, and it seems to
me that the only discretion granted to us is to determine what period is
to elapse before _all outdoor relief is to be stopped_."[283]
[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.
Fortunately we are not left to conjecture in this matter. In 1847, on
the eve of their transformation into the Poor Law Board, the
Commissioners (then Sir George Nicholls, Sir George Cornewall Lewis and
Sir Edmund Head) put officially on record what in their view had been
the intention of the legislature in passing the Act of 1834, and what,
in this respect, had been their own consistent policy. In a special
report to the Home Secretary in 1847, they declare that: "In exercising
the discretion entrusted to them by the legislature, the Commissioners
have been placed between two extreme opinions with respect to the manner
of framing their regulations. On the one hand, it is held that the main
object of the Poor Law Amendment Act is the extinction or repression of
outdoor relief _generally_ (and not merely of the outdoor relief of the
_able-bodied_), with the consequent diminution of the expenditure from
the poor's rate; and that the Commissioners ought to proceed to the
accomplishment of this end with little regard to public opinion. On the
other hand, it is asserted that the existing law, and the regulations
made under it, have gone much too far in the limitation of the outdoor
relief of the able-bodied, have effected too great a reduction in the
amount of pauperism and the expenditure for the relief of the poor, and
have thereby deprived the poorer classes of a vested right in the
property of the rate-paying part of the community.
"The Commissioners have pursued a middle course, almost equally removed
from each of these extremes. They have considered the main object of the
legislature in passing the Poor Law Amendment Act to have been the
extinction of the _allowance system_;[284] or the system of making up
the wages of labourers out of the poor's rate. With this view their
regulations respecting the limitation of outdoor relief have been almost
exclusively confined to the able-bodied in health; and these regulations
have been issued particularly to the rural unions inasmuch as it was in
the agricultural counties, and not in the large towns or manufacturing
districts, that the allowance system was most prevalent, and led to the
most dangerous consequences.... The Commissioners ... have to the utmost
of their power given effect by their regulations to the views of the
legislature."[285]
[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.
In 1847 the Poor Law Commissioners were, by Act of Parliament,
abolished, and their duties transferred to the Poor Law Board, under a
minister responsible to Parliament.
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).
CHAPTER III
THE POOR LAW BOARD
We have seen that between 1834 and 1847 the Central Authority settled
down to a certain empirical policy as to the administration of relief,
which was embodied, as regards workhouse management throughout the whole
country, in the General Consolidated Order of 1847; and (as regards
outdoor relief in the different geographical regions into which England
and Wales had been divided) in the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of
1844, in that Order coupled with a Labour Test Order, and in the series
of separate Orders to be presently consolidated in the Outdoor Relief
Regulation Order of 1852. The policy thus adopted was, as we have seen,
in various important respects not that of the "principles of 1834." It
is significant of the difficulty which was experienced in putting those
principles into operation that there was, during the whole period
1847-71, no attempt to bring the general policy into conformity with
that of the Report of 1834. We see no attempt at revision--indeed
practically no criticism or desire for revision--of the great Orders of
1844, 1847 and 1852. What happened was a slow and almost unselfconscious
development of a supplementary policy in respect to certain favoured
classes of paupers, notably children and the sick--classes which had
been practically ignored in the 1834 Report. This supplementary policy
was avowedly based, not on the principle of a minimum relief of
destitution with deterrent conditions, but on that of supplying whatever
was necessary for adequate training or treatment, without objecting to
the incidental result that this meant placing out in the competitive
world the persons thus dealt with in a position of positive advantage
as compared with the lowest class of independent labourers, who plainly
could get no such training or treatment. It does not appear necessary,
for this period, to separate the analysis of the statutes from that of
the orders of the Central Authority. Though the Acts of Parliament are
numerous--one or two for every session--they relate principally to the
machinery of administration,[286] and (except in the case of children)
deal only slightly with policy. Parliament had, in fact, ceased to be
interested in the Poor Law, and furnished for many years practically
neither independent criticism nor initiative. "The Poor Law Board,"
observed Sir George Cornewall Lewis in 1851, "has now become purely
administrative and has no character or policy of its own."[287] It got
from Parliament just what additional powers it chose to ask for.[288] We
may therefore include in one analysis both the statutes and the orders
relating to relief policy.
[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).
_A._--_The Able-bodied_
So far as may be gathered from new statutes, new general orders, or new
circulars of the Central Authority, there was, between 1847 and 1871, no
new policy prescribed to the local Poor Law authorities[289] for the
relief of the able-bodied. It is true that in August 1852, revised in
December 1852, we have a great General Order (still in force), the
Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, which permitted outdoor relief to the
able-bodied, unconditionally for women, and subject to test work for
men. This, however, was but a codification, with slight amendments, of
the separate Outdoor Labour Test Orders that had been issued between
1835 and 1852. It might, therefore, be inferred that the Central
Authority did not, between 1847 and 1871, change its policy.[290]
[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).
(i.) _National Uniformity_
No attempt was made to secure national uniformity with regard to the
treatment of the able-bodied.
Union after union was brought under one or other of the three systems
which we have already described until, by 1871, with half-a-dozen
exceptions, the whole area was covered. The Outdoor Relief Prohibitory
Order of 1844 (forbidding, with certain exceptions, outdoor relief to
the able-bodied, whether men or women) continued in force in, or was
issued anew to, certain unions. This Order, coupled with an Outdoor
Labour Test Order (sanctioning outdoor relief to able-bodied men and
their families subject to test work by the man, but prohibiting outdoor
relief to able-bodied independent women), continued in force in, or was
issued anew to, certain other unions. To a third set of unions there was
issued the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order (permitting outdoor relief to
able-bodied women unconditionally, and to able-bodied men subject to
test work). These three systems of outdoor relief to the able-bodied
remained, between 1847 and 1871, essentially as they had been elaborated
between 1834 and 1847.
But meanwhile a great change in the policy of the Central Authority was
silently taking place. The areas over which the three systems were
applied completely shifted in relative importance. In 1847 the Outdoor
Relief Prohibitory Order, issued alone, which may be said to come
nearest to the "principles of 1834," had been imposed on 396 unions; the
two other systems standing out only as relatively small exceptions,
temporarily applicable to 142 places in all.
It is clear that at that period the Central Authority was "of opinion
that where there is a commodious and efficient workhouse, it is best
that _the able-bodied paupers_ should be received and set to work
therein."[291]
[291] Circular of 25th August 1852 in Fifth Annual Report, 1852,
pp. 21-2. Note the limitation which we have italicised.
Yet for the next twenty years the part of England and Wales to which the
Central Authority sought to apply this policy steadily shrank. In 1871,
the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, issued alone, applied only to 307
unions, containing a steadily declining proportion of the total
population.
That Order was mitigated in 217 unions, comprising a steadily increasing
population, by being accompanied by a Labour Test Order. Finally, the
Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, since 1852 adopted as a permanent
policy, had crept over the Metropolis, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, and
the majority of urban centres elsewhere, to the number of no fewer than
117. In these important districts the Central Authority had become
convinced, to use its own words, that it was "_not expedient ... to
prohibit out-relief to any class of paupers_."[292]
[292] _Ibid._ p. 22.
The able-bodied in the workhouse remained under the General Consolidated
Order of 1847 essentially as we have already described them.
(ii.) _Municipal Work for the Unemployed_
We must here mention the episode of the public works undertaken in
1863-6 by the municipal and public health authorities of Lancashire,
etc., as a means of relieving the distress caused by the cotton famine.
As this has been so clearly described by various writers, it will
suffice here to draw attention to the fact that although directed by the
Poor Law Board, these works of municipal improvement formed no part of
its Poor Law policy. The Central Authority began by sanctioning "a large
amount of relief given at variance with the provisions of the General
Relief Regulations Order."[293] The problem was then tackled by
extensive charitable funds. Finally the Poor Law Board itself came to
the conclusion that "it appeared highly desirable that the large bodies
of able-bodied men who had been so long deprived of their usual
employment should not continue to be relieved either in idleness, or on
the performance of a task of unremunerative labour, but should rather,
if possible, have work at adequate wages placed within their reach which
would enable them to obtain an independent livelihood."[294] What was
then adopted was the policy of using public orders for necessary work as
a means of partially filling the gap in the aggregate volume of
employment caused by the stoppage of the mills. Various minor relief
works, in the ordinary sense of the term, were started by local
committees and private persons. But the main experiment, fostered by
Government loans of nearly two millions, and the advice of a Government
engineer, took the form of the execution by the municipalities, and
other local authorities, of necessary works of public improvement,
which, far from being artificially created in order to give employment,
would in any event have had to be executed, and were, in fact, long
overdue.[295] There was no attempt to set all the unemployed to work,
and no desire to confine to them the staff that was engaged. As a matter
of fact, about a third of the men taken on were workmen skilled in the
particular work to be done, and these do not appear to have been drawn
from the unemployed class at all. But for the mere unskilled manual work
volunteers were (in some, but not all the cases) asked for among the
distressed cotton operatives, from amongst whom the necessary number of
labourers were selected, to be engaged _at labourers' rates of pay_.
Thus, although in this utilisation of public orders to regularise the
volume of employment there was just this element of relief works, that
in some of the towns and some of the works use was made, for the
unskilled manual labour, of the services of selected unemployed cotton
operatives, the Lancashire authorities escaped what we have elsewhere
called the essential dilemma that attends the artificial employment of
the unemployed. As they were in the exceptional position of having to
offer unskilled labourers' work to skilled and normally highly-paid
operatives--and as they did not pretend to take on "the unemployed" as
such, but merely asked for so many volunteers from among the cotton
operatives to the exclusion of the actual labouring class--the wages
that they gave, though sufficient for livelihood, offered no attraction
to any of those whom they employed who had the alternative of returning
to their accustomed occupation. The boards of guardians were concerned
in these works only in their capacity as public health authorities. But
the fact is important that in this emergency, the Poor Law Board itself,
beginning with a mere relaxation of its regulations, turned then, as an
alternative, to even less strictly regulated charity, and finally came
to the conclusion that the best policy was to use the municipal orders
for waterworks, sewers, and paving works, as far as possible, to make up
a definitely ascertained deficiency in private orders. It was, we
suggest, just because these were not relief works in the usual sense of
the term, but merely public works of utility and even of necessity that
were long overdue, and because they were, in the main, executed as such
by labourers engaged at wages in the ordinary way, and not with a view
of offering work to all who demanded it, that the Poor Law Board could
come unhesitatingly to the conclusion that the experiment had been a
great success. The success, however, of the Government loan of nearly
two millions lay at least as much in the stimulus given to sanitary
improvement and municipal enterprise as in the comparatively small
amount of relief thereby directly afforded to the distressed cotton
operatives.[296]
[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.
An incident of this great experiment is worth recording, as possibly
affording a hint and a precedent. In October 1862--before the Government
loans had actually started the municipalities engaging in municipal
works--the Central Authority authorised the Manchester Board of
Guardians to give outdoor relief to able-bodied men for whom a labour
test could not be provided, on condition that they attended educational
classes arranged by the guardians. This permission was largely acted
upon. One whole trade union (the Society of Makers Up), asked "to be
sent to school, instead of to labour." Not only were reading and writing
taught, but what we should now term university extension lectures were
delivered (by Professor Roscoe, etc.).[297]
[297] MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 30th October,
20th November, and 3rd December 1862.
_B._--_Vagrants_
We left the Poor Law Commissioners, in 1847, at last awake to the fact
that the policy of the Report of 1834--that vagrants should be treated
like any other able-bodied male paupers, and offered "the House"--had
been a conspicuous failure. The new "union workhouses," rising up all
over the country, afforded to the habitual tramp a national system of
well-ordered, suitably situated, gratuitous common lodging-houses, of
which he took increasing advantage.[298] Confronted by this growth of
vagrancy, the Poor Law Commissioners, towards the end of their term, had
pressed on boards of guardians a new vagrancy policy--that of making the
night's lodging disagreeable to the wayfarer. By statute and order the
Central Authority had authorised compulsory detention for four hours and
the exaction of a task of work. This policy had not been generally
adopted, nor particularly successful where tried. In the bad years of
1847-9 vagrancy was still increasing at a dangerous rate, and one of the
first duties of the new Poor Law Board was to issue instructions on the
subject.
[298] Reports and Communications on Vagrancy, 1848.
The instructions given by Mr. Charles Buller, the first President of the
Poor Law Board, adumbrated in the guise of a policy what were really two
distinct and inherently incompatible lines of action. The Central
Authority, on the one hand, pressed on boards of guardians the
advisability of discriminating between the honest unemployed in search
of work and the professional tramp--"the thief, the mendicant and the
prostitute, who crowd the vagrant wards"--even to the extent of refusing
all relief whatsoever to able-bodied men of the latter class, who were
not in immediate danger of starvation. It seems as if the Central
Authority was at this point almost inclined to press on boards of
guardians the Scottish Poor Law policy of regarding the able-bodied
healthy male adult as ineligible for relief. "As a general rule," it was
laid down, the relieving officer "would be right in refusing relief to
able-bodied and healthy men; though in inclement weather he might afford
them shelter if really destitute of the means of procuring it for
themselves."[299] Acting on this suggestion many boards of guardians
closed their vagrant wards,[300] and the Bradford Guardians decided to
"altogether dispense with" the meals heretofore given "at the vagrant
office."[301] The honest wayfarer in temporary distress might, it was
suggested, be given a certificate showing his circumstances,
destination, object of journey, etc., upon production of which he was to
be readily admitted to the workhouses, and provided with comfortable
accommodation.[302]
[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.
To aid in this discrimination, it was suggested that a police constable,
who had knowledge of habitual vagrants and was feared by them, would be
useful as an assistant relieving officer.[303] Nevertheless the other
policy, that of the casual ward, admitting to its disagreeable and
deterrent shelter every applicant who chose to apply for it, was not
abandoned by the Central Authority. The orders and instructions about
casual wards still remained in force, and continued to be issued or
confirmed. These involved, not the refusal of relief to the able-bodied
healthy male adult, but systematic provision for it, coupled with
detention and a task of work.
[303] _Ibid._ p. 271.
Ten years later we find the Central Authority definitely abandoning, so
far as the Metropolis was concerned, both its policy of discrimination
among wayfarers and that of refusing, at any rate in weather not
inclement, relief to the healthy able-bodied male vagrant. The London
workhouses had become congested "by the flocking into them of the lowest
and most difficult to manage classes of poor."[304] They were now to be
entirely relieved of the annoyance and disorganisation caused by the
nightly influx of casual inmates. All persons applying for a night's
lodging were to be subjected, whatever their antecedents, character, or
circumstances, to a uniform "test of destitution," by being received
only in "asylums for the houseless poor," six of which, conducted on a
uniform system of employment, discipline, and deterrent treatment, were
to be established in London apart from the workhouses.[305] This was
admittedly a revival of the project of 1844,[306] which had failed from
the "want of co-operation on the part of several of the boards of
guardians."[307] The revived policy proved for six years equally
unsuccessful and for the same reason. The six "asylums for the houseless
poor" did not get built, and vagrants continued to be dealt with
haphazard in the forty Metropolitan workhouses. In 1864 the Central
Authority took what proved to be a decisive step. The Metropolitan
Houseless Poor Acts, 1864 and 1865, made it obligatory on Metropolitan
boards of guardians to provide casual wards for "destitute wayfarers,
wanderers, and foundlings."[308] At the same time it bribed them to
adopt that policy for all wayfarers by making (in accordance with a
recommendation of the House of Commons Select Committee on Poor Relief
of 1864) the cost of relief given in the casual wards a common charge
upon the whole of London.[309] The casual wards so made a common charge
had to be conducted under rules to be framed by the Central Authority;
and these we have in the Circular of October 26th 1864, recommending
that the new casual wards should consist of two large "parallelograms,"
each to accommodate in common promiscuity as many of one sex as were
ever expected; furnished with a common "sleeping platform" down each
side, on which the reclining occupants were to be separated from each
other only by planks on edge; without separate accommodation for
dressing or undressing; and with coarse "straw or cocoa fibre in a loose
tick," and a rug "sufficient for warmth."[310] To this was added, by the
General Order of March 3rd 1866, a uniform dietary "for wayfarers" in
these wards of bread and gruel only,[311] thus definitely marking the
abandonment, so far as London was concerned, of all attempt, either at
refusing a night's lodging to able-bodied healthy males, or at doing
anything more or anything different for the honest unemployed wayfarer
than for the professional tramp.
[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.
Notwithstanding the apparent decisiveness of policy as to vagrants
embodied in the Metropolitan Houseless Poor Act of 1864, we find the
Central Authority, disturbed by the steady growth of vagrancy throughout
the country,[312] still continuing to talk about discrimination. In
1868, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, in announcing that the Poor Law Board
contemplated extending to the whole country the Metropolitan system of
dealing with vagrants, added, with an inconsistency which we do not
understand, that "it would be required ... that guardians should take
the responsibility of a sound and vigilant discrimination between
deserving travellers in search of work and professional vagrants not
really destitute, by the appointment of officers capable of exercising
such discrimination; and that, where practicable, the police should be
appointed assistant relieving officers. The forthcoming Order would
likewise suggest, in cases where it might be practicable, that the
accommodation for deserving travellers should be different from that
given to professional vagrants."[313] Yet even for the professional
vagrant the promiscuous London casual ward of 1864 was not to be
extended. "It was," said the President of the Poor Law Board in 1868,
"very desirable that ... each person should have a separate or divided
bed place."[314] The new policy, which the President seems to have
thought was the London policy of 1864, but which was really a revival of
Mr. Charles Buller's policy of 1848, was embodied in a Circular, which
admittedly reproduced, in all essentials, the Minute of 1848--the
necessity of discrimination, the employment of the police, the issue of
tickets to genuine honest wayfarers, their comfortable accommodation in
workhouses without task of work, and the desirability of uniformity of
treatment in the different unions.[315]
[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.
It must be added that, before the end of its tenure of office, the Poor
Law Board had become convinced that it had as completely failed to solve
the problem of vagrancy as had the Poor Law Commissioners. In the
Metropolis it was forced on its attention that "the great increase in
the pauper population may be traced to the operation of the Houseless
Poor Act, which has practically legalised vagrancy and professional
vagabondism."[316] Throughout the whole country the number of vagrants
nightly relieved in the workhouse, which had between 1858 and 1862
always been under 2000, rose between 1862 and 1870 to between five and
six thousand, and to a maximum of 7946 on 1st July 1868, though falling
to less in the exceptionally good trade of 1870-1.[317] The fact is that
the boards of guardians felt themselves between the horns of a dilemma,
against which the inconsistent see-saw policy of the Central Authority
was no protection. If they refused relief to those whom their relieving
officers deemed worthless loafers, these bad characters became
"masterful beggars," pertinacious tramps, and sources of danger to the
countryside, whilst in the bad times of 1866 some of those refused
relief suffered hardship and even death.[318] Hence the general
reversion to a policy of relief. The Central Authority, under Mr.
Goschen's presidency, was at this point considering a new policy, that
of penal detention after relief. Mr. Goschen explained to the House of
Commons that this would amount, practically, to "a kind of
imprisonment," and be "a stronger measure than the administration by the
police of the law as at present existing," which had also been proposed,
but "if Parliament were inclined to concede power to detain paupers for
a longer period than they were now detained, and to keep them at work,
he believed that would be a very effectual means of diminishing vagrancy
and pauperism."[319]
[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.
_C._--_Women_
Women, of whom there were always between 80,000 and 100,000 on outdoor
relief, were almost wholly ignored in the Poor Law Legislation of
1847-71, as in the Orders of the Central Authority. The policy of the
Central Authority, so far as it appears from the documents, continued to
be to permit able-bodied independent women unconditionally to receive
outdoor relief, whether or not they were in receipt of wages, so far as
concerned the unions under the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order; and to
forbid outdoor relief to such women in unions under the Outdoor Relief
Prohibitory Order, whether or not this Order was accompanied by an
Outdoor Labour Test Order (for men).[320]
[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.
The women dependent on able-bodied men, whether themselves able-bodied
or not, might be maintained in their homes, on condition of their
husbands being employed in test work, not only in all unions under the
Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, but also in those in which the Outdoor
Relief Prohibitory Order was accompanied by a Labour Test Order. On the
other hand, such women, however feeble or infirm, were not allowed to be
maintained in their homes, even if their husbands were willing to do
test work, in those unions in which the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order
was alone in force. No reason appears for these differences in policy as
to the method of relief of identical categories of women in the
different geographical regions into which the Central Authority had
divided England and Wales. But although the policy of the Central
Authority with regard to women remained, in each of the three regions
into which England was divided by these Orders, apparently unchanged,
the regions themselves, as we have mentioned, were being silently
altered. The great enlargement of the territory to which the laxer Order
was applied and the narrow limitation of the territory governed by the
stricter Order, involved an enormous extension of the outdoor relief to
women permitted by the Central Authority.
In that part of England and Wales which was under the Outdoor Relief
Prohibitory Order, a widow without children continued to be allowed to
receive outdoor relief only during the first six months of her
widowhood. In all the rest of the country she continued to be allowed to
receive outdoor relief indefinitely. Widows with children continued to
be allowed to receive outdoor relief under all the Orders.
We have, however, in these years, the first recognition (so far as we
can trace) of the difficulty of the problem presented by the inadequate
earnings of independent able-bodied women.[321] In Bermondsey, in 1850,
where there was no Order in force as to outdoor relief, the Central
Authority was forced to face the problem presented by "widows and other
females who, though in very constant work as sempstresses or
shirtmakers," obtained so trifling a remuneration as to be unable to
live. The Central Authority admitted that it was lawful to grant them
relief, but discouraged this course, "persuaded that the practice of
making up insufficient earnings by outdoor relief must tend to produce
and perpetuate the evil." The guardians were advised to refuse partial
relief, so that some of the women might be wholly maintained in the
workhouse and so taken off the labour market, when pressure of
competition on the others would be thereby relieved and their wages
would rise. The Central Authority did not, however, take the
responsibility of issuing an Order specially enforcing this policy; and
it is to be noted (as already mentioned) that by gradually substituting
the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order for the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory
Order, the Central Authority was, in fact, retreating from the advice to
the Bermondsey Guardians of 1850.[322]
[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).
Not until 1869 (so far as we can trace) did the Central Authority face
the problem presented by the widow with children. Mr Goschen's
celebrated Minute of November 20th 1869, incidentally referred (as a
frequent exception to the rule against a "rate in aid of wages") to the
grant of partial relief "in the case of widows with families, where it
is often manifestly impossible that the woman can support the family."
Mr. Goschen does not appear to have made any definite suggestion of an
alternative policy in these cases. He seems to have regarded it as
merely an exception, of no great importance. But the Holborn Board of
Guardians, in their reply to the Circular, pointed out that "the
exception of widows would of itself constitute so large a proportion
that the rule is virtually swallowed up thereby." The Holborn Guardians,
apparently understanding that the Central Authority was hinting at the
stoppage of outdoor relief in these cases, also pointed out that "it
would be impossible to find workhouse accommodation for over 20,000
widows in the Metropolis and their 60,000 children." These figures were
indeed exaggerated; but it was incidentally observed by the Central
Authority itself that "the amount of destitution in the country
generally, caused by the death, absence, or desertion of the male head
of the family ... we should estimate ... to be 35 per cent of the
whole."[323] In 1858, the "able-bodied widows relieved out of doors" in
the whole country numbered 50,468, and the children dependent on them
126,658, making together over 25 per cent of the total pauper
population.[324] In the Metropolis alone, out of an outdoor pauper
population in 1869 of 121,012 (excluding lunatics and vagrants), the
women relieved because of the death or absence of their husbands
numbered 11,851, and their children 28,569, making a total of 40,420, or
one-third of the whole outdoor pauperism.[325] It was perhaps in view of
such statistics that the Central Authority, in reporting on the reply of
the Holborn Board of Guardians, among other replies, made no criticism
of the grant of outdoor relief to widows with children, and offered no
suggestion of an alternative policy. The only suggestions made were that
there should be more relieving officers to check the overlapping of
outdoor relief and private charity, and that the outdoor relief granted
should be "adequate."[326] A special Commissioner (Mr. Wodehouse) was
told off to make an official inquiry into the administration of outdoor
relief, in which the facts were again laid bare.[327] We do not find
that the Central Authority--now fully aware that the category of widows
with children, "where" (to use Mr. Goschen's words) "it is manifestly
impossible that the earnings of the woman can support the family,"
comprised about 177,000 persons, and made up at least a quarter of the
whole outdoor pauperism--issued any order prescribing what ought to be
done in these cases, or ever made any authoritative suggestion on the
subject. The Holborn and other boards of guardians had therefore warrant
for believing that the grant of outdoor relief to widows with children,
even in supplement of earnings, permitted as it was by the Orders,
continued, as from 1834 onwards, to have the sanction of the Central
Authority.
[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.
_D._--_Children_
It was with regard to children that the policy of the Central Authority
in this period made the greatest advance. This, however, applies chiefly
to the 40,000 children who were being relieved in institutions. With
regard to the children being maintained on outdoor relief--who were at
least five times as numerous--we do not find that the Central Authority
in this period took any cognisance of their condition,[328] except to
some small extent with regard to their schooling. Even this was a new
feature. In 1844, as already mentioned, the Central Authority had
expressly refused to allow 2d. a week to be paid for the schooling of
such a child, or even to permit that sum to be added to the outdoor
relief to the parent with the same object.[329] This decision was
emphasised by a Circular in 1847, laying down that pauper children
living at home were not to be educated at the expense of the poor
rate.[330] For years the Manchester Board of Guardians, under the
leadership of Mr. Hodgson, had tried to get some of their outdoor pauper
children to school, the guardians actually maintaining a primitive day
school of their own for this purpose. The Central Authority refused to
sanction this experiment, forbade its extension, questioned the
lawfulness of the guardians' action, and between 1850 and 1855 seems
always to have been complaining about it.[331] In 1855, however,
Parliament reversed the policy of non-responsibility for outdoor pauper
children, so far as to allow the boards of guardians, if they chose, to
pay for the schooling of such children between the ages of four and
sixteen.[332] They were, however, expressly forbidden to make it a
condition of relief that the child should attend school, for fear of
exciting religious jealousies, all schools being then denominational.
The Central Authority, in transmitting this statute ("Denison's Act") to
the boards of guardians, laid stress on its permissive character. No
instructions or suggestions were given as to the kind of school to be
chosen, though if the guardians in their exercise of their discretion
did pay the fees of any children, they were to satisfy themselves of
their due attendance.[333] But it trusted that "it will be soon brought
into extensive operation," and presently 3986 out of the 200,000 outdoor
pauper children were at school.[334] Special efforts were made during
the Lancashire cotton famine to get the Act carried out,[335] and
gradually more of the boards of guardians adopted the policy.[336] In
1870 the Elementary Education Act made education compulsory over a large
part of the country, and authorised boards of guardians not only to pay
fees, but also to make attendance at school a condition of relief. This,
however, came as part of the educational policy of Parliament, not as
part of the Poor Law policy of the Central Authority. So far as these
children were concerned (though nominal fees continued to be paid out of
the poor rate until 1891), the provision of schooling became merged in
the general communistic provision of schooling for the whole population.
By this beginning of communistic provision of education for the whole
population (completed by the Free Education Act of 1891), the Poor Law
authorities were enabled to escape--so far as education was
concerned--from the embarrassing dilemma of either placing the pauper
child in a position of vantage, or of deliberately bringing up the
quarter of a million pauper children in a state of ignorance similar to
that of the children of the poorest independent labourer prior to 1870.
In respect of everything but education the problem remained. So far as
regards the couple of hundred thousand children maintained on outdoor
relief, the Central Authority left the boards of guardians without
advice on this dilemma.
[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.
Passing now to the 40,000 children in Poor Law institutions, we have
described how, between 1834 and 1847, the Central Authority, in
disregard of the recommendations of the 1834 Report,[337] had adopted
the policy of having one common workhouse for each union, under a single
head, and with an almost identical regimen for all classes of inmates.
It was necessarily incidental to the policy of the Outdoor Relief
Prohibitory Order which was then widely prevalent, that the wife and
children of the destitute man should be relieved only in the workhouse.
These institutions came, therefore, to be the homes and places of
education of not only orphans and foundlings, but also of tens of
thousands of other children, who were often immured in them from birth
until they could be placed out in service. Apparently the idea of one
general workhouse for each union, under one uniform discipline, was too
deeply rooted in the Poor Law Commissioners to allow of any provision
being made for children in the Orders concerning workhouse management.
No provision was made for the children going out for walks or games or
play.[338] No Order required the guardians to appoint a qualified
schoolmaster, or, indeed, any teacher at all, or to buy any
school-books. Year after year the returns from many unions continue to
state "No teachers in workhouse," without evoking from the Central
Authority any compulsory Order.[339]
[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).
It is to the credit of the new Poor Law Board that it at once admitted
that the much-vaunted general workhouse system was, so far as the
children were concerned, simply manufacturing paupers. "Too many of
those brought up in the workhouse," said Mr. Charles Buller in 1848,
"were marked by a tendency to regard the workhouse as their natural and
proper home.... They had been accustomed to the workhouse from their
earliest infancy and ... to the confinement, ... and when they became
adults there was nothing to deter them from entering it."[340] The
remedy now proposed was the removal of all children from the workhouses
to separate Poor Law schools, and their education, irrespective of cost,
in such a way "as may best tend to raise them from the class of paupers
to that of independent labourers _and artisans_."[341] To attain this
end the Central Authority secured another statute in amendment of the
hitherto abortive Act of 1844, permitting the establishment of "district
schools" by combinations of unions.[342] But what enabled this policy
to be begun in the teeth of persistent opposition was a terrible
outbreak of cholera at Mr. Drouet's establishment at Tooting, where the
pauper children of many parishes had continued (as a survival of the old
Poor Law, not yet interfered with by the Central Authority) to be
"farmed out."[343]
[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).
In the course of the same year the Central Authority succeeded in
forming half-a-dozen school districts, and approved the establishment of
a gigantic boarding-school for each of them, accommodating 800, and even
1000 children. The General Order issued in 1849 for the government of
these "district schools" did not prescribe the details of administration
so precisely as did the General Consolidated Order of 1847; and much
latitude was left to the enterprise of the governing body. Against the
formation of these school districts the boards of guardians successfully
rebelled, much preferring to have a separate school for each union, and
outside London this was the system generally adopted by the more
populous unions. These separate schools, which were in all cases
distinct from the workhouse, were regulated by special Orders, providing
in similar general terms for the elements of good administration, but
also leaving much to the discretion of the guardians.[344] The Central
Authority now pressed the policy of separate schools on the boards of
guardians at every opportunity.[345] In 1856, for instance, we find it
saying to the Holborn Guardians that it cannot "too strongly urge upon
the guardians the importance of the children being so brought up as to
preserve them, as far as possible, free from the habits and associations
contracted in a workhouse; and of their receiving such instruction as
will fit them to earn their own livelihood. These objects will be best
secured by the removal of the children to a separate school."[346] The
Central Authority made useful suggestions, and it also encouraged
improvements by laudatory description of the best schools in the
_Official Circular_ and the Annual Reports.[347] When it was objected by
some boards of guardians that to teach writing and arithmetic to the
pauper children was to give them advantages superior to those of the
children of the independent labourer, the Central Authority replied that
the provision of a good education for the children was not likely to
encourage voluntary pauperism in the parents, and therefore there was no
need to apply the principle of less eligibility in this case.[348]
[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.
On the other hand, it has to be recorded that there were apparently
opposing influences at work, as the Norwich Board of Guardians found to
its cost in 1854. That board had in 1846, apparently of its own accord,
begun a most interesting experiment. As the workhouse was old and
overcrowded, and obviously contaminating to the hundreds of children it
contained, separate "Boys' and Girls' Homes" were established, away from
the workhouse and under separate management. At these early types of
Poor Law schools the children received both scholastic and industrial
training. Their special feature was, however, that the boys of
sufficient age were placed out in situations in the town, continuing to
use the institution as their home, and contributing the wages that they
earned towards the cost of their maintenance. The Norwich Guardians had
found, as others have done since, that the old style of indoor
apprenticeship was nearly extinct. They had resorted to what they called
"outdoor apprenticeship." "In nineteen cases out of twenty the
apprentices bound out ... have been outdoor apprentices and have resided
with their parents, and received certain weekly allowances. Masters will
not consent to take into their houses pauper apprentices."[349] The
Central Authority had objected to this, and had insisted on enforcing
the usual apprenticeship order.[350] Apparently it was not found
possible to place boys out on this obsolete system, and the plan was
adopted of getting the boys situations at wages, low at first, and not
for some years amounting to enough fully to maintain them. This
experiment had been undertaken with the full knowledge of the Poor Law
inspectors, who constantly visited the homes, and who expressed
themselves in high praise of their success, and it had even been
specially described in print, with great commendation, by the inspector
of pauper schools. Indeed, the eighty-seven boys who had already passed
out of the homes (presumably as soon as their wages were big enough to
keep them) were, with fewer than a dozen exceptions, well launched in
the world and doing well. In 1854, however, after eight years, the
Central Authority intimated that the whole expenditure on the homes was
illegal, as being unauthorised, and it was in fact disallowed. It added
that, whilst it was prepared to sanction the continuance of the homes as
mere schools, it could not permit them to be used as homes for the elder
boys who went out to work. The grounds on which this decision was
arrived at are not clear. In one place it is stated that the Poor Law
Board "conceive it to be unjust to the children of the independent
poor," presumably unjust to give the pauper boys such advantages. In
another place it is stated that the Poor Law Board had only been induced
to permit the homes temporarily on the understanding that they were
self-supporting--a contention hardly consistent with that of their
illegality--whereas the boys who went out to work proved to cost
something to the rates, though admittedly less than they would have cost
in the workhouse. In a third place it is pointed out that the projected
new workhouse will amply accommodate all the children, so that the homes
will be unnecessary even as schools--an argument which seems
inconsistent with the general policy of the Poor Law Board, unless we
are to infer that it wanted only district schools by combinations of
unions. We may note, as a final hint of the uncertainty that prevailed,
that, after three years' correspondence, the Poor Law inspector advised
the guardians to ask the Central Authority to sanction temporarily the
continuance of the homes, as "it is quite possible ... that within the
next two years the Legislature may resolve on communicating greater
vitality to the provisions for the establishment of district schools."
He had told the clerk to the guardians verbally that it was probable
that Parliament would make it compulsory to provide for pauper children
in establishments apart from workhouses, but that he saw "with regret
how strongly different views are pressed" in regard to these homes; and
that the guardians would meanwhile do well to delay proceeding with any
but the adults' wards of the new workhouse.[351]
[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.
No such legislation as was thus foreshadowed took place, but the policy
of removing the children from the workhouses was meanwhile incidentally
promoted by an Act of 1849, which enabled use to be made of any
establishment in which paupers were maintained by contract "for the
education of any poor children therein."[352] Similarly the various
Industrial Schools Acts opened up another class of schools to pauper
children.[353] Finally, the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1869 enabled training
ships to be established by school districts and the Metropolitan Asylums
Board for the education of pauper boys for the sea service.[354] Already
by 1856 it was reported with satisfaction that 78 per cent of the
children under boards of guardians in the Metropolis were in separate
schools--statistics, however, which continued to ignore the much larger
number of children on outdoor relief, of whose existence the Central
Authority only gradually became aware.[355]
[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).
During the next twenty years we see this policy of separate boarding
schools for such of the Poor Law children as were on indoor relief being
constantly pressed on boards of guardians. The erection of these costly
barrack schools, which were each regulated by a separate Special Order,
differing slightly from school to school,[356] the steady improvement in
their accommodation and diet, and the continuous rise in the educational
standard attained, which is the great feature of the ensuing period
(though in accordance with the recommendations of the 1834 Report),
marks a definite abandonment, as regards the children, of the principle
that the condition of the pauper should always be less eligible than
that of the lowest class of independent labourer. But although in the
course of the period 1847-71, in the Metropolis and various large towns,
the greater number of the boys and girls between five and fourteen were
removed from the workhouses to these "barrack schools" and similar
institutions, such schools were not made compulsory; the retention of
children in the workhouse was not forbidden, and in hundreds of
unions[357] they remained unaffected by the new policy of the Central
Authority, which apparently felt unable to require the boards of
guardians to adopt it. Even when the bulk of the children were placed in
separate schools, there were always some in the workhouse itself; and it
is remarkable that the Central Authority made no attempt to modify for
these the provisions of the General Consolidated Order of 1847, the
effect of which upon the workhouse administration of the period we have
already described.[358]
[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).
Meanwhile the "workhouse schools" continued to improve very slowly in
educational efficiency. The policy of the Central Authority was
apparently to develop industrial training--agricultural work, the
simpler handicrafts, and domestic service--on the model of the "Quatt
School" in Shropshire. Whether or not this industrial work militated
against more intellectual accomplishments is a moot point, but we hear
of "the reports of 'the stagnant dulness of workhouse education' which
annually proceed from Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools."[359]
[359] Eighth Annual Report, 1855, p. 58.
Whether or not from a certain divergence of aim between the departments,
the connection was in 1863 severed,[360] and the Poor Law Board
thenceforward had its own inspectors of Poor Law Schools, whose
criticisms and complaints, all in favour of the large district schools
as compared with the single union school, appear from 1867 onward in the
Annual Reports.[361]
[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.
At the very end of the period we may note the beginning of a reaction
against the "barrack schools." It was pointed out by those acquainted
with the Scottish system of boarding-out, as well as by persons
experienced in English Poor Law administration, that these expensive
boarding schools were not answering so well as their admirers claimed,
especially as regards the girls. During 1866-9 the alternative of
"boarding-out" children in private families at 4s. a week (now 5s.) was
warmly discussed, and experimentally adopted in a few places.[362] In
1869 the Central Authority so far yielded to the criticisms made upon
these institutions as to permit, under elaborate restrictions and
safeguards, the "boarding-out," in families beyond the limits of the
union, of the comparatively small class of children who were actually or
practically orphans.[363] In these cases all idea of making the
condition of the pauper child less eligible than that of the lowest
independent labourer was definitely abandoned. The whole concern of the
Central Authority was to see that the provision for the boarded-out
child was good and complete. Far from being assimilated to the children
of the lowest independent labourers, the boarded-out children were only
to be entrusted to specially selected families superior to the lowest,
who undertook to bring them up as their own, to provide proper food,
clothing and washing, to train them in good habits as well as in
suitable domestic and industrial work, and to make them regularly attend
school and place of worship. For all this the foster parents were to
receive with each child a sum three or four times as great as was, with
the sanction of the Central Authority, commonly allowed for the
maintenance of each of the couple of hundred thousand children at that
date on outdoor relief; and which (as Professor Fawcett vainly objected)
was far in excess of what the ordinary labourer could afford to expend
on his own children.[364] "A plan," observed Mr. Fowle, "which cannot be
defended on any sound principles of Poor Law."[365] "It is indeed
impossible," says Mr. Mackay in this connection, "to deny that
apparently every provision for pauper children may be regarded as a
contravention of this rule.... Professor Fawcett's ... argument has been
tacitly neglected."[366]
[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.
_E._--_The Sick_
We have shown that, between 1834 and 1847, it was not contemplated that
persons actually sick would be received in the workhouse, and that there
was no trace in the documents of any desire on the part of the Central
Authority to interfere with the usual practice of granting to them
outdoor relief, which had not been in any way condemned or discredited
by the 1834 Report. The same may be said of the Statutes, Orders, and
Circulars of 1847-71. We find no suggestion that the boards of guardians
ought not to grant outdoor relief in cases of sickness, or that sick
paupers ought to be relieved in the workhouse. On the contrary, the
exceptions specifically made in favour of sick persons seem to be even
widened in scope. Thus, in 1848, the Central Authority laid it down that
widows with illegitimate children were not to be refused outdoor relief,
if the children were sick.[367] By the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order
of December 1852, it was definitely provided that outdoor relief might
be given in case of sickness in the family, even if the head of the
family was simultaneously earning wages.[368] The same policy was
embodied in the corresponding General Order issued on 1st January 1869,
to certain Metropolitan unions.[369] Further, in the panic about cholera
in 1866, the Central Authority informed the boards of guardians by
circular that in cases of emergency they might call in any medical and
other assistance that was needed, and even provide whatever sustenance,
clothing, etc., was required,[370] apparently irrespective of
"destitution" and of all General Orders, etc., to the contrary.
Moreover, early in this period we note the beginning of the special
definition of "destitution" as regards medical relief which has since
been acted upon, that is to say, the inability to pay for the medical
attendance that the nature of the case requires. Thus it was declared by
the Central Authority in 1848 that the parish doctor might attend sick
servants living in their master's household, who were plainly not
destitute in the ordinary sense, as not being without food and lodging,
but who, if there were no wages due to them, might be unable to pay for
medical attendance.[371] A similar line of thought may be traced in that
provision of the Act of 1851 which authorised boards of guardians to
make annual subscriptions out of the poor rate to public hospitals and
infirmaries, to enable these non-pauper institutions the better to
provide "for the poor."[372] "The sick wards of the workhouses," as the
Central Authority explained in 1869, "were originally provided for the
cases of paupers in the workhouse who might be attacked by illness; and
not as State hospitals into which all the sick poor of the country might
be received for medical treatment and care. So far is this, indeed, from
being the case that at least two-thirds of the sick poor receive medical
attendance and treatment in their own homes."[373] When in 1869-71, the
Central Authority obtained elaborate reports showing, for all parts of
England, the practice that prevailed of normally giving outdoor relief
to the sick, and of taking them into the workhouse infirmaries only
when this was called for by (_a_) the nature of the disease, (_b_) the
wishes of the patient, or (_c_) the nature of the home, and then only
where suitable infirmary accommodation was available, there is no
indication that any objection was entertained to the policy of outdoor
relief to this large class.[374]
[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.
What is new in this period is the appearance, as a positive policy, of
bringing pressure to bear on the boards of guardians to improve the
quality of the medical attendance and medicine supplied. This led to an
explicit disavowal, so far as regards the sick paupers, of any
application to them of the principle of making the pauper's condition
less eligible than that of the lowest grade of independent labourers. It
is noteworthy that this new departure applied to outdoor medical relief
quite as much as to institutional medical treatment, in which it has
subsequently been sometimes excused on the ground that the superior
treatment is accompanied by a loss of liberty. The new departure took
three directions. It was definitely laid down that the medical
attendance afforded to the outdoor paupers was to be of good quality,
and thus necessarily above that obtained by the poorest independent
labourer, or even by "the poor" generally. This was the outcome of a
long campaign on behalf of the poorer members of the medical profession,
of which Wakley was the leader in the House of Commons, and the _Lancet_
the efficient organ.[375] In 1853 the Poor Law Board considered that the
qualifications of the Poor Law medical officers "ought to be such as to
ensure _for the poor_ a degree of skill in their medical attendants
equal to that which can be commanded by the more fortunate classes of
the community."[376] On the suggestion of the House of Commons Committee
on Poor Relief[377] it was authoritatively enjoined on boards of
guardians in 1865 by a special circular that they were to supply freely
quinine, cod-liver oil, and "other expensive medicines" to the sick
poor;[378] although it must have been plain that such things were beyond
the reach of the independent labourers consulting the "sixpenny doctor,"
and even beyond the usual resources of the provident dispensaries of the
period.[379] Finally, in 1867, the Metropolitan Poor Act authorised the
establishment throughout London of Poor Law dispensaries. These
institutions were consistently pressed on the Metropolitan boards of
guardians by the Central Authority, as having been successful in Ireland
in reducing the amount of sickness among the poor, and as ensuring, not
only regular and more successful medical attention, but also a
sufficient supply of medicines and medical appliances of standard
quality.[380] By this elaborate systematisation of outdoor medical
relief, the Central Authority not only put within the reach of the sick
paupers medical attendance far superior to that accessible to the lowest
grade of independent labourers, but even placed the sick pauper in the
Metropolis, without loss of liberty, in a position equal to that of the
superior artisan subscribing to a good provident dispensary.
[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.
The most remarkable change of front was, however, that relating to the
institutional treatment of the sick. Down to 1847, it is not too much to
say that "what may be called the hospital branch of Poor Law
administration"[381] was ignored alike by Parliament, public opinion,
and the Central Authority. We have shown that the institutional
provision for the sick was not so much as mentioned in the Report of
1834, and that it remained practically ignored in all the Orders,
Circulars, and Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners. The same is true
of the first eighteen years of the Poor Law Board. Few and far between
are the incidental references to the "sick wards" of the workhouses.
There is not even a hint of a suggestion that relief to the sick poor
could most advantageously take the form of an offer of "the House." On
the contrary, it was held in 1848 that applicants for admission
suffering from "fever" might even be refused admission, the relieving
officer being enjoined to find lodging elsewhere for them,[382] though
how this was to be done the Central Authority did not, in 1848, say. In
1857, the Metropolitan Boards of Guardians were recommended to send such
cases to the London Fever Hospital[383] (involving a payment by the
guardians of 7s. weekly). Finally, in 1864-5, we have an outburst of
public indignation, at the condition into which the sick wards of the
workhouses had been allowed to drift. The death of a pauper in Holborn
workhouse, and of another in St. Giles's workhouse, under conditions
which seemed to point to inhumanity and neglect, led to an enquiry by
three doctors (Anstie, Carr, and Ernest Hart), commissioned by the
_Lancet_ newspaper, the formation of an "Association for improving the
condition of the sick poor," and a deputation to the Poor Law
Board.[384] The publication of various reports on the workhouse
infirmaries, in which terrible deficiencies were revealed,[385] led to
public discussion and Parliamentary debates. The Central Authority at
once accepted the new standpoint. It made no attempt to resist the
provision of the necessarily costly institutional treatment for the sick
poor, whether or not their ailments were infectious or otherwise
dangerous to the public. The progressive improvement of "the hospital
branch of Poor Law administration," to use the phrase of the Central
Authority itself, which had in the preceding thirty years grown up
unawares, was now definitely accepted as an important feature of its
policy. Statutory powers were obtained for the provision of hospitals in
the Metropolis by combinations of boards of guardians. Urgent letters
were written pressing the boards of guardians to embark on the
expenditure required to enable them to provide efficiently for the sick
paupers.[386] From 1865 onward, we see the Central Authority, on the
public-spirited initiative of Mr. W. Rathbone and the Liverpool Select
Vestry, pressing on the boards of guardians the employment of salaried
and qualified nurses to attend to the sick paupers, whatever their
complaints.[387] We have even in 1867, so far as the sick are concerned,
the explicit disavowal by the Central Authority of the very idea of the
deterrent workhouse, which had formed so prominent a part of the policy
of 1834-1847. Mr. Gathorne Hardy, speaking as President of the Poor Law
Board, said "there is one thing ... which we must peremptorily insist
on, namely, the treatment of the sick in the infirmaries being conducted
on an entirely separate system, because the evils complained of have
mainly arisen from the workhouse management--which must to a great
degree be of a deterrent character--having been applied to the sick,
_who are not proper objects for such a system_."[388]
[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 small-pox, 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.
At first the new policy of the Central Authority for the institutional
treatment of the sick took the form of the erection of special hospitals
by "Sick Asylum Districts."[389] Presently, however, it came to the
conclusion that this involved an unnecessary expense, and that it would
be cheaper to revert to the idea of the Report of 1834, and use the
existing workhouse buildings by a system of classification by
institutions.[390] So definitely was this recognised as a reversion to
1834 that the Central Authority actually quoted the passage of the 1834
Report in justification of its plan.[391] From this point may be dated
the adoption of the policy of the provision, in connection with the
workhouse, but practically as a separate institution, of what is now
called the Poor Law Infirmary.[392] In 1870 the Central Authority took
pains to collect special statistics as to the extent to which this
recently developed provision for the sick was being taken advantage of.
It observes (and, significantly enough, without expression of
disapproval) that "the numbers on the lists of relieving officers may be
swollen by poor persons who in previous years, though really poor,
refrained from coming on the rates, but whom changes in the law or in
the mode of its administration have since attracted."[393] "Workhouses,"
it notes, "originally designed mainly as a test for the able-bodied,
have, especially in the large towns, been _of necessity_ gradually
transformed in to infirmaries for the sick. The higher standard for
hospital accommodation has had a material effect upon the expenditure.
So again it has been considered necessary to attach to workhouses
separate fever wards; and wherever it was possible, these wards have
been isolated by the erection of a separate building."[394] The extent
to which the Poor Law had become the public doctor was indeed
remarkable. The number of persons on outdoor relief who were "actually
sick," apart from mere old age infirmity, and without their families,
was found to be 13 per cent of the whole, equal to about 119,000. The
number in the workhouses who were "actually sick," irrespective of "the
vast number of old people disabled by old age, but not actually upon the
sick list," varied in different unions from 14 to 39 per cent in the
provinces, and up to nearly 50 per cent in some Metropolitan Unions;
amounting, for the whole country, to about 60,000 actual sick-bed
cases.[395] Taking indoor and outdoor patients together, the total
simultaneously under medical treatment in the twelfth week of the
half-year ending Lady Day 1870, was estimated at 173,000, being three
quarters of one per cent of the population, and perhaps one out of four
of all the persons under medical treatment in the whole population. The
story from this date is one continuous record, on the one hand of an
ever-increasing number of patients treated, and, on the other, of never
slackening pressure by the Central Authority to induce apathetic or
parsimonious boards of guardians to expend money in making both the
outdoor medical service and the workhouse infirmaries as efficient and
as well adapted and as well equipped for the alleviation and cure of
their patients--without the least notion of "the principle of less
eligibility"--as the most scientifically efficient hospitals and State
medical service in any part of the world. After 1867, indeed, there was
developed, for the Metropolitan paupers suffering from infectious
diseases, the splendid hospital system of the Metropolitan Asylums
Board.[396] At the very end of the existence of the Poor Law Board, Mr.
Goschen seems almost to have been contemplating a yet further extension.
"The economical and social advantages," he observed, "of _free medicine
to the poorer classes generally as distinguished from actual paupers,
and perfect accessibility to medical advice at all times under thorough
organisation_, may be considered as so important in themselves as to
render it necessary to weigh with the greatest care all the reasons
which may be adduced in their favour."[397]
[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).
_F._--_Persons of Unsound Mind_
It is difficult to discover what was the policy of the Central Authority
during this period with regard to lunatics, idiots, and the mentally
defective. Lunacy had always been, and remained, a ground of exception
from the prohibition to grant outdoor relief. The provision of a lodging
for a lunatic was, moreover, an exception to the prohibition of the
payment of rent for a pauper. As a result of these exceptions, there
were on 1st January 1852, 4107 lunatics and idiots on outdoor
relief,[398] and this number had increased by 1859 to 4892[399] and by
1870 to 6199.[400] The Central Authority took no steps to require or
persuade boards of guardians not to grant outdoor relief to lunatics,
nor yet to get any appropriate provision made for them in the great
general workhouses on which it had insisted. Parliament in 1862 (in
order to relieve the pressure on lunatic asylums) expressly authorised
arrangements to be made for chronic lunatics to be permanently
maintained in workhouses, under elaborate provisions for their proper
care.[401] These arrangements would have amounted, in fact, to the
creation, within the workhouse, of wards which were to be in every
respect as well equipped, as highly staffed, and as liberally supplied
as a regular lunatic asylum.[402] The Central Authority transmitted the
Act to the boards of guardians, observing, with what almost seems like
sarcasm, that it was not "aware of any workhouse in which any such
arrangements could conveniently be made";[403] and the provisions of
this Act were, we believe, never acted upon. Whilst consistently
objecting to the retention in workhouses of lunatics who were dangerous,
or who were deemed curable, we do not find that the Central Authority
ever insisted on there being a proper lunatic ward for the persons of
unsound mind who were necessarily received, for a longer or shorter
period, in every workhouse.[404] Moreover, the Central Authority took no
steps to get such persons removed to lunatic asylums. In 1845 it had
agreed with the Manchester Board of Guardians (who did not want to make
any more use of the county asylum than they could help) that they were
justified in retaining in the workhouse any lunatics whom their own
medical officer did not consider "proper to be confined" in a lunatic
asylum.[405] In 1849 it expressly laid it down that a weak-minded pauper
or, as we now say, a mentally defective, must either be a lunatic, and
be certified and treated as such, or not a lunatic, in which case no
special treatment could be provided for him or her in the one general
workhouse to which the Central Authority still adhered.[406] We can find
no indication of policy as to whether it was recommended that such
mentally defectives should be granted outdoor relief, or (as one can
scarcely believe) required to inhabit a workhouse which made no
provision for them.[407]
[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).
The explanation of this paralysis of the Central Authority, as regards
the policy to be pursued with persons of unsound mind, is to be found,
we believe, in the existence and growth during this period of the rival
authority of the Lunacy Commissioners, who had authority over all
persons of unsound mind, whether paupers or not. The Lunacy
Commissioners had not habitually in their minds the principle of "less
eligibility"; and they were already, between 1848 and 1871, making
requirements with regard to the accommodation and treatment of pauper
lunatics that the Poor Law authorities regarded as preposterously
extravagant. The records of the boards of guardians show visits of the
inspectors of the Lunacy Commissioners, and their perpetual complaints
of the presence of lunatics and idiots in the workhouses without proper
accommodation; mixed up with the sane inmates to the great discomfort of
both;[408] living in rooms which the Lunacy Commissioners considered too
low and unventilated, with yards too small and depressing, amid too much
confusion and disorder, for the section of the paupers for whom they
were responsible.[409] Such reports, officially communicated to the Poor
Law Board, seem to have been merely forwarded for the consideration of
the board of guardians concerned. But other action was not altogether
wanting. Under pressure from the Lunacy Commissioners, the Central
Authority asked, in 1857, for more care in the conveyance of
lunatics;[410] urged, in 1863, a more liberal dietary for lunatics in
workhouses;[411] in 1867 it reminded the boards of guardians that
lunatics required much food, especially milk and meat;[412] it was
thought "very desirable that the insane inmates ... should have the
opportunity of taking exercise";[413] it concurred "with the Visiting
Commissioner in deeming it desirable that a competent paid nurse should
be appointed for the lunatic ward," in a certain workhouse;[414] it
suggested the provision of leaning chairs in another workhouse;[415]
and, in yet another, the desirability of not excluding the persons of
unsound mind from religious services.[416] In 1870 it issued a circular,
transmitting the rules made by the Lunacy Commissioners as to the method
of bathing lunatics, for the careful consideration of the boards of
guardians.[417] But we do not find that the Central Authority issued any
Order amending the General Consolidated Order of 1847, which, it will be
remembered, did not include among its categories for classification
either lunatics, idiots, or the mentally defective; and the Central
Authority did not require any special provision to be made for them.
[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.
The policy of the Lunacy Commissioners was to get provision made in
every county for all the persons of unsound mind, whatever their means,
in specially organised lunatic asylums in which the best possible
arrangements should be made for their treatment and cure irrespective of
cost, and altogether regardless of making the condition of the pauper
lunatic less eligible than that of the poorest independent labourer.
Unlike the provision for education, and that for infectious disease, the
cost of this national (and as we may say communistic) provision for
lunatics was a charge upon the poor rate. Under the older statutes, the
expense of maintaining the inmates of the county lunatic asylums was
charged to the Poor Law authorities of the parishes in which they were
respectively settled; and the boards of guardians were entitled to
recover it, or part of it, from any relatives liable to maintain such
paupers, even in cases in which the removal to the asylum was compulsory
and insisted on in the public interest.[418] The great cost to the poor
rate of lunatics sent to the county lunatic asylums, and the difficulty
of recovering the amount from their relatives, prevented the
whole-hearted adoption, either by the boards of guardians, or the
Central Authority, of the policy of insisting on the removal of persons
of unsound mind to the county asylums. For the imbeciles and idiots of
the Metropolitan Unions, provision was made after 1867 in the asylums of
the Metropolitan Asylums Board.[419] But no analogous provision for
those of other unions was made. The result was that, amid a great
increase of pauper lunacy, the proportion of the paupers of unsound mind
who were in lunatic asylums did not increase.[420] On the other hand the
indisposition of the Central Authority to so amend the General
Consolidated Order of 1847 as to put lunatics in a separate category,
and require suitable accommodation and treatment for them--an
indisposition perhaps strengthened by the very high requirements on
which the Lunacy Commissioners would have insisted--stood in the way of
any candid recognition of the fact that for thousands of lunatics,
idiots, and mentally defectives, the workhouse had, without suitable
provision for them, and often to the unspeakable discomfort of the other
inmates, become a permanent home.
[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).
_G._--_Defectives_
During this period, the blind, the deaf and dumb, and the lame and
deformed were increasingly recognised by Parliament as classes for whom
the Poor Law authorities might, if they chose, provide expensive
treatment. This was done by authorising boards of guardians, if they
chose, to pay for their maintenance, whether children or adults, in
special institutions.[421] We do not find that the Central Authority
suggested the adoption of this or any other policy or gave any lead to
the boards of guardians with regard to these cases.[422]
[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).
_H._--_The Aged and Infirm_
We have shown that neither the Report of 1834 nor the Central Authority
between 1834 and 1847 even suggested any departure from the common
practice of granting outdoor relief to the aged and infirm. This
continued, so far as the official documents show, to be the policy of
the Central Authority during the whole of the period 1847-1871.[423] The
only two references to the subject in the Orders and Circulars of this
period assume that the aged and infirm will normally be relieved in
their own homes. Thus, in 1852, in commenting on the provision requiring
the weekly payment of relief, the Central Authority said, "as to the
cases in which the pauper is too infirm to come every week for the
relief, it is on many accounts advantageous that the relieving officer
should, as far as possible, himself visit the pauper, and give the
relief at least weekly."[424] And in the first edition of the Out-relief
Regulation Order of 1852 (that of 25th August 1852) the Central
Authority, far from prohibiting outdoor relief to persons "indigent and
helpless from age, sickness, accident, or bodily or mental infirmity,"
formally sanctioned this practice, by ordering that "one third at least
of such relief" should be given in kind (viz., "in articles of food or
fuel, or in other articles of absolute necessity"),[425] the object
being expressly explained to be, not, as might nowadays have been
imagined, the discouragement of such relief, but the prevention of its
misappropriation.[426] This provision was objected to by boards of
guardians up and down the country, on the ground that it would be a
hardship to the aged and infirm poor. The Poplar Board of Guardians, for
instance, stated "that there are a large number of persons under the
denomination of aged and infirm whom the guardians have, in their long
practical experience, found it expedient and not objectionable to
relieve wholly in money, feeling assured that it would be beneficially
expended for their use, and that in consequence of their infirmity the
relieving officer or his assistant, if necessary, is thereby enabled to
conveniently relieve them at their own house."[427] The Norwich
Guardians stated that it would be difficult "to determine (especially
for the aged and sick poor) what kind of food or articles should be
given." They also communicated with forty other unions, summoning them
to concerted resistance.[428] A deputation "from most of the large and
populous unions in the north of England ... and from several
Metropolitan parishes, representing in the aggregate upwards of
2,000,000 of population,"[429] assembled in London, and objected to
nearly all the provisions of the Order.
[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.
Accompanied by about twenty-five members of Parliament, the deputation
waited on the Poor Law Board, and specially urged their objection to
being compelled to give a third of all outdoor relief in kind. After two
hours' argumentative discussion, Sir John Trollope said that the board
would reconsider the whole Order, which need not in the meantime be
acted upon; and he hinted at a probable modification of the Article
relating to relief in kind.[430] In response to these objections, the
Central Authority does not seem even to have suggested that outdoor
relief to the aged and infirm was contrary to its principles. It first
intimated its willingness to modify the Order if its working proved to
be "accompanied with hardship to the aged or helpless poor"[431] and
then within a few weeks withdrew the provision altogether as regards any
but the able-bodied.[432] It was expressly explained that the Order, as
re-issued, was intended as a precaution "against the injurious
consequences of maintaining out of the poor rate _able-bodied labourers
and their families_ in a state of idleness," and that the Central
Authority left to the boards of guardians "full discretion as to the
description of relief to be given to indigent poor of every other
class."[433] From that date down to the abolition of the Poor Law Board
in 1871, we can find in the documents no hint or suggestion that it
disapproved of outdoor relief to the aged and infirm. On 1st January
1871, nearly half the outdoor relief was due to this cause.[434]
[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).
_I._--_Non-Residents_
There was no change in the policy of preventing relief to paupers not
resident within the union. The Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of 1852
embodied the prohibition with the same exceptions as had been contained
in the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844, omitting, however, that
of widows without children during the first six months of their
widowhood. But, as has been already mentioned, at the very end of the
period the Boarding-Out Orders of 1869, etc., permitted children to be
maintained outside the union.
_J._--_The Workhouse_
We have seen that between 1834 and 1847 the Central Authority turned
directly away from the express recommendations of the 1834 Report with
regard to the institutional accommodation of the paupers. Instead of a
series of separate institutions appropriately organised and equipped
for the several classes of the pauper population--the aged and infirm,
the children, and the adult able-bodied--the Central Authority had got
established, in nearly every union, one general workhouse; nearly
everywhere "the same cheap, homely building," with one common regimen,
under one management, for all classes of paupers.
The justification for the policy which, as we have seen, Sir Francis
Head induced the Central Authority to substitute for the recommendations
of the 1834 Report, may have been his confident expectation, in 1835,
that the use of the workhouse was only to serve as a "test," which the
applicants would not pass, and that there was accordingly no need to
regard the workhouse building as a continuing home.[435] This was the
view taken by Harriet Martineau, who, in her _Poor Law Tales_, describes
the overseer of the de-pauperised parish as locking the door of the empty
workhouse when it had completely fulfilled its purpose of a test by
having made all the applicants prefer and contrive to be independent of
poor relief. By 1847, however, it must have been clear that, even in the
most strictly administered parishes, under the most rigid application of
the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, there would be permanently
residing in the workhouse a motley crowd of the aged and infirm unable
to live independently; the destitute chronic sick in like case; the
orphans and foundlings; such afflicted persons as the village idiot, the
senile imbecile, the deaf and dumb, and what we now call the mentally
defective; together with a perpetually floating population of acutely
sick persons of all ages; vagrants; girls with illegitimate babies;
wives whose husbands had deserted them, or were in prison, in hospital,
or in the Army or Navy; widows beyond the first months of their
widowhood and other women unable to earn a livelihood; all sorts of "ins
and outs"; and the children dragging at the skirts of all these classes.
The workhouse population in 590 unions of England and Wales on 1st
January 1849, was, in fact, 121,331.[436] The condition of these
workhouse inmates, and the character of the regimen to which they were
subjected, had been brought to public notice in 1847 in the notorious
Andover case. The insanitary condition of the workhouses of the period
as places of residence, and, in particular, their excessive death-rate,
was repeatedly brought to notice not only by irresponsible agitators,
but also by such competent statistical and medical critics as McCulloch
and Wakley.[437] But the very idea of the general workhouse was now
subjected to severe criticism. "During the last ten years," said the
author of an able book in 1852, "I have visited many prisons and lunatic
asylums, not only in England, but in France and Germany. A single
English workhouse contains more that justly calls for condemnation in
the principle on which it is established than is found in the very worst
prisons or public lunatic asylums that I have seen. The workhouse as now
organised is a reproach and disgrace peculiar to England; nothing
corresponding to it is found throughout the whole continent of Europe.
In France the medical patients of our workhouses would be found in
'hopitaux'; the infirm aged poor would be in hospices; and the blind,
the idiot, the lunatic, the bastard child and the vagrant would
similarly be placed each in an appropriate but separate establishment.
With us a common _Malebolge_ is provided for them all; and in some parts
of the country the confusion is worse confounded by the effect of
Prohibitory Orders, which, enforcing the application of the notable
workhouse-test, drive into the same common sink of so many kinds of vice
and misfortune the poor man whose only crime is his poverty, and whose
want of work alone makes him chargeable. Each of the buildings which we
so absurdly call a workhouse is, in truth (1) a general hospital; (2) an
almshouse; (3) a foundling house; (4) a lying-in hospital; (5) a school
house; (6) a lunatic asylum; (7) an idiot house; (8) a blind asylum; (9)
a deaf and dumb asylum; (10) a workhouse; but this part of the
establishment is generally a _lucus a non lucendo_, omitting to find
work even for able-bodied paupers. Such and so varied are the
destinations of these common receptacles of sin and misfortune, of
sorrow and suffering of the most different kinds, each tending to
aggravate the others with which it is unnecessarily and injuriously
brought into contact. It is at once equally shocking to every principle
of reason and every feeling of humanity, that all these varied forms of
wretchedness should be thus crowded together into one common abode, that
no attempt should be made by law to classify them, and to provide
appropriate places for the relief of each."[438]
[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.
During the period now under review, 1847-71, we see the Central
Authority becoming gradually alive to the drawbacks of this mixture of
classes. At first its remedy seems to have been to take particular
classes out of the workhouse. We have already described the constant
attempts, made from the very establishment of the Poor Law Board, to
have the children removed to separate institutions and to get the
vagrants segregated into distinct casual wards. It was the resistance
and apathy of the boards of guardians that prevented these attempts
being particularly successful,[439] and the Central Authority appears
not to have felt able to issue peremptory orders on the subject. The
policy of the Lunacy Commissioners drew many lunatics out of the
workhouses, but this was more than made up by the increasing tendency to
seclude the village idiot, so that the workhouse population of unsound
mind actually increased.
[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.
We do not find that there was during the whole period any alteration of
the General Consolidated Order of 1847, upon which the regimen of the
workhouse depended. In spite of the increasing number of the sick and
the persons of unsound mind, the seven classes of workhouse inmates
determined by that Order were adhered to, and received no addition,
though the Poor Law Board favoured the sub-division of these classes so
far as it was reasonably possible in the existing buildings, especially
in the case of women. In a letter of 1854[440] it lamented the evil which
arose "from the association of girls, when removed from workhouse union
schools, with women of bad character in the able-bodied women's ward,"
and wished that it could be prevented. At the same time it stated that
in the smaller workhouses it was "often impracticable to provide the
accommodation" which would be necessary in order to maintain a complete
separation; and while pointing out that it was legally competent for the
guardians (with its approval) to erect extra accommodation, by means of
which this contamination could be avoided, the Central Authority did not
even remotely suggest that it was the guardians' duty so to do. By 1860
it "had given instructions that every new workhouse should be so
constructed as to allow of the requisite classification."[441]
[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.
From about 1865 onwards we note a new spirit in all the circulars and
letters relating to the workhouse. The public scandal caused by the
_Lancet_ inquiry into the conditions of the sick poor in the workhouses,
and the official reports and Parliamentary discussions that ensued, seem
to have enabled the Central Authority to take up a new attitude with
regard both to workhouse construction and workhouse regimen. From this
time forth the workhouse is recognised as being, not merely a "test of
destitution" for the able-bodied, which they were not expected long to
endure, but also the continuing home of large classes of helpless and
not otherwise than innocent persons. "Able-bodied people," reported the
Medical Officer in 1867, "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."[442]
[442] Dr. E. Smith, Medical Officer to Poor Law Board, in
Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, p. 43.
From now onwards we see the Central Authority always striving to improve
the workhouse. In the Circulars of 1868 much attention was paid to the
sufficiency of space and ventilation. It was required that parallel
blocks of building should be so far apart as to allow free access to
light and air; blocks connected at a right or acute angle were to be
avoided.
Ordinary wards were to be at least ten feet high and eighteen feet wide,
the length depending on the number of inmates; 300 cubic feet of space
were required for each healthy person in a dormitory, 500 for infirm
persons able to leave the dormitory during the day, and 700 in a day and
night room.[443] The Visiting Committee was to "ascertain not merely
whether the total number for which the workhouse is certified has been
exceeded, but whether the number of any one class exceeds the
accommodation available for it."[444] No wards were to be placed side by
side without a corridor between them; the corridors were to be six feet
wide, and ordinary dormitories were to have windows into them. Windows
and fanlights into internal spaces were to be made to open to be used as
ventilators, and ventilation was also to be "effected by special means,
apart from the usual means of doors, windows, and fire-places,"
air-bricks being recommended as a simple method.[445] No rooms occupied
by the inmates as sleeping-rooms were to be on the boundary of the
workhouse site. Hot and cold water was to be distributed to the
bath-rooms and sick wards. Airing yards for the inmates were to be "of
sufficient size"--with a rider that "if partially or wholly paved with
stone or brick or asphalted or gas-tarred they are often better than if
covered with gravel."[446] Yards for the children, sick, and aged were
to be enclosed with dwarf walls and palisades where practicable,
presumably with the object of giving a look-out, and making the yard
slightly less prison-like.[447] "Small yards, and a work-room, and a
covered shed for working in in bad weather," were to be provided for
vagrants.[448] For workhouses having a large number of children the Poor
Law Board recommended, "in addition to the school-rooms, day-rooms,
covered play-sheds in their yards, and industrial work-rooms."[449] The
staircases were to be of stone; the timber, Baltic fir and English oak;
fire escapes were to be provided; these and many other details were laid
down, all tending to make the building solid and capacious.[450] There
was no mention of ornament, no regard to appearance, no hint that
anything might be done to relieve the dead ugliness of the place; but it
must be recognised that the Central Authority had, by 1868, travelled
far from the "low, cheap, homely building" which it was recommending
thirty years before.[451]
[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.
Separate dormitories, day-rooms, and yards (apparently not dining-rooms)
were required for the aged, able-bodied, children, and sick of each sex,
and these were the only divisions laid down as fundamental, but the
Circular went on to recommend provision (1) "so far as practicable for
the sub-division of the able-bodied women into two or three classes with
reference to moral character, or behaviour, the previous habits of the
inmates, or such other grounds as might seem expedient," and (2) "in the
larger workhouses" for the separate accommodation of the following
classes of sick--
Ordinary sick of both sexes.
Lying-in women, with separate labour room.
Itch cases of both sexes.
Dirty and offensive cases of both sexes.
Venereal cases of both sexes.
Fever and small-pox cases of both sexes (to be in a separate building
with detached rooms).
Children (in whose case sex was not mentioned).[452]
[452] Circular of 15th June 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report,
1868-9, pp. 47-8.
In the furnishing of the wards the simplicity of 1868 was equally far
removed from that of 1835. Ordinary dormitories contained beds 2 feet 6
inches wide, chairs, bells, and gas where practicable. Day-rooms were to
have an open fireplace, benches, cupboards (or open shelves, which were
preferred), tables, gas, combs, and hairbrushes. "A proportion of
chairs" were to be provided "for the aged and infirm"; and of the
benches, likewise, "those for the aged and infirm should have backs, and
be of sufficient width for reasonable comfort." In the dining-rooms were
to be benches, tables, a minimum of necessary table utensils, and if
possible gas and an open fireplace. The sick wards were to be furnished
with more care, and with an eye to medical efficiency. It is unnecessary
to go into the long and detailed list of the medical appliances which
were required. There is even some notice of appearances in a suggestion
that "cheerful-looking rugs" should be placed on the beds, and of
comfort in the arm and other chairs "for two-thirds of the number of the
sick." There were also to be short benches with backs, and (but these
only for special cases) even cushions; rocking-chairs for the lying-in
wards, and little armchairs and rocking-chairs for the children's sick
wards.[453] Dr. Smith had further recommended a Bible for each inmate,
entertaining illustrated and religious periodicals, tracts and books,
games, and a foot valance to the bed to "add to the appearance of
comfort,"[454] These suggestions were not specifically taken up by the
Central Authority, but Dr. Smith's report was circulated to the
guardians, without comment.[455] We have the beginning, too, between
1863 and 1867, of the improvement of the food, which was regulated in
each workhouse by a separate Special Order, prescribing a dietary,
differing widely from union to union.[456] In 1866 the report of the
medical officer in favour of skilled cooking, by a professional cook,
instead of by a pauper inmate, really hot meals (even to the use of "hot
water dishes"), and efficient service, so as to increase the comfort of
the inmates, was circulated to the boards of guardians.[457] After many
reports and elaborate inquiries, the Central Authority in 1868 issued a
Circular of very authoritative suggestions for a general improvement in
the workhouse dietaries. After a protest that no cause had been shown
for any fundamental change in the principles which had been hitherto
recommended, it was urged that there were various points which the
guardians should remember in framing dietaries. The first of these
points was the addition of several classes who were to have separate
dietaries, viz.:--
(_a_) The aged and infirm not on the medical officer's book.
(_b_) Inmates on the medical officer's book for diet only and not on
the sick list.
(_c_) Inmates allowed extra diets on account of employment, and
those allowed alcohol for the same reason.
(_d_) Children aged nine to sixteen, if the guardians thought they
should be separately dieted.
(_e_) Sick diets to be framed by the medical officer as before.
(_f_) Imbeciles and suckling women to be dieted as the aged, "with
or without the substitution of milk porridge and bread at
breakfast or supper or at both meals."
[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.
Then followed various detailed suggestions, some of which dealt with
ingredients and methods of cooking. Soup or broth dinners were not to be
given more than twice a week; nor were bread and cheese or suet pudding
dinners, except to the able-bodied. Fresh vegetables were to be
provided, if possible, five times a week, and boiled rice alone was not
to be made a substitute for them. Rice pudding was not to be given as a
dinner except to children under nine, and to them not more than twice a
week. Children were not to have tea or coffee, except for supper on
Sunday, but milk at breakfast and supper, and they were to be given two
or three ounces of bread at 10 A.M. It was "suggested that tea, coffee,
or cocoa, with milk and sugar, and accompanied by bread and butter or
bread and cheese, should be allowed to all the aged and infirm women at
breakfast and supper, and the same to aged and infirm men, or milk
porridge with bread" might be given at one of those meals. The ordinary
rations were--of meat (cooked, without bone), for men four ounces, for
women three ounces; of soup, one to one and a half pints (containing
three ounces of meat) for an adult; and of bread at breakfast or supper,
six ounces for able-bodied men, for the aged, women, and children over
nine five ounces, and proportionately less for younger children.[458]
[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).
The movement for the improvement of the workhouse thus initiated by the
Central Authority in 1865-70 represents a vast departure, not only from
the policy of the Poor Law Commissioners of 1835-47, but also from that
of the Poor Law Board itself from 1847 to 1865. Unfortunately, in the
absence of any embodiment of the new policy in a General Order, it was
left to the slow and haphazard discretion of the six hundred boards of
guardians how far it was carried into practice.[459] There is, however,
evidence that by 1872, at any rate, the Metropolitan workhouses were
reported to have become "attractive to paupers," and to contain "many
persons ... who could maintain themselves out of doors; and, in short,
that the workhouse furnishes no test of destitution."[460] Moreover,
though the Central Authority sought to improve the physical conditions
of workhouse life, and even to promote the comfort of the classes who
now formed the great bulk of the workhouse population, it does not seem
to have had any idea of remedying the mental deadness of the workhouse,
the starvation of the intellect, the paralysis of the will, and the
extinction of all initiative to which such an existence inevitably
tended. The only hint that we can find during the whole period of any
consciousness that the hundred and fifty thousand workhouse inmates had
minds is a statement by Mr. C. P. Villiers in 1860 that "the board had
readily consented to establish libraries" for the inmates.[461] We
cannot find any order authorising the provision of workhouse libraries,
or any circular suggesting them; nor do we discover their existence from
such local records as we have been able to consult.
[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.
_K._--_Emigration_
Emigration was not made the subject, during this period, of statute,
order, or circular. At first we find the Central Authority continuing
the favour to it which had been expressed in the 1834 Report and in the
documents and action of the Poor Law Commissioners. In 1849 the Central
Authority got a Bill through Parliament increasing the powers of
promoting and assisting emigration,[462] in support of which the
Manchester Board of Guardians petitioned in characteristic
phraseology.[463] In the same year the Central Authority even approved
the sending out of a convict's family to join him; "the transportation
of the convict is not a voluntary desertion of the family, and when the
Government promotes the sending out of the family ... the expenditure of
the poor rate in furtherance of that object may properly be
sanctioned."[464] By 1852 the number of persons emigrated at the expense
of the poor rate had risen to 3271 in a single year, four-fifths going
to the Australian Colonies.[465] By this time the total number of
persons assisted to emigrate at the expense of the poor rates, between
1834 and 1853, had mounted up to nearly 24,000.[466] The policy then
changes. The number of persons emigrated at the expense of the poor rate
suddenly declines, falling from 3271 in 1852 to 488 in 1853.[467] In
1854 it is recorded that the Central Authority had "declined during the
past year to sanction any expenditure from the poor rate in aid of
emigration to the Australian Colonies (except in ... special
circumstances), on the ground that the condition of those colonies
[appeared] to be such as of itself to attract largely voluntary and
independent emigration"[468]--a reason, we may observe, which does not
seem relevant to a discussion of the advantage or disadvantage of
emigration as a means of reducing pauperism at home. It does not
appear that the change of policy was due, as it might have been, to a
conviction that a colony in a period of excitement over "gold rushes"
was not a suitable place to which to send a young person in whose
welfare one took a personal interest. It may be that the real reason was
a political one, viz. objections expressed by the Australian colonies
themselves. Whatever the motive, however, rate-aided emigration remained
in disfavour. "We must consider," said the Poor Law Board in 1860, "that
at present emigration cannot be considered as any practical remedial
measure for the repression of pauperism."[469] In 1863, Mr. Villiers,
speaking as President of the Poor Law Board, gave a new reason for the
disfavour into which emigration had fallen. "I do not mean to say," he
protested, on a discussion about the distress caused by the Lancashire
Cotton Famine, "that the Government should discourage emigration....
[But] when we know the large amount of capital in the country, and the
great increase of it, and are also cognisant of the demand for labour a
few years since, I do not think it would be wise of the Government to
expend public money in the promotion of emigration."[470] For the next
seven years emigration at the expense of the poor rate practically
ceases, the number of persons so assisted falling in 1866-7 to
eighteen.[471] In the following year, 277 persons were sent from Poplar,
then exceptionally distressed,[472] but there was no general resumption
of the policy, so far as adults were concerned. In 1869 the Central
Authority, whilst disavowing any intention of reviving the policy, tried
to simplify the procedure with regard to emigration, but found the
representatives of the colonies adverse.[473] In 1870 there was,
however, a slight revival, accompanied by the new feature of the
emigration to Canada of orphan or deserted children (Miss Rye's
scheme),[474] destined to become thenceforth a constant feature, though
not in any one year attaining any considerable magnitude. The total
number of persons emigrated at the expense of the poor rate in the
seventeen years between 1853 and 1870 was between three and four
thousand, as contrasted with nearly 24,000 in the preceding nineteen
years.[475]
[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.
_L._--_Relief on Loan_
We may note that the Central Authority did not advise making use of the
statutory power to grant relief in the form of a loan, as a means of
discouraging applicants, but regarded it solely as a way of saving the
rates. Such relief was to be granted with due consideration and the
_bona fide_ intention of recovering.[476] Relief could not be given on
loan if it would be contrary to Order to grant it not on loan.[477] In
fact, what might not lawfully be given, was not to be lent.[478]
Whatever was granted on loan should always be strictly recovered in due
time. "The power of lending is only to be exercised where the guardians
think fit to do something less than absolutely give the relief applied
for in cases where the application is lawful."[479] As examples of
occasions suitable for relief on loan, the Central Authority adduced
that of a mentally defective person having a regular and sufficient
income, but yet occasionally destitute from incapacity to manage his
expenditure.[480] Other cases are those of wives or children found
destitute, when the relief may be made on loan to the husbands or
parents.[481] A further instance is supplied by relief applied for by
the mother of an illegitimate child who is entitled to periodical
payments from the putative father. The putative father may be asked to
make his payments in such a way as to facilitate the recovery of the
loan from the mother.[482] We find no revival of the idea mooted in 1840
of granting medical relief on loan.
[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.
_M._--_Co-operation with Voluntary Agencies_
A noteworthy feature of the very end of this period was the emphasis
suddenly laid upon the importance of systematic co-operation between the
Poor Law and voluntary charitable agencies. This was the novel feature
of Mr. Goschen's celebrated Minute of 20th November 1869. His object was
"to avoid the double distribution of relief to the same persons, and at
the same time to secure that the most effective use should be made" of
voluntary funds. With this view he sought "to mark out the separate
limits of the Poor Law and of charity respectively, and [to find out]
how it is possible to secure joint action between the two." He suggested
that voluntary agencies should undertake the following:--
(_a_) The necessary supplementing of insufficient incomes--and
he does not here distinguish between earnings,
dividends, pensions, and family contributions--"leaving
to the operation of the [Poor] Law the provision
for the totally destitute."
(_b_) Donations of bedding, clothing, or other similar articles
not provided by the guardians (as distinguished
from food or money)[483] to persons in receipt of outdoor
relief.
(_c_) Services to such persons which are beyond the power
of the guardians (such as the redemption from
pawn or the purchase of tools or clothes, and the
expenses of migration).
It was suggested that charitable agencies and the relieving officers
should bring to each other's notice all cases falling within each
other's spheres, in order that none might be overlooked; systematically
giving each other also information of all cases that were being
relieved, so as to prevent any overlapping. Mr. Goschen seems to have
thought it beyond the power of the Poor Law Board to do anything to set
going any joint action between the Metropolitan boards of guardians and
charitable agencies. He did not convene a conference or initiate a joint
committee, or even circulate his proposal to the Metropolitan charities;
though he had evidently been advised that the services both of the
officers of the Poor Law Board and of those of the guardians could
legally be used "to assist in systematising ... relief operations in
various parts of the Metropolis," and "to facilitate the communication
between the official and private agencies"; and that Poor Law funds
could be drawn on for remuneration for their extra work and for the
necessary printing. He confined himself literally to sending his Minute
to the Metropolitan boards of guardians, with a request for their views
upon it. In reply, he got little beyond a series of expositions of the
apparent impracticability of his proposals. In commenting on these
replies, the Central Authority did not pursue Mr. Goschen's suggestions,
but urged only "increased vigilance and the appointment of more
relieving officers" on the one hand,[484] and on the other the grant of
"more adequate relief."[485] There the matter rested, for though
systematic co-operation between charities and the Poor Law has since
been assumed to be the policy of the Central Authority, we cannot find
that there has ever been any second official statement on the
subject.[486]
[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.
To the historian of Poor Law policy, Mr. Goschen's Minute is important
as the first indication of what we shall see developing in the ensuing
period--an attempt to restrict the range of operations of the Poor Law,
which here began to battle with the opposite tendency to extend the
range of those operations, and to improve their quality, which, as we
have seen, had marked the whole reign of the Poor Law Board with regard
to children and persons of unsound mind; and which had, from 1865, taken
such a stride onwards in the provision of hospitals and dispensaries for
the sick, and improved accommodation for the workhouse inmates.
_N._--_The Position in 1871_
In 1867 the Poor Law Board, which had been continued from time to time
by temporary statutes, was made permanent,[487] and in 1871 it was
merged in a new and permanent department, the Local Government Board,
established to take over not only the Poor Law business, but also the
Local Government Act Department of the Home Office and the growing
public health service, which had, since the abolition of the General
Board of Health, been under the Privy Council. This amalgamation, which
was not brought about by anything to do with the Poor Law side, does not
mark any significant epoch in Poor Law policy. It is therefore
unnecessary to attempt any summary of the whole policy of the Poor Law
Board as such. It need only be noted at this point that the new
establishment of the Central Authority on a permanent basis, no longer
dependent on temporary statutes, but definitely one of the departments
of the national executive, with its President more frequently than not a
member of the Cabinet, greatly strengthened the authority and augmented
the confidence with which it dealt with boards of guardians. And this
authority was in these years being fortified by the growth of an
official staff, on a more permanent basis than the temporarily serving
inspectors and assistant inspectors of a professedly temporary board. We
are already conscious, at the end of this period, of a growing firmness
of touch and an increasing consciousness of there being once more a
deliberate policy, which the new department will strive to carry out and
enforce.
[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).
CHAPTER IV
THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD
As we have already mentioned, the merging of the Poor Law Board in the
newly established Local Government Board came about for reasons
unconnected with the Poor Law, and it coincided with no definite change
in Poor Law Policy. But, as already indicated, the placing of the
Central Authority on a permanent basis coincided with a gradual
improvement in the quality of the inspectorial staff, who, in the
ensuing decades, remind us more of the masterful assistant commissioners
of the 1834-47 period. On the other hand, the development of the office
from a mere specialised authority, concerned only with a single
function, into what became practically a Ministry of the Interior,
charged with the supervision of all the local government of the country
(with the partial exception of police and schools), necessitated both an
increase and a development of the permanent secretariat. To this
secretariat, with its graded hierarchy and multiplicity of departments,
boards of guardians and the administration of the Poor Law tended
inevitably to take their place among municipal corporations, local
boards of health, highway authorities, and the administration of other
statutory powers. There is even a third element to take into account.
The revival of public interest in Poor Law problems, beginning about
1867[488] in the Metropolis and some of the large towns, and spreading
later to the whole country, had its effect in the House of Commons,
especially after the extension of the franchise in London and the
boroughs (1867), and in the counties (1884). We see this manifesting
itself in Poor Law policy in various minor statutes, and, above all, in
sporadic circulars and other declarations of policy by the Parliamentary
President of the Local Government Board.
[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).
Thus the student who seeks to discover what was the policy of the
Central Authority between 1871 and 1907 finds two distinct influences at
work on Boards of Guardians, each of which carries with it the weight of
the Central Authority, but one of them is seen to be predominant between
1871 and 1885, whilst the other predominates after 1885.
The able, zealous, and somewhat doctrinaire inspectorate, especially
between 1871 and 1885, stands always on the "principles of 1834" in
their strictest interpretation--constantly using language, indeed, which
went beyond any proposals of the 1834 Report, or any policy embodied in
the documents of the Central Authority of 1834-47. On the other hand,
the president (and Parliament with his concurrence) sporadically brought
in (especially after 1885) a note that some might term a sentimental,
others an enlightened humanitarianism, with regard to particular
sections--the unemployed, the decayed members of friendly societies, the
"deserving aged poor" generally. This humanitarianism was certainly in
direct contradiction of the "principles of 1834." How far it may be said
to have embodied, perhaps unconsciously, other principles will
subsequently appear.
The cleavage in policy between the inspectorate and the president did
not at first manifest itself. For the first decade or so, the successive
presidents and the inspectorate seem to be at one in a policy of "strict
administration"--a policy as to which we cannot discover whether it was
due to the influence of such presidents as Mr. Goschen and Mr. Stansfeld
upon such inspectors as Mr. Corbett, Mr. Doyle, Mr. Wodehouse, and Mr.
Longley, or _vice versa_. We may perhaps ascribe to the caution of the
secretariat the confining of this policy to the general terms of
circulars and minutes, thus avoiding alike the necessary precision of
orders and statutes and any explicit extension of the "principles of
1834" to classes other than the able-bodied.
From 1871 to about 1885 the outstanding feature of the policy of the
Central Authority was the steady pressure exercised through the
inspectors with the object of reducing outdoor relief. This arose out of
the inquiries set on foot by Mr. Goschen, which had revealed, not only
the granting of a large amount of outdoor relief to able-bodied men and
women and their families, but also great differences in practice between
one union and another. As we have shown, neither Mr. Goschen nor the
Central Authority under any other president had, down to 1871, so far as
the aged and infirm and cases of sickness were concerned, ever indicated
or advocated, in any official document that we have been able to find,
any alternative policy to that of outdoor relief. The Circular on
Outdoor Relief[489] now issued to the inspectors and widely published,
which set the tone for the ensuing decade, did not explicitly declare
any new policy with regard to these classes, which then made up at least
three-fourths of the total outdoor relief cases. Moreover its
illustrative examples and its specific recommendations related entirely
to the able-bodied. Indeed, except for an important new departure in the
treatment of able-bodied widows with children, the recommendations to be
pressed on Boards of Guardians amounted to no more than the substitution
of the practice of the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order for either that
of the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order or that of the Labour Test Order,
where one or other of these latter was in force. The differences between
these orders, as we have shown, relate only to the able-bodied. Thus, an
acute clerk of a board of guardians would have been warranted in saying
that, so far as concerned the aged and infirm and the sick, the Circular
of 1871 announced no new policy.
[489] Circular of 2nd December 1871, in First Annual Report,
1871-2, pp. 63-8.
But the Circular appeared to the casual reader to be against outdoor
relief as such to any class of paupers. The expression "Outdoor Relief"
was nowhere defined or limited. Particular unions were compared one with
another as to the amount and proportion of their total outdoor relief
to all cases, those having a large amount being held to blame, without a
consideration of whether their outdoor relief was to the able-bodied or
to the aged and infirm and the sick; and even without any consideration
of the relative proportion of persons over sixty, or the relative
prevalence of ill-health in their several populations.[490]
[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.
Moreover, some of the other recommendations of the Circular implied,
though they did not express, a suggestion that the "offer of the House"
might be used as a means of preventing the aged and the sick from coming
on the rates at all. Quite a new stress was laid on getting
contributions from relatives, and on the most vigilant inquiry into
circumstances, recommendations which certainly applied to the aged and
infirm and to the sick, and which seemed to carry with them the hint
that, if confronted with the workhouse, even the aged and the sick would
be maintained by their relations.
Whether or not the Central Authority can be held in these years to have
deliberately adopted the new policy of the offer of the workhouse for
the aged and infirm and for the sick, as well as for the able-bodied, it
was this policy which, from 1871 onwards, was increasingly pressed on
boards of guardians by the abler and more energetic of the inspectors.
We cannot find any official document in which any inspector explicitly
committed himself to the statement that the time had come when outdoor
relief should, as a matter of principle, be refused to the aged and
infirm, or to the sick, as had long been the official advice with regard
to the able-bodied.[491] But it was in these years that these inspectors
took to circulating among their boards of guardians the comparative
tables showing their relative position in order of merit according to
the smallness of their out-relief--always without making any distinction
between the out-relief to the aged and the sick on the one hand, and
that to the able-bodied on the other. In their published reports on
their districts we see the inspectors taking the same tone and using the
same unguarded phrases implying the inherent badness of outdoor relief
(without any limitation to the able-bodied), that marked the Circular of
1871. The minutes of the boards of guardians of this period occasionally
preserve a record of, or contain a reference to the inspector's letters
or personal advice to the same effect.[492]
[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).
It was a feature of this period that the inspectors were in close
personal contact with the president. Mr. Stansfeld inaugurated a system
of occasional dinners at which he met all the inspectors and discussed
with them their difficulties. They had also periodical conferences in
London for a week at a time, at which they formulated a common policy.
In these years began, too, the Poor Law conferences, where the
inspectors (and occasionally also the president) came in contact with
the new school of unofficial Poor Law experts, who were in favour of the
"logical development" of the "principles of 1834." It was, in fact, "now
argued" that, just as under the Act of 1834, the "offer of the
workhouse" had "obliged the able-bodied to assume responsibility for the
able-bodied period of life ... an application of the same principle to
the other responsibilities of life would produce equally advantageous
results."[493] The presidents of the first decade of the Local
Government Board seem, indeed, sometimes to have accepted the view that
all relief ought, strictly speaking, to be given in the workhouse. Mr.
Longley's Report on outdoor relief in the Metropolis was sent officially
to the boards of guardians and commended as laying down "sound lines of
policy."[494] Mr. Dodson, in 1881, declared as president that "the whole
object and system of the Poor Law as established in this country is that
it should be strictly administered, with the aim simply to testing and
relieving absolute destitution; and no effectual means have yet been
devised of so testing the destitution except by offering the house. And
just in proportion as the Poor Law is strictly administered, and in
proportion as entrance into the house is insisted upon as a condition of
relief, so, on the whole, is the Poor Law better administered--better
administered, I do not hesitate to say, not only in the interest of the
poor themselves, but in the interest of the ratepayers at large. Now,
you must remember, in the case of outdoor relief it is impossible
absolutely to test the cases. They cannot be closely watched, and you
cannot tell when a man is receiving outdoor relief that he is not having
aid from other sources, or that he is not to some extent earning
something for himself, and might possibly, if left to his own resources,
earn more. Well, then, it is a system which in that way acts as a check
upon personal exertions and upon providence, and I need not say that
anything which acts as a check upon exertion and providence cannot but
result in an increase of pauperism and the demoralisation of the
labouring classes, and must end in an increased charge to the
ratepayers."[495]
[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.
A notable step towards stricter administration in these years was the
adoption in 1875 by the Manchester Board of Guardians of by-laws for its
own guidance, putting additional restrictions on the grant of outdoor
relief.[496] These by-laws were made much of by the inspectors, and
carried from board to board. Their object was to discourage as much as
possible the grant of outdoor relief as such. Yet it is noteworthy
that they apply primarily to the able-bodied (male and female), and that
they do not mention at all the case of the aged, and that they allude to
the sick only by way of restricting the duration of each order of
outdoor relief to two weeks. But here again we detect the hint that the
"offer of the house" might be used, in the case of the aged, as a means
of extracting contributions from relatives whether or not such
contributions were legally due.
[496] Fifth Annual Report, 1875-6, pp. xvii-xix.
In 1877 we see a great effort made to get the new departure embodied in
a general order. The Central Poor Law Conference, professing to sum up
all the experience and knowledge both of the inspectors and of the new
school of unofficial Poor Law experts, asked the Central Authority to
issue new orders restricting outdoor relief generally. Even here it is
noteworthy that no explicit suggestion was made that the aged and the
sick ought not to be granted outdoor relief. What was asked for was
practically the "Manchester Rules," with the addition of the suggestion
that all relief should be given on loan. Here, however, the Central
Authority made a stand. It refused to make any new order, specifically
declining to extend the Prohibitory Order to the whole country, to make
all relief recoverable as if granted on loan, to enable all medical
relief to be made on loan, to impose a fixed limit for the grant of
outdoor relief in cases of sickness, or to prohibit outdoor relief to
widows in the first six months of their widowhood.[497]
[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.
Thus, the policy of 1871-85 resulted, not in any alteration of the
classic orders of 1844, 1847, and 1852, or in any explicit reversal of
the policy hitherto pursued with regard to the aged and the sick, but
only in a general "tightening up" of the administration of relief by
boards of guardians all over the country. We shall see this general
"tightening up" more in detail in the examination of the treatment of
various classes. That examination will also reveal the effect of the
reaction against this tightening up, which set in about 1885--a reaction
which showed itself in the relaxation, usually at the instance or with
the encouragement of Parliament and successive presidents, of the
conditions of relief to specific classes.
_A._--THE ABLE-BODIED
(i.) _National Uniformity_
In the absence of new Statutes, and of alterations in the General Orders
relating to the relief by boards of guardians of the able-bodied, there
was, of course, between 1871 and 1907, no step towards national
uniformity. The country continued to be divided up geographically into
three regions, according to whether or not the Central Authority had
permitted the grant of outdoor relief to able-bodied men, subject to a
labour test; and to whether or not it had permitted outdoor relief to
able-bodied women without children. And unlike the period 1847-1871,
that of 1871-1907 did not witness any important alteration in the
geographical extension of these three regions, though the relative
populations altered very considerably. The general policy of the Central
Authority, in issuing the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order to rural
districts, with or without the Labour Test Order when required, and in
issuing to the large towns the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, was
continued throughout the whole period.[498]
[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.
(ii.) _The Workhouse Test_
What happened for the first five-and-twenty years of the Local
Government Board was, as we have indicated, a general tightening up in
the administration of all three regions. The Central Authority intimated
that it would not easily give the approval that was necessary for any
departure from the orders. "In unions where the Prohibitory Order is in
force," said the circular to the inspectors of 2nd December 1871, "the
workhouse test should be strictly applied.... The Board will not be
prepared to sanction any cases which are not reported within the time
limited by the order, and in which the reports do not contain a detailed
statement of the paupers to which they refer, showing the number of
their respective families with the ages and number of children employed,
amount of wages of the several members of the family at work, cause of
destitution, period during which they have been without employment,
amount of relief, if any, given previously to the transmission of the
report, and what extent of accommodation for all classes exists in the
workhouse at the time."[499]
[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.
As times became bad, the Central Authority received "applications ...
for a relaxation of the provisions of the General Out-relief Prohibitory
Order, and for the substitution of an outdoor labour test for the more
effective test of destitution afforded by the offer of relief in the
workhouse." Instead of yielding to these requests, as had formerly
happened, the Central Authority now replied, "that the Supplemental
Outdoor Labour Test Order is not intended to supersede, but to be
subsidiary to the General Out-relief Prohibitory Order, and should not
be brought into operation so long as there is sufficient room in the
workhouse available for able-bodied paupers."[500] "A strict adherence
to the workhouse test," said the Central Authority, "on such occasions
when temporary relief is demanded solely from the state of the weather,
is essentially beneficial to the labouring classes, and conducive to
their real interest. A certainty of obtaining outdoor relief in his own
home, whenever he may demand it, extinguishes in the mind of the
labourer all motive for husbanding his earnings, and induces him to rely
exclusively upon the rates, instead of upon his own savings, for any
momentary relief which he may require from the sudden cessation of his
usual employment. The unfailing application of the workhouse test, on
the other hand, makes him at once aware that the only form in which he
can receive relief is as an ordinary inmate of the workhouse, and the
strongest inducement to support himself and his family is thus held out
to him, an inducement altogether wanting when the guardians, upon his
application, readily grant him outdoor relief."[501]
[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.
But, as already mentioned, the Central Authority, though pressed to do
so, did not consent to make the Out-relief Prohibitory Order co-extensive
with the country. "The Order," it replied, "is now in force in all the
rural unions ... and in many urban unions also, and the Board continue
to apply its provisions from time to time to other unions as often as
the circumstances enable them to do so, but it has never been attempted
to apply the provisions of the Order to the Metropolis, or those centres
of manufacturing industry where large numbers of persons are
periodically thrown out of employment by sudden and extensive
depressions of trade."[502] In such places, as it was explained, it
would certainly be found necessary to abrogate the Order at those
periods, and this would weaken its force generally.
[502] Letter of Local Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor
Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8,
p. 56.
(iii.) _The Labour Test_
Where the relief of able-bodied men outside the workhouse was not
prohibited, we see the Central Authority in these years not only rigidly
maintaining the rule as to a labour test (whether under the Out-relief
Regulation Order or under a Labour Test Order supplementary to the
Out-relief Prohibitory Order); but also seeking to make the
administration more strict. This rule, it was explained in 1879, "is one
the value of which has been experienced at various times, and in various
parts of the country, as a test of the actual destitution of the
applicant; and to the observance of which, in times of serious pressure,
such as the present, the Board attach very great importance. The Board
are not prepared to suspend the operation of the articles in question
generally; but if while applying its provisions, the guardians should be
of opinion that, in certain special cases which might arise, it would be
proper that the strict application of these provisions should not be
enforced, the Board, on receiving a particular report of the
circumstances under Article 10 of the Order, would be prepared to give
their favourable consideration to the cases."[503] Even in such a severe
crisis of unemployment as that of 1879-81, when the number of men thrown
out of work was probably greater than at any date from 1841 down to the
present day, the Central Authority held to its view of what the labour
test should be. "For this object," it was explained, "the operations of
breaking stone and picking oakum (when performed under proper
superintendence) are in many respects very appropriate, and, having
regard to the objection to employing paupers on work of a productive
character, which may interfere with the ordinary callings or employment
of any portion of the independent population of the district, the Board
are unable to suggest any other kind of work than those named."[504] Nor
was even breaking stone or picking oakum to be paid for as wages, or
regarded as employment. "With regard to the proposal of the [Warrington]
guardians to pay 2s. 6d. for each ton of stones broken," the Central
Authority stated "that the task is intended merely for a test of
destitution, and that the relief granted to each pauper should not be
proportioned to the quantity of stone broken by him, but to the
necessities of his case."[505] The inspectors were instructed to press
the guardians everywhere not to grant even admission to "the stoneyard"
as a matter of course; "orders to able-bodied men for relief in the
labour yard should only be given from week to week"; and the homes of
the men so relieved should be visited by the relieving officer at least
once a fortnight.[506] Moreover, even this relief was intended to be
only temporary; and the conditions were sometimes made more onerous
after the first few weeks. "In the Poplar Union, at the expiration of
the first month, the applicant is required to come to the stoneyard an
hour earlier and to leave an hour later than before, and to break an
additional bushel of stones."[507] Gradually we see it being assumed,
even as regards unions under the Out-relief Regulation Order, that it is
merely "when the workhouse accommodation is insufficient,"[508] or "so
long as they have not adequate workhouse accommodation,"[509] that
relief should be given with a labour test. Right down to February 1886,
the Central Authority declared that it "would not feel justified in
relaxing" the regulations which prohibited relief to able-bodied men,
however temporary and undeserved might be their want of employment,
"without any such test of destitution as is provided by admission to a
properly managed workhouse, or the performance of an adequate task of
work." To cope with the distress caused by unemployment, the Holborn
Guardians on 9th February 1886 were, in fact, expressly told to hire a
stoneyard.[510]
[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.
(iv.) _The Modified Workhouse Test Order_
In one union there was an attempt, to which the Central Authority in
1887 gave its approval by Special Order, to substitute for the labour
test provisions of the Out-relief Regulation Order, a special
application of the "Workhouse Test."[511] This Order, limited in
duration to twelve months, permitted outdoor relief to be given to the
wife and family of an able-bodied man, without a labour test, on
condition that the man himself entered the workhouse. This device was
intended to get over the three principal obstacles to the universal
adoption of the "Workhouse Test" for the able-bodied, viz. the lack of
sufficient accommodation in workhouses; the objection to "breaking up
the home"; and the undesirability of bringing the wives, and especially
the children, under workhouse influences. This Order, which was not
renewed on its expiry, and not issued to any other union for nearly
twenty years, was, as we have said, asked for as a means of making the
administration of relief more stringent than it was under the Out-relief
Regulation Order. Combined with the establishment of a special "Test
Workhouse," which we shall presently describe, it might come near to
being a penal alternative. But it is, as we shall see afterwards,
important rather as a precedent capable also of application in an
entirely humanitarian way.
[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.
(v.) _The Test Workhouse_
It must be noted that, whilst the inspectorate was in these years doing
its utmost to insist on "the offer of the house" to all able-bodied
persons, it was also encouraging boards of guardians to make the
workhouse for such persons an exclusively disciplinary institution. This
had, as we have mentioned, been suggested by Mr. Corbett in 1868. The
pressure on the accommodation of the Metropolitan workhouses, and the
mixing together of so many different classes of inmates, made it
impossible, Mr. Corbett had pointed out, "to apply the workhouse as a
test of destitution to single able-bodied men."[512] "In urging upon
boards of guardians in the Metropolis," repeated his successor, Mr.
Longley, "as I have lately had occasion to do almost daily, the
application of the workhouse test, I have not infrequently been met by
the startling admission that the workhouse is attractive to paupers;
that there are many persons in the workhouse who could maintain
themselves out of doors; and, in short, that the workhouse furnishes no
test of destitution. All arguments in support of the workhouse test
which assume the existence of a 'well-regulated workhouse' (to use the
language of the Poor Law Commissioners of Inquiry, 1833) must fail at
once when addressed to guardians whose workhouse offers attractions to
the indolent. And I have reason to think that the aversion to the proper
and free use of the workhouse which distinguishes many Metropolitan
boards of guardians, is in some measure due to the failure of the
workhouses, as at present administered, to satisfy the essential
conditions of their establishment."[513]
[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).
Mr. Longley was told to prepare an elaborate report on indoor relief in
the Metropolis, and in this he expressed his emphatic opinion that "the
deterrent discipline ... fails at present to be duly enforced in London
workhouses almost without exception.... The general tone of their
administration is that of the _almshouse_ rather than of the _workhouse_
system."[514] He traced this inconvenient laxity to the very nature of
the general workhouse for all classes, which the Central Authority had
substituted for the series of specialised institutions recommended in
the Report of 1834. "The presence in a workhouse," he said, "of the
sick, or of any class in whose favour the ordinary discipline must be
relaxed, and who receive special indulgences, has an almost inevitable
tendency to impair the general discipline of the establishment."[515]
The very improvement in the workhouses, which, under the Central
Authority's own pressure, was taking place in these years, had, in fact,
brought to light the inherent drawback of the general workhouse. Hence
the able-bodied, like the children and the sick, were now to be
accommodated by themselves. Thus we find, from 1871 onwards, the idea of
the "Test Workhouse," an institution set apart exclusively for the
able-bodied, where they could be subjected (to use Mr. Longley's words)
to "such a system of labour, discipline, a nd restraint as shall be
sufficient to outweigh," in the estimation of the inmates, "the
advantages" which they enjoy. Mr. Longley declared that the main object
of the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867 had been, not exclusively, or even
principally, the better accommodation of the sick, but the introduction
of classification by institutions, with the double object of, on the one
hand, an improved treatment of the sick, and, on the other, "the
establishment of a stricter and more deterrent discipline in
workhouses."[516] Circumstances, he said, had delayed the accomplishment
of the latter purpose, but it was now time for the Central Authority to
"urge upon guardians the establishment in workhouses of a more
distinctly deterrent system of discipline and diet than has hitherto
been secured," involving "a reconsideration of the conditions of pauper
labour and service in workhouses."[517]
[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).
Under the influence of the inspectorate, we see half the unions in
London gradually agreeing to take advantage of the powers given by the
Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867, and to make use, for their able-bodied
paupers, of the workhouse of the Poplar Union, which now sent its sick
to the new "sick asylum," its children to the district school, and its
aged and infirm to the workhouse of another union.[518] This
establishment of a test workhouse for the able-bodied received at first
the warm commendation of the Central Authority.[519] The Poplar
workhouse, with its rigid discipline, its absolutely limited diet and
its severe task of monotonous toil (oakum-picking and stone-pounding),
measured not by time but by a prescribed quantity, became a terror. For
the next seven years, we see the guardians offering, sometimes to
"troublesome" paupers, sometimes to all able-bodied applicants, male
or female--not outdoor relief upon a labour test--but "an order for
Poplar." "Notwithstanding the considerable number of unions which have
availed themselves of this privilege, the number ... who have accepted
the relief, or having accepted it, have remained in the workhouse, has
been so small that, although the workhouse will contain 768 persons,
there were in it at the close of last year only 166 inmates."[520] In
1878, however, the Metropolitan police magistrates seem to have
expressed disapproval of the penal character which the institution had
assumed. A woman brought up for refusing to do her task of oakum-picking
at Poplar was discharged, with the observation that such work was not a
fit task to set to women in receipt of Poor Law relief. On these
sentiments becoming known, as the Poplar Guardians informed the Central
Authority, "the master of the workhouse has a very considerable amount
of trouble in getting any work done now by the inmates." The Central
Authority, in reply, sympathised with the difficulty, but could, after
six weeks' deliberation, do nothing but express the hope that the Poplar
Guardians would be able to convert the magistrates to their views.[521]
[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.
The difficulty seems to have continued, for, in 1881, the Central
Authority issued an Order permitting the Poplar Guardians to use their
workhouse for other than the able-bodied, thus bringing the experiment
to an end.[522]
[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.
It is to be noted that, in spite of the Poplar experience, the policy of
a special "Test House," devoted exclusively to the able-bodied,
continued to be pressed on guardians by the Inspectorate. The Birmingham
Guardians established such a "test house," in 1880, but it seems to have
been opened to other classes in 1887.[523] In the latter year,
notwithstanding this renewed abandonment, we see Mr. Henley pressing the
same policy on the Manchester Guardians, leading them to visit
Birmingham to inspect the test house there.[524] In the Metropolis, the
inspectorate got the Kensington workhouse made use of in 1882, in
substitution for that of Poplar, though only for males; and able-bodied
applicants were, for thirteen years, referred thither. This arrangement
came to an end in 1905, greatly to the regret of the inspectorate. This
Kensington test house, it was said, "for many years did useful work as a
place where really able-bodied men were received from all parts of
London, and kept hard at work under strict surveillance. As the
Kensington Guardians now need the workhouse for their own purposes this
arrangement has of necessity ceased.... The number of really able-bodied
men in the London workhouses at one time is never very large, but it is
large enough to make it extremely desirable that there should be at
least one workhouse exclusively for such a class, to which, and to which
only, they might be admitted."[525]
[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).
As an adjunct of the policy of the deterrent workhouse for the
able-bodied, we have to note the coming-in of compulsory detection.
This, of course, had been entirely absent from "the principles of 1834,"
according to which every inmate of the workhouse was to be free to quit
it, with no more notice than was required for the convenience of the
establishment. "Much evil," said a Circular of 1871, "has arisen, and
... the discipline of the workhouse has been seriously impaired by the
frequent exercise of the power which the inmates have hitherto possessed
of discharging themselves from the workhouse at short and uncertain
notice, claiming re-admission as might best suit their inclination and
convenience." This was remedied by a statute in 1871 which gave the
guardians a power to detain, with which we shall deal in our section on
the workhouse.[526]
[526] 34 & 35 Vic. c. 108, sec. 4; Circular of 18th November 1871,
in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 54.
(vi.) _The Provision of Employment_
In the midst of all the efforts of the inspectorate to secure stricter
administration, made apparently with the ungrudging support of the
Central Authority, there came, in February 1886, an altogether
incongruous intervention by the new President (Mr. Chamberlain), who had
then been only a few weeks in office. On 19th February 1886, he
addressed a public letter to the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of
Works, saying that "there is considerable distress amongst workpeople of
a class above that of the persons who usually apply for poor law
relief"; and urging the Board "to expedite as far as practicable the
commencement of any public works which they may be contemplating, so
that additional employment may be afforded."[527] Four weeks later this
policy was embodied in a circular to all boards of guardians, which may
be said to have begun, for good or for evil, a new era as regards the
treatment of such of the able-bodied as were classed as "the
unemployed." Whilst nominally upholding the workhouse test and, when
that is impossible, the labour test,[528] for the relief of the
able-bodied pauper, the circular lays it down emphatically that an
altogether different provision must be made for the unemployed
wage-earner. The President was "convinced that in the ranks of those who
do not ordinarily seek poor law relief there is evidence of much and
increasing privation," among persons "usually in regular employment." It
was, in his view, "not desirable that the working classes should be
familiarised with Poor Law Relief;" and the guardians were recommended
"to endeavour to arrange" with the local municipal authorities for the
execution of such public works as the laying out, paving and cleansing
of streets, sewerage and water works, the laying-out of recreation
grounds and new cemeteries, and "spade husbandry on sewage farms." The
men to be selected from among the special class referred to were to be
engaged by the municipal authorities upon the recommendation of the
guardians. They were to be paid wages, though at somewhat below the
ordinary rates; every encouragement being given to the municipal
authorities to raise loans for the purpose. The men would thus not be
paupers, nor in receipt of anything from the Poor Rate, the intervention
of the guardians being confined to inciting the local municipal
authorities to undertake the work, and to recommending the candidates
for employment.[529]
[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.
The policy thus laid down by Mr. Chamberlain, of finding municipal work
for the unemployed, was, it will be seen, a revival of the expedient
adopted in the Lancashire Cotton Famine. But Mr. Chamberlain omitted to
safeguard his proposal in the way in which the works started out of the
Government loans to the Lancashire municipal authorities in 1863-6 had
been (in practice, though not explicitly in terms) safeguarded. It was
not explained--perhaps it was not realised--that the conditions of
success in the Lancashire experiment had been: (i.) that no pretence
should be made of taking on the unemployed as such, and, in particular,
that the casual labourer class, whether temporarily unemployed or not,
should be definitely excluded; and (ii.) that the direct advantage to
unemployed workmen should be limited to the taking on, to do the
unskilled labourer's work, of a restricted proportion of selected
applicants, not of the labouring but of the skilled artisan class. These
necessary conditions were not expounded by the Central Authority either
in 1886 or in subsequent years. Successive presidents repeated Mr.
Chamberlain's suggestions, with no more limitations than he had laid
down. Mr. Ritchie, for instance, in the following year, told a
deputation of Boards of Guardians that, although they could not legally
give employment, as distinguished from poor relief, they "might assist
the local authorities, if the latter undertook public works, by sending
to them persons applying for relief, who would no doubt prefer to be
relieved by temporary employment rather than by becoming a burden on the
rates."[530] In 1891 (a year of "good trade," by the way) Mr. Ritchie
sent a circular to the Metropolitan vestries and district boards, urging
them to provide employment by street cleaning, etc., "in concert with
the Boards of Guardians," who were to be "afforded the opportunity of
recommending for employment persons who from their previous
circumstances and condition it is most desirable should not be placed
under the necessity of receiving relief at the cost of the rates."[531]
[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).
Similar letters were sent to the Boards of Guardians. In November 1892,
Mr. Fowler, afterwards Lord Wolverhampton, reproduced Mr. Chamberlain's
Circular of 1886, and recommended municipal works, "in order that
the pauperisation of those persons whose difficulties are occasioned
only by exceptional circumstances arising from temporary scarcity of
employment ... may as far as practicable be avoided."[532] In 1893
again, under Mr. Shaw Lefevre's presidency, similar circulars were
sent out.[533] In 1895, Mr. Shaw Lefevre, afterwards Lord Eversley,
again issued circulars using the very phrases of that of 1886, which
were addressed, first to all the boards of guardians, and then to all
the rural and urban district councils, asking the former about the
distress, and urging the latter to undertake works, in conference with
the boards of guardians, in order to afford employment to artisans
and others, reduced to want through the prolonged frost.[534] The
House of Commons, two days later, appointed a Committee to consider
what could be done, at the request of which circulars were sent
to all municipalities and district councils asking what had been
done.[535] Called upon to justify itself by the Committee presided
over by Mr., afterwards Sir Henry, Campbell-Bannerman, the Central
Authority explained what had been done, both in the way of Presidential
Circulars about unemployment, and in the way of Poor Law relief to
the able-bodied. It did not in this emergency suggest or issue any
new General Orders, but it sanctioned "departures from the rules
as regards outdoor relief in particular cases."[536] Moreover,
there was, as Sir Hugh Owen explained, "no indisposition on the
part of the Local Government Board to comply with an application
from a board of guardians for the issue of the Outdoor Labour Test
Order when the circumstances have appeared to be such as to require
it."[537] Meanwhile the public controversy that was taking place,
the reports of the proceedings of the Committee, and above all the
circulars demanding information from all the local authorities in the
Kingdom, enormously stimulated the idea that the unemployed had got
to be specially dealt with in such a way as to "prevent the stigma
of pauperism, and the consequent loss of citizenship."[538] The
Committee, after making elaborate inquiries, practically endorsed the
policy of Mr. Chamberlain's Circular of 1886, of bringing municipal
work to the aid of the unemployed, and carried it even further.
They definitely recommended the adoption, as a constant feature of
municipal work, though only in respect of the annually recurring
slackness of employment in the winter months, of the policy of using
the public orders in such a way as to regularise the aggregate volume
of employment. As regards the Metropolis, it was recommended that
individual boards of guardians might contribute, with the sanction of
the Local Government Board, out of the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund,
half the cost of the works undertaken by the vestries or district
boards at their instance.[539] Moreover, as it had been discovered that
the Acts of 1819 and 1830 had not been repealed, which authorised the
local Poor Law authorities to purchase or hire not exceeding 50 acres
of land on which to set the poor to work at reasonable wages--statutes
which the Central Authority had persistently ignored as obsolete, and
had refused to make the rules under which alone they could be made
operative--the Committee recommended: "That the Local Government Board
should consider the application of such powers, and make rules for the
use of boards of guardians in relation thereto."[540]
[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.
Finally we come, with regard to the relief of the section of the
able-bodied who may be deemed to be "the unemployed," to Mr. Long's
scheme, embodied in the Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905, under which
distress committees of the local municipal councils, formed partly of
members nominated by the boards of guardians, are empowered to make
special provision for those of the able-bodied who are "unemployed,"
without their becoming paupers, in the way of: (i.) emigration; (ii.)
internal migration; (iii.) temporary employment; (iv.) farm colonies; or
(v.) labour exchanges; at the expense, so far as emigration, migration,
labour exchanges, and the cost of the whole machinery are concerned, of
the local municipal rates, and, so far as the actual relief or wages is
concerned, of voluntary subscriptions or subventions from the National
Exchequer.[541]
[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.
(vii.) _The Farm Colony_
Meanwhile various boards of guardians had obtained the sanction of the
Central Authority for another method of dealing with that section of the
able-bodied who are termed "the unemployed." Upon the pressing and
repeated advice of the Central Authority itself, the Poplar Board (which
did not at first respond to the suggestion[542]) had in later years
cordially co-operated with the local municipal authority in making
employment for the unemployed. The increase in the number of able-bodied
applicants had continued. The workhouse was full, and indeed
overcrowded. In October 1893 Mr. Lansbury had tried in vain to induce
his fellow guardians to apply for the (Whitechapel) Modified Workhouse
Test Order, permitting the admission to the workhouse of the men alone,
whilst the families received outdoor relief. Two months later the
Central Authority was asked to sanction the expenditure of £500
chargeable to the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund, to provide work for
able-bodied applicants on three days a week. The Central Authority felt
unable to sanction so vague a proposal, and practically invited a more
definite scheme. Presently the idea of a farm colony, on which to employ
able-bodied men, whilst their families remained on outdoor relief in
London, received the approval of a conference of Metropolitan guardians.
The Central Authority stated that, whilst it could not sanction any
combination of areas with this object, it would consider any proposal by
a board of guardians for the purpose. When, however, the Poplar Board of
Guardians made such a proposal, the Central Authority declined to
contemplate any action under the statutes of 1819 and 1830 already
referred to, and persisted in regarding the proposed farm colony as
merely a branch workhouse, deprecating it on account of the expense and
distance.[543] Finally, by the generosity of Mr. Joseph Fels in placing
land gratuitously at the disposal of the Poplar Board, the project in
1904 got under way, and the Central Authority (after suggesting, as an
alternative, the use of the test workhouse at Kensington, which, as
above mentioned, was on the point of coming to an end) sanctioned the
extensive farm colony at Laindon under the pretence that it was a
temporary workhouse, to which all the regulations of the General
Consolidated Order of 1847, and all the elaborately prescribed dietaries
of the Dietaries and Accounts Order of 1900, were nominally to
apply.[544] At first the view of the Central Authority seems to have
been that the men were not receiving indoor relief, but were, under the
Out-relief Regulation Order of 1852, performing a task of work in a
temporary workhouse, and were thus, we assume, receiving outdoor relief
in respect of their wives and families in return for such a labour test.
[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).
In February 1905, however, the so-called (Whitechapel) Modified
Workhouse Test Order was issued to Poplar, under which the men alone
could be admitted to the workhouse, and become indoor paupers, their
wives and families receiving outdoor relief.[545]
[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.
Meanwhile the farm colony experiment was being tried in another form.
The Central Authority gave its sanction, in March 1904, to the Poplar
Board of Guardians sending some of their able-bodied male paupers to the
Hadleigh farm colony of the Salvation Army, at a payment at the rate of
£28:12s. per annum for each man, in addition to the outdoor relief
granted to his wife and family.[546] In the following year it gave its
sanction to a similar proposal by the Bradford Board of Guardians.[547]
We do not know in what other instances the Central Authority tried this
particular form of the farm colony experiment. The Lingfield farm colony
of the Church Army was also being made use of by some boards of
guardians, presumably with the sanction of the Central Authority.[548]
We do not understand why these interesting farm colony experiments
undertaken by Poplar, Bradford, and other boards of guardians, with the
special sanction of the Central Authority, find no mention, either in
its annual reports for 1904-5 or 1905-6, or in the reports for those
years of the inspectors for the districts.
[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.
_B._--VAGRANTS
The adoption, between 1886 and 1907, of a policy of discriminating
between some able-bodied applicants and others, according to their
character and circumstances, with a view (whether by Poor Law farm
colony or by the relief works and labour exchanges of the distress
committees) to the rehabilitation of the man really seeking work, makes
all the more remarkable the retention, during the whole period, of a
contrary policy with regard to wayfarers or vagrants. We find the
Central Authority, from 1871 onwards, consistently maintaining for this
class a policy of indiscriminate relief on demand, under deterrent
conditions, distinctly "less eligible" than the poorest accommodation of
the independent labourer, free from any trace of wish for, or attempt
at, reform or cure, and intended to be uniform throughout the kingdom.
There was, for instance, after 1871, no reversion to the policy so
frequently adumbrated between 1847 and 1871, of discriminating between
the professional tramp and the _bona fide_ workman in search of
employment, reserving the deterrent casual ward for the one, and
granting a night's lodging without conditions to the other. On the
contrary, the basis of the new policy of 1871 was the universal
establishment of the deterrent casual ward for all wayfarers, and the
exclusion from the workhouse of even the worthiest among them. This
uniformity was to be secured by the Pauper Inmates Discharge and
Regulation Act, 1871,[549] which provided that a casual pauper should
not be entitled to discharge himself before 11 a.m. on the day following
his admission, or, if found a second time in one casual ward within a
month, not till 9 a.m. on the third day, nor in any case until he had
performed a prescribed task. The Act also made for uniformity by
requiring the guardians to provide such casual wards as the Central
Authority thought necessary, and by subjecting the admission, diet, and
task to its Orders. From this time forth, therefore, the Central
Authority assumes complete responsibility for the treatment of vagrants.
Its Circular of 1871 begins by condemning the work of its predecessors.
"The result of the system hitherto adopted in the relief of this class
of paupers cannot be regarded as successful, for while there has been no
uniformity of treatment as to diet and work there has been neglect in
many unions to provide proper and sufficient wards."[550] The Central
Authority enunciated once more the need for national uniformity,
pointing out that stringent regulations in one union caused vagrants to
vary their route and resort to another place, and expressed an intention
of requiring that suitable accommodation should be provided at every
workhouse. But no uniformity was actually prescribed. The examples of
Bath and Corwen unions were quoted for the guidance of others. At Bath
vagrants had to apply for relief at the police station, whence
able-bodied men were sent to the workhouse, where they were relieved,
and required to perform a three hours' task of stone-breaking, while
women, children, and old and infirm men were relieved at a refuge
without any task. The Central Authority mentioned this system with
apparent approval, and remarked that it had diminished the vagrancy of
Bath by over 58 per cent. At Corwen a proposal was approved to place the
vagrant wards in the yard of the police station, and appoint a police
officer as assistant relieving officer.[551] But the stream of vagrants,
after a merely temporary abatement, continued to grow. In 1882 the
Central Authority got another statute, and issued another order,
increasing the period of detention and otherwise making the conditions
more deterrent[552]--still without laying down any policy of
discrimination between wayfarers of one sort and wayfarers of another. A
few more years' experience showed that the detention really operated
against the virtuous wayfarer, who found himself discharged too late to
get the work for which he had tramped. The remedy of the Central
Authority was to issue circulars suggesting that the guardians should
give orders that casual paupers who had done their task on the preceding
day should be allowed to leave early in the morning.[553] Some boards of
guardians acted on this, others did not--thus destroying the national
uniformity at which the Central Authority had aimed. Finally, in 1892,
in tardy response to a recommendation of the House of Lords Committee of
1888, a Circular and an Order were issued, "with the view of
facilitating the search for work by casual paupers who are desirous of
obtaining employment," which gave to every inmate of the casual ward,
who had performed his task to the best of his ability, an absolute right
to claim his discharge at 5.30 A.M. in summer, or 6 A.M. in winter, on
the second day after admission, on his merely representing "that he is
desirous of seeking work."[554] Whether from this or other causes, the
stream of vagrants continued to grow, with the usual fluctuations. In
1904 the numbers passed all previous records, and so unsatisfactory had
proved the policy of 1871-1904 that a Departmental Committee was
appointed to find a new one.[555]
[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.
_C._--WOMEN
It was in this period of 1871-1907 that the Central Authority began to
lay down a policy with regard to women as women; significantly enough,
as part of the restrictive policy brought in by the inspectorate. Women
continued to be practically ignored in the statutes and orders, so that
their legal position remained virtually unchanged.[556] But without any
change in the orders, or in the division of the whole country into
geographical regions under which, as we have shown, women had different
claims to relief, the Central Authority sought by circulars, minutes,
decisions, and the persistent pressure of the inspectorate, to
discourage the grant of outdoor relief to particular classes of women.
Thus outdoor relief to able-bodied single women without illegitimate
children continued to be permissible, without any labour test or other
conditions, in all the unions under the Out-relief Regulation Order; and
the area under this Order continued to grow in population, until it
amounted, by 1907, to three-fourths of the whole. But by Circular of 2nd
December 1871, the Central Authority advised that outdoor relief should
not be given in any case whatsoever of this class.[557] Such outdoor
relief was specifically prohibited in the rules adopted by the
Manchester Board of Guardians in 1875, which were frequently commended
to the notice of other Boards of Guardians, who, under inspectorial
pressure, voluntarily put themselves under similar rules.[558] In the
same way, without alteration of the Orders, it was urged that deserted
wives should not be given outdoor relief, at any rate during the first
twelve months after the desertion.[559] It was officially
declared to be "inexpedient to allow outdoor relief to the wives and
children of persons who are in gaol"--not merely of convicted prisoners
under sentence, but also of those not under sentence, nearly all of whom
are still unconvicted, and, therefore, legally presumed to be
innocent--and this in spite of the admitted fact that "the law has
provided that regulations prescribed with regard to widows shall apply
to the wives in these cases," so that the Central Authority had no power
to make a prohibitory order.[560] So, too, the "wives of men in the first
class Army Reserve," to whom relief could not be actually prohibited
without trouble with the War Office, were declared not to need constant
relief, as "an able-bodied woman with the Government allowance and such
assistance as her husband ought to provide from his pay and allowances
should have no difficulty in finding, if not immediately, at least
within a reasonable period after her husband's departure, sufficient
employment to enable her to maintain adequately herself and her
children." But outdoor relief might be given for a short period, and, it
was suggested, on loan.[561] Even to widows, who, it was now recognised,
accounted for a third of the whole pauper population,[562] outdoor
relief was--apparently for the first time in the whole history of the
Central Authority from 1834, so far as we can find--now officially
discouraged. It was strongly recommended that it should not be given at
all to "any able-bodied widow with one child only." Even where there
were "more than one child, it may be desirable to take one or more of
the children into the workhouse in preference to giving outdoor
relief."[563] It is characteristic that this policy was not based on any
consideration of what was the appropriate treatment for the child, but
was regarded only as a "test," by which it was intended to exclude every
widow who could _possibly_ maintain herself and family without poor
relief. Six years later we have it observed, as a capital drawback to
this policy, not that the children might suffer by being taken into the
workhouse, but that "since the passing of the Elementary Education Acts
this offer as a test of destitution has not the same effect as
previously, inasmuch as the children being required to attend school,
the mothers cannot have the benefit of any earnings which otherwise the
children might obtain."[564] And though the Central Authority refused,
in 1877, to make illegal the grant of outdoor relief to "widows within
six months of their widowhood"--declaring, indeed, that "a widow, with
or without children, could not, on the death of her husband, in all
cases be required to go into the workhouse"--it was not obscurely hinted
that "it may be that the period of six months now allowed is too long,"
and that "the guardians should exercise their discretion in dealing with
each case according to its merits."[565] The example of the Bradfield
Union, where "the widow's month" had, since about 1873, been substituted
for "the widow's six months," was always being commended to boards of
guardians by the inspectorate. Moreover, in the Metropolis, at
Manchester, at Birmingham, and various other places, it was strongly
recommended in these years that outdoor relief to able-bodied
independent women should be given only with a labour test; which might
be (as at Manchester) "the enforced silence and order of the
needle-room," where the women, at any rate, learnt to knit, and sew, and
darn a stocking, or, as at Birmingham and Poplar, what Mr. Corbett
called "the comparative licence and desultory work of the ordinary oakum
room."[566] The task of oakum picking was eventually preferred by the
Central Authority, and, down to the last decade of the century, it was
this that was recommended to boards of guardians. The effect of this
long-continued and persistent pressure for the first twenty years of the
Local Government Board, without any alteration in the legal status of
women by order or statute, is seen in the statistics of outdoor relief.
The able-bodied women getting outdoor relief on 1st January 1871,
numbered 116,407.[567] On 1st January 1892, they had been brought down
to 53,571, the reduction having been principally in: (_a_) wives of
able-bodied men; (_b_) single women without children; and (_c_) wives of
men in gaol, in the Army, Navy, etc., or otherwise absent. But the
number of widows on outdoor relief had also been reduced from 53,502 in
1873 to 36,627 on 1st January 1892.[568]
[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.
After 1885, though some of the inspectors continued to recommend, with
regard to women, the strict policy of 1871,[569] the Local Government
Board itself, so far as we can discover, reverted to silence on the
point, and gave no advice.
[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).
_D._--CHILDREN
(i.) _On Outdoor Relief_
There seems to have been, so far as regards children, no explicit change
in policy in 1871. To take first the 336,870 children under sixteen who
were on outdoor relief on 1st January 1871[570]--almost exactly
one-third of the aggregate pauperism--we see continued the same ignoring
of their general condition. We do not find that the inspectors ever
investigated what was happening to these children or that the Central
Authority ever made any official inquiry, still less issued any order,
on the subject. The general policy of restricting outdoor relief, which
we have sufficiently described, had incidentally the effect, in the
course of twenty years, of reducing the number of children on outdoor
relief by nearly one-half.[571]
[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).
On one point, indeed, that of education, as we have seen, Parliament had
explicitly over-ridden the implied contention that the Poor Law
Authorities had no responsibility for the welfare of the children on
outdoor relief. The policy of Denison's Act of 1855, which had been
comparatively little acted upon, was extended in 1873 so as to make it
compulsory on boards of guardians to see that such children between five
and thirteen were regularly at school.[572] The guardians were even
required to pay the school fees for children--even illegitimate
children--who were not paupers, if they needed this, and the parents did
not thereby become paupers.[573] We see the Central Authority
communicating these decisions of the Legislature without comment, and
the boards of guardians carrying them out as they chose;[574] sometimes
even taking it upon themselves to petition the Education Department to
relax the requirement of schooling after twelve, as being hard on the
parent, useless to the child, and leading to "much necessary work being
left undone," especially "the eradication of pernicious weeds."[575]
[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.
We may see further imposition of responsibility on the boards of
guardians for the well-being of the children of the poor, in the series
of Acts for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Already in 1868
boards of guardians had been expressly directed by statute to institute
proceedings against parents who neglected their children.[576] In 1888
the Central Authority reminded the guardians of the power they had thus
had for twenty years, without often making use of it.[577] In 1889
Parliament enacted that any person having the custody of a child under
sixteen who "wilfully ill-treats, neglects, abandons, or exposes such
child, or causes or procures such child to be ill-treated, neglected,
abandoned, or exposed, in a manner likely to cause such child
unnecessary suffering or injury to its health, shall be guilty of a
misdemeanour," and that the guardians might, "out of the funds under
their control, pay the reasonable costs and expenses of any proceedings"
which they direct to be taken. They were not definitely required to take
such proceedings, but Parliament laid the duty upon them to do so. The
Act of 1894 made the provisions more explicit, and defined injury to
health so as to include "injury to or loss of sight, or hearing, or
limb, or organ of the body, and any mental derangement."[578]
[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.
These statutes were applicable, among others, to the 170,000 children on
outdoor relief, many of whom were plainly underfed, housed in insanitary
conditions, half-clothed, and generally treated in a manner "likely to
cause injury" to their health; but we do not find that the boards of
guardians realised the great increase of power and responsibility thus
entrusted to them. The Central Authority, which observed mildly that
Parliament evidently meant the guardians to institute proceedings, did
not point out to them the applicability of the new statutes to the
children on outdoor relief; and the boards of guardians, so far as we
can ascertain, seldom or never acted on them. In 1904, accordingly, the
power to pay the expenses of prosecution was transferred to county and
borough authorities, so that the guardians ceased to be responsible for
taking proceedings; but the workhouse remains a "place of safety" to
which a constable or other person authorised by a Justice may take a
child, the guardians are required to provide for the reception of any
child so brought to the workhouse, and the master is bound to admit such
child if there is sufficient accommodation.[579]
[579] 4 Edw. VII. c. 15, sec. 5.
After 1890 we find the responsibility of the Poor Law authorities for
all the outdoor paupers beginning to be recognised by the inspectorate.
"The absolute responsibility of the guardians for the material
well-being of every one who is in receipt of outdoor relief,"[580] said
Mr. Davy in 1893, had been officially recognised by the District Nurses
Order, to which we shall recur. "If any relief at all is given to an
applicant," Mr. Davy laid it down, "it is the plain duty of the
guardians _to take precautions_ to insure that ... the pauper is
sufficiently fed, clothed, and lodged."[581] This was notoriously not
the case in many unions, the children especially being in an evil
plight. "In many unions," said Mr. Baldwyn Fleming, in 1891, "the
relieving officer and the inspector of nuisances could show guardians
cases ... where large families are living in cottages too small for
them, and the accommodation is in almost every respect unsatisfactory,
where the children have little but rags to cover them by day or night,
where school attendance is avoided to the utmost, where the feeding only
just escapes starvation, where the physical and moral education of the
children are equally impracticable, where infant life is one constant
struggle with misery and privation."[582] The demoralising association
of the outdoor pauper children with the pay-station was specially
denounced by another inspector. "What," he said, "is the sense, I would
ask--I _do_ ask in board rooms--of all this trouble and outlay to put
the children into cottage homes or scattered homes, to keep them, in
fact, altogether away from the workhouse, if while doing all this the
very same authority permit the precisely similar children of the outdoor
poor to haunt the pay-stations, to hang about workhouse gates, or to sit
mixed up in waiting-rooms with adult paupers.... The children, early in
life, often at times when they ought to be at school, have their eyes
opened to the facility with which by exaggerating your impecunious
condition, 2s. 6d. or 3s. a week can be got without the labour of
earning it.... The master of one of the board schools had written ... to
complain that three children systematically were kept from school on a
particular day of the week for the purpose of drawing relief due to
their parents."[583]
[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.
We cannot find, however, any order, minute, or circular explicitly
taking official cognisance of the condition of these children (except in
respect of the statutory requirement of school attendance); nor do the
boards of guardians seem to have taken any trouble to inquire into their
condition. In 1901 the Central Authority had reported to it, at its
special request (in connection with the adequacy of the amount granted,
especially for the aged), the amounts usually given in outdoor relief.
In the majority of unions it must then have appeared that the amount
allowed for the support of each child on outdoor relief was either the
1s. and one loaf per week, which had had the sanction of Mr. Corbett in
1869,[584] or frequently 1s. 6d. per week. The Bradford Board of
Guardians, however, if no other, reported that it allowed to deserving
widows with dependent children 4s. for the first child, 3s. for the
second, and 2s. for each additional child (besides 5s. for the mother
herself).[585] We do not find that any official view has been expressed
as to this diversity.
[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).
At the very end of the period we find Parliament suddenly insisting on
the responsibility of the boards of guardians for the condition, not
only of the children on outdoor relief, but of all children in so far as
sufficiency of food is concerned. By the Act of 1906 special provision
is made for children at school who are in need of food. This Act,
embodied in a General Order, was communicated to boards of guardians in
a circular which explains the exact degree of responsibility which, in
the opinion of the Central Authority, Parliament has thereby imposed on
them. A parent is bound to supply his children with necessary food, and
if he is unable to do so should apply to the guardians for help. When a
father, being able to supply food, neglects to do so, or being unable
neglects to apply to the guardians, so that the child is underfed, a
"special application" on behalf of the child may be made to the
guardians or relieving officer "by the managers, or by a teacher duly
empowered by the managers, of a public elementary school, or by an
officer duly empowered by the local education authority." If the food is
urgently needed it is to be supplied at once, as a loan to the father,
and he is to be informed as soon as possible that it has been so given.
When there is no such urgency, the father is to be informed that food
will be supplied before it is given, that he may have the opportunity of
providing it himself; and the guardians are to inquire whether the need
is due to habitual neglect; if it is so, the relief shall (and in any
case it may) be given on loan.
Whenever relief under this order is given on loan, the guardians are
obliged to take proceedings for its recovery, unless the Local
Government Board specially approves of their not doing so, which
approval would only be obtainable in very special circumstances, _e.g._
if it were obviously impossible to recover the amount. It is held to be
particularly important that these proceedings should always be taken, as
they are the only means of safeguarding against abuse, for the rule
that, as a condition of relief, the able-bodied father must enter the
workhouse or be set to work by the guardians is specially abrogated in
cases under this order, as being inapplicable to them. The order does
not apply to any child who is blind or deaf and dumb, nor in the case of
any relative except the father, nor if the child is not resident with
the father. Relief is not to be ordered on a "special application" for a
longer period than one month. "Where a special application is renewed
within a short time, say six months, after the expiration of the period
for which the relief has been given, and further relief has to be
allowed, or where within this period special application is made and
relief is given in respect of some other member of the same family, and
the cause of the application is the habitual neglect of the father to
provide food, the Board think that the guardians should consider whether
the case is one in which proceedings could be taken against the father,
either under the Vagrancy Act 1824, or the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children Act 1904."
Finally, the Board "trust that the boards of guardians, particularly
those of populous unions in which cases of underfed children more
frequently occur, will endeavour to co-operate with the local education
authorities in dealing with really necessitous cases, whilst exercising
due discrimination so as to avoid the pauperisation and consequent
disfranchisement of parents who ought not to be brought under the Poor
Law."[586]
[586] Circular of 27th April 1905, in Thirty-fifth Annual Report,
1905-6, pp. 317-20.
The number of outdoor pauper children is now slightly more than in 1892,
there being on 1st January 1906, 179,870 such, 96,804 being widows'
children, 72,721 children with both parents or with fathers only, and
10,345 having no parents.[587]
[587] Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. cxxxi.
Turning now to the much smaller number of children in Poor Law
institutions, of whom there were on January 1st 1871, 55,832[588]
(together with a very small number "boarded out"), we see a similar
continuity of policy in the Central Authority, but in these cases it is
continuity in the policy of a constant enlargement of responsibility,
and of a steady improvement in the provision.[589]
[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 over-crowding 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."
(ii.) _In Poor Law Schools_
The main preoccupation of the Central Authority since 1871, so far as
children are concerned, has been the increase, progressive improvement,
and novel development of the Poor Law school entirely removed from the
workhouse.[590] The recommendations and incitements to boards of
guardians to remove from the workhouse the healthy children of school
age are incessant down to 1900.[591] Such children are ordinarily
accommodated in Poor Law schools, either district schools, where these
exist, or much more frequently "separated" or "workhouse schools," which
may be of the old aggregated type, or "cottage homes" or "scattered
homes." The dramatic change from the views of 1850 is the abandonment of
the "district school." The aggregated type, held in such esteem
previously to 1871, fell gradually into disfavour, and is now known as
the "barrack school." Already in 1871 Mr. Corbett was criticising these
schools as being far too large (as well as too indiscriminate in the
kind of children admitted) to be really successful.[592] After repeated
outbreaks of malignant ophthalmia, and continued experience of the
mental drawbacks, especially of the large girls' schools, the Central
Authority abandoned its policy, and presently came to decline to
sanction proposals which would have the effect of "extending the large
schools in the Metropolis and ... most readily [to] entertain any
proposals for applying to other purposes any of these large buildings,
subject to other provision of a suitable character being made for the
children."[593] The barrack school system grew up out of the five
Metropolitan school districts; these also therefore shared in the
condemnation, and in 1899 two had been dissolved.[594]
[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.
A "separate school" belonging to a single union or separate parish would
naturally be much smaller than a district school, but nothing is said as
to the merits or demerits of an aggregated school of moderate size. The
method which seems to have won the approval of the Central Authority is
that of "cottage homes," or the "block system," under which children are
grouped in bodies of not more than twenty-five or thirty in separate
houses on a common ground of considerable acreage, and with suitable
common buildings, such as baths, chapels, etc., under the supervision,
not only of "house-mothers," but also of a superintendent of the whole.
Since 1894 the Board have constantly approved the erection of schools on
this plan; they always require that the cottage homes should be entirely
separated from the workhouse. The outstanding feature of this system is
the great expense.[595]
[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.
An alternative plan is that of "scattered homes," _i.e._ cottages taken
here and there throughout the union, not adjacent to each other,
wherein the children live under the care of matrons or foster parents,
and whence they attend the public elementary schools. In some cases the
results of this system have been good, but the Central Authority
received reports of certain cases of bad management, which made it
cautious in regard to other proposals in that direction. The adoption of
the system in Camberwell was sanctioned on the conditions that the
guardians could satisfy the Central Authority that they could get proper
houses for the scattered homes, and also that they could be quite sure
of having an adequate system of inspection.[596]
[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.
Notwithstanding the great expense of these highly elaborated
boarding-schools for the indoor pauper boys and girls--an expense
reaching between £100 and £200 capital, and between £30 and £50 annual
maintenance, for each child--we see the Central Authority constantly
pressing for their multiplication. The very idea of "less eligibility"
has been forgotten by the inspectors. To quote one of them in 1902: "The
number and nature of obstacles (to the removal of children from the
workhouse) conjured up in the minds of many of the country guardians
is," he says, "quite surprising. One idea, which proves a great
stumbling-block, is that the children will be put in a position above
their deserts, and above that of the children living in their own homes
with their parents."[597]
[597] Mr. Hervey's Report, in Thirty-first Annual Report, 1901-2,
p. 80.
On 1st January 1906, the total number of children in "district or
separate schools" was no more than 12,393, whilst in "cottage and other
homes" there were 14,590; and 11,368 were in other institutions (mostly
certified industrial schools, conducted by philanthropic committees not
for profit).[598]
[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).
(iii.) _The Workhouse Children_
Notwithstanding the desire of the Central Authority to remove the
children from the workhouses, there remained on 1st January 1906 no
fewer than 21,526 in these institutions.[599] The Central Authority has,
for instance, never objected to the retention in workhouses of children
of tender years, or of children of any age, in the interval before they
can be sent to school. In 1889, indeed, it was especially forbidden to
send children to separate schools under the age of three.[600] Though no
alteration has been made in the General Consolidated Order of 1847, by
which the internal economy of the workhouse is professedly governed, the
Central Authority laid it down in 1895 that "in every workhouse in which
there are several children too young to attend school, a separate
nursery--dry, spacious, light, and well ventilated--should be provided,
and should be suitably furnished."[601]
[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.
The children are always to be under the supervision of paid officers, a
recommendation made in the days of the Poor Law Board, but still up to
1895 frequently urged--showing that at any rate till then it had not
been effectively insisted on. Even in that year the Board had to write:
"In no case should the care of young children be entrusted to inferior
or weak-minded inmates"--a qualification which weakens the force of the
prohibition of the use of paupers at all. "Unless young children are
placed under responsible supervision they cannot be said to be 'properly
taken care of'";[602] and again, more generally, "all children in
workhouses should be under the charge of officers, either industrial
trainers or caretakers, and should not be left to the charge of adult
paupers."[603] The medical officer is responsible for the children's
health, and with a view to the prevention of disease he is expected to
inspect them, whether they are ill or not, "frequently and
individually." In this connection may be mentioned a "Memorandum
relative to Ophthalmia of New-born Children,"[604] in which the Board
requested medical officers to give each nurse or midwife acting under
their directions such written instructions as they might deem necessary
in order to give effect to the recommendations of the Royal Commission
on the subject. In 1882 the Central Authority refused to sanction any
women's committee;[605] but by 1897 the guardians were urged to appoint
women's committees for the supervision of the women and children in the
workhouse.
[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.
It is interesting to trace the growth of opinion with regard to the
provision for the children of means of enjoyment. For half a century
after 1834 the Central Authority allowed no toys whatever for all its
tens of thousands of indoor children of all ages. An auditor in 1883
disallowed sums spent on toys for sick children, and Mr. Hibbert was
questioned in Parliament. He said "there have been similar disallowances
previously, and the Local Government Board, while relieving the persons
surcharged of their liability, have held that expenditure of this
character should be defrayed by private liberality, rather than out of
rates compulsorily levied." The disallowances had therefore hitherto
been confirmed, the payments being thus decided to be actually illegal.
"The subject," continued Mr. Hibbert, "had been considered in connection
with the recent surcharge, and it is proposed to hold that the
expenditure was within the legal powers of the guardians, and the
auditor will be communicated with, with a view to a reversal of his
decision."[606] It is not clear which of these conflicting decisions of
the Central Authority was in accordance with law.
[606] _Ibid._ vol. iii. 1888, p. 55; _Hansard_, 13th March 1883,
vol. 277, p. 365.
In 1891 the Board wrote: "The supply of illustrated books and
periodicals of children is especially desirable. Admirable publications
of this class can now be obtained at a very small cost, and where it
appears to be necessary an expenditure by the guardians for this purpose
should, in the Board's opinion, be urged upon them. The question of the
provision of bats, balls, skipping-ropes, etc., for the children and
toys for the infants, is also one which the Board are desirous should
receive the attention of the inspectors on the occasion of their
inspections of the workhouses."[607]
[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.
"Special care should be taken that a sufficient part of each day is set
apart for recreation only, and that the children should be allowed to
take exercise frequently outside the workhouse premises, and that they
should be encouraged in healthy games of all sorts."[608] The guardians
were allowed to take girls from the Forest Gate Schools to see the
sights of London, provided the places visited were approved by the
school inspector,[609] and also to pay a donation to the funds of a Band
of Hope, when the Poor Law children were allowed to share in the work of
the society.[610]
[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.
In recent years, we see the inspectorate urging that even children of
tender years ought not to live in the workhouse. This is a new idea
which has not yet received more formal endorsement. As children under
three may not, by the Central Authority's own order of 10th February
1899, be sent to a separate Poor Law school, there is as yet no place
for them but the workhouse. "Nothing has been said," observed Mr. Jenner
Fust, in 1901, "about the nursery children, at present retained at the
workhouse till three years old, or even more, though the case of these
requires attention as much as that of the older ones. They are almost
always largely under the care of inmates, and the conditions are seldom
improved even when these inmates are their own mothers.... I cannot but
think that nursery homes with trained nurses as foster-mothers should
form part of the equipment of all cottage homes, or, if a separate
receiving home be established, the nursery children might conveniently
be placed there, the removal from the workhouse not being delayed beyond
the period when a child is able to walk."[611]
[611] Mr. Jenner Fust's Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report,
1900-1, p. 147.
With regard to the education of the older workhouse children the Central
Authority has changed its policy. It does not actually forbid the
guardians to arrange for a school within the workhouse, which was the
policy of 1850. But the plan now favoured is to send them out to the
public elementary schools, as is also done when they are placed in
scattered homes. At first the Central Authority only sanctioned this
course with reluctance, only when the number of such children was small,
and with special recommendations as to the appointment of officers to
supervise the children out of school hours and impart industrial
training.[612] In the case of one union, they "urged the guardians to
reconsider the question, with a view to the appointment either of a
caretaker of the children or a porter, who could give that attention to
the boys when in the workhouse which was of such importance to their
future welfare."[613] Later, perhaps, when the principle of paid
"caretakers" had become more fully accepted, the Central Authority gave
the system much more hearty support, noted its prevalence with
satisfaction, and considered it highly desirable that children in Poor
Law establishments should thus be given opportunities of mixing with
other children.
[612] _Local Government Chronicle_, 22nd June 1878, p. 489.
[613] _Hansard_, 6th September 1886, vol. 308, p. 1316.
When there is a choice of elementary schools, each child should be sent
to the one conducted according to its own religious creed, and it was
also recommended that the children should be sent out to Sunday schools
of their own denomination. This denomination is ordinarily that of the
child's parents, but if the religion is not known, he is to be brought
up in the Church of England:[614] if the father changes his creed, that
of the child changes also.[615]
[614] _Local Government Chronicle_, 2nd July 1904, p. 707.
[615] _Ibid._ 8th November 1902, p. 1126.
While in the workhouse the children are to receive instruction in
industrial and manual work, but the Board strongly resisted proposals
for sending them out to work in factories.[616]
[616] _Hansard_, 21st June 1888, vol. 327, pp. 809-10; _Selections
from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board_, vol ii.
1883, p. 139.
Subject to these conditions, the 21,526 children living in the workhouse
remain there to the knowledge and with the sanction of the Central
Authority--at least, this is what the guardians contend, and, so far as
we can discover, there is no order, circular, or minute to the
contrary.[617]
[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.
Meanwhile the guardians are pressed to bestow on them an amount of
salaried care and expensive attention that surprises the more
old-fashioned among them, who have not yet quite abandoned the principle
of "less eligibility." "One matter of some interest," says Mr. Baldwyn
Fleming in 1902, "is the curious reluctance displayed by country
guardians to have the children's teeth cared for." The argument used is,
"The ratepayers do not take their children to the dentist, and why
should we do so?" (in the case of the indoor Poor Law children.)[618]
[618] Mr. Baldwyn Fleming's Report in the Thirty-first Annual
Report, 1901-2, p. 91.
(iv.) _The Education of the Indoor Pauper Child_
Down to 1897 the Central Authority had contemplated and recognised in
its orders and circulars that the pauper children would spend only about
half the school time in ordinary school subjects, the other half being
devoted to what was euphemistically called "industrial training."[619]
This meant, in practice, the employment of the children in domestic
work, gardening, mending clothes or boots, and so on, the persons
selected as "industrial trainers" not being required to have any
pedagogic qualifications or power to teach, and being paid in fact only
at workmen's rates. In 1897, the rapid abandonment of the half-time
system outside the workhouse led to a great advance. By the Order of
that year,[620] which governs all Poor Law schools, whether they are in
workhouses or district or separate schools, the half-time system is
greatly discouraged. Industrial training takes a subordinate place. The
Order fixes the number of hours during which the children are to be
under school instruction, and provides for a ten minutes' rest in every
attendance of two hours or more, limits the number of hours which may be
occupied in manual or industrial work, and provides for one whole
holiday or two half-holidays in each week, in addition to allowing six
weeks' holidays in the year if the guardians choose to grant it. One
object of the Order was to secure that children should not be unduly
pressed with manual or industrial work in addition to the school
instruction. The religious teaching required by any Orders in force is
to be given in addition to the school hours. In 1877 it had been ordered
that any time which might be devoted to drill or industrial training,
other than a reasonable time for needlework, in the case of girls,
should not be included in the time prescribed for attendance.[621] The
present Order, in more general terms, allows school instruction to
include "any of the subjects for which grants may be made under the Code
of Regulations of the Education Department, for the time being in force,
except cookery, laundry work, dairy work, or cottage gardening." Of the
time allowed for needlework, not more than one-third is to be spent in
mending; the rest is to be occupied in plain needlework, knitting, and
cutting out and making garments. When children attend school for
half-time, it is preferred that they shall receive the school
instruction in the morning, and the industrial training in the
afternoon.[622] There is now no superior limit to the education that may
be provided for a pauper child within the proper ages. As early as 1878
payment for the attendance of the workhouse girls at a school of cookery
was held to be legal. Guardians are allowed to pay the fees for the
instruction of the children at a technical institute when they see fit
to do so,[623] quite irrespective of whether or not the children of the
poorest independent labourer can get such advantages.
[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.
It may be noted that a Special Order of 30th April 1887 (not mentioned
in the Annual Reports, or otherwise communicated to boards of guardians)
enables the Forest Gate District School to allow a class of the elder
girls to go out and buy their food, spending not more than 3s. 6d. a
week each, and prepare it for their own consumption, so as to get some
practical experience of ordinary life. By another Order of 5th August
1889, the children in this one school are allowed to buy their own
outfits (up to £3 10s.). We do not find that the Central Authority has
yet made these privileges general, nor extended them to any other indoor
pauper children.[624]
[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.
On 1st April 1904, the responsibility for the inspection
of the education of the Poor Law Schools, and of pauper
children in certified schools, was transferred to the Board
of Education thus reverting to the policy prior to 1863.[625]
[625] Thirty-third Annual Report, 1903-4, p. 256.
(v.) _Boarding-out_
The boarding-out system was in 1871 still on its trial, having been
authorised for scarcely a year, and the Central Authority was very
guarded in expressing any opinion on its merits; it gradually won
favour, but while mildly encouraging it the Central Authority would do
nothing to force its growth. In 1900 it was referred to as one method of
removing children from the workhouse,[626] but it was never thought
likely to become a practical means for dealing with the mass of pauper
children, as a substitute either for ordinary outdoor relief or for Poor
Law schools.[627]
[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.
Boarding-out beyond the union had been first regulated by the Order of
25th November 1870. In 1877 it was found that boarding-out within the
union was being largely practised, it being, as the Central Authority
had itself held, legally only ordinary out-relief, requiring no
sanction. This also was then regulated by a General Order.[628] Both
these Orders were re-issued with slight modifications in 1889, the
former to every union in the country, the latter to all but the most
populous town unions. Again, in 1905, the Order for boarding-out beyond
the union was slightly altered and re-issued.[629]
[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.
The operation of these Orders was limited to certain classes of
children; in 1877 to those deserted by their parents, or whose parents
were dead, undergoing penal servitude, suffering from mental disease, or
out of England; by the Orders of 1889, children whose parents were
permanently bedridden or disabled were added to the list; and in 1905
children adopted by the guardians were formally included, as such
children could previously only be boarded out if they were also orphan
or deserted according to the definition. The Central Authority refused
its sanction to a proposal to board out the illegitimate children of
able-bodied women in the workhouse.[630] It was twice decided that when
out-relief is given to a child living with a person not legally liable
for its support, such child must be considered as boarded out.[631]
There is no age limit for boarding-out within the union, but a child may
not be first boarded out beyond the union under two, nor when over ten,
unless in the same home with a brother or sister under that age.
[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).
In view of this gradual adoption of the boarding-out system as a
permanent form of the treatment of children under the Poor Law, it is
instructive to compare the requirements which the Central Authority
makes to ensure the proper maintenance of the boarded-out children with
the policy just described in respect of the children on ordinary outdoor
relief.
The various Orders all lay practically the same duties on the
foster-parent. He is to sign an undertaking that: "He will bring up the
child as one of his own children, and provide the child with proper
food, lodging and washing, and endeavour to train the child in habits of
truthfulness, obedience, personal cleanliness and industry, as well as
in suitable domestic and outdoor work, so far as may be consistent with
the law; that he will take care that the child shall attend duly at
church or chapel according to the religious creed to which the child
belongs, and shall attend school according to the provisions of the law
for the time being; that he will provide for the proper repair and
renewal of the child's clothing, and that in case of the child's illness
he will forthwith report such illness to the guardians and to the
boarding-out committee; and that he will at all times permit the child
to be visited and the house to be inspected by any member of the
boarding-out committee, and by any person specially appointed for that
purpose by the guardians or by the Local Government Board. The
undertaking shall also contain an engagement on the part of the
foster-parent that he will, upon the demand of a person duly authorised
in writing by the boarding-out committee, or by the guardians, give up
possession of the child."[632] The 1905 undertaking is slightly
different in terms, the chief variation being an omission of the
reference to "domestic and outdoor work," because cases had occurred in
which these words had been pleaded as an excuse for overtaxing the
working capacity of the children.[633]
[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.
Foster-parents may never be persons in receipt of relief, or whose only
means of support is the allowance made for the children. Children should
not, except in special cases, be boarded with relations, nor in any home
where the father is employed in night work; foster-parents employed in
outdoor work are preferred to those occupied in sedentary labour.[634]
They should also (both, in the case of married couples) be of the same
religious creed as the child,[635] live within two miles from the school
where the child is to attend, and within five miles--preferably
three--from the house of some member of the committee. Attention is to
be paid to decent accommodation in the homes, and to the separation of
the sexes in the sleeping-rooms. Children over seven are not allowed to
sleep in the same room with married couples. No child is to be boarded
out in a house where sleeping accommodation is afforded to an adult
lodger.[636]
[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.
The number of children to be placed in any one home was at first limited
to two--or four, if all were brothers and sisters,--but it was soon
found that further restrictions were necessary for the prevention of
over-crowding. Accordingly, it is ruled that not more than one child may
be placed in a home where a child is boarded by any other agency and
none where there is more than one such child; no child is to be boarded
in a home where, with him, there would be more than five children
resident. The clothing provided for a boarded-out child is to be of a
good, ordinary character, with no suggestion of a workhouse uniform. The
highly expensive but most advantageous service of dentistry may be paid
for by the guardians. The Central Authority strongly disapproved of a
proposal made to it, under which a child was to be sent out to work, and
earn wages, while the full allowance was still being paid by the
guardians. "If a boarded-out child is eligible under the Education and
Factory Acts for employment, the boarding-out committee should report
the case to the guardians, who should obtain the consent of the Local
Government Board to any proposal to relieve the child whilst in receipt
of regular wages. A foster-parent should not be permitted to allow a
child to go to work for wages unless the guardians, with the assent of
the Board, have previously assented thereto."[637]
[637] _Local Government Chronicle_, 12th March 1904, p. 290.
Prior to 1877 the Central Authority held that children boarded out
within the union, being merely cases of outdoor relief, did not require
these precautions. From 1877 onward similar precautions were required in
their cases. Such children became thus differentiated from other
children on outdoor relief, on whose behalf no such requirements are
insisted on. For the boarded-out children a payment was approved of 4s.
a week each (afterwards raised to 5s.), a sum to be contrasted with the
1s. or 1s. 6d. for each child which is the usual sum allowed for each
child on ordinary outdoor relief.[638]
[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).
In equally marked contrast with its attitude with regard to the other
children on outdoor relief, the Central Authority has been vigilant to
secure for the boarded-out children systematic inspection. Mr. Chaplin
said in Parliament: "I approve of, and warmly sympathise with
boarding-out, subject to one condition, which is of surpassing
importance, namely, that the inspection of the children boarded out
shall be adequate and effective. I cannot conceive a position of greater
misery and hardship than that of some poor unfortunate little child
boarded out to some one who takes care of it, not for love of the child,
but simply for the purpose of making a gain and a profit out of it....
So far as it is possible to promote that adequate inspection ... and
wherever it is possible to board out on these conditions, the Board
gives its assistance."[639]
[639] _Hansard_, 8th August 1898, vol. 54, p. 576.
The children boarded within the union are to visited by the medical
officer quarterly, whether or not they are reported ill, and by the
relieving officer--who pays the foster-parents at their
residence,--ordinarily weekly, and may also be visited by the guardians
or any other person appointed for the purpose by the guardians or the
Local Government Board. If there is a boarding-out committee (which is
permissive under the 1889 Boarding-out in Unions Order) a member thereof
must visit every six weeks; the inspection by the medical officer may
then be dispensed with, and the system becomes more nearly like that for
boarding outside the union. Under the latter, the responsibility is
thrown on the committee, and unless they fail the guardians are not
allowed themselves to inspect. The Local Government Board also sends an
inspector from time to time, with the object of discovering how the
committees do their work, for it is on the efficiency of the committees
that the whole system of boarding-out depends.[640]
[640] Circular Letter, 29th May 1889, in Nineteenth Annual Report,
1889-90, pp. 36-41.
When the children are thus thoroughly supervised by the committees, and
the committees are kept up to their work by the general inspectors, the
Board do not favour any further inspection by the guardians. "One of
the main objects of the boarding-out system is that pauper children
should become merged in the general population; but if a child boarded
out is to be examined regularly by a medical man, supervised by a
committee of the guardians, and inspected by a Government inspector, it
would appear to imply that no confidence whatever is to be placed in the
boarding-out committees under whom the children are placed, although for
any success attending the boarding-out system it is on these committees
that we must rely."[641] Besides, "where children are boarded out by
guardians at a long distance from their own union or parish, it may
often be inconvenient, except in the case of many children being placed
in the same neighbourhood, for the guardians to arrange for the
visitation of the children by their own officer as frequently as the
Board deem indispensable, when inspection by members of the committee
has ceased. It follows, therefore, that if the voluntary boarding-out
committees should allow their vigilance or their interest to flag, the
guardians will, in all probability, seldom have any alternative but to
take back the children."[642]
[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.
The boarded-out children, thus elaborately inspected and expensively
provided for, had, by 1st January 1906, slowly risen to 8,781;[643] but
they were even then only one-seventh of those in institutions, and only
one-twentieth of those on ordinary outdoor relief.
[643] Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. cxxxii.
(vi.) _Apprenticeship_
We may note a tendency to enlarge the responsibilities, powers and
duties of the guardians for successfully launching the children in the
world--an enlargement which plainly loses sight altogether of the
principle of "less eligibility." We see the Central Authority making
elaborate suggestions for the care of children apprenticed or in
service, and issuing an Order enabling the guardians to provide outfits
when children were sent out, without previously asking for sanction,
which had before been necessary under some of the Orders. When the
Central Authority had been asked for such sanction it had taken the
opportunity of objecting to a child being sent to service without money
wages, or to an inn or public-house (unless in exceptional
circumstances), or to any place where the conditions of service seemed
unsatisfactory, and of requiring to be satisfied that the child was
qualified for employment as required by the Education Acts. By allowing
guardians to obtain outfits without obtaining express sanction the
Central Authority relinquished this opportunity of control over the
conditions of service. It therefore referred to these points in the
Circular on the Order, and expressed its confidence that the guardians
would see that all was satisfactory in these respects.[644] It did not
approve of the Poor Law children being engaged as servants to officers
of Poor Law establishments--situations which, like those in
public-houses, etc., were left to be filled by the less carefully
protected children of independent parents or those on outdoor
relief--considering it desirable that the children should be severed
from all connection with pauper surroundings as soon as possible after
attaining an age at which they can secure employment.[645]
[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.
When children are first apprenticed they receive very low wages or more
often none at all, and there is frequently a difficulty in providing for
their maintenance. We have already referred to the doubt of the Central
Authority as to how to treat the experiment of the Norwich Guardians on
this point. Though these Guardians kept their homes this doubt
apparently continued. The Keighley Guardians wished to use one of their
cottage homes as a residence for working boys from the workhouse, but
the Central Authority refused its assent, stating that it had no power
to render such a course legal. Nevertheless it allowed a lad who
received no wages, but was entirely engaged in learning his trade, to
reside in the workhouse during the term of his apprenticeship,[646] and
to children earning low wages insufficient to support them outdoor
relief may be given. "In such cases the Board have required to be
furnished with an assurance that the guardians had satisfied themselves
that the amount allowed by them would, with the weekly wages paid by the
master, be adequate to provide for the maintenance and clothing of the
apprentice, either alone or in association with other boys. They also
required a statement of the weekly wages ordinarily paid in the locality
to apprentices in the particular trade, and to be informed (_a_) of the
amount of weekly relief the guardians proposed to grant; (_b_) the
period during which such relief should continue; and (_c_) whether, as
the apprentice's wages increased, the relief would be correspondingly
reduced."[647]
[646] _Ibid._ 31st October 1903, p. 1070.
[647] _Local Government Chronicle_, 31st January 1903, p. 102.
In 1904 the Central Authority was prepared to acquiesce, subject to the
details of the scheme proving satisfactory, in a proposal to establish a
home for boys over whom the guardians had acquired parental rights, the
boys receiving board and lodging therein for so long in each case, as
the wages were insufficient to enable them to obtain suitable
accommodation elsewhere.[648]
[648] _Ibid._ 15th October 1904, p. 1072; _Decisions of the Local
Government Board_, 1903-4, by W. A. Casson, 1905, p. 118.
The Central Authority had, in 1873, been doubtful how far a relieving
officer should interfere if he found, when visiting a servant or
apprentice, that the master or mistress, _instead of paying the
stipulated wages_, gave clothing, which might be old, useless, or valued
at an exorbitant rate. It merely told the guardians that he should make
a special inquiry, and report if the practice appeared to be actually
injurious to the personal condition of the child, so as to amount to
"cruel or illegal treatment in any respect."[649]
[649] Circular Letter of 31st May 1873, in Third Annual Report,
1873-4, pp. 3-4.
Apprenticeship to the sea service[650] had, previously to 1894, been
left outside the scope of the orders regulating other apprenticeships,
being subject to special provisions under the Merchant Shipping Acts,
and also regulated by the Board of Trade. That Board made some
alterations in the form of indenture in 1895, and the Local Government
Board issued a circular to guardians calling attention to the changes.
The master was required to pay to the superintendent any balance of
spending money, share of salvage and other perquisites due to an
apprentice after his daily or weekly allowance had been paid, and the
superintendent was to apply such sums for the boy's benefit in the
expenses of holidays, payment of fines, or other ways. This provision
was considered by the Local Government Board to be of great importance,
as it would "enable the magistrates in many cases to punish a boy for
breaches of discipline, without committing him to prison." The new form
of indenture also required the master to allow each apprentice a
reasonable holiday in every year.
[650] _See ante_, p. 17.
The same circular referred to recommendations made by Mr. Davy and Mr.
Berrington, in a Report on the Fishing Apprenticeship System, as to the
desirability of continued supervision by the guardians after the boys
were apprenticed, and of arranging for reports to be made to the
guardians in cases of absconding or other grave offence on the part of
the boys, and also as to the expediency of giving future apprentices
some preliminary instruction in cooking.[651]
[651] Circular of 2nd March 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report,
1895-6, p. 118.
So far as we can make out from the published documents, the use of the
power of apprenticeship is--in the view of the guardians and the Central
Authority alike--practically limited to the children maintained in Poor
Law institutions (indoor paupers), numbering 50,669 on 1st January 1906,
together with those outdoor pauper children who are either "boarded out"
(in the technical sense), numbering 8,781, or maintained in certified
schools, etc., numbering 9,364, making an aggregate total of 68,814
children to whom the Central Authority's policy of apprenticeship is
assumed to be applicable.[652] We do not find any suggestion that any
similar policy is applicable to the other 166,258 children on outdoor
relief,[653] about the starting in life of whom we can find no
documents.
[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).
(vii.) _Adoption_
From 1871 to 1889 the powers and responsibilities of Poor Law
authorities with regard to children whose parents claimed the control of
them were, as against the parents, extremely limited. The Central
Authority clung to the principle of parental authority. In 1887, Mr.
Ritchie said:
"No doubt there are some instances in which the interests of children
are prejudiced by their parents claiming them from the guardians, but I
should not be prepared to propose legislation which would enable a board
of guardians to withhold a child from its parent when claimed by
him."[654]
[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.
Two years later Parliament over-rode this contention of official
irresponsibility, and passed the first of a series of Acts under which
guardians might themselves assume parental responsibilities and
unsuitable parents might be deprived of the custody of their children;
and the guardians of the poor might become _in loco parentis_, even up
to eighteen years of age. By the Act of 1889, "where a child is
maintained by the guardians of any union and was deserted by its
parent," or if the "parent is imprisoned under a sentence of penal
servitude or imprisonment in respect of an offence committed against a
child," "the guardians may at any time resolve that such child shall be
under the control of the guardians until it reaches the age, if a boy,
of sixteen, and, if a girl, of eighteen years"; such a resolution of the
guardians is not irrevocable; they may rescind it, or, without
rescinding it, "permit such child to be either permanently or
temporarily under the control of such parent, or of any other relative
or of any friend." If the parent is aggrieved by the resolution, he may
appeal to a Court of Summary Jurisdiction, and the Court, if satisfied
"that the child has not been maintained by the guardians, or was not
deserted by such parent, or that it is for the benefit of the child that
it should be either permanently or temporarily under the control of such
parent, or that the resolution of the guardians should be determined,
may make an Order accordingly, and any such Order shall be complied with
by the guardians, and if the Order determines the resolution, the
resolution shall be thereby determined." The "powers and rights" of a
parent which the guardians may assume are subject to one limitation, in
that no resolution can authorise them to have the child educated in any
religious creed other than that in which the child would otherwise have
been educated, _i.e._ that of its parents.[655]
[655] Poor Law Act 1889, 52 & 58 Vic. c. 56. sec. 1.
The Central Authority duly commended the Act among other legislation of
the session to the notice of the boards of guardians in an official
circular.[656]
[656] Circular of 28th September 1899, in Twenty-ninth Annual
Report 1889-1900, p. 48.
Such was the original form of this law; but the experiences of the
Central Authority and the guardians as to its working led them to get
passed successive measures developing its details in various respects.
The Court's power of determining the resolution of the guardians was
limited by the Act of 1890, which provides that: "where a parent has
(_a_) abandoned or deserted his child; or (_b_) allowed his child to be
brought up by another person at that person's expense, or by the
guardians of a Poor Law union, for such a length of time and under such
circumstances as to satisfy the Court that the parent was unmindful of
his parental duties, the Court shall not make an order for the delivery
of the child to the parent unless the parent has satisfied the Court
that, having regard to the welfare of the child, he is a fit person to
have the custody of the child." Under this law, therefore, not only the
Poor Law guardians, but any other person who has brought up the child at
his own expense may acquire the right of custody in the place of the
parent. This Act is not to "affect the power of the Court to consult the
wishes of the child ... or diminish the right which any child now
possesses to the exercise of its own free choice." The Court was also
given the power to make such order as it may think fit, "to secure that
the child be brought up in the religion in which the parent has a legal
right to require that the child should be brought up."[657]
[657] Custody of Children Act, 54 Vic. c. 3, secs. 3, 4.
The class of children to which the law applies was, at the instance of
the Central Authority, considerably enlarged in 1899, and it is worth
considering how extensive it now is. "Where a child is maintained by the
guardians of a Poor Law union, and: (i.) the child has been deserted by
its parent; or (ii.) the guardians are of opinion that by reason of
mental deficiency, or of vicious habits, or mode of life, a parent of
the child is unfit to have the control of it; or (iii.) a parent is
unable to perform his or her parental duties by reason of being under
sentence of penal servitude or of being detained under the Inebriates
Act 1898; or (iv.) a parent of the child has been sentenced to
imprisonment in respect of any offence against any of his or her
children; or (v.) a parent of the child is permanently bedridden or
disabled, and is the inmate of a workhouse, and consents to the
resolution hereinafter mentioned; or (vi.) both the parents (or in the
case of an illegitimate child, the mother of the child) are (or is)
dead; the guardians may, at any time, resolve that until the child
reaches the age of eighteen years, all the rights and powers of such
parent as aforesaid, or, if both parents are dead, of the parents, in
respect of the child shall, subject as in this Act mentioned, vest in
the guardians." Penalties were also enacted against any person who shall
knowingly assist or induce any child adopted by the guardians to leave
their control. If any child maintained by the guardians is, with their
consent, adopted by some other person, their responsibility for the
child does not at once cease, for they are required, during three years
after the date of the adoption, to cause the child to be visited at
least twice a year, by some person appointed by them for the purpose;
and they have the power, if they see fit, to revoke their consent to the
adoption, and reassume custody of the child.[658]
[658] Poor Law Act, 1899, 62 & 63 Vic. c. 37, secs. 1-3.
Some boards of guardians--often on the suggestion of the
inspectorate--promptly made use of their new powers. On 1st June 1902,
the number of children already adopted up to that date was no fewer than
7724, of whom 1503 were then over fifteen.[659] It is to be noted that,
though the powers are applicable to all pauper children, the Central
Authority has not suggested their use except in respect of the children
in Poor Law institutions (including, however, the "ins and outs"),[660]
together with those technically "boarded out," or in certified schools;
and we do not find that they have ever been made use of for any of the
children maintained by the guardians on outdoor relief, however
disastrous is their upbringing.
[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.
_E._--THE SICK
We broke off the description of the policy of the Central Authority with
regard to the sick with the suggestive quotation from the Annual Report
of the Poor Law Board in 1870, over Mr. Goschen's signature. "The
economical and social advantages," said the last President of the Poor
Law Board, "of free medicine to the poorer classes generally as
distinguished from actual paupers, and perfect accessibility to medical
advice at all times under thorough organisation, may be considered as so
important in themselves as to render it necessary to weigh with the
greatest care all the reasons which may be adduced in their
favour."[661]
[661] Twenty-second Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1869-70,
p. lii.
(i.) _Domiciliary Treatment_
So far as published documents go, we cannot find that any inquiry was
made by the Local Government Board (at any rate on its Poor Law side) as
to the advantage and feasibility of this suggestion of providing free
medical assistance, under thorough organisation, to the poorer classes
generally. There was no breach of continuity in the policy, begun in
1865, of transforming the provision for the sick paupers in the
workhouse, into elaborately equipped, adequately staffed, and separately
administered general hospitals, which were called Poor Law infirmaries.
But in the general crusade against outdoor relief, initiated by the able
and zealous inspectorate in 1871, there was no exception made for
outdoor medical relief.[662] There was accordingly (just as we have
shown to be the case in regard to widows and the aged) no limitation,
corresponding to the express exceptions of the General Orders in favour
of the sick, in the phrases condemnatory of outdoor relief generally,
which are to be found in the Annual Reports and Circulars of these
years. The inspectors, it is clear, made no distinction, in their
persistent pressure against "outdoor relief," between medical and other
relief, between hygienic advice and money doles. Mr. Longley, indeed,
went so far as to condemn, expressly because it provided medical relief
otherwise than in the workhouse, the whole system of Poor Law
dispensaries which the Central Authority had itself just initiated
and practically forced on the Metropolitan Boards of Guardians.[663]
This report of Mr. Longley's was honoured by notice in the annual
volume, and commended by the Local Government Board for "careful
consideration."[664] There is, therefore, some warrant for the
inference that the Local Government Board, under Mr. Stansfeld and Mr.
Sclater-Booth, had not only put aside the suggestion of providing free
medical attendance for the poorer classes generally, but also that
it had now become the policy of the Central Authority--so far as we
can discover, for the first time since 1834--to restrict, as far as
possible, even such domiciliary medical attendance as was being given
under the Poor Law to the sick poor.
[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.
It is, however, fair to say that this policy of restricting outdoor
medical relief was not expressed in any alteration of the General
Orders, nor, explicitly, in any published minute or circular of the
Central Authority itself. In the 1871 Circular, discouraging outdoor
relief generally, it is, for instance, merely suggested that all paupers
receiving relief on account of temporary sickness--among whom there were
at that date apparently some 119,000 sick persons[665]--should be
visited at least fortnightly by the relieving officer.[666] The Central
Authority clung to the general disqualification of paupers, even those
in receipt of medical relief only, though the Parliamentary Secretary
had to admit that: "No doubt the Legislature had made an exception in
the cases of vaccination and of education, and it might be that the
exception should be extended to infectious diseases."[667] But when it
was pressed to impose a limit of one month to each grant of outdoor
relief, the request was, on the cautious advice of the permanent
advisers, definitely refused, lest hardship should be caused in cases of
sickness; though it was said that the guardians themselves might put
such a limit, "where such ... may properly be imposed."[668]
[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.
The Central Authority was willing to consider any proposal to amend the
law, so as to allow of the compulsory removal to the workhouse of sick
persons who had no proper lodging accommodation.[669] But even to a
person who had refused to enter the workhouse, the guardians were not to
deny outdoor medical relief if sick,[670] and in no case were the sick
to be removed from their homes unless certified by the medical officer
as physically able to endure the journey.[671] There was thus, even
between 1871 and 1885, no explicit reversal, on grounds of Poor Law
principle, of the old policy which, it will be remembered, had not been
condemned by the 1834 Report of outdoor relief to the sick. If a
"destitute young husband or wife were sick," Mr. Sclater-Booth, speaking
as President of the Local Government Board, told the House of Commons in
1876, "they would not be taken into the workhouse, but would receive
outdoor relief."[672] Two years later the Central Authority actually
declared itself in favour of supplying to the sick poor who were under
domiciliary treatment, not only medical attendance and maintenance, but
also skilled professional nursing. There was, it said in reply to
influential medical pressure, "nothing to prevent the guardians
supplying such assistance," and the Central Authority was even "desirous
of encouraging this arrangement as much as possible," though the
insufficient supply of qualified nurses was likely to "render
impracticable for some time to come any general application of the
system of paid nurses in the treatment of the poor at their own
homes."[673]
[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.
(ii.) _Institutional Treatment_
Meanwhile, however, the substitution of indoor for outdoor relief in the
case of the sick[674] was being supported on grounds, not of Poor Law
principle, but of medical efficiency. The transformation of the
workhouses into what the Poor Law inspectors themselves began to call
"State hospitals" made more striking than ever the contrast between the
light, clean, and airy newly-built infirmary ward, with trained nurses,
a resident doctor, complete equipment, and a scientifically determined
dietary, on the one hand; and the insanitary and overcrowded hovel or
slum tenement, on the other, in which the sick pauper had no other food
than was provided by the pittance of outdoor relief, no further nursing
than his family could supply, and no better medical attendance than the
grudgingly accorded order on the district medical officer could command.
Quite irrespective of "Poor Law principles," the case for institutional
rather than domiciliary treatment of nearly every sick case became, to
the medical experts who now advised the Central Authority, simply
overwhelming. "The treatment which in sickness the poor receive in
workhouses constitutes," said the Central Authority in 1878, "one of the
most valuable forms of medical relief. _With a considerable portion of
the population, indeed, it is the only mode in which, when overtaken by
sickness, their medical needs can be adequately met._"[675] This policy
led not only to an incessant pressure on boards of guardians to provide
the "State hospitals" which had, from 1865 onwards, been expected from
the guardians of all populous unions,[676] but also to a positive
encouragement of sick persons, whether or not actually destitute in the
technical sense of the term, to take advantage of them. We see this
first with regard to infectious diseases. The hospitals of the
Metropolitan Asylums Board, maintained out of the Poor Rate exclusively
for paupers, and technically only workhouses like any others, soon came
to be used, free of charge, by small-pox and fever patients who were not
paupers.[677] It became the official policy, well understood by the
Central Authority, to get removed to these Poor Law institutions every
patient, whether destitute or not, who could not be adequately isolated
at home.[678] Already in 1875 the Central Authority expressly authorised
the medical superintendent to admit without an order any small-pox or
fever patient presenting himself, if refusal to admit might involve
danger,[679] and in 1887 it expressly permitted even non-urgent cases
to be admitted on the certificate of any medical practitioner.[680]
Nevertheless, in 1877 the Central Authority was still taking the line
that "the hospitals ... of ... the Metropolitan Asylums Board are
essentially intended to meet the requirements of the destitute class,
and that the admission ... of persons not in need of poor relief is
altogether exceptional."[681] Two years later, however, by a statute
promoted by the Central Authority itself, the Metropolitan Asylums Board
were expressly empowered to receive non-pauper patients, though only
under contracts with the local public health authorities, by which they
were to be paid for.[682] We cannot discover which vestries and district
boards, if any, entered into such contracts. Not until 1883, when these
fever and small-pox hospitals had been a dozen years in use by
non-paupers, was the position temporarily legalised by the Diseases
Prevention Act of 1883[683]--a measure also carried by the Central
Authority itself--which, whilst leaving these hospitals as Poor Law
institutions, administered by a Poor Law authority, and kept up out of
the poor rate, declared that admission, treatment, and maintenance
therein should--whether the patients were or were not otherwise
paupers--not be deemed parochial relief, or carry with it any
disqualification whatever.[684] Since that day we have the remarkable
spectacle of the Poor Law Authorities, Central and Local, annually
congratulating themselves on the fact that, year after year, they were
managing to attract into these expensive Poor Law institutions, for
gratuitous maintenance and treatment, a larger and larger percentage of
the total number of cases notified.[685]
[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).
A similar enlargement of the sphere of the Poor Law institution has, of
late years, been going on in other than infectious cases. "The poorer
classes generally," to use Mr. Goschen's words, "as distinguished from
actual paupers," came more and more to appreciate the practical
distinction between the workhouse and the Poor Law infirmary; and,
especially in the Metropolis and the large towns, the latter became more
and more freely used as a general hospital.[686] This tendency was
facilitated in London by the operation of the Metropolitan Common Poor
Fund established by the Central Authority itself, which, from 1870
onward, bore the bulk of the cost of maintenance of the Poor Law
infirmaries, as of the hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board.[687]
The Central Authority saw with approval the increasing attractiveness of
these institutions, not only in London but throughout the country. In an
official memorandum communicated to all boards of guardians in 1892, it
observed that: "The sick poor can usually be better tended and nursed by
skilled nurses in well-equipped sick wards than in their own homes; and
the regularity, neatness, and order of the wards _tend to diminish the
repugnance to entering the workhouse_, which is often evinced by the
sick poor of the better class when reduced to want by failing
health."[688] It did not refuse to permit them to be made use of by
paying patients, where--as is usually the case in rural districts--no
"non-pauper institution" was available. "If," writes the Central
Authority in 1902, there is "a sick person who is in receipt of an
allowance from a benefit club or similar society," and who "is unable to
obtain in a non-pauper institution such treatment as the illness from
which he suffers requires," the Central Authority will "offer no
objection to his admission to the workhouse infirmary."[689]
[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.
To those boards of guardians who clung to the policy of "deterring" the
sick poor from obtaining medical relief--which, as we have shown, Mr.
Gathorne Hardy had, on behalf of the Central Authority, in 1867
expressly repudiated[690]--all this official encouragement to enter Poor
Law institutions seemed revolutionary. The fact that the sick poor came
more and more to draw a distinction between the workhouse on the one
hand, and the Poor Law infirmary or isolation hospital on the other,
appeared seriously objectionable. When it was noticed that the Central
Authority officially styled the separate institution for the sick "an
asylum for the sick poor,"[691] or "the hospital," or simply the
"infirmary,"[692] the Manchester guardians revolted, and definitely
instructed their medical and relieving officers "to avoid using the word
'hospital' or 'infirmary,' and simply to use the word 'workhouse.'"[693]
Other boards, we believe, insisted--although "the infirmary" was an
entirely distinct institution--that it should be entered only through
the workhouse itself. Against this lingering objection on grounds of
Poor Law policy to get the sick cured in the most efficient way, we see
the inspectorate in the later years more and more explicitly protesting.
"I wish it were possible," said Mr. Preston-Thomas in 1899, "to get rid
of the name of workhouse (which, by the way, has become singularly
inappropriate), for I believe that it is to the associations of the name
rather than to the institution itself that prejudice attaches. The
disinclination of the independent poor to enter the hospitals of the
Metropolitan Asylums Board, which was considerable at first, has now
practically vanished, and I do not see why there should not be the same
change of feeling with regard to Poor Law infirmaries in the
country."[694]
[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.
In the same spirit we see the Central Authority in these three decades
persistently pressing Boards of Guardians to build new workhouse
infirmaries.[695] The report becomes current in the Poor Law world that
Local Government Board officers, in interviews, went so far as to say
that a certain board of guardians was morally guilty of manslaughter in
refusing to embark on extensive new building operations. The official
architect's criticisms on the Poor Law infirmary plans submitted to him
are all on the lines of making these into up-to-date general hospitals.
The proposals sanctioned by the Central Authority go up to a capital
outlay of £350 per bed. The Central Authority even sanctions special
hospitals established by the guardians at the expense of the poor rate,
for particular classes of patients, such as the "West Derby, Liverpool
and Toxteth Park Hospital, ... for the reception of persons suffering
from tuberculosis," many of whom are so little destitute that they pay
the cost of their treatment and maintenance;[696] or, as at Croydon,
Kingston, and Richmond, "for the reception of epileptic and
feeble-minded persons," who cannot be certified as of unsound mind.[697]
Persons in receipt of medical relief only are no longer disqualified as
paupers from being registered as Parliamentary and Municipal electors,
and it has even been held that admission to a Poor Law hospital, sick
asylum, or infirmary because of ill-health, and for the purpose of being
medically treated, amounts to medical relief only, even though it
incidentally involves also maintenance at the expense of the poor
rate.[698] By 1903 we have the Central Authority laying it down in
general terms, "that it is the guardians' duty to provide for their sick
poor, and no sanction ... is necessary to sending such cases to
institutions for curative treatment ... and ... paying reasonable
expenses involved in so doing."[699] The Central Authority seems,
indeed, to exhaust official ingenuity in securing the best possible
treatment and also the comfort of the patients in the sick wards.[700]
Any reasonable fee may be paid for calling in consultants whenever the
medical officer thinks it "necessary or desirable," without any special
sanction being requisite.[701] We need not recite the constant struggle
to get more nurses and better. As early as 1879 a president could
(perhaps with some ministerial optimism) declare that: "in the new
infirmaries I have succeeded in abolishing pauper help almost
entirely."[702]
[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.
The guardians are reminded that the epileptics are especially to be
incessantly accompanied by trained nurses, lest they should be
suffocated in their fits.[703] The sick men in the workhouse may be
allowed tobacco and snuff, the sick women tea, in addition to that
prescribed in the dietary table.[704] The doctor is expressly reminded
that it is his duty to "order such food as he may consider
requisite."[705] When a complaint was made that beer was supplied in a
Norfolk workhouse, the Central Authority refused to interfere with a
"beer allowance" to sick paupers, given and renewed from week to week by
direction of the medical officer.[706] The guardians are even reminded
of the importance of providing illustrated books and newspapers for the
sick.[707]
[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).
Meanwhile the standard of equipment, of resident medical attendance, and
especially of trained nursing[708] required by the Central Authority in
the Poor Law institutions is constantly rising, in correspondence with
the progress of hospital science. We see all this reflected in the
advice and criticisms pressed by the inspectorate on the boards of
guardians. "The workhouses of a past and bygone age," says Mr. Hervey in
1903, "are no longer refuges for able-bodied, but are becoming every day
more of the nature of State hospitals for the aged, sick, and infirm.
_As such, they should be furnished with the very best nursing
procurable._"[709]
[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).
(iii.) _The Municipal Medical Service_
It may be that it is on the Public Health side, which was in 1871 added
to the Poor Law work of the Central Authority, that we may trace the
influence of the suggestion that was under discussion at the Poor Law
Board under Mr. Goschen's presidency, just prior to its merging in the
Local Government Board. The idea of "free medicine to the poorer classes
generally, as distinguished from actual paupers, and perfect
accessibility to medical advice at all times under thorough
organisation"--which the new permanent secretary, Sir John Lambert, may
have brought back from his official visit to Ireland--finds a certain
expression in the Public Health Act of 1872, re-enacted with additions
in 1875, which created "one local authority for all public health
purposes in every place, so that no area should be without such an
authority, or have more than one." In the rural districts the board of
guardians became this authority. As such they came under a series of
responsibilities based upon ideas diametrically opposed to those of the
Poor Law. Instead of confining their action to actual applicants for
help, they had to search out cases of nuisance or dangerous disease.
Instead of restricting their administration to those who were willing
and anxious for it, they were charged with compelling to be done all
that was required. Instead of being limited in purview to a small class
specially stigmatised as paupers, the guardians had to consider the
whole population as needing their attention without distinction of class
or subjection to stigma. They were expressly authorised, not merely to
repress nuisances, but to provide hospitals "for the use of the
inhabitants," without any limitation to infectious or any other
diseases.[710] They were even empowered, with the consent of the Central
Authority, to "provide or contract with any person to provide a
temporary supply of medicine and medical assistance for the poorer
inhabitants of their district."[711] The Central Authority eagerly
pressed on the local authorities the policy of the new Act.[712] We see
the Poor Law inspectors--who were "in possession of the views of the
(Local Government) Board on the subject"--explaining to boards of
guardians in unions having rural districts their new duties; the future
work of their new Public Health staff of medical officer of health and
sanitary inspectors; and their responsibility for maintaining and
improving the health, not of paupers only, but of the whole
community.[713] We are not here concerned with the progress of public
health administration, in which the boards of guardians cannot be said
to have been apt or willing disciples. It is not to the boards of
guardians, in 1907 still the sanitary authorities in non-urban
districts, that we owe the elaborate medical organisation of an
up-to-date Public Health Department, with its peripatetic health
visitors and diagnosing doctors, its milk depots and campaign against
infantile mortality, its gratuitous supply of anti-toxins and
diarrhoea medicine, its gratuitous hospitals and sanatoria no longer
confined to small-pox and fever. We need only notice here the gradual
appreciation, by the Central Authority and the Poor Law inspectors, of
the intimate connection between shortcomings in the public health
service and an excess of pauperism. Even from the narrowest standpoint
of Poor Law principles, the causal connection between disease and
pauperism could no longer be ignored. "The effect of bad house
accommodation on the health of the poor," writes Mr. Bagenal in 1902,
"has often been demonstrated by experts in public health. Not only are
serious illnesses more frequent, but damp and draughty dwellings lower
vitality to such an extent that the bodily vigour and activity, as well
as the spirits, are affected, and the system becomes unable to withstand
actual disease. Families are often pauperised on account of sickness
produced by living in unhealthy conditions. Labourers also often become
permanently disabled, and fall upon the rates, owing to premature old
age brought on by insanitary houses. To prevent sickness and to prolong
the working term of a labourer's life must be a gain to the ratepayers,
as well as to all classes of the community."[714] To take only one
specific instance, in the Redruth Union the reason for a high average of
pauperism in 1906 was found in the large amount of destitution produced
by "miner's phthisis," and the great number of widows and orphans which
it caused, "the total number of persons pauperised owing to this special
cause being ... 333," besides other cases of infirmity of the miners
themselves. "A substantial proportion of the excessive pauperism in the
Redruth Union is thus accounted for."[715]
[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.
_F._--PERSONS OF UNSOUND MIND
It does not seem necessary to trace the slight changes in the law
relating to pauper lunatics, or in the orders and circulars of the
Central Authority. There appears to have been no alteration in the
relation of the Central Authority to the Lunacy Commissioners,
practically no steps being taken to initiate policy except upon the
suggestion of the latter, whose standard of accommodation and treatment
continues steadily to rise for pauper as for non-pauper lunatics.
The only point of interest is the continuance, virtually unchanged, of
the three methods of treatment, viz. maintenance in the workhouse,
treatment in a lunatic asylum, or grant of outdoor relief.
The number of persons of unsound mind in the workhouse continued
practically undiminished, without any steps being taken to prevent their
retention among the aged, the sick, and the children, who came more and
more to make up the workhouse population.[716] There were, in fact,
three classes of cases in which a lunatic might be detained in a
workhouse. Firstly, there is the old provision, under which "the
visitors of any asylum may, with the consent of the Local Government
Board and the Commissioners, and subject to such regulations as they
respectively prescribe, make arrangements with the guardians of any
union for the reception into the workhouse of any chronic lunatics, not
being dangerous, who are in the asylum, and have been selected and
certified by the manager of the asylum as proper to be removed to the
workhouse."[717] Secondly, "where a pauper lunatic is discharged from an
institution for lunatics, and the medical officer of the institution is
of opinion that the lunatic has not recovered, and is a proper person to
be kept in a workhouse as a lunatic, the medical officer shall certify
such opinion, and the lunatic may thereupon be received and detained
against his will in a workhouse without further order, if the medical
officer of the workhouse certifies in writing that the accommodation in
the workhouse is sufficient."[718] Thirdly, if it is necessary for the
welfare of a lunatic, or for the public safety, that he should
immediately be placed under care and control, pending regular
proceedings for his removal, he may be taken to a workhouse (if there is
proper accommodation therein) by a constable, relieving officer, or
overseer, and may be detained there for three days, during which time
the proceedings are to be taken; and in any case in which a summary
reception order has been or might be made, he may be further detained on
a justice's order till he can be removed, provided that the period does
not exceed fourteen days.[719] Moreover, any other lunatic might be
"allowed to remain in a workhouse as a lunatic" if "the medical officer
of the workhouse certifies in writing: (_a_) that such a person is a
lunatic, with the grounds for the opinion; and (_b_) that he is a proper
person to be allowed to remain in a workhouse as a lunatic; and (_c_)
that the accommodation in the workhouse is sufficient for his proper
care and treatment, separate from the inmates of the workhouse not
lunatics, unless the medical officer certifies that the lunatic's
condition is such that it is not necessary for the convenience of the
lunatic or of the other inmates that he should be kept separate." Such a
certificate signed by the medical officer is sufficient authority for
detaining the lunatic in a workhouse for fourteen days, but no longer,
unless within that time a justice signs an order for his detention.
Failing such a certificate, or, after fourteen days, such an order, or
if at any time the lunatic ceases to be "a proper person to be allowed
to remain in a workhouse," he becomes "a proper person to be sent to an
asylum," and proceedings are to be taken accordingly.[720]
[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.
Meanwhile the Central Authority continued to permit the grant of outdoor
relief in cases of lunacy; and about 5000 were always so maintained.
Regulations for the boarding-out of pauper lunatics first appear in the
Act of 1889. "Where application is made to the committee of visitors of
an asylum by any relative or friend of a pauper lunatic confined therein
that he may be delivered over to the custody of such relative or friend,
the committee may, upon being satisfied that the application has been
approved by the guardians of the union to which the lunatic is
chargeable, and, in case the proposed residence is outside the limits of
the said union, then also by a justice having jurisdiction in the place
where the relative or friend resides, and that the lunatic will be
properly taken care of, order the lunatic to be delivered over
accordingly." The authority liable for such a lunatic's maintenance is
to pay an allowance for his support to the person who undertakes his
care; the medical officer of the district is to visit him and report to
the visiting committee every quarter, and two visitors may at any time
order the lunatic to be removed to the asylum.[721] Any two
Commissioners have also the right to visit any pauper lunatic or alleged
lunatic not in an institution for lunatics or in a workhouse, and call
in a medical practitioner; if the latter signs a certificate, and they
think fit, the Lord Chancellor may direct that the lunatic be received
into an institution.[722]
[721] Lunacy Act 1889, sec. 40.
[722] _Ibid._ sec. 42.
For the paupers of unsound mind in the Metropolis there was even a
fourth alternative, namely, the "district asylums" of the Metropolitan
Asylum Board. On the opening of the Darenth Asylum, the Central
Authority quoted, without disapproval, the following remarks of the
Lunacy Commissioners: "The withdrawal, for proper care, of helpless
children of this kind [idiots] from the households of many of the
industrious and deserving poor is a frequent means of _warding off
pauperism in the parents_."[723] We do not find, however, any more
explicit statement on this point. What the Central Authority continued
to press on the Boards of Guardians was, not so much the importance of
relieving the struggling poor from the burden of their insane or idiotic
dependants, nor yet the freeing of the workhouses from the presence of
persons of unsound mind; but rather of appropriate discrimination. "It
is of great importance not merely to exclude from the [district] asylums
those who, by reason of violence or irritability, are proper subjects
for the county asylum, but also those who, from old age or disease, are
unfit for the journey to the asylum, or who, from the slight degree to
which their mind is affected, might more properly remain in the
workhouse."[724] "The removal of helpless, bedridden persons, whose
mental weakness is, in many cases, the result of old age, to asylums
situated a considerable distance from the Metropolis, is calculated, on
the one hand, to be injurious to the persons thus removed, and, on the
other, to occupy the district asylums with a different class of persons
from that for which they were constructed."[725] Imbecile children are
to be kept in the workhouse till they are five years old, and may then
be sent to the asylum at Darenth.[726] Outside the Metropolis there is
no specialised Poor Law provision for idiots, who, if not received into
the county asylum, must either be placed in non-Poor-Law institutions at
considerable expense, or detained in the workhouse. In 1885 the Central
Authority even suggested that harmless and aged lunatics had, on grounds
of economy, better be retained in the workhouse, rather than removed to
an asylum.[727] We hear incidentally of a Special Order in 1900 under
which certain chronic lunatics were actually transferred from the
Suffolk County Asylum to the workhouse of the Mildenhall Union.[728] As
late as 1905 we find the Central Authority expressing regret that so
many cases of senile imbecility were removed from the workhouses to
asylums.[729]
[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.
Under this policy the number of paupers of unsound mind receiving
outdoor relief diminished very slightly, being 4736 on 1st January 1906;
those in the asylums of the Metropolitan Asylums Board and in county and
borough lunatic asylums rose to no fewer than 92,409; whilst those in
workhouses nevertheless did not fall off from the total of thirty-five
years previously, being, in fact, on 1st January 1906, 11,484, or an
average of nineteen in each workhouse.[730]
[730] _Ibid._ p. clxx.
Towards the latter part of the time we begin to find the inspectors,
somewhat in disaccord with the suggestions of the Central Authority
itself, protesting against the presence in the workhouses even of the
chronic lunatic, the harmless idiot, or the senile imbecile, on the new
ground that their presence caused annoyance to the sane
inmates--annoyance which had, for seventy years, been apparently either
unnoticed or not considered. "I am sorry to say," reported Mr.
Preston-Thomas in 1901, "that in all but six of the workhouses in my
district imbeciles mix freely with the other workhouse inmates. Many of
them are mischievous, noisy, or physically offensive.
In some instances, even if their bodily ailment is very slight, they
sleep in the sick wards in order that they may come under the
supervision of the nurses, and they frequently disturb other patients at
night. By day they are a source of much irritation and annoyance, and in
a small workhouse I have known the lives of a number of old men made
seriously uncomfortable by a mischievous idiot for whom no place could
be found in an asylum.... I am much afraid," prophetically continued Mr.
Preston-Thomas, "that ... the question will be postponed indefinitely,
and six or eight years hence the idiots will still be worrying the sane
inmates of workhouses.... It is in the country workhouses, sometimes
with only a dozen imbeciles or less, divided among the sexes, that the
chief difficulty arises.... A good many are often found useful in the
laundry and other domestic work of the institution, but I do not think
this consideration ought to outweigh what may almost be characterised as
the cruelty of requiring sane persons to associate, by day and by night,
with gibbering idiots."[731] When the Select Committee on the Bill to
establish Cottage Homes for the Aged Poor in 1900 strongly recommended
the removal of all imbeciles from workhouses, the Central Authority,
observing that the advisability of this step had been repeatedly brought
to its notice by guardians and others, declared that the question must
be deferred.[732]
[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.
_G._--DEFECTIVES
For the first twenty years after 1871 there is no alteration of policy
to record with regard to defectives. In fact, the Central Authority does
not seem to have paid much attention to this class, whether mentally or
physically defective, during this period. It enjoined no policy for the
treatment of them till 1891. A Circular on "Blind and Deaf and Dumb
inmates of Workhouses" then required the inspectors to "continue to give
special attention" to children among this class, and urge their removal
from the workhouse when desirable. It was held that the guardians might,
if they chose, pay the whole of the maintenance of deaf and dumb
children sent to appropriate institutions. No limit has been fixed, but
in no case has more than £20 a year been sanctioned.[733] Adults also
were to be given instruction in reading and writing, if able to profit
thereby, and if such instruction could not be provided in the union,
they might be sent, under contract, to the workhouse of some other union
where teaching might be available, either in the workhouse or in the
town. It is also suggested that arrangements might with advantage be
made for reading aloud to the aged blind in the workhouse. But it was
held to be illegal to pay for the technical instruction of blind
workhouse inmates at a non-Poor-Law institution.[734] From 1903 onward,
however, we have the almost dramatic extension of the scope of the
Education Authority with regard to defective children of all kinds--a
change which has already gone far to transfer responsibility for the
treatment of the blind, the deaf and dumb, the crippled, the epileptic,
and the mentally defective children up to sixteen from the Poor Law to
the Education Authorities. The first step was the Act of 1893, which
required the local Education Authority to provide education for blind
and deaf children; but children sent to any institution from the
workhouse, or boarded out by the guardians, were expressly
excluded.[735] In 1899 similar provision was made for defective and
epileptic children; and the guardians were authorised to arrange with
the Education Authority to take over Poor Law cases on payment.[736]
Under these Acts provision is more and more being made, especially in
London, for the education, treatment, and even (where requisite)
maintenance in educational institutions of these children up to sixteen.
[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).
In 1903 a Special Order provided for the transfer, from the Metropolitan
workhouses to the special homes of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, of
children who, without being certified as of unsound mind, were mentally
defective; and for their retention in such homes until twenty-one years
of age.[737] We do not find any corresponding provision with regard to
the mentally defective children outside the Metropolis; or for the
mentally defectives beyond sixteen years of age. In the rural
workhouses, at any rate, which make up three-fourths of the whole, it
would seem that in 1907, as it was officially reported in 1879, these
mentally defectives, together with "the imbeciles, are more or less
mixed up with the ordinary inmates of the class to which they
belong."[738]
[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.
In recent years we see the Central Authority willingly sanctioning
special provision for individual cases. Thus, special assistance may be
given for starting in trade persons handicapped by their infirmities. In
one case, the Board sanctioned the purchase of tools for a blind man who
had been taught a trade.[739] In another case, "an adult having become
incapacitated by reason of accident from again following his usual
occupation, the guardians were desirous of paying a premium in
consideration of his being taught a trade which the nature of his
infirmity would not prevent his carrying on. On the proposal being
submitted to the Local Government Board, the Board observed that as the
person was too old to be bound as an apprentice, there was no authority
for the payment of the premium, but they suggested whether the
difficulty might not be overcome by out-relief being granted during the
period of learning."[740]
[739] _Local Government Chronicle_, 29th November 1902, p. 1203.
[740] _Ibid._ 6th December 1902, p. 1225.
A third instance is given as follows: "A boy, aged sixteen years, has
been a pupil at an institution for the blind, the fees for his board and
education having hitherto been paid by the said board [of guardians]
under the Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act 1893. The
boy is desirous of competing for a scholarship of the value of £40 a
year from the Institution for the Blind in London; total fees, £60 a
year. The guardians wish to contribute £13 a year, the father, who earns
on an average £2:2s. a week, being willing to pay the balance of £7, in
addition to travelling expenses and outfit. The Board hold that the
guardians can, assuming the boy is in need of relief, carry out their
proposal under 30 and 31 Vic. c. 106, sec. 21."[741] An interesting
feature of this case is the vagueness of the term "in need of relief,"
instead of "destitution."
[741] _Decisions of the Local Government Board_, 1902-3, by W. A.
Casson, 1904, p. 14.
_H._--THE AGED AND INFIRM
(i.) _Outdoor Relief_
The crusade of the inspectorate of 1871-85, in favour of the "workhouse
system" of Poor Law relief, made no exception in favour of aged persons,
whether deserving or undeserving, any more than it did in favour of
widows with young children or the sick. On the contrary, Mr. Longley
assumed, in every paragraph of his Report,[742] that the "workhouse
principle" was universally applicable to "the disabled"--the term he
used for the aged and infirm--as well as to the able-bodied. A rigid
adherence to the policy of "offering the House" would, he argued, lead
the poor to provide, or induce their relatives to provide, for old age
as well as for sickness and widowhood.[743] Further, Mr. Longley
strongly deprecated any deviation in particular cases from what he
euphemistically called "the offer of indoor relief." "That which an
applicant does not know certainly that he will not get," he forcibly
argued, "he readily persuades himself, if he wishes for it, that he will
get; and the poor, to whom any inducement is held out to regard
application for relief as a sort of gambling speculation, in which,
though many fail, some will succeed, will, like other gamblers, reckon
upon their own success."[744] For every "hard case" he relied on the
springing up in every union of intelligently directed private charity.
"It is, in fact, the very existence of charity"--assumed thus to be
always at hand whenever required--"which strengthens the hands of the
Poor Law administrator in adherence to rule."[745] Yet, with a certain
want of logic, he desired this charitable provision to remain
"precarious" and "intermittent;" something which it was possible to
argue would always be there when a "hard case" occurred, and which,
nevertheless, could not be counted upon by the poor themselves. In other
words, he seemed to imply that charitable outdoor relief was superior to
Poor Law outdoor relief for the very reason that though some applicants
for it would succeed, others in like circumstances would fail to get
it--thus inducing, one would have thought, exactly the spirit of
"gambling speculation" on the part of the poor that he clearly perceived
to arise from the adoption by boards of guardians of an intermittent and
uncertain relief policy.
[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._
How far this policy of offering the House to all aged persons, deserving
or undeserving, was assumed by the other inspectors to be the official
policy, and how far it was pressed by them, on boards of guardians
throughout the country, we have been unable to ascertain. Apart from the
approval of Mr. Longley's views implied by the publication of his
Reports and the circulation of them among boards of guardians, the
Central Authority maintained, between 1871 and 1896, an absolute
silence[746] on the question of outdoor relief to the aged.
[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).
All the more surprising to boards of guardians must have been the sudden
and unexpected reversal of this policy by the Central Authority between
1896 and 1900. In July 1896, the Central Authority, under the presidency
of Mr. Chaplin, issued a Circular to boards of guardians outside the
Metropolis, drawing attention to the importance of the relieving
officers and medical officers discharging their duties with the greatest
particularity. In a concluding paragraph the Central Authority
significantly reminds the guardians of the recommendations of the Royal
Commission on the Aged Poor, of which an extract is appended. "We are
convinced," run the recommendations thus exceptionally brought to the
guardians' notice, "that there is a strong feeling that in the
administration of relief there should be greater discrimination between
the respectable aged who become destitute and those whose destitution is
distinctly the consequence of their own misconduct; and we recommend
that boards of guardians, in dealing with applications for relief,
should inquire with special care into the antecedents of destitute
persons whose physical faculties have failed by reason of age and
infirmity; and that _outdoor relief in such cases should be given_ to
those who are shown to have been of good character, thrifty according to
their opportunities, and generally independent in early life, and who
are not living under conditions of health or surrounding circumstances
which make it evident that the relief given should be indoor
relief."[747] But this is not all. The poor, far from being left
uncertain as to the grant of outdoor relief, were to be specially told
that they would receive it if only they led deserving lives. "It
accordingly appears to us eminently desirable," continue the
recommendations, as communicated by the Central Authority to the boards
of guardians, "that boards of guardians should adopt rules in accordance
with the general principles which we have indicated, by which they may
be broadly guided in dealing with individual applications for relief,
and _that such rules should be generally made known for the information
of the poor of the union, in order that those really in need may not be
discouraged from applying_."[748]
[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.
How far this reversion to the policy contemplated by the 1834 Report,
and continued, as we have shown, by the Poor Law Commissioners, and the
Poor Law Board down to 1871, obtained the adhesion of the inspectors who
had grown up in the traditions of Mr. Longley's Reports of 1871-5, we
have been unable to ascertain.[749] Nor is it clear that the partial
circulation[750] by the Central Authority of the recommendations of the
Royal Commission affected the admonitions against outdoor relief
generally, which the inspectors had for nearly thirty years been
addressing to the boards of guardians.[751] Four years later the Central
Authority took an even more decisive step.
[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.
In the famous pronouncement on Poor Law Administration generally which
Mr. Chaplin issued to all boards of guardians in 1900, systematic and
adequate outdoor relief to all aged persons who were at once destitute
and deserving was laid down as the definite policy of the Central
Authority. "It has been felt," runs this Circular, "that persons who
have habitually led decent and deserving lives should, if they require
relief in their old age, receive different treatment from those whose
previous habits and character have been unsatisfactory, and who have
failed to exercise thrift in the bringing up of their families or
otherwise. The Board consider that aged deserving persons _should not be
urged to enter the workhouse at all_ unless there is some cause which
renders such a course necessary, such as infirmity of mind or body, the
absence of house accommodation, or of a suitable person to care for
them, or some similar cause, but that they should be relieved by having
adequate outdoor relief granted to them. The Board are happy to think
that it is commonly the practice of boards of guardians to grant outdoor
relief in such cases, but they are afraid that too frequently such
relief is not adequate in amount. They are desirous of pressing upon the
guardians that such relief should, when granted, be always
adequate."[752] Nor did the Central Authority content itself with merely
issuing the Circular. Letters were sent in a few months' time to all the
boards of guardians asking what action had been taken with regard to the
suggested grant of outdoor relief to aged deserving persons, and, in
particular, whether the practice was to grant an adequate amount to each
case. The effect was (to use the words of an inspector) to produce "a
good deal of discussion ... upon the question of the amount of outdoor
relief granted to aged deserving persons."[753] "I rather fear," said
another inspector, "that in some unions it has rather been regarded as
a sort of mandate to increase the system of out-relief generally. This
the Circular did not intend."[754] On the other hand, yet another
inspector remarks that only "a few boards have looked at the (Local
Government) Board's suggestions from a sympathetic point of view, and
have increased their regular allowances to the aged out-paupers, but in
a large majority of the unions the guardians state that alteration is
not called for.... The principle is ... warding off destitution, not
providing maintenance."[755] Whatever was the intention of the Central
Authority, it is evident that the replies (which were not published and
which we have not seen) that it received to its repeated inquiries must
have revealed an enormous diversity of practice, utterly at variance
with the principle of national uniformity. In one union there would be
hardly any cases for which the guardians would grant outdoor relief at
all. In the next union practically every aged applicant would get it.
The conception of adequacy revealed in the replies must have been
equally various. In the West Riding the amount allowed per aged person
ranged from 1s. 6d. a week to as much as 7s. 6d. a week, whereas in the
East Riding the variations were only between 2s. 6d. and 5s. for each
person.[756] We happen to know that the Bradford Guardians reported
that, with greater uniformity, they gave 5s. a week for each deserving
aged person.[757] We have not been able to ascertain what action, if
any, was taken by the Central Authority on these replies. No objection
appears to have been taken, and no criticism to have been made, either
in respect of the virtual refusal of outdoor relief to the deserving
aged in some unions, or in respect of its almost indiscriminate bestowal
in others, or again, in respect of the wide range of variation between
union and union, in the amount allowed for each person. It is thus not
clear what is now the policy of the Central Authority on these points.
Its latest utterance is the Circular of 1900. Since then, so far as we
can discover, it has been silent on the subject.
[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.
(ii.) _Indoor Relief_
Meanwhile there had accumulated in the workhouses of the Metropolis
(where the effect of the Metropolitan Common Poor fund had been to offer
a premium on indoor relief to two-thirds of the unions), and in those of
the unions up and down the country in which Mr. Longley's policy had
been more or less carried out, a large number of aged people, who became
permanent residents.[758] This fact, already noticeable and officially
recorded in 1867,[759] did not lead to any change in the policy of
workhouse administration laid down by the Central Authority. The General
Consolidated Order of 1847, framed essentially to deal with workhouses
in which the able-bodied were the most important feature, was not
amended to meet the new conditions. The structural improvements which,
as we have already described, began to be adopted after the _Lancet_
inquiry of 1865, continued to be pressed for, and eventually insisted
on, so far as regards new workhouses. In this respect the old people in
particular unions shared in the general benefit. But we do not find that
the Central Authority, after 1871, had any policy of altering the
general _régime_ of the old people's wards, corresponding to that which,
as we have described, took place with regard to the sick wards. On the
contrary, we must note, as part of Mr. Longley's policy, his emphatic
warning in 1873, that the workhouses had already become so "attractive
to paupers," as to furnish "no test of destitution."[760] He made no
exception in favour of the old people's wards. It was, in fact, the
"_deterrent discipline_" of the workhouse that he regarded as "the
keystone of an efficient system of indoor relief," not merely for the
able-bodied, but also, through its effect on the minds of those who were
still young, and on the relations of those who were old, also for the
aged.[761] We may, therefore, understand why it is that we find, between
1871 and 1892, practically nothing in the way of expression of the
policy of the Central Authority with regard to the indoor treatment of
the aged. It stood by the General Consolidated Order of 1847.[762] Even
the attempt made in 1867-75 to revert to the policy of the 1834 Report,
so far as to have specialised institutions for the aged, the sick, and
the able-bodied, as well as for the children, was not persisted in, so
far as the aged were concerned. No other unions were found to adopt the
joint arrangements of Poplar and Stepney under which the aged and infirm
of both unions had a workhouse to themselves, and even this one was
brought to an end in 1892.[763]
[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).
In 1892 the note changes. From that date onward we get a distinct
reversion, as regards the aged indoor pauper, to the policy indicated in
the 1834 Report ("the old might enjoy their indulgences"), from which
the Poor Law Commissioners of 1834-47, and the successive Central
Authorities of 1847-1892, had turned away.
It is interesting to see that the new departure began over tobacco.[764]
The Liverpool Select Vestry determined to give the well-conducted old
men in the workhouse the indulgence of a weekly screw of tobacco,
whether or not they were employed on disagreeable duties. The auditor
objected. The vestry insisted. The Central Authority was obdurate. The
local body appealed to its Parliamentary representatives. It was
suggested as a compromise that the medical officer might be got to
include it in the dietary table, when the Central Authority would not
refuse to sanction it.[765] The vestry declined to compromise, and
insisted on allowing tobacco as a non-dietetic indulgence. Finally, the
inspector was instructed to say that the objection was withdrawn. No
publicity was given to the concession, but it gradually leaked out.
During the year 1892 we see the Central Authority sanctioning by letter,
without any official publication on the subject, such applications as
were made by individual boards of guardians to be permitted to allow an
ounce of tobacco weekly to the men over sixty in the workhouse.[766] At
last, in November 1892, a General Order was issued permitting it in all
unions, irrespective of sex, and without limit of amount.[767] Little
more than a year later, as some compensation to the old women (though
they had not been excluded, in terms, from the indulgence of tobacco or
snuff), they were allowed "dry tea," with sugar and milk, irrespective
of that provided for in the dietary table.[768] Presently, this indulgence
is extended to "dry coffee or cocoa," if preferred, and the men also are
allowed to receive it.[769] At last, the Central Authority, by two lengthy
Circulars in 1895 and 1896,[770] under the presidency of Sir Henry Fowler
and Mr. Chaplin respectively, systematically laid down principles of
workhouse administration, so far as the aged were concerned, in sharp
contrast with those advocated by Mr. Longley, or indeed, with those
which had been inculcated from 1835 to 1892. It was expressly stated
that as the character of the workhouse population had so completely
changed since 1834, the administration no longer needed to be so
deterrent. The old idea of fixed uniform times of going to bed and
rising and taking meals was given up, it being expressly left to the
master and matron to allow any of the aged (as well as the infirm and
the young children) to retire to rest, to rise and to have their meals
at whatever hours it was thought fit. The visiting committees of
workhouses were now specially enjoined to see that the aged were
properly attended to, and recommended to confer with them as to any
grievances without any officials being present.[771] It was suggested that
the great sleeping wards should be partitioned into separate cubicles.
The guardians were reminded that aged or infirm couples might be
provided with separate rooms. The well-behaved aged and infirm were to
be allowed, within reasonable limits,[772] to go out for walks, to visit
their friends, and to attend their own places of worship on Sunday. The
rules were to be relaxed to allow them to receive visits in the
workhouse from their friends. There was to be no distinctive dress.
Those of them who were of good conduct, and who had "previously led
moral and respectable lives" were to be separated from the rest, who
"are likely to cause them discomfort," and were to have the enjoyment of
a separate day-room. The whole note of the administration of the old
people's wards of the workhouses was, in fact, to be changed, so far as
the Central Authority could change it. In the words of the 1834 Report,
the old were to "enjoy their indulgences." Four years later another
Circular was issued in stronger terms, reiterating the suggestions of
privileges that the guardians ought to allow to the deserving inmates
over sixty-five--freedom to rise and go to bed and have their meals when
they liked, to have their own locked cupboards for their little
treasures, in all cases to have their tobacco and dry tea, to be free to
go out when they chose, and to be allowed to receive the visits of their
friends. They were to be given separate cubicles to sleep in, and
special day-rooms, "which might, if thought desirable, be available for
members of both sexes ... and in which their meals, other than dinner,
might be served at hours fixed by the guardians."[773] "It is hoped that,
where there is room, the guardians will not hesitate to take steps to
bring about improvements of the kind indicated in the arrangements for
the aged deserving poor."[774] Four or five months later the guardians
were stirred up by letter, and asked what they had done towards creating
the specially privileged class of deserving aged inmates that had been
so strongly pressed on them.[775]
[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 armchairs, 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.
During these years the dietaries for the aged and infirm were being
altered in the direction of liberality, variety, and freedom of choice.
Not only were hot meat or fish dinners provided ("with sauce"), but also
tea, coffee, cocoa, milk, sugar, butter, seed cake, onions, lettuce,
rhubarb or stewed fruit, sago, semolina, and rice pudding. In 1900
"provision is also made for ... the inmates on special infirm diet ...
to receive daily, before bedtime, or at such time as the guardians may
fix, a small allowance of milk pudding or similar food to break the
interval between the usual meals."[776] The Central Authority in 1904 made
no objection to a board of guardians subscribing to a lending library,
in order to obtain a constant supply of books for the deserving aged
workhouse inmates, and held that no special sanction was required.[777]
Finally, "it is open to guardians, if they think fit, to incur
reasonable expenses in providing a piano, for use at divine service [and
therefore, presumably also at other times, once it was installed] held
in a workhouse infirmary for old and infirm inmates;"[778] or to provide a
harmonium at the cost of the poor rate for the use of the inmates of the
workhouse.[779]
[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.
_I._--NON-RESIDENTS
There is no change to record in 1871 in the expressed policy of
preventing relief to paupers not resident within the union. Such relief
(given in order to avoid the expense and hardship of removal) continued
in many cases, but was repeatedly blamed by the inspectors.
"Non-resident relief is given in almost all the unions ... sixteen per
cent of the outdoor paupers of Glendale Union were non-resident."[780]
In 1878 the Central Authority suggested that such relief "might be
almost entirely discontinued."[780] There has been no explicit
abrogation of this policy down to the present day; even in face of
representations that it is "harsh and totally out of keeping with the
spirit of the times."[781] But from 1871 onwards we have the force of
the maxim weakened by the growth of whole classes of cases which the
guardians are allowed, and even encouraged, to send to places outside
the union, and maintain there. We need do no more than allude to the
boarded-out children. Another growing class is that of paupers who are
placed in certified schools or homes, either by way merely of
boarding-school (frequently recommended as a method of disposing of
Roman Catholic children); or for residence in any industrial or
reformatory school; or (irrespective of age) for maintenance in an
institution for special treatment (blind, deaf and dumb, crippled,
epileptic, idiot, etc.); or merely in an asylum for the aged and
infirm;[782] or for curative treatment in a hospital, convalescent home,
seaside home, or sanatorium.[783] Even able-bodied aged paupers may, as
the Poplar Guardians were informed in 1896, be boarded out in country
families, under the guise of non-resident relief. The Central Authority
has not objected to the transfer of workhouse inmates, provided these do
not actively protest, to country workhouses, there to be maintained as
non-resident paupers.[784] In one case, indeed, the Central Authority
allowed a union to abolish its workhouse altogether (retaining only a
casual ward), and approved "arrangements for the boarding-out of the
indoor poor in the workhouses of other unions for a period not exceeding
five years."[785] It is, therefore, not easy to determine how much is
left of the policy of preventing non-resident relief as such.
[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.
_J._--THE WORKHOUSE
We left the Central Authority in 1871, fully accepting the view that the
workhouse was not merely a "test" which few only might be expected to
pass or to endure for long, but a place of permanent or long-continued
residence for whole classes of paupers. The workhouse population on 1st
January 1871 numbered, in fact, 168,073. The Central Authority,
reverting to the proposals of the 1834 Report, had accordingly started
out to differentiate the workhouse into separate institutions for
particular classes (the children, the sick, and, in the Metropolis, also
the imbeciles and idiots); to impose an altogether new standard of
expensive structural efficiency on the boards of guardians; to press
incessantly for new buildings of approved pattern; to increase the
healthiness and comfort of the wards for the sick, the aged, and the
children; and to make the dietaries for these classes better adapted to
their likings and their needs. "Those who enjoy the advantages of these
institutions," had said the Central Authority's own medical officer in
1867, "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."[787] There was, after 1871, no change and no
arrest in this policy.[788] So far as the children, the sick, and the
aged and infirm were concerned, we have already described its
continuance and its progressive development. The improvement of the
institutional provision for the pauper, by removing some of the
objections to the indiscriminate general workhouse of 1835-65, fitted
in, we may say, with the new crusade of the inspectorate against outdoor
relief as such. That crusade was, however, for the first twenty years,
pushed without regard to whether or not the particular boards of
guardians had accepted the new idea of the specialised institutional
treatment for particular classes, or were still wedded to the
indiscriminate common workhouse, which aimed at being "deterrent." Mr.
Longley realised that the higher standard of comfort that was coming to
be allowed to the aged, the sick, and the children in a general
workhouse inevitably tended to prevent the necessary strictness and
severity being applied to the able-bodied. The inspectorate accordingly
strove in London to get specialised institutions for the able-bodied
also, the result being the "Poplar test workhouse" that we have already
described.
[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.
In 1874 the Central Authority expressed its regret at the slow progress
"towards the permanent classification in separate establishments of the
various classes of indoor paupers, other than the sick.... We attach the
utmost importance to this improvement of the classification of indoor
paupers, which we believe to be a necessary condition of the maintenance
of that discipline which lies at the root of an effective administration
of indoor relief. This improvement, however, cannot be effected, except
at an enormous and almost prohibitory cost, otherwise than by the
combination of several boards of guardians for this purpose. Their
existing workhouses would, in that event, become available for the
separate accommodation of various classes of indoor paupers chargeable
to the several combined areas. We are advised that in the existing state
of the law it is doubtful whether such a combination can be effected
otherwise than by the voluntary action of boards of guardians, which we
trust may still take place, and the desirableness of which we shall
continue to press upon the guardians."[789] No such combinations took
place, and the Central Authority, baffled by the expense and apparently
not prepared to adopt the heroic expedient of issuing orders merging
several unions in one, abandoned the attempt to get classification by
institutions, except with regard to the children and the sick. The
able-bodied had to be dealt with in a general workhouse; and we must
note, for twenty years after 1871, battling with the ameliorative
efforts of the departmental architect, the departmental medical officer,
and the departmental educational experts, on behalf of particular
classes of inmates, an attempt to make the workhouse more "deterrent" to
other classes of paupers.
[789] Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. xxv-xxvi.
The most marked increase of severity was directed against the class of
"ins and outs," called in America "revolvers," and it took the form of
enlarged powers of detention. By an Act of 1871 the guardians were
enabled to detain a pauper (other than a vagrant) who gave notice to
quit, in any case for twenty-four hours; if he had already discharged
himself once or oftener within a month before giving the notice, for
forty-eight hours; and if he had so discharged himself more than twice
within two months, for seventy-two hours.[790] Under the Act of
1899[791] a pauper may even be compulsorily detained for 168 hours (one
week) "if he has, in the opinion of the guardians, discharged himself
frequently without sufficient reason."
[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.
With regard to the able-bodied pauper, at any rate for the first fifteen
years after 1871, there was to be no leniency. The spirit of the
administration, whether of the workhouse or of the casual ward, was that
subsequently expressed by Mr. Walter Long. "I would treat the wastrel
and the vagabond, and the man who makes his wife and children paupers
because of his own degraded habits, in a severe way, and I would make
life a burden to him while he remains in the workhouse. I try to insist
upon it that in the administration of our workhouses we should make such
men realise that if we are compelled to keep them out of the rates we
will do it at some discomfort to them."[792] But it was not, in fact,
found practicable to avoid improving the accommodation, even for the
able-bodied. For them, as for all other inmates, the Central Authority
insisted on a sufficient supply of blankets, sheets, bedroom furniture
and conveniences. For them, too, the Central Authority insisted on such
comforts as knives and forks to eat their meals with--in one case having
a long tussle with a recalcitrant board of guardians on this point.[793]
The able-bodied shared, too, in the improvement of the cooking which
took place, particularly after the general investigation which led to
the new Dietaries Order of 1900. "This Order," said an inspector, "has
certainly had two good incidental results. It has induced many boards of
guardians to engage paid cooks, instead of employing chance inmates
knowing nothing about the work ... and the cooking appliances have in
many cases been overhauled and improved. In some places they have been
of the most rudimentary character."[794] The able-bodied may even get
special privileges. Inmates employed on specially heavy work are
permitted to receive an extra meal, as lunch. The discretion in this
matter at first belonged to the medical officer, but now the guardians
have power to order lunch as they think fit. In no case can any inmate
claim it as a right, and it is not to be given merely on account of
household work. Lunch, when allowed, is very plain, and may not include
alcohol. The medical officer is to advise as to the degree of employment
necessitating lunch, but the Central Authority suggests that "heavy
work," earning lunch for able-bodied men and women, should be taken to
mean "an average day's work with sustained exertion, _e.g._
corn-grinding, pumping, stone-breaking or crushing, shifting heavy
goods, digging, scrubbing, washing, ironing, etc.," while heavy work for
the aged and infirm (or light work for the able-bodied) is "employment
without sustained exertion, _e.g._ wood-chopping and wood-bundling,
hoeing or weeding, sorting light articles, sewing, etc."[795] Beer was
particularly objected to. In 1877 the Hackney Board of Guardians, who
wanted to give beer to two paupers who assisted the coachman, were told
that they were "legally empowered to require from inmates such labour as
might be required without having recourse to exceptional
indulgences"--in this case the giving of beer--"which would only, in
effect, vitiate the principle of the workhouse being a pauper
test."[796] On the other hand, it appears that beer is habitually
allowed to the able-bodied inmates of certain workhouses at certain
times, in return for work. A number of boards of guardians, having land
to cultivate, have been permitted by Special Orders to "make to paupers
employed in harvest work on land belonging to the guardians such
allowance of food and _fermented liquor_ as may be necessary," without
any direction of the medical officer.[797] And when in 1903 an auditor
surcharged a workhouse master for beer allowed to certain inmates for
work done, it was explained "that if such allowance was withheld, _some
of the paupers would leave the workhouse_"--surely a strange threat to
make to a Poor Law authority--and with others "difficulties would arise
to get them to work." On this explanation the Central Authority (whilst
upholding the auditor's decision in point of law) remitted the
surcharge.[798] Finally, it may be observed that the shelter of the
workhouse was not to be denied to the able-bodied, even for bad conduct.
The master must admit all persons who present the proper order, at
whatever hour of the day or night. He may not refuse admission even to a
man in a state of drunkenness.[799] Nor could a man be punished for being
admitted whilst suffering from _delirium tremens_.[800]
[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.
There is, thus, a marked change of tone after 1885 in workhouse
administration, as in other branches of policy. This change of tone
becomes specially marked in the Circular of January and the Memorandum
of June 1895, in which the newly elected boards of guardians, chosen for
the first time on a democratic franchise and without any high rating
qualification, were specially instructed as to their administrative
duties. These authoritative documents breathe a spirit of humane
consideration for the pauper inmates, without excepting the able-bodied,
which Mr. Longley would, we think, not have regarded as "deterrent." The
medical officer, rather than the master, was to advise the guardians on
practically all the points on which the general regimen of the
institution depended. The visiting committees were to take care that all
the arrangements were in order; they "should satisfy themselves whether
there is any structural defect in any part of the house; whether
painting or lime-washing is required; whether the wards are clean and
provided with such conveniences as lockers or shelves, so that they may
be kept in proper order; whether there is any defect in the construction
of the sanitary arrangements or in the general sewerage of the house;
whether the yards are defective as airing courts or _places of
recreation_. The attention of the visiting committee should be carefully
directed to the subject of ventilation, which should be effected by
special means, apart from the usual means of doors, windows, and
fire-places, and should be so arranged that each ward may be brought into
uninterrupted communication with the open air."[801] The classes of
inmates are to be subdivided "with reference to their moral character or
behaviour, or to their previous habits."[802] The employment to be
provided is to be "unobjectionable in its character."[803] The clothing of
inmates when absent on leave from the workhouse "should not be in any
way distinctive or conspicuous in character."[804] The visiting committees
are to see that there is always enough underclothing in stock to allow
all the inmates the requisite changes; that "sufficient means for
ensuring personal cleanliness are provided; that a convenient lavatory,
as well as baths,[805] with water laid on, and supplied with towels, soap,
and combs, are accessible to each class."[806] "A piece of cocoa fibre
matting or other material, or a mattress, should be placed between the
bedstead and the bed. A sufficient supply of blankets, sheets, bedroom
furniture and conveniences should be provided."[807]
[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.
It remains only to mention the great improvement in the workhouse
dietary carried out, after prolonged inquiries, in the General Order of
1900.[808] During the preceding twenty years there had been but little
attention paid to the subject. The Central Authority had, in 1871,
sanctioned the use of Australian tinned meat.[809] It had also
authorised in over a hundred unions fish dinners once a week.[810] In
1892 it had drawn attention to the great variation among unions in the
amount of alcoholic drink consumed.[811] In 1896 it had engaged in a
prolonged struggle with the Chorlton Board of Guardians, and others
elsewhere, who objected to the waste involved in supplying each inmate
with a fixed and weighed-out allowance of bread, and who found by
experiment that much less was used (and very much less thrown into the
pig-trough) if the paupers were allowed to help themselves at meals
without stint. The Central Authority long resisted this subversive
proposal, and insisted on the General Consolidated Order of 1847 being
obeyed. When the rebellious boards persisted, the Central Authority gave
way--not, however, amending its Orders, but permitting, by letter, the
breach of them.[812] An official Departmental Committee appointed to
consider the matter advised the president that the injunction of the
Order to weigh out a fixed ration to each pauper might with advantage be
abandoned in the case of bread.[813] But when, in 1901, the Association
of Poor Law Unions asked that the same principle should be applied to
vegetables, the Central Authority consented only to bear the suggestion
in mind.[814]
[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.
In 1900 the new Dietaries Order, as we have already mentioned, greatly
increased the nutritive value, variety, and attractiveness of the diets
allowed; whilst the accompanying Memorandum formulated a whole code of
suggestions for the improvement of the meals.[815]
[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.)
_K._--EMIGRATION
For many years after 1871 there is no change, either of policy or of
practice, to record as to emigration, beyond the continuance and slow
growth of a tiny trickle of child emigration to Canada. Down to recent
years, at any rate, the Colonies expressed a decided objection to any
Poor Law emigration of adults, being, as the Central Authority
explained, "unwilling to run the risk of thus receiving persons of bad
character, or those who, from weak health or other causes, might become
burdensome to them," and "in consequence of representations which have
been made by the Government of the United States" the Central Authority
feels itself "precluded from sanctioning any expenditure from the poor
rates in connection with the emigration to that country."[816]
Nevertheless, the Act of 1849 had not been repealed and the guardians
were not debarred from emigrating, not paupers only, but any poor
persons settled in their unions, whether in receipt of relief or not.
The number so emigrated (apart from orphan or deserted children)
continued, however, to be small.[817] In 1905 the Central Authority,
under Mr. Long's presidency, in connection first with the relief of the
unemployed by the guardians, and then under the Unemployed Workmen Act,
revived the old policy of 1835-53 and expressly encouraged the
emigration, at the public expense, of suitable persons, whether or not
otherwise in receipt of aid from the rates.[818]
[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).
Meanwhile, the emigration of Poor Law children to Canada continued,
special applications for the sanction of the Central Authority having to
be made in each case.[819] The question of the superior position in
which such children were thus placed, compared with those of the lowest
grade of independent labourer, does not appear to have been raised. The
emigration and special supervision in Canada were the subject of
repeated circulars and correspondence.[820] The numbers of orphan and
deserted children thus removed to superior conditions rose, from 100 or
200 annually, to 398 in 1903 and 491 in 1905.[821]
[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.
_L._--RELIEF ON LOAN
We note, without any explicit change of policy, a growing tendency to
extend the sphere of relief on loan. It is in Mr. Corbett's Report of
1871 that we find a revival of the suggestion thrown out in 1840 that
medical relief, in particular, might be given on loan; and even that it
should be "generally granted by way of loan,"[822] without regard, it
would seem, to the probability of its being recovered. This opinion of
the inspectorate, though (as we gather) constantly pressed on boards of
guardians, did not, in 1877, receive the explicit endorsement of the
Central Authority. An influential proposal to make all relief (and
especially all medical relief) recoverable as if given on loan was
definitely negatived. "The policy of the existing law," it was declared,
"is that the question whether or not relief shall be granted on loan,
or, in other words, whether it shall be recoverable at a future time, is
to be determined by a consideration of the actual circumstances existing
at the time the relief is granted, and it would be at variance with that
policy if every recipient of relief were to feel that after he again
succeeded in obtaining employment any savings he might be able to put by
would be liable for the repayment of the relief which he might have
received."[823] This seems to be the latest declaration of policy. There
is a particular difficulty in the way of granting medical relief on loan
when the medical officer is paid by salary, which does not arise when he
is paid by fee--namely, that of fixing the amount to be recovered. The
Central Authority suggested that the difficulty might perhaps be met by
paying him partly by fee and partly by salary, but it expressed no
decided views as to either the practicability or the expediency of such
a course.[824]
[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._
Moreover, the Central Authority held that "the relieving officer has no
power to compel any applicant to accept relief on loan. If, therefore,
in a case of sudden or urgent necessity a person refuses to accept the
offer of medical relief upon the condition that the cost thereof be
repaid, the Board consider that the relieving officer would not be
exempt from all further responsibility in the case, unless he had reason
to believe that the applicant was in a position to procure the requisite
medical aid without assistance from the poor rate."[825] When it was
laid down in 1876 that no relief to a lunatic could be recovered unless
and until declared to be on loan, it was remarked that "it will be
incumbent upon the guardians ... to examine each case ... to consider
all its circumstances, and not to declare the relief to be given on
loan, until they are satisfied that the circumstances will justify such
a declaration." Nor was it permissible to fix the value of medical
relief at an arbitrary sum. "There are great practical difficulties,"
concludes the Central Authority in 1886, "in the way of determining the
value of such relief," for the purpose of recovering it when made on
loan.[826]
[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.
Thus, it can perhaps not fairly be said that the inspectors' policy of
using the power of granting relief on loan as a means of deterring
applicants from applying for or accepting it, has received formal
endorsement by the Central Authority. On the other hand, unions which
have adopted the policy of systematically granting all medical relief
on loan, irrespective of the applicant's circumstances, have--so far as
we can discover--not been reproved or criticised by the Central
Authority for what is, apparently, a breach of its instructions. On a
complaint being made of this practice, the Bradfield Board of Guardians
contended that it was justified; and their contention was apparently
upheld.[827] And the practice of the Bristol Board of Guardians of
granting all outdoor relief on loan, irrespective of the applicant's
circumstances, or even of his actual acceptance of it as a loan, has not
been stopped. Moreover, by the Feeding of School Children Order, the
Central Authority (in apparent contradiction of its decision in 1877)
directed such relief to be given on loan irrespective of the father's
circumstances.[828]
[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.
_M._--CO-OPERATION WITH VOLUNTARY AGENCIES
We left Mr. Goschen and the Poor Law Board much impressed with the value
of systematic and organised co-operation with voluntary organisations in
order to avoid the combination of outdoor relief with any other source
of income. In 1873 we find an interesting report by Miss Octavia Hill on
official and voluntary agencies in administering relief, which the
Central Authority published and commended.[829] But, in spite of Mr.
Goschen, the boards of guardians by no means invariably accepted the
doctrine of never giving outdoor relief in aid of other pecuniary
resources. The Brixworth Guardians, indeed, as part of their strict
policy, refused to accord any favour to the person having an allowance
from a friendly society; but even they seem to have made up from the
poor rate the amount necessary for full maintenance. Most other boards
of guardians, however, as the Central Authority was officially informed
in 1873, reckoned, by a rough compromise, the friendly society pay at
half its amount,[830] in flat contradiction of the dictum of the Central
Authority of 1840 and 1870.[831] This course was incidentally reproved
by the Central Authority in 1888. "The guardians," it was stated, "are
bound to take into consideration all the means of support possessed by
the applicant; ... if ... the allowance from the club or society appears
to the guardians to be inadequate to meet all the requirements of the
case, they should take such allowance into account in determining what
amount of relief is required to relieve the destitution of the
applicant."[832] It was, however, apparently found impracticable to take
any official action; and there is, until 1894, scarcely any later
mention of the subject.[833] The policy of "all or nothing," which Mr.
Goschen had suggested as a counsel of perfection, was, in fact, not
persisted in by the Local Government Board. The practice of making up
insufficient incomes, whether derived from charity, from property or
friendly society allowance or annuity, or even (in the case of women)
from earnings, continued; not infrequently with the explicit sanction of
the Central Authority.[834] In 1894 the policy of supplementing other
resources received a partial sanction from Parliament. By the Outdoor
Relief Friendly Societies Act 1894, boards of guardians were legally
empowered if they thought fit, to ignore the fact that an applicant for
relief had a friendly society allowance.[835] This gave a legal sanction
to the usual compromise of counting such an allowance at half its value,
and thus giving the thrifty person half the advantage of his thrift. It
is difficult to see how the case of a person having a small friendly
society allowance could be logically distinguished from that of a person
having other means or sources of income insufficient to maintain him.
Presently the Central Authority expressly extended the new doctrine to
other forms of saving. In 1903 it declared that relief in supplement of
property (in case of sickness or infirmity of the applicant or any
dependent) was lawful. In the case of an applicant actually possessing
property, "if the guardians are satisfied, after due inquiry, that the
means possessed by an applicant are insufficient to support himself and
family, they are empowered, subject to the regulations in force, to
grant such relief as will meet the necessities of the case."[836] In the
following year Parliament followed suit by expressly enacting that
boards of guardians should not under any circumstances take into
consideration any friendly society allowance up to 5s. a week.[837]
There is, accordingly, in 1907 reported to be much outdoor relief
avowedly given in supplement of charitable aid and other sources of
income.
[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).
This kind of co-operation between voluntary agencies and the Poor Law,
in the pecuniary relief of the same individual, is, as we need hardly
point out, in direct contravention of the principle enunciated by Mr.
Goschen in 1869. Nothing, in fact, has been done since Mr. Goschen's
Circular that is even in the direction, so far as domiciliary relief is
concerned, of the entire allocation of particular cases to one kind of
organised aid or the other. On the other hand, there has been, since
1871, an almost continuous encouragement of another kind of
co-operation, namely, the use, by the Poor Law Authority, of
institutions under voluntary management for the maintenance and
treatment of particular classes of paupers, at the expense, wholly or
partially, of the poor rates. The number of paupers who are technically
in receipt of outdoor relief, but who are, in fact, maintained in
specialised voluntary institutions, is always increasing. Certified
schools for children of all denominations, and with all kinds of
defects; certified sanatoria and convalescent homes for the sick;
voluntary hospitals of all kinds and sorts;[838] industrial and
reformatory institutions for the able-bodied; asylums for the crippled
and the epileptic, and the various kinds of "Farm Colonies" are all now
admitted as laudable experiments, expressly authorised, systematically
inspected, and extensively subsidised, in the curative treatment of
destitute persons. We may infer that it is in institutional treatment of
this sort rather than in domiciliary relief that the Central Authority
maintains the principle of co-operation with voluntary agencies that Mr.
Goschen laid down.
[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).
CHAPTER V
THE PRINCIPLES OF 1907
It is unnecessary to attempt to summarise the policy of the Central
Authority from 1847 to 1907, in the manner adopted for the inaugural
period, 1835 to 1847. The policy of the last sixty years is so
complicated and diversified that we could hardly compress it further
than is already done in the foregoing analysis, without making it
unintelligible. We propose, therefore, to end this report by examining
to what extent, in our opinion, the Central Authority has, in 1907,
departed from "the principles of 1834"; to what extent it has evolved
other methods of dealing with its problem--methods based on principles
that were neither advocated nor condemned, because they were not thought
of, by the little group of ardent doctrinaires who conceived and carried
out the reforms of the new Poor Law; and, finally, to what extent it has
left the local authorities without guidance as to which of the competing
principles they should adopt in their everyday task of relieving the
destitute.
_A._--THE DEPARTURES FROM THE PRINCIPLES OF 1834
The principles of the 1834 Report, to which different people will assign
different degrees of scope or importance, are, as we have shown, three
in number. We will deal successively with the Principle of National
Uniformity, the Principle of Less Eligibility, and the "Workhouse
System."
(i.) _The Principle of National Uniformity_
The Principle of National Uniformity--that is, of identity of treatment
of each class of destitute persons from one end of the kingdom to the
other--for the purpose of reducing the "perpetual shifting" from parish
to parish, of preventing discontent, and of bringing the parochial
management effectually under central control, is, in 1907, with one
notable exception, in practice abandoned. Uniform national treatment is
to-day obligatory with regard to one class only of destitute persons,
the wayfarers or vagrants. Whatever may be the diversity of practice
amongst boards of guardians, the policy of the Central Authority for the
vagrant is, uniformly throughout the kingdom and without exception,
indoor relief, in a specially appropriated ward, with prescribed
"deterrent" treatment as regards diet, task and detention. For the
able-bodied male person, seeking relief in his own parish--the very
class for whom the 1834 Report most passionately postulated national
uniformity of treatment--there is, in 1907, no uniform policy. The
universal "offer of the House" was apparently found to be impracticable
even in the first decade; and by 1852 the Central Authority had settled
down to the division of England and Wales into two geographical regions,
in one of which outdoor relief to the able-bodied male applicant is
(with minor exceptions) prohibited, whilst in the other region boards of
guardians are not only permitted, but even advised, to meet the
recurring times of distress, and of pressure on the workhouse
accommodation, by the grant of outdoor relief against a task of work.
With regard to that section of the class of able-bodied who may be
intended by the indefinite term "unemployed," there is to-day, under the
Unemployed Workmen Act 1905, a third alternative policy, in itself
capable of endless variety from place to place, with which we shall have
to deal under the head of principles new since 1834.
Less intelligible is the existing diversity of policy of the Central
Authority in 1907 with regard to able-bodied women. In all the unions in
one of the geographical regions into which the country is divided, an
able-bodied woman, whether spinster, wife or widow, can be granted
maintenance in her own home. In all the unions of the other region, such
women, unless included in certain exceptions, can be relieved only in
the workhouse.
With regard to the non-able-bodied classes--the children, the sick and
the aged--who now comprise four-fifths of the whole pauperism, it is
hardly too much to say that the precisely opposite principle has been
adopted, that of permitting experimental variations by the 646 boards of
guardians. The maintenance of children in a general workhouse, in
"barrack schools," in cottage homes, in scattered homes, in certified
schools or institutions, in families within the union, in families
outside the union, with their relatives on a boarding-out allowance or
with their own parents on outdoor relief--at a cost to the rates varying
from 1s. up to more than 20s. per head per week--are all policies
actually in operation in one union or another, to the knowledge and with
the permission of the Central Authority. No one of them is prescribed or
universally recommended to the exclusion of the others. The same may be
said of the policy for the sick. Workhouse sick wards, separate
infirmaries of general character, specialised hospitals and sanatoria
for particular diseases, subsidies to voluntary institutions,
dispensaries, and domiciliary treatment, with or without nurses, are
among the different ways of relieving the destitute sick which different
boards of guardians are authorised to adopt, according to their fancies
or to the circumstances of their unions. The aged are less open to
experimental variations, but even here we find the "workhouse test," the
comfortable aged ward, the special "almshouses" for the well-conducted,
and the grant of adequate outdoor relief to every "deserving" person,
all recommended to different boards of guardians, simultaneously or
alternately, by order, letter, or inspector's advice.
A minor uniformity insisted on in the 1834 Report concerned the grant of
outdoor relief. The Report emphatically pointed out that, in the award
of outdoor relief, any attempt to discriminate according to merit was
dangerous and likely to lead to fraud. This was promptly given up as
regards women in the policy of discriminating between chaste and
unchaste. With regard to the aged, the policy of non-discrimination
according to merit or character has not only been abandoned by the
Central Authority, but even expressly condemned, boards of guardians
being now directed to give adequate outdoor relief to all deserving aged
persons. The Unemployed Workmen Act carries this contrary policy of
discrimination according to merit into the class of the able-bodied.
Only with regard to the wayfarer does the Central Authority still adhere
to the policy of an undiscriminating uniform refusal of outdoor relief
to all applicants irrespective of merit.
(ii.) _The Principle of Less Eligibility_
The Principle of "Less Eligibility"--that is, that the condition of the
pauper should be "less eligible" than that of the lowest grade of
independent labourer--(though, as we have shown, asserted explicitly in
the 1834 Report only of the able-bodied) is often regarded as the root
principle of the reforms of 1834. The Central Authority in 1907 applies
this principle unreservedly to one class only, the wayfarers or
vagrants. In respect of this class the application of the principle goes
even further than was contemplated in 1834. As will be remembered, the
Report of 1834 recommended that the wayfarer should be regarded merely
as an able-bodied person, and offered maintenance in the workhouse,
without compulsory detention or worse conditions than were afforded to
other inmates. In 1907 the Central Authority orders the wayfarer,
without discrimination of character or conduct, to be relieved only in a
casual ward, under a regimen not only inferior to that of the
able-bodied ward of the workhouse, but also, in food and amenity of
accommodation, distinctly less eligible than the condition of the
poorest independent labourer. Moreover, even this "less eligible" relief
is accompanied by compulsory detention and a task of hard labour of
monotonous and disagreeable character.
Exactly to what extent the policy of the Central Authority of to-day has
avowedly departed from the Principle of Less Eligibility with regard to
other sections of the able-bodied class it is difficult, in the absence
of explicit statement, to determine. According to the Statutes, Orders,
and Circulars now promulgated by the Central Authority, the able-bodied
(not being wayfarers) may be relieved in three main ways, among which
the local authority over a large part of England and Wales is left free
choice, viz.:--(_a_) maintenance in the workhouse, (_b_) outdoor relief
with a labour test, and (_c_) employment for wages[839] by the distress
committee. To take first the maintenance in the workhouse, any attempt
to restrict, either in quantity or quality, the food, warmth,
accommodation, leisure or rest afforded by the workhouse down to the
standard in practice attained by the lowest grade of independent
wage-earners has long since been abandoned. It has, in fact, been
discovered that the independent labourers of the lowest grade do not get
enough food, warmth or rest to maintain themselves and their families
continuously in health; whereas the able-bodied inmate of the workhouse
is supplied, by the peremptory directions of the Central Authority, up
to a standard which fully equals--if it does not exceed--the
requirements of physiological efficiency.
[839] Or migration or emigration.
It is sometimes said that, to counterbalance this excess of
"eligibility," the Central Authority maintains the policy which we have
described as starving the will and intelligence of the workhouse
inmates, by withholding all recreation, all exercise of choice or
initiative, all responsibility and all training for independent life.
But the Central Authority has latterly permitted various experimental
departures from this policy of enforced blank-mindedness characteristic
of the General Consolidated Order of 1847. It has permitted, in one
union or another, a policy (as at Lambeth) of letting the able-bodied
men go out at intervals (without taking out their dependents), in order
to look for work; or (as at Whitechapel) the engagement of a salaried
"mental trainer" to organise their leisure in an intellectual way; and
even (as at Poplar) the provision (under the name of a temporary
workhouse) of a farm in the country, where they are engaged, on short
hours and high diet, in the ordinary avocations of an agricultural
labourer--their families being meanwhile maintained in their own homes.
But maintenance in the workhouse can no longer be said to be the policy
imposed by the Central Authority even for the able-bodied. In all the
great centres of population, and in other unions in times of pressure,
it is the explicit policy of the Central Authority, rather than extend
the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, and enlarge the workhouses, to
allow the maintenance at home of the able-bodied man and his
dependents, in return for a task of work by the man only.[840] This
labour test at no date involved daily hours of work equal to those of
the lowest grade of independent labourer, but the task set was, until
recent years, of a monotonous and unpleasant character. Since 1886,
however, the task singled out for recommendation by the Central
Authority is nothing more unpleasant than spade labour in field or
garden, which forms the recreation of many a wage-earner.
[840] Either under the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, or under a
Labour Test Order.
What remained in the way of "less eligibility" was, until 1905, the
stigma of "pauperism," involving electoral disqualification, and
chargeability to relatives. Since the Unemployed Workmen Act this has
been wholly removed, in respect of the section of the able-bodied whose
destitution is relieved by the distress committee. In their case,
indeed, there is now not even the suggestion, which Mr. Chamberlain had
made in 1886, that the amount paid in return for their work should be
less than the current rate of wages.
With regard to all other classes except the able-bodied men and their
dependents,[841] the Central Authority has, _de facto_, abandoned the
Principle of Less Eligibility. It prescribes merely a policy of
"adequacy" of maintenance according to the actual requirements of each
case, viewed from the standpoint of modern physiology, irrespective of
whether the maintenance is at home or in an institution. This, it is
clear, is much above the standard attained by the lowest grade of
independent labourer. When this maintenance is given at home (as it is
with the explicit permission of the Central Authority in the majority of
cases) it is not accompanied by any other drawback than the "stigma of
pauperism." In respect of the extensive classes of the sick and the
children, the Central Authority may even be said to have avowedly
adopted a diametrically opposite policy to that of "less eligibility,"
namely, the principle of substituting for relief the best possible
"treatment," with the intention of making these paupers actually more
fit than the lowest grade of independent labourer. And, short of entire
removal out of the Poor Law (as has actually been done with the
able-bodied who are "unemployed," the children in industrial schools,
and the patients of the Public Health Department), everything possible
has been done to remove the "stigma of pauperism" from the children in
Poor Law institutions and from the recipients of medical relief.
[841] In unions under the Prohibitory Order, also able-bodied
single women.
(iii.) _The Workhouse System_
The principle commonly known as "the Workhouse System"--the complete
substitution of "indoor" for "outdoor" relief--was, as we have shown, no
part of the recommendations of the 1834 Report for any but the
able-bodied. It was, however, adopted by the strictest of the reformers
of 1834-47, and again by those of 1871-85, as the only effective method
of applying the Principle of Less Eligibility and of reducing pauperism.
The workhouse, on this principle, was not to be regarded as a place of
long-continued residence, still less as an institution for beneficial
treatment, but primarily (if not exclusively) as a "test of
destitution," that is, as a means of affording the actual necessities of
existence under conditions so deterrent that the pauper would rather
prefer to maintain himself independently than accept the relief so
offered. This is still the policy of the Central Authority, but only for
one class of paupers, the wayfarers or vagrants. As we have seen, there
are, in 1907, alternative methods of relief for the other classes,
preferred by the Central Authority. In the case of the aged, the Central
Authority explicitly lays it down that the "deserving" applicants ought
not even to be urged to enter the workhouse, and ought to be given
outdoor relief adequate for their maintenance in their own homes. In the
case of the able-bodied, the "respectable" applicant is to be referred
to the distress committee, outside the Poor Law altogether; whilst in
periods of unemployment the Central Authority permits the outdoor relief
of the less respectable destitute men against a labour test. With regard
to the sick and children, the very idea of a deterrent workhouse has
disappeared, and the policy is to afford them "treatment" (including
maintenance wherever required), either in their own homes, or in other
people's homes, or in institutions, in the manner, and to the degree,
calculated to promote their utmost efficiency.
_B._--NEW PRINCIPLES UNKNOWN IN 1834
In the policy of the Central Authority, as we find it in 1907 in the
statutes, orders and circulars in force, there are discoverable three
separate principles, which were neither advocated nor condemned in the
1834 Report, because they were either unknown, or not considered
relevant to the relief of the destitute. These are the Principle of
Curative Treatment, the Principle of Universal Provision, and the
Principle of Compulsion.
(i.) _The Principle of Curative Treatment_
The Principle of Curative Treatment--that is, of bringing about in the
applicant actual physical or mental improvement, so as to render him
positively more fit than if he had abstained from applying for
relief--may be considered the direct opposite of the Principle of Less
Eligibility. It might, indeed, be termed the Principle of Greater
Eligibility. This principle has been gradually evolved by the Central
Authority in the course of the last fifty or sixty years; but it has
characterised in particular the administration of the Local Government
Board ever since its establishment in 1871. We see it most thoroughly
applied to the sick and the children; though not yet to all sections
even of these classes.
With regard to the sick, the policy since 1865 has been to get them out
of the general workhouse, and to get established, for their treatment,
separate institutions as well built, as well equipped, and
professionally as well staffed as the most efficient hospitals. The
whole object is to cure the patients in the most rapid and thorough
fashion. The very idea of "deterring" them from entrance has been
avowedly discarded. Hence, in those unions in which the policy of the
Central Authority has been thoroughly carried out, and where the poorer
classes have (but for the Poor Law) to rely on their own independent
exertions, those of them who, in illness, accept Poor Law relief, find
their condition in every way more eligible than those who do not apply
for it, or who are refused it because they are deemed "not destitute."
The Principle of Curative Treatment has not been so consistently and
universally pressed on local authorities in the case of outdoor medical
relief. The Central Authority is "desirous of encouraging" the provision
of professional trained nursing for those cases of sickness treated at
home. But it has not yet seen its way to make (as in the Poor Law
infirmary or workhouse sick ward) the provision of even one trained
nurse compulsory in every union. With regard to the supply of drugs,
etc., of standard quality, and to the free accessibility of medical
advice at definite hours, it is only in the Metropolis that the Central
Authority has pressed on boards of guardians the universal provision of
well-equipped and well-staffed dispensaries; though these have, with the
willing sanction of the Central Authority, been copied in a few other
towns. On the other hand, the Principle of Curative Treatment may be
said to have been accepted all over the country, though perhaps not
consistently enforced, in the free supply of expensive drugs and
surgical appliances, in the provision for difficult operations, and
generally in the rising standard of qualification, attendance and
remuneration expected for the district medical officers charged with the
care of such of the sick paupers as are treated in their own homes. In
all these respects, these patients are admittedly under better
conditions than those who are just above the locally accepted definition
of destitution. This is emphasised by the absence in 1907 of any
political disqualification.
The application to the children of what we have called the "Principle of
Curative Treatment" is of older date than its application to the
sick--dating, indeed, from E. Carleton Tufnell's Report of 1841. In all
the development from the earliest "district school" to the most
up-to-date "cottage home," the whole policy of the Central Authority has
been to provide the most efficient education for the child, so that it
shall be positively more able to cope with the battle of life and less
likely to fall again into the ranks of pauperism than the child of the
lowest grade of independent labourer. In the Poor Law institutions for
children sanctioned in recent years, the Principle of Greater
Eligibility has been carried so far as to result in the provision, for
the pauper child, of physical training, mental education, and prolonged
supervisory care, extending over more years of life, and costing more
per head per annum, than the corresponding provision usually made for
children even of the lower middle class. In the same way, the Central
Authority sanctions, even if it does not overtly encourage, the bestowal
of elaborate and costly care and supervision in the launching into life
of some sections of Poor Law children--going even so far as occasionally
to sanction premiums, residential homes, or a "rate in aid" of their
insufficient earnings as apprentices in skilled trades. But though the
Principle of Curative Treatment has been carried to a high pitch in
respect of some sections of the child pauper population, it has been
scarcely at all applied to other sections. It is, indeed, not too much
to say that, with regard to the children on outdoor relief, the contrary
Principle of Less Eligibility is still the governing policy. An
investigation into their condition might show that a large proportion of
them, upon the relief afforded, are more likely to fall into disease,
vice or pauperism than the average child of the lowest grade of
independent labourer. For these children, the policy of the Central
Authority does not include either supervision or systematic medical
inspection, either the protection of the child's leisure from industrial
work or even any minimum provision for its maintenance, let alone any
selection of a suitable skilled occupation for it or any subsidised
apprenticeship. All that the Central Authority does for these 170,000
pauper children is to ask that they should be vaccinated and should be
in regular attendance at a public elementary school--advantages which
they share with the non-pauper children.
We do not find that the Principle of Curative Treatment has been
deliberately applied to the other classes of paupers. To the aged,
curative treatment is, indeed, scarcely applicable, but it is
interesting to trace, in the policy of expressly directing the grant of
adequate outdoor relief to the deserving aged, combined with the
statutory requirement that a friendly society allowance is not to be
taken into account in such grant, a sort of Principle of Greater
Eligibility. With regard to the able-bodied, there is a certain
premonition of the Principle of Curative Treatment in the farm colony as
well as in the "mental instructor" sanctioned for the able-bodied ward
of the workhouse. Indeed, there is only one class of paupers to which
the Central Authority has rigidly refused to apply this new principle.
From the casual ward every trace of curative treatment has been
eliminated, and the Principle of Less Eligibility rigidly adhered to.
(ii.) _The Principle of Universal Provision_
But what is most strikingly new since 1834 in the policy of the Central
Authority is the Principle of Universal Provision, that is, the
provision by the State of particular services for all who will accept
them, irrespective of "destitution" or inability to provide the services
independently. We see this principle in most municipal action, but it
impinges on the work of the Poor Law authorities most directly in such
services as vaccination, sanitation, and education. From the standpoint
of the Poor Law critic, this principle avoids the characteristic Poor
Law dilemma, and escapes alike the horn of making the condition of the
patient so bad as to be injurious to him, and that of making it better
than the lot of the lowest grade of independent labourer. In providing
vaccination, sanitation, and education--to say nothing of parks,
museums, and libraries--indiscriminately for every one who is ready to
accept them,[842] the State does nothing to diminish the inequality of
condition between the thrifty and the unthrifty--for it is a simple
axiom that the addition of equals to unequals produces unequals--whilst
it raises the standard of living of all. The most thrifty of artisans
who discovers a public elementary school freely provided for his own
children, does not find his advantage over his unthrifty neighbour
thereby in the smallest degree diminished. It is this consideration
which justifies the provision of municipal hospitals, and which,
presumably, led the Central Authority of 1870 (under Mr. Goschen) to
dwell upon the expediency of "free medicine to the poorer classes
generally, as distinguished from actual paupers, and perfect
accessibility to medical advice at all times under thorough
organisation."[843] It is this principle that lies at the base of all
schemes of non-contributory pensions to be given to persons on reaching
a certain age. The controlling limits of the application of this
Principle of Universal Provision in the mind of the Central Authority
seem to have been, first, the consideration whether it is in the public
interest desirable that the service in question should be as widely as
possible enjoyed; and secondly, the consideration whether, as a matter
of fact, such universal provision is found to diminish human
productiveness or mental development.
[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.
With regard to vaccination, sanitation, and education, the policy of the
Central Authority has long been based upon the Principle of Universal
Provision. In its application to the pauper population, we need only
refer particularly to the problem of the Poor Law child. As we have
already stated, the Education Acts of 1870-1903 have enabled the Poor
Law authorities to escape, in respect of mental training during school
age, from the embarrassing dilemma of either placing the pauper child in
a position of vantage, or of deliberately bringing up a couple of
hundred thousand children in a state incompatible with future
citizenship. In respect of everything beyond vaccination, sanitation,
and education--together with hospitals in some places for some kinds of
illness--the dilemma remains.
(iii.) _The Principle of Compulsion_
The Principle of Compulsion--in the sense of treating an individual in
the way that the community deems best, whether he likes it or not--is,
of course, as old as the lazarhouse, "Bedlam," and the gaol. Such
compulsory treatment may have for its object deterrent punishment,
reformation and cure, or mere isolation from the world. In all three
aspects this principle now forms an integral part of the policy of the
Central Authority for one or other classes of destitute persons.
It is interesting to note that, although the Principle of Compulsion
played a large part in the Elizabethan Poor Law, to which the 1834
Report purported to revert, it formed no part of "the principles of
1834." It did not appear in any of the recommendations of the Report.
What underlay the whole scheme of 1834 was the very opposite to
compulsion. No power was given to any Poor Law authority--apart from the
case of dangerous lunacy--to detain any pauper against his will, for
any purpose whatsoever. Every inmate of the workhouse was to be free to
discharge himself at the shortest notice compatible with the convenience
of the establishment. The vagrant was to be at liberty to leave as early
in the morning as he chose after his night's lodging. The sick person,
even if dangerous to others, or on the point of death, was to be
permitted to leave the shelter of the workhouse, if he chose, with no
more restraint than a warning from the medical officer. It was even open
to doubt whether a board of guardians could legally detain the youngest
orphan infant struggling to be free. The whole intention of the 1834
Report was, in fact, to make the pauper of any age feel that he was at
all times an unwelcome guest.
Today we see the Central Authority making use of the Principle of
Compulsion as part of its policy towards every class, except the
deserving healthy aged. The wayfarer, whatever his character or conduct,
is to be compulsorily detained, under penal conditions, for twenty-four
hours, or, in certain cases, much longer, in order to deter him from
ever again applying for a night's lodging. The able-bodied man or woman
in the workhouse is, under certain circumstances, to be compulsorily
detained, for a day, or even a week, in order to deter him or her from
passing too frequently "in and out." Quite different are the objects,
isolation from the public and their own cure, with which the infectious
sick are now compulsorily detained in the workhouse infirmary or
isolation hospital. We may note, too, that the power to detain lunatics,
for isolation, if not for cure, has, since 1834, been stretched so as to
include many harmless persons of defective mind, who are now regularly
certified for detention. Finally, we have the compulsory detention of
children, ranging from detention against the will of every one except
the parent, in the case of children of indoor paupers, up to the
complete parental authority exercised by the board of guardians over
orphan or deserted children; and, in the guise of adoption, even
extending to the age of sixteen, and against the will of the parents.
And there are signs that the Principle of Compulsion--that is, the
treatment of an individual in the way that the community deems best,
whether he likes it or not--is about to form part of the policy for
other sections of the destitute.
_C._--THE CONTRAST BETWEEN 1834 AND 1907
It is not without interest to contrast the three "principles of 1834"
with the three "principles of 1907." In both cases the three principles
hang together, and form, in fact, only aspects of a single philosophy of
life.
The "principles of 1834" plainly embody the doctrine of _laisser faire_.
They assume the non-responsibility of the community for anything beyond
keeping the destitute applicant alive. They rely, for inducing the
individual to support himself independently, on the pressure that
results from his being, in the competitive struggle, simply "let alone."
As the only alternative to self-support, there is to be presented to
him, uniformly throughout the country, the undeviating regimen of the
workhouse, with conditions "less eligible" than those of the lowest
grade of independent labourer.
The "principles of 1907" embody the doctrine of a mutual obligation
between the individual and the community. The universal maintenance of a
definite minimum of civilised life--seen to be in the interest of the
community no less than in that of the individual--becomes the joint
responsibility of an indissoluble partnership. The community recognises
a duty in the curative treatment of all who are in need of it; a duty
most clearly seen in the medical treatment of the sick and the education
of the children. Once this corporate responsibility is accepted, it
becomes a question whether the universal provision of any necessary
common service is not the most advantageous method of fulfilling such
responsibility--a method which has, at any rate, the advantage of
leaving unimpaired the salutary inequality between the thrifty and the
unthrifty. It is, moreover, an inevitable complement of this corporate
responsibility and of the recognition of the indissoluble partnership,
that new and enlarged obligations, unknown in a state of _laisser
faire_, are placed upon the individual--such as the obligation of the
parent to keep his children in health, and to send them to school at the
time and in the condition insisted upon; the obligation of the young
person to be well-conducted and to learn; the obligation of the adult
not to infect his environment and to submit when required to hospital
treatment. To enforce these obligations--all new since 1834--upon the
individual citizen, experience shows that some other pressure on his
volition is required than that which results from merely leaving him
alone. Hence the community, by the combination of the principles of
Curative Treatment, Universal Provision and Compulsion, deliberately
"weights" the alternatives, in the guise of a series of experiments upon
volition. The individual retains as much freedom of choice as--if not
more than--he ever enjoyed before. But the father finds it made more
easy for him to get his children educated, and made more disagreeable
for him to neglect them. It is made more easy for the mother to keep her
infants in health, and more disagreeable for her to let them die. The
man suffering from disease finds it made more easy for him to get cured
without infecting his neighbours, and made more disagreeable for him not
to take all the necessary precautions. The labour exchanges and the farm
colonies aim at making it more easy for the wage-earner to get a
situation; perhaps the reformatory establishment, with powers of
detention, is needed to make it more disagreeable for him not to accept
and retain that situation. We must, in fact, recognise that the
"principles of 1907," to which experience has gradually brought the
Central Authority, "hang together" in theory and practice no less than
did those of 1834.
_D._--NO MAN'S LAND
But although the aforesaid "principles of 1907" demonstrably emerge in
the statutes and orders, circulars and particular decisions of the
Central Authority, and although they have severally received the most
authoritative sanction for particular classes or on particular
occasions, they have, as a whole, not been consciously substituted for
the "principles of 1834." Indeed, it is open to question whether
successive presidents and particular officials, if suddenly
cross-examined, might not reveal a complete unconsciousness of there
being any new principles at all, and whether they might not profess to
be still standing on the policy of 1834! The result is, on the one hand,
a lack of clear exposition of policy, and, on the other, a failure to
apply any policy at all, either systematically or with the necessary
qualifications and safeguards. Accordingly, the boards of guardians are
in a state of hopeless bewilderment. They dimly realise that, in one
crucial instance after another, the Principle of National Uniformity,
the Principle of Less Eligibility, and the Workhouse System, have been
authoritatively abandoned. They vaguely perceive, with regard to one
section of paupers after another, that the Local Government Board
directs them to act upon lines inconsistent with those laid down in
1834. But they are not explicitly told what are the new principles, to
what classes of paupers they are to be applied, and what safeguards and
qualifications they demand. There is, in fact, to-day, a sort of "No
Man's Land" in Poor Law administration, in which the principles of 1834
have been _de facto_ abandoned, without the principles of 1907 being
consciously substituted. Owing to this lack of central direction, we
find diversity without deliberation, indulgence without cure, and relief
without discipline. It is an incident of this failure consciously and
explicitly to adopt deliberate principles of action, that no attention
has been paid to their limitations and qualifications. The principles of
1834 were such as could be mechanically and universally applied, if only
any Government had dared to do it. The principles to which the
experience of the past seventy years has unconsciously led the Central
Authority need to be carefully thought out in their application to
particular classes. These principles are, in fact, not all of universal
application. There are classes (_e.g._ the aged) not susceptible of
Curative Treatment; there are only a few sections (_e.g._ lunatics,
infectious disease patients and the incorrigible loafers) who need
Compulsion; whilst, in our present civilisation, Universal Provision
(_e.g._ education and sanitation in their widest interpretation, and
old-age pensions) will be limited to particular services. This
demarcation of the application of the principles on which the Central
Authority is already proceeding, is not being discovered, or even sought
after. It is here that the Poor Law Commission of 1905-9 will have its
greatest effect. Its criticisms and its recommendations will be
operative, whatever may be the legislative outcome, in deciding to what
extent, and in what particular directions there will be an increasing
application of the Principle of Curative Treatment, the Principle of
Compulsion, and the Principle of Universal Provision respectively; or,
on the other hand, to what extent and in what direction we shall seek to
revive one or other of the principles of 1834.
CHAPTER VI
THE MAJORITY REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION
OF 1905-1909
The analysis of Poor Law Policy contained in the preceding chapters,
and the comparative statement of principles to which it led, was made
the subject of a report to the Royal Commission on the Poor Law in
the very middle of its career. We have thought it convenient to leave
the analysis and the statement--subject to the correction of a few
trifling errors--exactly as they were written in July 1907. We have
now to examine the Report of the Royal Commission itself, and to see
how far that body responded to the suggestion that it should formulate
a definite body of principles upon which public assistance should
proceed.[844]
[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.).
_The Principles of 1907_
We turn first to the Report signed by the Majority of the Commissioners,
including those members who were, or had been, members of the Charity
Organisation Society. It is not easy to be sure what are the principles
which the signatories of this Report wish to see accepted by the public.
The whole wording of the lengthy document points in one direction, and
nearly all its definite proposals in another. Thus, in the drastic
criticism of the present Poor Law; in the phraseology running all
through the Report, and in some of the detailed recommendations, we find
a very definite, if generally tacit, abandonment of the "Principles of
1834," and a seeming adoption of what we have called the "Principles of
1907," as set forth in the preceding chapters. Indeed, the Majority
Report is in one place explicit in its repudiation of the "Principles of
1834," arguing that, whatever may have been their validity
three-quarters of a century ago, they are no longer applicable even to
the able-bodied. "The administrators of the present Poor Law," it was
expressly declared without dissent from any Commissioner, "are in fact
endeavouring to apply the rigid system of 1834 to a condition of affairs
which it was never intended to meet. What is wanted is not to abolish
the Poor Law, but to widen, strengthen, and humanise the Poor Law, so as
to make it respond to a demand for a more considerate, elastic, and, so
far as possible, curative treatment of the Able-bodied."[845] This
interpretation of the Majority Report finds support in the fact that
what we have termed the "Principles of 1907" are repeatedly endorsed.
Thus, the Principle of Curative Treatment is expressed almost on every
page. It is, in fact, owing to the assertion and reassertion of this
principle that the Majority Report owed its instantaneous popularity
with the benevolent public. In sharp contrast with every previous Poor
Law Report, this one urged that the children were to be brought up in
the best possible way; the sick were to be given the most curative
treatment; the mentally defective were to be treated solely with a view
to their amelioration; the physically defective and the infirm were to
have the specialised treatment and the appliances best calculated to
remedy their defects; even the able-bodied, whether the unemployed or
the vagrants, the honest working-men or the wastrels, were to be dealt
with by home treatment or in establishments of which the aim was to be
training and reform. The Principle of Curative Treatment was made, in
fact, the basis of all the methods proposed for the treatment of all the
different sections of the pauper host.
[845] Par. 337 of Part VI. of Majority Report.
The Principle of Compulsion,--alien, as we have shown, to the whole
spirit of the Report of 1834--had, by 1907, only been adopted here and
there. The Majority proposals of 1909, far from reverting in this
respect to those of 1834, not only heartily adopt such compulsion as has
already entered into the Poor Law, but also carry the principle much
further. These proposals involve the compulsory enforcement of pauperism
on whole sections of the community who are considered to need public
assistance, but who do not wish to accept it--on the helpless and
friendless aged who get into an insanitary condition; on the children of
"Ins and Outs," and of other parents who are leading improper lives; on
the feeble-minded who are, nevertheless, not so mentally defective as to
be able to be certified as of unsound mind; on sick persons not properly
cared for in their own homes; on children suffering from ophthalmia or
other contagious diseases; on persons of either sex suffering from
venereal diseases; on "unmarried mothers" resorting to the workhouse in
their hour of need; and on able-bodied men and women who become
repeatedly chargeable owing to their own misconduct. All these persons
so diverse in their characters, their circumstances, and their needs,
ought, it is expressly recommended, to be compulsorily detained in a
Poor Law Institution or at the Poor Law expense, at the instance of the
new Poor Law Authority. Whenever deemed necessary, they are to be made
subject to what is euphemistically called "An Order for Continuous
Treatment," under which their compulsory detention may extend to as long
as three years. "The term detention," it is said, "is perhaps, however,
infelicitous. It is generally associated with the idea of punishment by
imprisonment. Our primary object in proposing detention is neither
punishment nor imprisonment. We aim at affording opportunities for
applying ameliorative treatment to particular individuals over a
continuous period. We desire to substitute for the present system of
incontinuous and inefficacious relief a continuity of care and treatment
which shall benefit both the recipient and the community.... All these
cases have this common characteristic, viz. that the absence of power
of continuous treatment constitutes a danger either to the individual or
the State."[846]
[846] Par. 150 of Part IX. of Majority Report.
Finally, the third of the "Principles of 1907"--that of Universal
Provision--far from meeting with objection, receives repeated
endorsement. The Majority accept, without a word of criticism, the
provision of national pensions for all the persons over seventy years of
age below a certain income-limit, and they do not even suggest the
maintenance of the present temporary disqualification of those who have
received parochial relief since January 1, 1908. They endorse the
universal provision by the Local Education Authority of medical
inspection and diagnosis for all children in attendance at the public
elementary schools; though they think that the contemplated provision of
medical treatment for these children should not be a function of the
Local Education Authority. They even recommend the universal provision
of medical attendance for every sick person who applies for it, with
free choice of doctors; though it is urged that inquiry should be
subsequently made as to the applicants' means, and that such as may be
found to be able to pay for the service rendered to them should be
required to do so. Hospital accommodation and treatment is, moreover, to
be provided at the public expense, without charge and without
disfranchisement wherever it is deemed to be required, including
whatever is necessary for the proper treatment of phthisis. Finally, the
National Government is to undertake an entirely new service; to be
available without charge to every one who cares to use it, irrespective
of his affluence; and to be as ubiquitous and as universal as the Post
Office. By a national system of Labour Exchanges, the present disjointed
efforts of innumerable seekers after jobs are to be replaced by a public
organisation, the business of which will be to know all the vacancies
and all the applicants, and to find a man for every job, if not a job
for every man. All this represents, not only the endorsement of the
Principle of Universal Provision so far as it has already gone, but also
a considerable further increase of the communistic activity of the
State.
_The Plea for a Single Destitution Authority_
When, however, we study the detailed recommendations of the Majority
Report, and consider the probable working of the machinery that they
would set up, we discover, notwithstanding all the elaborately
sympathetic phrases, a very definite trend backward to the "Principles
of 1834," in a manner which seems to us calculated ingeniously to
nullify the apparent repudiation, and in reality to leave the situation
more confused than before.
We have to note, in the first place, that the Majority Report lays the
utmost stress on the importance of retaining in each locality what is
definitely a "Destitution Authority." "It should," they declare, "be a
fundamental condition of the assistance system of the future that the
responsibility for the due and effective relief of all necessitous
persons at the public expense should be in the hands of one, and only
one, authority in each County and County Borough."[847] To this
principle they recur again and again as of paramount importance. In
retaining this General Destitution Authority, and in emphasising the
necessity for the treatment of all sections--the infants, the children,
the sick, the aged, the prematurely incapacitated, the able-bodied
unemployed--being committed to its charge, the Majority Report may
fairly claim to be standing on the same ground as the authors of the
1834 Report, though with a significant difference. To the Royal
Commission of 1834 the single all-embracing Destitution Authority was
not a matter of principle at all, but a necessity, which no one
questioned. Throughout the whole country there had been only one kind of
Local Authority which gave any sort of public assistance to the poor,
and that was the Poor Law Authority. The 1834 Report could, accordingly,
take it for granted that all sections of the persons to be relieved at
the public expense on the ground of their necessities must be dealt
with, as destitute persons, by one and the same authority. In 1909 the
position has become quite different. There have grown up, since 1834,
other public authorities in each district, which provide, independently
of the Poor Law, this or that form of public assistance to persons who
require it, sometimes to all who apply, sometimes to those only who
prove their need. The Local Education Authorities, the Local Health
Authorities, the Local Lunacy Authorities, the Local Pension
Authorities, and the Local Unemployed Authorities are, in fact, spending
in the aggregate on the children, the sick, the mentally defective, the
aged and the able-bodied unemployed, in their several forms of public
assistance, out of the same fund of rates and taxes, _more than twice as
much every year as all the Poor Law Authorities put together_. To the
Royal Commission of 1909 the retention of a general Destitution
Authority, dealing with all sections of destitute persons as destitute
persons, was, therefore, not a necessity. It was a deliberate choice,
and we find them erecting it into a principle. This principle does not,
as might perhaps be supposed, apply only to the provision of
maintenance. It is expressly asserted that the schooling and industrial
training of the persons relieved and the medical attendance of the sick,
so far as it is provided at the public expense, must equally form part
of the work of the new Poor Law Authorities. Even the provision of Day
Industrial Schools for destitute uncared-for children, of public
Sanatoria for phthisis patients, and of Rescue Homes for girl mothers,
in so far as undertaken at the public expense, must be the work of the
new Poor Law Authorities.[848] It is part of the same idea to insist on
the importance of there being established a single "Public Assistance
Service ... which should include all officers concerned with the
supervision control and disciplinary treatment of the poor ... not only
the ... relieving officers both male and female" but also "masters,
matrons, and superintendents of institutions of every grade," whether
for the children, the sick, or the able-bodied unemployed. All these
officers, whatever their technical duties, are to have a certain common
training, to receive certificates of different grades, to enjoy
opportunities of promotion from one post to another, and to be made to
realise, throughout their whole service, that they are "concerned with
the moral training of those committed to their care."[849] Thus, all the
various specialised institutions, which are to replace the General Mixed
Workhouse--the nursery, the residential school, the hospital, the
dispensary, the "industrial institution" for the able-bodied, the Rescue
Home for girl mothers, the phthisis sanatorium and the home for the
helpless aged--are to be administered by officers of a single
homogeneous interchangeable service, deliberately focusing their
attention on the moral accompaniments assumed to be characteristic of
destitute persons as such, whether these are children or adults, sick or
whole. "From the point of view thus indicated," explains an
authoritative exponent of the Majority Report, "there is, as it were, an
army of social healers to be trained and organised; and it is like the
army of war in the fundamental fact that it is to be disciplined and
animated with a single spirit and purpose, however varied and
specialised may be the duties that fall within its range. The whole of
these proposals are founded on the conviction that there is a problem
common and peculiar to the entire range of destitution or
necessitousness, demanding a common and peculiar method of dealing with
it."[850] This, indeed, is the fundamental difference between the Majority
Report and the Minority Report. "The antagonism," continues this
exponent, "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; and 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."[851]
[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._
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 from 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. We find ourselves, in short, back at the
"Principles of 1834."[852]
[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.
_The Reversion to 1834_
With this clue to their meaning, it becomes possible to understand the
main constructive proposals of the Majority Commissioners. The most
distinctive feature of these proposals, as well as the most novel, is
the setting up in every district, side by side, of two separate
organisations for the assistance of the poor; one to deal with one set
of people and the other with another set; one, the "Public Assistance
Authority," to administer the Poor Law, at the expense of the rates,
whilst the other, the Voluntary Aid Committee, to carry out the desires
of the charitable, mainly out of private funds.[853] This proposal is,
in our judgment, a bold attempt to get back the "Principles of 1834" in
all their austerity. From the writings of Chadwick and Nassau Senior
down to the latest pronouncements of the Charity Organisation Society,
it has always been held that any Poor Law administration according to
the "Principles of 1834," involved the co-existence of voluntary charity
sufficiently well-organised to prevent the deserving person from falling
under the deterrent conditions of the Poor Law, and from being subject
to the stigma of pauperism. According to this view, which received the
endorsement of Mr. (afterwards Lord) Goschen's celebrated Minute of
1870, the public assistance of the Poor Law Authority is _designed and
intended only for the undeserving_, it being assumed that those worthy
of anything better than the Poor Law supplied ought to be provided for
by organised charity. When we find the Majority Report explicitly
"accepting the principle of Mr. Goschen's Minute";[854] setting up in
every district a Voluntary Aid Committee to carry out this principle;
definitely recommending that rules should be made _requiring_ certain
classes of applicants to apply to the Voluntary Aid Committee, and
certain others to the public Authority, whether the applicants like it
or not;[855] and expressly stipulating that the treatment provided by
the latter is to be "less eligible" than that which the former may be
pleased to prescribe,[856] we cannot help feeling that the policy of the
future "Public Assistance Authority" is, after all, to be the Poor Law
of 1834, dealing only (as is assumed) with the worthless and the
undeserving whom the charitable have, because of their character,
refused to aid, and to whom the New Poor Law is to extend only "less
eligible" treatment.[857] If the new Public Assistance Authorities are
really intended to proceed on "curative and restorative" principles, and
"to widen, strengthen, and humanise the Poor Law," why is so much stress
laid on Mr. Goschen's Minute (which was based on a "deterrent" and
"negative" Poor Law), and why is it so important to rescue, by means of
a Voluntary Aid Committee, all the deserving cases from the clutches of
the Public Assistance Authority? If the treatment applied by the Public
Assistance Authority is really to be that calculated to be what is most
"curative and restorative" to them, why should the "deserving" cases be
debarred from it? In this ingenious mapping out of the relative spheres
of Voluntary Charity and the Poor Law, we see embodied, in the most
plausible and the most practical form, the two-fold assumption of
Professor Bosanquet, namely, that those for whom provision is made by
the Poor Law are persons with a moral defect, whom it is necessary to
treat in such a way as to discourage, "by expectation and example,"
others from applying for the public treatment.
[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).
We are not ourselves surprised to find the Majority Report, which
started out with an acceptance of the "Principles of 1907," thus
reverting in its practical proposals to the "Principles of 1834." What
was brought out by the elaborate investigations of the Royal Commission
of 1905-9 was that, however successful the new principles had proved in
other hands, it was neither expedient nor practicable for a Poor Law
Authority, just because it was a Poor Law Authority, to administer
relief on the lines of Curative Treatment, Compulsion, and Universal
Provision. Thus, the two halves of the Majority Report are incompatible
with each other. If there is to be, under the name of the Public
Assistance Authority, a general Destitution Authority, there cannot, in
fact, be any universal or whole-hearted adoption of the "Principles of
1907," even to the extent to which they receive apparent endorsement.
_The Mutual Incompatibility of the Proposals of the Majority Report_
Now, in our judgment, both the positions successively taken up in the
Majority Report are untenable. We propose first to show that it is not
possible for the "Principles of 1907" (to which, as we have seen,
three-quarters of a century of experience has driven the Local
Government Board) to be carried out by a Destitution Authority, either
efficiently or economically, or, indeed, without danger. It was just
this impossibility that has led to the "diversity without deliberation,
indulgence without cure, and relief without discipline," which marks the
Poor Law administration of to-day, and which caused the appointment of
the Royal Commission. On this point we agree with those who stand on the
old lines. _If there is to be a Poor Law Authority, there is no safety
but in the "Principles of 1834."_ On the other hand, we hold public
opinion to be justified in condemning these principles, and in demanding
the application of Curative Treatment, Compulsion, and Universal
Provision. But the economical and efficient administration of these
three principles involves the acceptance of another, the Principle of
Prevention--the principle of actively preventing the several _causes_ of
destitution, and of arresting their operation at the incipient stage,
whether by operating on the individual or on the environment. Without
the thorough-going application of this Principle of Prevention by the
various Public Authorities concerned, Curative and Restorative Treatment
inevitably undermines the motive of self-maintenance and weakens
parental responsibility, Compulsion strikes at the consciousness of
personal freedom, and Universal Provision tends to degrade into an
unenlightened communism.
The incompatibility of the Principles of 1907 with the very nature of a
general Destitution Authority will, we think, be clear to any one who
will consider the subject in detail.
(i.) _The Principle of Curative Treatment and a Destitution Authority_
It is, to begin with, an inherent drawback of any general Destitution
Authority for the work of Curative Treatment that it is necessarily a
"mixed" Authority, having to deal, not with patients suffering from any
one disease, but with persons of the most diverse needs, and requiring
treatment of very different nature. To entrust to one and the same
Authority the care of the infants and the aged, the children and the
able-bodied adults, the sick and the healthy, maids and widows; and to
instruct that Authority to adopt "curative and restorative treatment,"
is inevitably to concentrate attention, not on the different methods
that their several necessities require, but on their one common
attribute of destitution, and on the one common remedy of "relief" upon
whatever terms, strict or lax, that may be in fashion. To a Destitution
Authority, however constituted, a sick person is not wholly a patient,
he is also a pauper; and too often his character of pauper interferes
with his being regarded with a single eye as a patient to be cured. To
such an Authority a destitute child is not merely, or even mainly, a
future citizen, to be nurtured and trained in the wisest way for the
service of the community; the fact that the child is a pauper cannot by
a Destitution Authority be forgotten, and all experience shows that this
remembrance injuriously affects what is done for the child.
A further drawback is that the "mixed" Authority, having to deal
simultaneously with all sections and all kinds of persons, tends
invariably to a service of "mixed" officials; and with a Destitution
Authority this service is almost necessarily composed of "Destitution"
officials. They are not, and can scarcely be, specially trained to deal
with infants, or with children, or with able-bodied adults, or with the
sick, or with the mentally defective, or with the aged. The specialist
training and experience that they acquire is not with any of these, but
with the one common attribute of destitution. Thus the typical Relieving
Officer or Workhouse Master has not, and can seldom hope to have, the
specialist knowledge that would fit him to be a competent inspector of
boarded-out girls, a useful guardian of feeble-minded boys, a successful
administrator of a Rescue Home, a skilled superintendent of a phthisis
sanatorium, a happy adviser in discovering situations for men out of
work, or an expert trainer for those who have to be prepared for new
occupations. Even when public-spirited Boards of Guardians, under the
wisest administrative guidance, persistently strive to make "a
classified Poor Law," they fail to attain, in fact, the classification
that they desire. This is seen in the persistence of the General Mixed
Workhouse, in spite of the explicit condemnation of a succession of
expert critics. It is seen in the fact that, after twenty years of
"scattered homes" for children, we still find the Guardians unable to
resist the temptation of putting into them, along with the children,
feeble-minded and morally perverted girls in their adolescence. It is
seen in the fact that, after fifty years of Poor Law Schools, there is
still no classification of the pupils according to their educational
needs; and we find everywhere, sitting side by side, in the same school,
the feeble-minded child, the merely backward child, the precocious young
scholar, and the incipient criminal, all submitted to the same
curriculum, with the same books, under the same teacher. Even in the
latest efforts at classification, by a model Board of Guardians, we
find, housed on the same site and managed by the same superintendent,
the most deserving aged persons, the epileptic patients, and the
able-bodied men relegated to the discipline of "test labour." Such
specialised institutions as have come into existence under a Destitution
Authority are, in fact, perpetually crumbling back into the General
Mixed Workhouse. We see no reason to expect that a general Destitution
Authority that was nominated, instead of being elected, would be free
from this besetting tendency.
But the inherent incapacity of any Destitution Authority to cope with
the task comes out most strongly in its inevitable failure to deal with
the "incipient stage." By the very nature of a Destitution Authority it
can deal only with cases of destitution, and the greatest stress is
laid, and rightly laid, on the necessity for this limitation. This means
that it never does, and never can, deal with any disease or any moral
defect, or any injurious influence of any kind, _in its incipient
stage_. An independent citizen who begins in any way to be adversely
affected in mind, body, or estate, in such a manner as to be reduced to
a state of destitution, does not, in most cases, suddenly, or even
quickly, reach that depth. The evil influence takes some time to bring
him down. All that time, whilst the progress of the disease may still be
arrested, and a cure is possible, Destitution Authority does not hear of
the case, and would be legally precluded from intervening, even if it
did hear of it, _because there is not yet any destitution_. Eventually,
when the case has become so bad that employment is lost, savings are
dissipated and friends exhausted, resort is had to the Destitution
Authority. But the case is then too far gone for any useful
intervention. All that can then be done is, whatever the case, to
administer "relief," and ease the patient's sinking into senility or the
grave. This inherent defect of a Destitution Authority, which no
alteration of name or composition or policy can remedy, must for ever
prevent it applying curative or restorative treatment in any really
effective way. No Poor Law and no Poor Law Authority, just because it is
a Poor Law and a Poor Law Authority, can ever reach out to anticipate
and ward off destitution _before it has occurred_. And this failure to
get hold of the incipient case applies to all the various kinds of
adverse influences that cause destitution. It is, perhaps, most clearly
seen in such physical diseases as phthisis, to which one-seventh of all
the pauperism is due. Here the interval between the detection of the
disease and its development to such an extent as to bring wage-earning
employment to an end may often be several years. If treated at the early
stage, before destitution has set in, the disease is often curable. If
not treated until the patient is so ill as to be unable to earn wages,
the case is invariably incurable. It is needless to instance other
physical diseases of like kind. We may adduce unemployment as an example
of an equally dangerous complaint, apt to be curable if dealt with at
once; and only too likely to be hopeless if left until destitution has
set in. The case of the infant or child suffering from neglect is
another patent example. In short, if the Public Authority must in all
cases hold its hand until destitution has set in, _as any Destitution
Authority must do_, it might as well abandon all hope, in the vast
majority of cases, of any effective curative or restorative treatment.
It never gets the cases until they are too far gone. We might as well
run a hospital on the plan of never consenting to admit any case until
mortification had set in!
Now, it becomes more and more apparent that it is a useless extravagance
to adopt the policy of curative and restorative treatment, unless we are
prepared to "search out" the cases that need dealing with,--the infants
and children who are just beginning to be neglected by their parents and
guardians, the persons of all ages who are just beginning to suffer from
disease, the feeble-minded lacking ameliorating care, the man just
smitten with unemployment--at the stage in their complaint at which the
application of our treatment has, at any rate, some chance of yielding
effective results. The Local Education Authority or the Local Health
Authority understands at once that it cannot do its work if it waits
until it is applied to. It accordingly _searches out_ illiterate
children of school age, or persons smitten with infectious disease. But
a Destitution Authority, administering a Poor Law, cannot in this way
"search out" the cases needing its attention without thereby offering
assistance to those who are not pecuniarily destitute. Accordingly, it
is of the very nature of any Destitution Authority to restrict its
operations as much as possible, to deter people from coming, or to wait,
at any rate, until it is applied to. It is from this inability to adopt
a policy of "searching out" that a Destitution Authority never gets hold
of the case in its incipient stage, and is never really preventive of
destitution.
An instance of the impracticability of the application of curative and
restorative treatment by a Poor Law Authority, just because it is a Poor
Law Authority, is afforded by the ebb and flow of the whole class of
"Ins and Outs." This well-known class, in all its varieties, comprises
the able-bodied or semi-able-bodied frequenter of urban workhouses, the
customer of the casual wards, the inebriate in his recurring attacks of
_delirium tremens_, the feeble-minded girl in her annual confinements,
and, last but not by any means least important, the unfortunate infants
and children dragged to and fro by their parents. Whatever their sex,
their age, their health, their character, or their conduct, these "Ins
and Outs" come at the crisis of their destitution, and go as soon as
they can see their way to some sort of a living outside, choosing their
own times and seasons for demanding the maintenance which a Poor Law
Authority dare not withhold, and for resuming the liberty which it
cannot refuse. So long as the conditions offered by the Poor Law
Authority are "deterrent," few will apply for this maintenance; the
vagrant, the able-bodied loafer, the temporarily sick, the disabled
drunkard, parents with neglected children, the epileptic and the
feeble-minded preferring, even at the cost of foregoing the treatment
that they really need, such other forms of parasitism as free shelters,
the doles of the charitable, the gifts of friends and relations, or the
earnings of their unfortunate dependents. But let the conditions offered
by the Poor Law Authority be "curative and restorative" in their
character, and all classes of "Ins and Outs" will clamour for the
hospitality of the Poor Law whenever their other means of parasitism
show signs of falling short. Whether they come in or remain out, a Poor
Law Authority, just because it is a Poor Law Authority, is wholly unable
to enforce on them, before they are destitute, the sort of conduct that
would prevent their _becoming_ destitute, and would thus preserve the
community from the danger and cost of their parasitic existence. The
Poor Law Authority is thus incapable, not (as is often supposed) because
it has no adequate powers of detention, and because it must let its
patients go whenever they please. Its incapacity depends on the more
fundamental and less curable defect that, as a Destitution Authority, it
is inherently incapable of bringing pressure to bear on the lives and
wills of these people, at the time when such pressure may be effective,
namely, _long before they have become destitute_, at the moment when
they are taking the first step towards the evil parasitism to which they
eventually succumb.
(ii.) _The Principle of Compulsion and a Destitution Authority_
It has usually been considered impracticable to combine any powers of
compulsion with a Poor Law system. The Majority Report proposes,
however, to endow its new Public Assistance Authority with extensive
powers of compulsory treatment; that is to say, to enable the
administrators of the Poor Law to dispense with its limitation to those
who are actually destitute and unable to maintain themselves, whenever
such administrators choose to consider it expedient to compel particular
persons, who claim not to be destitute, to become or to continue
paupers, with the object of segregating them from their fellows. Such an
extension of the powers of the Public Assistance Authority would be
inconsistent with one of the cardinal principles of the Majority Report,
namely, that the area of the operations of the Poor Law should not be
extended.[858] What is more important is that it does not seem at all
probable that any House of Commons would consent to give to any
Destitution Authority, maintaining the stigma of pauperism, the power to
make a man a pauper against his will.
[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.).
So far as compelling persons who are ill, and who need treatment, to
come in and be treated for their own good, or for the health of the
neighbourhood, this is a power which Parliament has already, in certain
cases, conceded to the Local Health Authority, which has no stigma of
pauperism, and which has, moreover, the machinery for searching out the
cases, irrespective of their affluence. These powers could easily be
extended. It would seem both futile and unnecessary, with regard to
persons whose need is nursing and medical attendance, and who may not be
pecuniarily destitute, to confer a similar power also on the Destitution
Authority, which has no such machinery for searching out cases, and no
particular responsibility for the Public Health.
With regard to the second great class of those whom it is desired to
segregate compulsorily against their will, namely, the feeble-minded,
the whole weight of expert opinion is against conferring this power upon
either the existing Board of Guardians or any Poor Law Authority, and in
favour of entrusting it to the Lunacy Authority, an Authority which--in
contrast with any Destitution Authority--will treat these unfortunate
persons in respect of their ascertained defect, and not in respect of
their destitution, or in respect of any moral defect assumed to be
connected therewith.
When we come to the children, the case is even clearer. If power is to
be given to any Authority to separate a child from its parents, and to
deprive the latter of its custody and care, public opinion emphatically
demands that this power should be conferred and exercised solely for the
good of the child, and with a view to its best possible nurture and
training.
It is plain that this is best secured by freeing the child from all
association with pauperism and entrusting its care to the Authority
which deals, apart from any stigma of pauperism, with other children in
a normal way, and which specialises on their proper training.
Finally, in the case of able-bodied and able-minded men and women in
health, whose distress arises merely from their being without
wage-earning employment--whatever may be the cause of such
unemployment--it will, we think, be wholly impracticable to obtain, for
a Destitution Authority, any powers of compulsory segregation. To
compel, by law, able-bodied men and women to become paupers against
their will; to force upon them a degrading status with the stigma of
pauperism, when they do not even apply for public assistance; to compel
them to come into an institution of the Destitution Authority, when they
ask only to be let alone, must, we think, in the absence of any judicial
conviction of a specific offence against the law, be dismissed as
politically out of the question. It may be that some such restriction of
personal liberty is essential to the effective curative treatment of
particular individuals, whose unemployment proceeds from their own
personal defects. But no power of compulsory segregation can be
justified except in respect of individuals in which this personal
defectiveness has been definitely ascertained and judicially certified.
The Destitution Authority, having no means of ascertaining whether or
not situations are available, and no opportunity of experimenting upon
the personal willingness of its patients to accept and retain
wage-earning employment, can never sift out the voluntary from the
involuntary unemployed. Moreover, even if the Destitution Authority
possessed the machinery for searching out the men who really needed
reformatory treatment, but who did not apply for relief, and if it had
some infallible method of recognising which of them were involuntarily
idle, and which of them were unemployed through their own defects of
character, it would still be impossible to justify the grant of
compulsory powers of segregation, except to an Authority which was both
authorised and qualified to improve--not to pauperise and degrade--the
persons, unconvicted of any crime, whom it thus forcibly deprived of
their freedom.
We come to quite a different kind of compulsion when no one is forced to
become a pauper against his will, but those who have voluntarily entered
a Poor Law Institution may be, under certain circumstances, detained
against their will, either for their own advantage, or as a disciplinary
measure. In such a case Parliament has already shown itself willing to
grant certain minor powers of detention. But there is, as all Poor Law
administrators know, a practical difficulty in enforcing any such
detention at any time or in any way that is unpleasant to the common run
of patients, even when it is sought only to exercise the power for the
patient's own good. Experience shows that, if those who need the shelter
of the institution, or the care which it affords, believe that they will
be liable to be detained against their will, many of them simply will
not come in to be treated; and, least of all, if the liability to
compulsory detention is combined with the stigma and the degradation of
pauperism. Thus, compulsory detention is a natural and defective adjunct
of a "deterrent" Poor Law, because it scares people off; but it is a
fatal obstacle to the operations of a Poor Law which is intended to be
curative and restorative. The very patients to whom the "order for
continuous treatment" would be most appropriate and most useful will
refuse to come in. Without the will, the power, or the machinery for
"searching out" cases (other than those who apply for relief), which no
Poor Law Authority can ever have, or the power to compel them to come
in, irrespective of their pecuniary resources or their own consent,
which no Poor Law Authority is ever likely to be granted, any policy of
compulsory detention of those already in the Poor Law Institutions
becomes, on any policy of curative and restorative treatment, simply
suicidal. Those for whom the curative and restorative treatment is
especially designed do not present themselves.
(iii.) _The Principle of Universal Provision and a Destitution
Authority_
When we come to the third of the "Principles of 1907," that of Universal
Provision, we see at once that this is inherently inconsistent with the
very nature of a Destitution Authority. It is of the essence of a
Destitution Authority whatever its functions and whatever its
designation, that it should confine its ministrations to a particular
section of the community, namely those who are destitute. But with
regard to one subject after another, such as primary education or
sanitation, or the ordinary matters of municipal government, the
community has come to the conclusion that it is in the public interest
that these services should be rendered to all who need or claim them,
whatever their affluence. Thus, whenever it is decided to apply the
Principle of Universal Provision to any public service, either free of
any charge or upon payment of a stated price or contribution, this
public service necessarily falls to some Public Authority other than
that administering the Poor Law. And the further consequence arises that
at once we get, in respect of that particular service, an overlapping of
functions and duplication of work. The Destitution Authority is bound to
provide everything requisite (including the service in question) for its
destitute clients. The other Public Authority is bound to supply the
service in question to all who need it (including those who are
destitute). This overlapping and duplication has, as we have elsewhere
indicated, already gone very far. The Local Education Authorities are
now providing for children, irrespective of their affluence, not only
primary, secondary, and university education, but also, in many tens of
thousands of cases, medical inspection and treatment, meals at school,
and even complete board, lodging, and clothing. The Local Health
Authorities are now providing for the sick, irrespective of their
affluence, not only sanitary inspection and control, but also medical
diagnosis and treatment, nursing, and (in 700 municipal hospitals) even
maintenance. The Local Lunacy Authorities are now providing for all
grades of the mentally defective, irrespective of their affluence, not
only control, but also ameliorative treatment and maintenance. The Local
Pension Authorities are now providing for all persons over seventy who
do not possess more than twelve shillings a week of income, irrespective
of whether or not they are destitute, regular pensions from national
funds. The Local Unemployment Authorities (the Distress Committees) are
providing for all men who are unemployed, quite irrespective of their
affluence, various costly services, part of which are now in process of
being transferred to a National Authority (the National Labour
Exchange). It is not possible to stop this overlap and duplication by
establishing, as the Majority Report vainly desiderates, in every
district "one Authority and only one Authority" for all forms of public
assistance, for this would be, as we see, to merge in the Poor Law all
the services of Local Government, and to extend the "stigma of
pauperism" to the entire community. Indeed, the adoption of the
Principle of Universal Provision has already gone so far, and the
services of the separate Public Authorities are already so
all-embracing, that there is no section of the pauper host for which
they do not nowadays provide. Destitute children are already being
maintained by the Local Education Authorities, destitute sick by the
Local Health Authorities, destitute mentally defective by the Local
Lunacy Authorities, destitute aged by the Local Pension Authorities, and
destitute able-bodied by the Local Unemployment Authorities--actually in
greater numbers, in the aggregate, than those still under the Poor Law.
There are no paupers who do not belong to one or other of these five
sections. Hence the partial adoption by the community of this Principle
of Universal Provision has rendered unnecessary the retention of any
Destitution Authority. Its work is being done elsewhere.
We must remember that the Principle of Universal Provision in no way
implies or involves, either the gratuitousness of the service or the
charging of any uniform fee. The enforcement by the Local Health
Authority of a National Minimum of sanitation and water-supply for each
dwelling-house, does not mean that these things are necessarily provided
by the Local Health Authority itself, or free of charge. Most of the
service is ensured by an enforcement upon the owners and occupiers of
dwelling-houses of the fulfilment of their personal obligations. The
provision by the Local Education Authority of educational facilities for
all who claimed them was long accompanied by a universal charging of
fees, and is, above the primary grade, still usually made a matter of
charge. The Local Lunacy Authorities insist on payment being made in
respect of all their patients whose settlements they can trace,
recovering the full cost (apart from the Government Grant) either from
the patient's own estate, or from his relations, or from the Union to
which he belongs. Hence we see that the adoption of the Principle of
Universal Provision does not imply or involve the gratuitousness of the
service, or any diminution of the number or kinds of cases in which,
under the present law and practice, payment is enforced on the
individual or his relations. A transfer to the several Preventive
Authorities (the Education Authority, the Health Authority, the Lunacy
Authority, and the Unemployment Authority) of the various services now
combined under the Board of Guardians, could, in fact, hardly fail to
lead to a more systematic consideration and a far stricter enforcement
of the duty of repaying the cost of the treatment than the present
slipshod and logically inconsistent arrangements. What particular
services should be charged for to the recipients as such, and which to
the ratepayers as a whole; in what proportion the cost should be shared
between the patient, the Local Authority, and the National Government;
and at what rate and under what conditions any such charges should be
recovered by legal process in particular cases, are all of them
questions which should, in our view, be authoritatively determined by
Parliament, in a clear and consistent code relating to Charge and
Recovery of Cost.
CHAPTER VII
THE MINORITY REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION OF 1905-1909
We have described how the Majority Report of the Royal Commission
professedly accepts the "Principles of 1907," but attempts to graft
them upon a new Destitution Authority, and then inevitably finds
itself compelled--seeing that these principles are incompatible with
the very nature of a Destitution Authority--to revert, in reality,
to the "Principles of 1834." The Minority Report on the other hand,
carries the "Principles of 1907" to their logical conclusion; and at
the same time discovers to us the unifying principle on which they
have been unconsciously based, and by which alone their possible
costliness can be limited and justified. Thus the Minority Report
finds, at the stage to which English Local Government has now
attained, absolutely no need for a Poor Law Authority, or for any
policy of "relieving" destitution on any principles whatsoever. It
finds the other Public Authorities already dealing, on the Principles
of Curative Treatment, Compulsion, and Universal Provision, and as a
part of their normal functions in connection with the population at
large, with all the different sections of the pauper host; the Local
Education Authority providing for many destitute children of school
age; the Local Health Authority for many destitute infants, and sick
and infirm persons; the Local Lunacy Authority for actually a majority
of the destitute mentally defective; the Local Pension Authority for
hundreds of thousands of destitute aged; and the Local Unemployment
Authority, now to be reinforced by a National Unemployment Authority,
for innumerable destitute able-bodied. Thus, as already stated, there
are to-day actually more destitute persons being maintained at the
public expense outside the Poor Law than inside its scope. What seems
clearly inevitable is the continuation of this evolution, and the
transfer to these several Public Authorities _of the remainder of each
section of the destitute_ for whom the Board of Guardians is still
providing. Those children of school age who are still being looked
after by the Poor Law Authority will be increasingly entrusted to the
Local Education Authority; those sick persons who are still included
among the paupers will more and more be merged in those already under
treatment by the Local Health Authority; those mentally defective and
feeble-minded who still cumber the workhouses will presently be handed
over to the Lunacy Authorities; the remnant of the healthy aged who are
still classed as paupers will inevitably be dealt with among the much
larger number already under the care of the Local Pension Committee;
whilst those able-bodied persons who are being relieved as vagrants or
paupers, together with the "Unemployed" now on the registers of the
Distress Committees, will come under the supervision and control of the
new National Authority for the able-bodied, of which the beginning is
seen in the Labour Exchanges Act of 1909. This, we suggest, is plainly
the lesson of the day.
The gist of the Minority Report so far, at any rate, as the
non-able-bodied are concerned may be put even more shortly. The Poor Law
and the Poor Law Authorities--necessary at an earlier stage of Local
Government, when destitution would otherwise have gone undealt with--can
now simply be merged in the ordinary functions of municipal and county
administration Only in this way can we put an end to the costly and
extravagant overlapping that now exists between the Poor Law Authority,
on the one hand, and all the other Authorities on the other.
_The Principle of Prevention_
From the Minority Report proposals, thus succinctly put, we have so far
omitted what is really the kernel of the whole matter. These ordinary
functions of municipal and county administration--the hospitals and
schools and asylums and the domiciliary treatment of one kind or
another--are costly; and they are apparently especially costly the more
consciously and the more systematically we administer them on the
Principles of Curative Treatment, Compulsion, and Universal Provision.
If we hand over to the Local Education Authorities those children for
whom the Boards of Guardians still provide; to the Local Health
Authorities those infants, sick and infirm, who are still under the Poor
Law; to the Local Lunacy Authorities the feeble-minded still retained in
the workhouse; to the Local Pension Authorities the aged who have not
yet got national pensions; and to the Unemployment Authorities, local or
national, the vagrants and other able-bodied persons who are still among
the paupers, will not this involve, in comparison with the cost under
the Board of Guardians, a great increase of public expenditure, and can
any such increase be justified?
We need not, at this point, stay to argue that, owing to the practical
abandonment of the "Principles of 1834," the administration of the Board
of Guardians has itself become very costly; that children in Poor Law
Schools and patients in Poor Law Infirmaries often cost more per head
than children in the boarding schools of the Local Education Authority
and patients in the hospitals of the Local Health Authority; and that
seeing that the very existence of overlapping Public Authorities and
duplication of work is, in itself, a wasteful extravagance, there is no
reason to expect any increase in net cost from the mere fact of the
transfer.
In the view of the Minority Commissioners what is more important is that
the whole development of Municipal and County administration, of which
we may take the Public Health Acts as the leading example, is justified
to the ratepayer and to the economist, _by the still greater expense
that it prevents_. The Minority Report embodies a whole series of
proposals, which would amount, as has been expressly said, to setting on
foot a systematic crusade against the very occurrence of destitution in
any of its forms: 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 cause by Neglected Infancy and Neglected
Childhood.
The deliberate and systematic adoption of this Principle of Prevention
is the very basis of the Minority Report proposals. It is, in fact, this
principle which underlies all the three "Principles of 1907," that we
traced in a previous chapter as the outcome of all the practical
experience of the last seventy-five years. The Local Authorities do not
apply the Principle of Curative Treatment wholly, or even mainly, for
the pleasure or the advantage of the individual sufferer; what they have
in view is the prevention of future evils to the community from the
spread or recurrence of the disease, or the continuance of the
disability. When they apply the Principle of Compulsion, they do so, not
for its own sake, and not even for the immediate advantage that it
brings, but in order to prevent greater evils to the community in the
future, such as the existence of illiterate and wholly uneducated
persons, or the outbreaks of violent lunatics, or the more subtle
degradation of the Standard of Life by the procreation of the
feeble-minded and the undermining competition of degenerates. If, in one
service or another, the Principle of Universal Provision is adopted, it
is because we have become convinced, with regard to that service, that
Universal Provision, either gratuitously or at a charge, is actually
less expensive than any alternative; or that it is of such great
importance to the community to "maximise the consumption" that it may be
looked upon as really preventing some more costly evil. Throughout the
whole field we find this Principle of Prevention at once limiting the
real cost to the community, and justifying the outlay. In some cases,
indeed, the application of the Principle of Prevention is so successful
as to bring to an end the very outlay which it has inspired. To put up a
small-pox hospital is costly; but it may end in freeing the community
from small-pox, with the result that the building stands empty. By
starting special treatment for ring-worm and favus, the most
enterprising Local Education Authorities now see their way to the total
elimination of these diseases from their schools.
Now, the inherent vice of the vast expenditure at present incurred by
our Poor Law Authorities is, to the economist, not its amount, nor its
indiscriminateness, but the absence of this Principle of Prevention.
Except with regard to the small minority of "indoor" or "boarded-out"
children, and a small proportion of the sick, it cannot be said that the
Poor Law Authorities make any attempt to prevent the occurrence of
destitution. It is, indeed, not their business to do so.
Unlike the Local Health Authority, the Destitution Authorities can do
nothing to alter the social environment which is continually producing
new destitution. They can do nothing for the man who is just beginning
to suffer from phthisis, but who still earns wages and is not yet
destitute; though they know that, in a year or two, for lack of proper
provision at the incipient stage, the man will become gradually worse,
and will eventually enter the workhouse, long after the curable stage
has passed, merely to die. Unlike the Local Education Authorities, the
Destitution Authorities cannot reach out to prevent the neglect of
children which will, in time, produce "unemployables." The whole of the
action and the whole of the expenditure of the existing Boards of
Guardians, and equally that of the new Public Assistance Authorities
proposed in the Majority Report, must, in law, be confined to the relief
of a destitution which has already occurred.
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 to destitution, namely: (_a_) sickness and
feeble-mindedness, howsoever caused; (_b_) neglected infancy and
childhood, whosoever may be in fault; and (_c_) unemployment (including
"under-employment"), by whatsoever occasioned. If we could prevent
sickness and feeble-mindedness, howsoever 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 the United Kingdom nearly twenty millions per annum.
The proposal of the Minority Report 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--the Minority Commissioners 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. It is important to put the issue quite clearly before
the public. The systematic campaign for the prevention of the occurrence
of destitution, that the Minority Commissioners 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.[859]
[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.
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 small-pox, 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.
Viewed in this light, the fear of an increased charge upon public funds
fades away. Prevention is not only better, but also much cheaper, than
cure. What the Minority Report asserts--and the assertion cannot fairly
be judged except by reading the elaborate survey of the facts and the
whole careful argument, that it has now become possible, with the
application of this Principle of Prevention by the various Public
Authorities already at work, for destitution, as we now know it, to be
abolished and extirpated from our midst, to the extent, at least, that
plague and cholera and typhus and illiteracy and the labour of little
children in cotton factories have already been abolished. If this
confident assertion is only partially borne out by experience, it is
clear that, far from involving any increase of aggregate cost to the
community, the abolition of the Poor Law and of the Poor Law Authority
will have been a most economical measure.
_The "Moral Factor" in the Problem of Destitution_
There are those who see in this proposal to "break up" the Poor Law, and
to entrust the conduct of the campaign against destitution to the Local
Education Authority, the Local Health Authority, the Local Lunacy
Authority, the Local Pension Authority, and the National or Local
Authorities dealing with unemployment, an ignoring of what they call the
"moral factor." To speak of the prevention of destitution in terms of
the functions of these Authorities seems, to such critics, equivalent to
implying that all destitution is due to causes over which the individual
has no control--thus putting aside the contributing causes of idleness,
extravagance, drunkenness, gambling, and all sorts of irregularity of
life. But this is to misconceive the position taken up by the Minority
Commissioners, and to fail in appreciation of their proposals. They do
not deny--indeed, what observer could possibly deny or minimise?--the
extent to which the destitution of whole families is caused or
aggravated by personal defects and shortcomings in one or other of their
members, and most frequently in the husband and father upon whom the
family maintenance normally depends.
The Minority Commissioners certainly do not ignore the fact that what
has to be aimed at is not this or that improvement in material
circumstances or physical comfort, but an improvement in personal
character. To use a metaphor from the card table, this improvement of
personal character in the human subject is the "odd trick" for which
social reformers are struggling, and by which alone success can be
secured. But we cannot win the "odd trick" without winning the six
others.
Two considerations may make the position clear. However large may be the
part in producing destitution that we may choose to ascribe to the
"moral factor"--to defects or shortcomings in the character of the
unfortunate victims themselves--the fact that the investigations of the
Royal Commission indicate that at least nine-tenths of all the paupers
arrive at pauperism _along one or other of three roads_--the Road of
Neglected Childhood, the Road of Sickness and Feeble-mindedness, and the
Road of Unemployment (including "Under-employment"), must give us
pause. If it can be said that it is to some defect of moral character or
personal shortcoming that the sinking into destitution at the bottom of
the road is, in a final analysis, more correctly to be ascribed--though
on this point which among us is qualified to be a judge?--it is
abundantly clear that the assumed defect or shortcoming manifests itself
in, or at least is accompanied by, either child-neglect, sickness,
feeble-mindedness, or unemployment. These are the roads by which the
future pauper travels. Moreover, if these outward and visible signs of
the inward and spiritual shortcomings are sometimes caused by these
latter, it is at least equally true that the defects of character are
aggravated and confirmed by their evil accompaniments.
It is by dealing with the individual through these manifestations or
accompaniments of his inward defect, that we can most successfully bring
to bear our curative and restorative influences. What is certain is that
if we could put an end to neglected infancy, neglected childhood, and
neglected youth, by whomsoever occasioned; if we could prevent all
preventable sickness and infirmity, however caused; if we could either
ameliorate or segregate the feeble-minded; if we could make impossible
any long-continued unemployment and any chronic "under-employment,"
whatever its origin, we should have prevented the occurrence of
nine-tenths of the destitution that is now annually created.
The second consideration is that all experience shows that it is
impossible even to begin to deal successfully with personal character
until we dismiss the idea of relieving destitution as such, and go
boldly for a definite policy of preventing or arresting the operation of
each separate cause of destitution. Take, for instance, the destitution
brought about by drink. Under the Poor Law--under any Poor Law--the
drunkard cannot be touched until he is in a state of destitution. A man
may be neglecting his children, leaving his wife without medical
attendance, or maltreating a feeble-minded child, and yet no Poor Law
Authority can do anything to prevent the destitution which will
probably ensue. It is only when the man is suffering from delirium
tremens that he is taken into the workhouse, put into a clean bed, with
two attendants to look after him, dosed with the costly and agreeable
morphia, and then, when he has recovered from his debauch and can return
to his work, let out to begin his evil courses again. Under the system
proposed by the Minority Report of making the Education Authority, the
Public Health Authority, and the Lunacy Authority responsible for
searching out the incipient destitution of the neglected child, the sick
wife, and the maltreated feeble-minded child, the drinking head of the
family would have been called to book long before he found himself in
the comfortable quarters of the workhouse. Indeed, it seems apparent
that, once the Public Health Authority was responsible for searching out
diseases, one of the first diseases which would call for systematic
prevention and cure would be chronic alcoholism.
Take, again, the destitution brought about by unemployment. So long as
this is relieved by a Destitution Authority there is no chance of
enforcing the responsibility of every able-bodied person to maintain
himself and his family. We may, of course, deter men from getting relief
out of the rates, but we shall not deter them from being parasitic on
other people, or from allowing their dependants to sink into a state of
destitution. If, however, we had an Unemployment Authority responsible
for either finding a man a job or placing him in training, we could for
the first time strictly enforce on every man and woman who were, as a
matter of fact, failing to maintain themselves and their dependants, the
obligation to make use of this organ of the State. When the visitor from
the Children's Care Committee discovered an underfed child, or the
Health Visitor discovered a woman about to be confined without proper
nursing and medical attendance, it would be no use for the man to say he
was out of work. It would be unnecessary to inquire why he was out of
work, whether his unemployment was due to his own inefficiency or to the
bankruptcy of his late employer. He would simply be required to be at
the Labour Exchange, where he would either be provided with a job or
found the means of improving his working capacity while he was waiting
for a job. If it were discovered by actual observation of the man's
present behaviour that there was in him a grave moral defect not
otherwise remediable, he would have to submit himself, in a detention
colony, to a treatment which would be at once curative and deterrent in
the old Poor Law sense. It is, in fact, exactly because _it has been
impossible to grapple with the moral factor by merely relieving
destitution that experienced workers among the poor have turned away
from the whole conception of a Poor Law and the relief of destitution,
in favour of a systematic attempt to prevent the occurrence of
destitution_.
_The Sphere of Voluntary Agencies in the Prevention of Destitution_
Both the Majority Report and the Minority Report lay stress on the
importance of enlisting the assistance of voluntary agencies and private
charity in the task of dealing with destitution. Both schemes of reform
allot a large and important sphere to these auxiliaries. But there is
the widest possible difference, both in principle and in practicable
applications, between the two proposals.
To the Majority what seems desirable is that the army of destitute
persons needing assistance should be divided into two classes--those who
can best be helped by private charity, and those for whom public
assistance is most appropriate. These two classes should, it is
asserted, be kept, from the outset, wholly separate, to be dealt with by
two vertically co-ordinate authorities--the Public Assistance Committee,
an official body, dispensing public funds, and the Voluntary Aid
Committee, made up of voluntary charitable workers, dispensing private
funds. Certain classes of applicants for assistance who come for the
first time are to be required, whether they wish it or not, to be
assigned to the Voluntary Aid Committee, which is to be free to deal
with the cases as it chooses. Those only whom it refuses to aid, or
refuses to continue to aid, are to be relegated to the Public Assistance
Committee, which is to be bound to make its aid in some way "less
eligible" than that which the Voluntary Aid Committee would have given.
The explanation of this remarkable proposal, with its assumed separation
of the poor into what we may not unfairly call the sheep and the goats,
lies in the fact that it is to private charity, organised in the
Voluntary Aid Committee, that the Majority Commissioners look for what
they call "preventive work." But this is to use the word "preventive" as
meaning, not in the least what the Minority Commissioners mean by that
term, but merely the saving of selected persons from the stigma of
pauperism and from the assumedly unsatisfactory method of treatment by
the Public Authority. This difference in the use of the word "prevent"
runs through all the arguments and proposals of the two Reports, and
explains many of the divergencies between their specific
recommendations. When the word "prevention" is used in the Majority
Report it nearly always means the prevention of pauperism; whenever it
is used in the Minority Report it invariably means the prevention of
destitution.
The Minority Commissioners dissent emphatically from the proposal to
separate the poor into two classes, and to free the Public Authority
from all responsibility for the treatment of the one, whilst excluding
the voluntary workers from all share in the treatment of the other. Such
a proposal has, among other objectionable features, the cardinal defect
that it obscures the importance, and actually stands in the way of any
effective measures for preventing the occurrence of destitution. It is
always possible for Voluntary Agencies to save selected persons from
pauperism; but such Agencies can seldom do anything to prevent, even in
these selected persons, the occurrence of destitution. When a phthisical
man, unable any longer to earn wages, is so far brought low as to apply
for assistance, the Voluntary Aid Committee may help him to live, may
procure him medical advice, may gain him admission to a Voluntary
Sanatorium, if a vacancy can be found; and may, eventually, help his
already infected family to bury him. But all this is "Early Victorian"
in its conception. It belongs to the time when sickness had to be
accepted as the "Visitation of God." The Voluntary Aid Committee, in
thus preventing that man from becoming a pauper, will have done nothing
towards preventing the destitution with which he has already been
smitten before he comes to them, and will have accomplished nothing
towards saving others from succumbing in the same way. The destitution
in this case might have been prevented if the Local Health Authority had
pursued more energetically its campaign against preventable sickness; if
it had so improved the environment as to bring sunshine and fresh air
into the working-class street, and insisted on good sanitation of the
dwelling-house; if it had "searched out" the case, so as to discover it
long before application was made, when the disease was still in its
incipient stage, before destitution had set in, and before the rest of
the family was infected; if the patient had, at this early stage, been,
by a short sojourn in the Municipal Infirmary, effectively taught how to
live; if his home had then been kept under systematic observation; and
if the National Labour Exchange had found him suitable outdoor
employment. But these things are out of the reach of Voluntary Agencies,
as they are beyond the ken of any Destitution Authority.
The Minority Commissioners assign to Voluntary Agencies quite a
different sphere of activity--one, indeed, which the more progressive
among them have already claimed as their own. The time has gone by when
we can separate the poor into two classes, so as to confine the
assistance of the Voluntary Agencies to one only of these classes, the
smaller of the two, and so as to restrict their work to the relief of a
destitution which has already occurred, instead of the more hopeful task
of helping to prevent the very occurrence of destitution, by arresting
its several causes. It is impossible in the twentieth century for the
Local Authority to part with its responsibility as regards any of the
inhabitants of its district; but, on the other hand, it is coming more
and more clearly to be seen that it is impracticable for it to fulfil
this responsibility except by the aid of a large number of volunteer
workers. The modern relation between the public authority and the
voluntary worker is one of systematically organised partnership under
expert direction. Thus, according to the proposals of the Minority
Report, every case requiring notice or action of any sort will be dealt
with both by voluntary workers and by the public authority, each in its
own appropriate sphere, and each according to its special opportunities.
The children of the district will not be divided between a Voluntary Aid
Committee and the Public Assistance Committee, some being dealt with
wholly by the one and the rest wholly by the other. The Local Education
Authority must remain wholly responsible for preventing any kind of
neglect in all the children of the district; but we already see its
work, in the most progressive districts, dependent for its success upon
the co-operation of a whole series of School Managers and Children's
Care Committees, Country Holiday Fund Committees and "Spectacle
Committees," and Apprenticeship Committees and what not. The Local
Health Authority cannot cede to any Voluntary Agencies its
responsibilities for the maintenance in health of all the population of
its district; but the Medical Officer of Health needs to recruit, and
is, in scores of towns, already recruiting, a whole army of volunteers
in the Health Visitors, the organisers of "Schools for Mothers," the
nursing associations, the managers of convalescent homes, the
"after-care" committees, the committees of voluntary institutions for
cripples and epileptics, and so on. Even with regard to the newer public
service in connection with mentally defective children, aged pensioners,
or the unemployed, abundant use is already beginning to be made of the
voluntary worker. The Minority Commissioners look, under their scheme,
for an enormous extension of the sphere for volunteer work of this sort,
organised in connection with one or other of the Committees of the
County or Country Borough Council. Each Committee needs its own fringe
of voluntary workers, who will act as its eyes and ears and fingers, in
keeping touch with the huge masses of population with which it has to
deal, and will enable it both to "search out" all the cases that need
attention, irrespective of any application, and to invest the official
machinery with that touch of personal interest and human sympathy which
is so necessary for its successful working. And that fringe is already
there. It is significant that the immediate result of the assumption by
the London Education Authority of its new duties of feeding and
medically inspecting the children of school age was the call, by the
London County Council, for 7000 volunteers to fill its Children's Care
Committees alone. The Minority Report involves, in short, vastly greater
numbers of voluntary workers than does the Majority Report, and assigns
to them both a more important and a more hopeful sphere than the
helping of particular individuals to "keep off the rates."[860]
[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.
CHAPTER VIII
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
We may now attempt to sum up the position as it presents itself, after
the deliverance of the Royal Commission, to the statesman and to the
public opinion of 1910.
There is first the chaos of authorities, the overlapping of functions
and the duplication of services, resulting in the expenditure, out of
rates and taxes in the United Kingdom, on the maintenance, schooling,
and medical attendance of the poorer classes of nearly seventy millions
sterling annually. During the past five years, even whilst the Royal
Commission was sitting, this multiplication of overlapping authorities
has proceeded at a great pace. In 1905 the Unemployed Workmen Act
created a rival authority for relieving the able-bodied man. In 1906 the
Education (Provision of Meals) Act, in 1907 the Education
(Administrative Provisions) Act, and in 1908 the Education (Scotland)
Act and the Children Act, set up the Local Education Authority as a
rival to the Poor Law Authority in regard to providing food, medical
attendance, and all other necessaries for children found destitute at
school. In 1908, too, the Old Age Pensions Act established a rival
authority for the maintenance of the destitute aged. Meanwhile, the
Local Health Authorities have been told to take over the destitute man
who has phthisis, and to extend in many directions the range of their
work; the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy has declared that a new
authority must be found for the vagrants, and the Royal Commission on
the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded has come to the very
authoritative conclusion that all grades and kinds of mentally defective
persons must be taken out of the Poor Law altogether. The result is
that, already in 1910, the number of persons being actually fed at the
public expense by the Local Education Authorities, the Local Health
Authorities, the Local Lunacy Authorities, the Local Unemployment
Authorities, and the Local Pension Authorities, _exceeds, in the
aggregate, the number of persons being fed by the Poor Law Authorities_.
For every separate section of the pauper host there are now at least two
Public Authorities at work--sometimes three or four Public
Authorities--with duplicated machinery, overlapping services, officers
competing with each other on rival principles of action, _in not a few
cases simultaneously providing for the same persons without knowing of
each other's work_.
The Poor Law Authorities themselves, and the bulk of their work, the
Royal Commission found extremely unsatisfactory, and are unanimous in
condemning, not so much from any personal shortcomings of the 24,000
guardians as from the nature of the task to which they had been set. The
assistance that they dispense, by its very nature, comes too late to be
preventive of the occurrence of destitution, and, in the majority of
cases, too late to be curative. Whatever may be decided as to its
successor, it is clear that the existing Poor Law system, and the
existing Poor Law Authority, must, to use the expressive words of Mr.
Balfour's election address, be "scrapped."
The Majority Commissioners hold, on the assumption that every case of
pauperism implies a moral defect, that there should be, in each
locality, one Authority and only one Authority to deal with persons
requiring maintenance from public funds. They, therefore, recommend the
establishment of a new "Destitution Authority" to deal only with persons
who are destitute, and only when they are destitute; and for such
persons to provide, from birth to burial, in distinctively Poor Law
Institutions, or under distinctively Poor Law officials, all that is
required. It is admitted that this involves the repeal of the Unemployed
Workmen Act and the Education (Provision of Meals) Act. We must leave
politicians to judge whether it is practicable to thrust the unemployed
workman, and the child found hungry at school, back into the Poor Law,
even if the Poor Law is called by another name. But even if this were
done, the Majority Report would still leave the overlap as regards the
destitute aged which is involved in the Old Age Pensions Act; the
overlap as regards the destitute sick which is involved in the
evergrowing activities of the 700 rate-maintained municipal hospitals of
the Local Health Authorities; the overlap with regard to destitute
children which is involved by the activities of the Local Education
Authorities and the Home Office under the Industrial Schools Acts, and
now under the Children Act. And the Majority Commissioners cannot, it
appears, make up their minds[861] whether or not they wish the
recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Feeble-minded to be
carried into law, and thus end the overlap between the Poor Law
Authority and the Lunacy Authority.
[861] See Appendix B (extract from the Minority Report for
Scotland).
The Majority Report purports to give the new "Public Assistance
Authority" some guidance as to policy. It is to relieve none but those
at present entitled to relief, and therefore, in all cases, to wait
until destitution has set in. Thus the aid will, as now, come too late
to prevent or to cure. On the other hand, the "deterrent" attitude of
1834 is to be given up; the workhouse is to be abolished; and "curative
and restorative treatment," at home or in an appropriate institution, is
to be afforded to every case. Yet in order to afford to certain classes
of applicants methods of relief and treatment more suitable than any
Public Assistance Authority is to be allowed to afford, a complete
system of Voluntary Aid Committees is to be set up, and to such
Committees these particular applicants are to be required to apply,
whether or not they prefer charity to public aid.
Against these proposals of the Majority Report the Minority
Commissioners protest that they will not put a stop to the calamitous
and extravagant overlapping of services and duplication of work which
now exists or to the demoralising chaos that prevails as to recovery of
cost. Moreover, the Minority Commissioners hold that if the community
restricts itself to relieving persons _at the crisis of their
destitution_, and this is a necessary condition of any Poor Law, or of
the action of any Destitution Authority, whatever its name, the
community cannot, without grave financial danger, and still graver
danger to character, depart from the principles of 1834. However
unpopular may be the doctrine, it is still true that if destitute
persons are to be given "curative and restorative treatment" without
deterrent conditions and without the stigma of pauperism, a constantly
increasing number of persons will, _unless they are in some way
prevented from sinking into destitution_, come in and out of the Poor
Law as it suits their convenience, to their own grave demoralisation and
at a ruinous cost to the nation. But the heart and conscience of the
community will not tolerate the subjection of all the million paupers
indiscriminately to deterrent conditions, especially as these have now
been proved to be seriously detrimental in their effects. The whole
phraseology of the Majority Report, and its proposals themselves, afford
convincing testimony to the necessity of giving up the idea of a
"deterrent" Poor Law. And the Majority Report gives us no substitute for
this deterrence--unless, indeed, it can really be imagined that the
operation of the Voluntary Aid Committees is somehow to protect us.
The only effective substitute for deterrence is, the Minority
Commissioners suggest, the Principle of Prevention--prevention, that is,
not merely of pauperism, but of the very occurrence of destitution. This
negatives the very idea of a Destitution Authority, whatsoever its
designation or its policy. It is in vain to hope that any Poor Law, or
any Destitution Authority, however improved, can ever prevent or even
diminish destitution; because, confined as it is to dealing with a
destitution which has occurred, it is inherently precluded by its very
nature from attacking any of the causes which produce the destitution
that is perpetually coming on its hands. Thus, the twenty millions
sterling now spent annually in the United Kingdom on the mere relief of
destitution do practically nothing to prevent the creation, year by
year, of new masses of destitution. Even the educational work which the
Poor Law Authorities do for the Poor Law children is largely vitiated by
their inherent disability to exercise any supervision over the life of
the child before and after the crisis of destitution. The greater part
of the expenditure on the Poor Law Medical Service is, so far as any
gain to the health of the nation is concerned, wasted because no sick
person can legally be treated in the incipient stage of his disease when
it may still be curable; the Poor Law doctor must always wait until
destitution has set in! This--so the Minority Commissioners claim--must
necessarily be the same in the case of the "Public Assistance Authority"
proposed in the Majority Report, or, indeed, in the case of anybody set
to administer a Poor Law. On the other hand, the fact that universal
provision of some services to all persons, whether destitute or not, has
been adopted by Parliament, has led to a duplication and confusions of
functions between the old Poor Law Authority and the new Preventive
Authorities. This daily-increasing overlap and duplication can only be
ended by either stripping the new Preventive Authorities of functions
entrusted to them within the last few years by Parliament--which is
plainly impossible--or by abolishing the Poor Law. Hence the only safe,
as well as the only advantageous way out of this confusion is to go
forward on the Principle of Prevention. This Principle of Prevention may
take the form, on the one hand, of altering the environment, on the
other, of treating the individual. But if the cost of curative
treatment, or even of altering the environment, is to be borne by the
community, it is essential, on grounds of economy, that there should be
a searching out of all incipient cases and such a disciplinary
supervision as will prevent persons from becoming destitute through
neglected infancy, neglected childhood, preventable illness, and
voluntary unemployment.
In this disciplinary supervision over those who repeatedly fall into the
morass of destitution, or who, by failing to fulfil their social
obligations, show signs of entering upon the descent into that morass,
we see a more humane, as well as a more effective form of "deterrence"
than that of the 1834 Poor Law. The newer preventive authorities deter
from falling into destitution, not by fear of what will happen when the
fall has taken place, but by timely insistence on the performance of the
social duties that will prevent the fall. The parents who, under the
pressure of the Local Education Authority, are induced and compelled to
send their children to school from 5 to 14 years of age are not only
effectually "deterred" from living on their children's earnings, but are
also prevented from so far neglecting their offspring as to fail to get
them to school regularly and punctually, or to fail to maintain them in
a state fit for admission to school, according to a standard that is
constantly rising. In some districts the Local Education Authority has
even gone far, by means of inspection, instruction, exhortation, and, in
the last resort, prosecution, towards effectually "deterring" parents
from letting their children become verminous. Deterrent action of this
kind by the Local Education Authority has been accompanied by
corresponding action by the Local Health Authority, which has--again by
inspection, instruction, exhortation, and, in the last resort,
prosecution--induced many occupiers of tenement dwellings to prevent
these from remaining verminous or otherwise grossly below the current
standard of sanitation. This form of deterrence it is that lies at the
base of all our Public Health and Factory Legislation; a deterrence that
leads the owners and occupiers to bestir themselves to keep their
dwellings up to the current local standard of healthiness, the occupiers
of factories to maintain these in accordance with the requirements of
the law, and the operatives in unhealthy trades to observe the
precautions prescribed against disease. The same idea of a preventive
deterrence will inspire the Local Lunacy Authorities, once they are made
responsible for the feeble-minded, to insist on proper care and control
for those helpless girl mothers whom the Poor Law must perforce leave
free to propagate a feeble-minded race. In the same way the Minority
Commissioners believe that the new National Authority for Unemployment,
of which we may detect the beginnings in the National Labour Exchange,
will be able to "deter" men from becoming unemployed, not only by
actually preventing many unnecessary breaches of continuity in
employment (by equalising, year by year, the aggregate demand for
labour, regularising employment in the seasonal trades, and
"decasualising" the casual labourer in the ways elaborately described in
the Report), but also by putting the necessary pressure on the will of
those who are "born tired" or who have become "unemployable," either to
accept and retain the situations that will be definitely offered to
them, or else to submit themselves to disciplinary training, with the
reformatory Detention Colony in the background.
We venture to end this exposition of the philosophy of the Minority
Report of 1909 by a repetition of the words that we used, perhaps
prematurely, to describe those "Principles of 1907," to which, as we
have demonstrated, three-quarters of a century of experience has
empirically brought the Local Government Board itself. These principles,
we pointed out--in contrast to the _laisser faire_ of 1834--"embody the
doctrine of a mutual obligation between the individual and the
community. The universal maintenance of a definite minimum of civilised
life--seem to be in the interest of the community no less than in that
of the individual--becomes the joint responsibility of an indissoluble
partnership. The community recognises a duty in the curative treatment
of all who are in need of it--a duty most clearly seen in the medical
treatment of the sick and the education of the children. Once this
corporate responsibility is accepted, it becomes a question whether the
universal provision of any necessary common service is not the most
advantageous method of fulfilling such responsibility--a method which
has, at any rate, the advantage of leaving unimpaired the salutary
inequality between the thrifty and the unthrifty. It is, moreover, an
inevitable complement of this corporate responsibility, and of the
recognition of the indissoluble partnership, that new and enlarged
obligations, unknown in a state of _laisser faire_, are placed upon the
individual--such as the obligation of the parent to keep his children in
health, and to send them to school at the time and in the condition
insisted upon; the obligation of the young person to be well conducted
and to learn; the obligation of the adult not to infect his environment,
and to submit when required to hospital treatment. To enforce these
obligations--all new since 1834--upon the individual citizen, experience
shows that some other pressure on his volition is required than merely
leaving him alone. Hence the community, by the combination of the
principles of Curative Treatment, Universal Provision and Compulsion,
deliberately 'weights the alternatives,' in the guise of a series of
experiments upon volition. The individual retains as much freedom of
choice as--if not more than--he ever enjoyed before. But the father
finds it made more easy for him to get his children educated, and made
more disagreeable for him to neglect them. It is made more easy for the
mother to keep her infants in health, and more disagreeable for her to
let them die. The man suffering from disease finds it made more easy for
him to get cured without infecting his neighbours, and more
disagreeable for him not to take all the necessary precautions. The
labour exchanges and the farm colonies aim at making it more easy for
the wage-earner to get a situation; perhaps the reformatory
establishment, with powers of detention, is needed to make it more
disagreeable for him not to accept and retain that situation." It is, in
short, this doctrine of a mutual obligation--this fundamental principle
that social health is not a matter for the individual alone, nor for the
Government alone, but depends essentially on the joint responsibility of
the individual and the community for the maintenance of a definite
minimum of civilised life--that inspires every detail of the Minority
Report.
APPENDIX A
MEMORANDUM BY THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD AS TO THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES FOR
POOR LAW PURPOSES AND THE OUT-RELIEF ORDERS IN FORCE AT THE END OF THE
YEARS 1847, 1871, 1906.
The following table exhibits all the unions, incorporations, and
separate parishes which existed for Poor Law purposes on the 31st
December in the years 1847, 1871, and 1906 respectively. Where any such
union, etc., did not exist at the end of 1847 or ceased to exist before
the end of 1906 a note has been made in the margin showing, as nearly as
the materials readily available will permit,[862] the position of the
parishes comprised in the union, etc., with respect to the Poor Law
administration during the periods when the unions, etc., were
non-existent.
[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.
The table shows the nature of the Poor Law (administrative) area at each
of the three selected dates. The letters =S.P.= indicate that at the
relevant date the Poor Law area was a separate parish administered by a
board of guardians under the Poor Law Acts Amendment Act 1834; =L.P.= that
the area was a separate parish administered under the provisions of a
Local Act; =G.L.= that the area was an incorporation formed under
Gilbert's Act (22 Geo. 3 c. 83); =L.I.= that the area was an incorporation
formed under a Local Act. The letter =U= indicates that at the relevant
date the Poor Law area was a union formed under the Act of 1834, though
before or after that date the area was of another nature, as indicated.
Where no letters in heavy type are inserted, the Poor Law area was
formed as a union under the Act of 1834, and no change in its nature had
taken place.
The table shows whether an Outdoor Relief Prohibitory, Outdoor Labour
Test, or Outdoor Relief Regulation Order was in force in each of the
unions, etc., at the selected dates. The letter P indicates that at the
relevant date a Prohibitory Order was in force; T, that an Outdoor
Labour Test Order was so in force; and R, that a Regulation Order was so
in force. In some cases it is difficult for various reasons to state
positively whether a Prohibitory, Test, or Regulation Order was in
force. Such cases have been marked with a "?"
In a few cases (distinguished in the table by the letter C) there were
in force, at the end of 1847, regulations in regard to a labour test for
outdoor paupers, which are set out in the Appendix at the end of the
table.
In the cases of Nottingham and St. Pancras the outdoor relief
regulations at the end of 1847 were in special terms. These regulations
are set out in the Appendix.
It is to be noted that at the end of 1847, about 220 separate parishes
(principally in the North of England, about 150 being in the West Riding
of Yorkshire) were still outside any incorporation or union, and were
managed under the provisions of 43 Eliz. c. 2. At 1871 these parishes
had nearly all been included in various unions, only the four Inns of
Court[863] and the Charterhouse remaining. In 1877 the Charterhouse was
added to Holborn Union.
[863] See the proviso to sec. 43 of the Divided Parishes, etc.,
Act 1876.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD, S.W.
_10th May 1907._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unions, etc. | End of |End of | End of | Notes.
| 1847. | 1871.| 1906. |
------------------- +---------+-------+--------+------------------------
Aberayron |P. |P. |P. |
[now Aberaeron] | | | |
Abergavenny |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |See Bedwellty.
Aberystwith |P. |P. |P. |
[now Aberystwyth] | | | |
Abingdon |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Albans, St. |P. |P. |P.T. |
Alcester |P. |P. |P.T. |
Alderbury. See | | | |
Salisbury. | | | |
Alnwick |P. |P. |P. |
Alresford |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Alston-with- |P.(S.P.) |P.(S.P)|P.(S.P.)|
Garrigill | | | |
Alstonfield |Nil.(G.I)|... |... |Dissolved in 1869.
| | | | Parishes added to
| | | | Ashbourne and Leek
| | | | Unions.
Alton |P. |P. |P. | See Headley.
Altrincham. See | | | |
Bucklow. | | | |
Alverstoke |Nil.(G.I)|R.(S.P)|R.(S.P.)|Incorporation dissolved
and Gosport | | | | in 1868 and board of
| | | | guardians for separate
| | | | parish declared.
Amersham |P. |P. |P. |
Amesbury |P. |P. |P. |
Ampthill |P. |P. |P. |See Woburn.
Andover |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Anglesey |T. |R. |P. |Dissolved in 1869, and
| | | | included in East
| | | | Preston Union.
Asaph, St. |P. |P. |P. |
Ash |C.(G.I.) |... |... |Dissolved in 1869, and
| | | | parishes added to
| | | | Farnham, Guildford,
| | | | and Hartley Wintney
| | | | Unions.
Ashbourne |Nil. |P. |P. |See Alstonfield.
Ashby-de-la-Zouch |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Ashford, East |P. |P. |P. |
Ashford, West |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Ashton-under-Lyne |T. |R. |R. |
Aston |P. |P. |P.T. |
Atcham |P. |P. |P. |See Bedworth.
Auckland. |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Axbridge |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Axminster |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Aylesbury |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Aylsham |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Aysgarth |... |P. |P. |Formed in 1869 out of
| | | | parishes in Bainbridge
| | | | Incorporation with two
| | | | or three other
| | | | parishes.
| | | |
Bainbridge |Nil.(G.I)|... |... |Dissolved in 1869. See
| | | | See Aysgarth Union.
Bakewell |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Bala |P. |P. |P. |
Banbury |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Bangor and |C. |P. |P. |
Beaumaris | | | |
Barnet |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Barnsley |Nil. |R. |R. |Formed in 1849. In 1847
| | | | all parishes were
| | | | managed under 43 Eliz.
Barnstaple |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Barrow-in-Furness |... |... |R. |Formed in 1876.
| | | | Formerly part of
| | | | Ulverston Union.
Barrow-upon-Soar |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Barton Regis |P.T. |P.T. |... |Named "Clifton Union"
| | | | till 1877. Parishes
| | | | added to Bristol,
| | | | Chipping Sodbury, and
| | | | Thornbury Poor Law
| | | | Unions.
Barton-upon-Irwell |... |R. |R. |Formed in 1849.
| | | | Formerly part of
| | | | Chorlton Union.
Barwick in Elmet |Nil.(G.I)|... | |Parishes added to Great
| | | | Ouseburn, Leeds,
| | | | Pontefract,
| | | | Tadcaster, and
| | | | Wetherby Unions.
Basford |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Basingstoke |P. |P. |P. |
Bath |P. |P. |P. |
Battle |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Beaminster |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Bedale |P. |P. |P. |
Bedford |P. |P. |P. |
Bedminster. See | | | |
Long Ashton. | | | |
Bedwellty. | |P. |P.T. |Formed in 1849.
| | | |Formerly part of
| | | | Abergavenny Union.
Bedworth |Nil. | | |Dissolved in 1851.
|(G.I.) | | | Parishes added to
| | | | Atherstone, Foleshill,
| | | | Hinckley, Lutterworth,
| | | | Market Bosworth, and
| | | | Rugby Unions.
Belford |P. |P. |P. |
Bellingham |P. |P. |P. |
Belper |P. |P. |P. |
Berkhampstead |P. |P. |P. |
Bermondsey |Nil. |R. |R. |Named "St. Olave's
(formerly |(U.) |(U.) |(S.P.) | Union" till 1904. Now
St. Olave's | | | | named Bermondsey
Union). | | | | Parish. See also St.
| | | | Mary, Rotherhithe, St.
| | | | Mary Magdalen,
| | | | Bermondsey.
Bermondsey, |Nil. | | |Included in St. Olave's
St. Mary | | | | Union (now called
Magdalen Parish |(S.P.) | | | Bermondsey Parish)
| | | | in 1869.
Berwick-on-Tweed |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Bethnal Green |Nil. |R. |R. |
|(S.P.) |(S.P) |(S.P.) |
Beverley |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Bichester |P. |P. |P. |
Bideford |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Biggleswade |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Billericay |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Billesdon |P. |P. |P. |
Bingham |P. |P. |P. |
Birkenhead | |R. |R. |Formed in 1861.
| | | | Formerly part of
| | | | Wirrall Union.
Birmingham |Nil. |R. |R. |
|(L.P.) |(L.P) |(L.P.) |
Bishop Stortford |P. |P. |P. |
Blaby |P. |P. |P. |
Blackburn |Nil. |R. |R. |
Blandford |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Blean |P. |P. |P. |
Blofield |P. |P. |P. |
Blything |P. |P. |P. |
Bodmin |C. |P. |P. |
Bolton |Nil. |R. |R. |
Bootle |C. |P. |P. |
Bosmere and |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Claydon | | | |
Boston |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Boughton, Great. | | | |
See Tarvin. | | | |
Bourn |P. |P. |P. |
Brackley |P. |P. |P. |
Bradfield |P. |P. |P. |
Bradford, Wilts |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Bradford, Yorks |T. |R. |R. |Parishes in Bradford
|(U.) |(U.) |(S.P.) | Union united in 1897
| | | | with certain parishes
| | | | in North Bierley Union
| | | | to form the Township
| | | | of Bradford. For Poor
| | | | Law purposes the area
| | | | of this township is
| | | | named the Bradford
| | | | Poor Law Union
Braintree |P. |P.T. |P.T. |See Witham.
Bramley |Nil. |Nil. |P.T. |Formed in 1862. In 1847
| | | | all the parishes were
| | | | managed under 43 Eliz.
Brampton |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Brecknock |P. |P. |P. |
Brentford |C. |R. |R. |
Bridge |P. |P. |P. |
Bridgend and |P. |P. |P.T. |
Cowbridge | | | |
Bridgnorth |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Bridgwater |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Bridlington |C. |P. |P. |
Bridport |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Brighton |Nil(L.P.)|Nil(LP)|Nil(L.P)|
Brinton |Nil(G.I.)|... |... |Dissolved in 1869.
| | | | Parishes added to
| | | | Walsingham Union.
Bristol |Nil(L.I.)|R.(LI) |R.(S.P.)|Formerly an
| | | | incorporation,
| | | | now a parish, and
| | | | _see_ Barton Regis.
Brixworth |P. |P. |P. |
Bromley |P. |P. |P.T. |
Bromsgrove |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Bromyard |P. |P. |P. |
Buckingham |P. |P. |P. |
Bucklow |P. |P.T. |P.T. |Named "Altrincham
| | | | Union" till 1895.
Builth |T. |R. |R. |
Buntingford |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Burnley |Nil. |R. |R. |
Burton-upon-Trent |P. |P. |P.T. |
Bury |Nil. |R. |R. |
Bury St. Edmunds |P. (L.I.)|P.(LI.)|P.(S.P.)|Incorporation till
| | | | parish under Poor Law
| | | | Amendment Act.
| | | |
Caistor |P. |P. |P. |See Grimsby.
Calne |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Camberwell |Nil(S.P.)|R(S.P) |R.(S.P.)|
Cambridge |P. (U.) |P.T.(U)|P.T.(SP)|Parishes united to form
| | | | one parish in 1900.
Camelford |C. |P.T. |P.T. |
Cannock |P. |P. |P.T. |Named "Penkridge Union"
| | | | till 1877.
Canterbury |Nil(L.I.)|P.(L.I.)|P.(S.P)|Incorporation till
| | | | 1881. Then a union,
| | | | now a parish.
Cardiff |P. |P.T. |P.T. |See Pontypridd.
Cardigan |P. |P. |P. |
Carlisle |T. |R. |R. |
Carlton |Nil(G.I.)|... |... |Dissolved in 1869.
| | | | Parishes added to
| | | | Holbeck, Hunslet,
| | | | Leeds, Wetherby, and
| | | | Wharfedale Unions.
Carmarthen |P. |P. |P. |
Carnarvon |Nil. |P. |P. |
Castle Ward |P. |P. |P. |
Catherington |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Caton |Nil(G.I.)|... |... |Dissolved in 1869.
| | | | Parishes added to
| | | | Lancaster and
| | | | Lunesdale Unions.
Caxton and Arlington|P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Cerne |P. |P. |P. |
Chailey |P. |P. |... |Dissolved in 1898.
| | | | Parishes added to Lewes
| | | | Union.
Chapel-en-le-Frith |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Chard |P. |P. |P. |
Chelmsford |P. |P. |P. |
Chelsea |Nil(S.P.)|R (S.P.)|R.(S.P)|
Cheltenham |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Chepstow |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Chertsey |T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Chester |Nil(L.I.)|P.T.(U.)|P.T.(U)|Incorporation dissolved
| | | | and union formed in
| | | | 1869. In 1871 many
| | | | parishes added from
| | | | Great Boughton (Tarvin)
| | | | and Hawarden Unions.
Chesterfield |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Chester-le-Street |P. |P. |P. |
Chesterton |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Chichester |Nil(L.I.)|R.(L.I.)|R.(S.P)|Incorporation dissolved
| | | | and separate parish
| | | | declared in 1896.
Chippenham |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Chipping Norton |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Chipping Sodbury |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |See Barton Regis.
Chorley |Nil. |R. |R. |
Chorlton |Nil. |R. |R. |See Barton-upon-Irwell.
Christchurch |P. |P. |P.T. |
Church Stretton. |P. |P. |P. |
Cirencester |P. |P. |P.T. |
Cleobury Mortimer |P. |P. |P. |
Clerkenwell. See | | | |
St.James, | | | |
Clerkenwell. | | | |
Clifton. See | | | |
Barton Regis. | | | |
Clitheroe |Nil. |R. |R. |
Clun |P. |P. |P. |
Clutton |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Cockermouth |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Colchester |P. U. |P.T.(U.)|P.T(SP)|Parishes in union
| | | | united to form one
| | | | parish in 1897
Columb, St Major |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Congleton |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Conway |T. |P. |P. |
Cookham. See | | | |
Maidenhead. | | | |
Corwen |P. |P. |P. |
Cosford |P. |P. |P. |
Coventry |Nil(L.I.)|R.(L.I.)|R.(U.) |Incorporation dissolved
| | | | and union formed in
| | | | 1874
Cranbrook |P. |P. |P. |
Crediton |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Crickhowell |P. |P. |P.T. |
Cricklade and |P. |P. |P. |
Wootton Bassett. | | | |
Croydon |P. |P. |P.T. |
Cuckfield |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
| | | |
Darlington |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Dartford |P. |P. |P. |
Daventry |P. |P. |P. |
Depwade |P. |P.T. |P.T. |See Guiltcross.
Derby |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Devizes |P. |P. |P. |
Devonport |Nil.(L.P)|R.(L.P.)|R.(S.P)|Named "Stoke Damerel
| | | | Parish" till 1898.
| | | | Declared separate
| | | | parish under board of
| | | | guardians in 1900.
Dewsbury |Nil. |R. |R. |
Docking |P. |P. |P. |
Dolgelly |T. |P. |P. |
Doncaster |P. |P. |P. |
Dorchester |P. |P. |P. |
Dore |P. |P. |P. |
Dorking |P. |P. |P. |
Dover |P. |P. |P. |
Downham |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Drayton |P. |P. |P. |
Driffield |P. |P. |P. |
Droitwich |P. |P. |P. |
Droxford |P. |P. |P. |
Dudley |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Dulverton |T. |P. |P. |
Dunmow |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Durham |P. |P. |P.T. |
Dursley |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
| | | |
Easington |T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Easingwold |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Eastbourne |P. |P. |P. |See West Firle.
East Grinstead |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Easthampstead |P. |P. |P. |
East Preston |C.(G.I.) |R.(U.) |R.(U.) |Incorporation dissolved
| | | | and union formed in
| | | | 1869. The union
| | | | included nearly all
| | | | the parishes in the
| | | | dissolved
| | | | incorporation, and
| | | | also included the
| | | | dissolved Arundel
| | | | Incorporation. See
| | | | also Sutton.
East Retford |P. |P. |P. |
Eastry |P. |P. |P. |
East Stonehouse |P.(S.P.) |P.T.(SP)|P.T(SP)|
East Ward |P. |P. |P. |
Ecclesall Bierlow |C. |R. |R. |
Edmonton |Nil. |R. |R. |See Hampstead.
Elham |P. |P. |P. |
Ellesmere |P. |P. |P. |See Whitchurch (Salop).
Ely |P. |P.T. |P.T |
Epping |P. |P. |P. |
Epsom |P. |P. |P. |
Erpingham |P. |P. |P. |
Eton |P. |P. |P. |
Evesham |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Exeter |Nil.(L.I)|R.(L.I.)|R.(SP.)|Union formed in 1877.
| | | | Now a parish.
| | | |
Faith, St. |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Falmouth |C. |P.T. |P.T. |
Fareham |P. |P. |P. |
Faringdon |P. |P. |P.T. |
Farnborough |C. (G.I.)|... |... |Dissolved in 1869.
| | | | Parishes added to
| | | | Hartley Wintney Union.
Farnham |Nil. |P. |P. |See Ash.
Faversham |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Festiniog |P. |P. |P. |
Flegg, East |P.(L.I.) |P.(L.I.)|P.(LI.)|
and West | | | |
Foleshill |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |See Bedworth.
Forden |... |P. |P. |Formed in 1870. In 1847
| | | | a few of the parishes
| | | | were managed under 43
| | | | Eliz.--the remainder
| | | | formed the Montgomery
| | | | and Pool Incorporation
Fordingbridge |P. |P. |P. |
Forehoe |P. (L.I.)|P.(L.I.)|P.(LI.)|
Freebridge Lynn |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Frome |P. |P. |P. |
Fulham |Nil. (U.)|R.(U.) |R.(S.P)|Union dissolved in 1899
| | | | and the separate
| | | | parishes of Fulham and
| | | | Hammersmith declared.
Fylde |Nil. |R. |R. |
| | | |
Gainsborough |P. |P. |P. |
Garstang |Nil. |R. |R. |
Gateshead |T. |R. |R. |
George, St., in the |Nil.(S.P)|R.(S.P.)|R. (SP)|
East | | | |
George, St., Hanover|Nil.(L.P)|... |... |Included in St.
Square | | | | George's Union in
| | | | 1870.
George, St. (Union) |... |Nil. |R. |Formed in 1870 of
| | | | parishes formerly
| | | | under Local Acts (St.
| | | | Margaret, Westminster,
| | | | and St. George,
| | | | Hanover Square).
George, St., |Nil.(S.P)|... |... |Added to St. Saviour's
the Martyr | | | | Union (now called
| | | | Southwark Union) in
| | | | 1869.
Germans, St. |P. |P. |P. |
Giles, St., | | | |
Camberwell. | | | |
See Camberwell. | | | |
Giles, St., in |Nil.(L.P)|R.(S.P.)|R.(S.P)|Board of guardians
the Fields, | | | | declared in 1868.
and St. George, | | | |
Bloomsbury (United| | | |
Parishes) | | | |
Glanford Brigg |P. |P. |P. |
Glendale |P. |P. |P. |
Glossop |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Gloucester |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Godstone |P. |P. |P. |
Goole |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Gower |... |P. |P.T. |Formed in 1857.
| | | | Formerly part of
| | | | Swansea Union.
Grantham |P. |P. |P. |See Belvoir and
| | | | Grantham
| | | | Out-relief Unions.
Gravesend and |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Milton | | | |
Great Boughton. | | | |
See Tarvin. | | | |
Great Preston. See | | | |
Preston, Great. | | | |
Great Yarmouth. | | | |
See Yarmouth. | | | |
Greenwich |Nil. |R. |R. |See Woolwich.
Grimsby |... |... |P.T. |Formed in 1890 Formerly
| | | | part of Caistor Union.
Guildford |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |See Ash.
Guiltcross. |P. |P.T. |... |Dissolved in 1902.
| | | | Parishes added to
| | | | Depwade, Thetford, and
| | | | Wayland Unions.
Guisborough |P. |P. |P.T. |See Middlesbrough.
| | | |
Hackney |Nil. |R. |R. |
Hailsham |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |See West Firle.
Halifax |T. |R. |R. |
Halstead |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Haltwhistle |P. |P. |P. |
Hambledon |P.T |P.T. |P.T. |
Hammersmith |... |... |R.(S.P)|Declared a separate
| | | | parish in 1899.
| | | | Formerly part of
| | | | Fulham Union.
Hampstead |... |R.(S.P.)|R.(S.P)|Declared a separate
| | | | parish in 1848.
| | | | Formerly part of
| | | | Edmonton Union.
Hardingstone |P. |P. |P. |
Hartismere |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Hartlepool |... |P. |P.T. |Formed in 1859 Formerly
| | | | part of Stockton Union.
Hartley Wintney |P. |P. |P. |See Ash and Farnborough
Haslingden |Nil. |R. |R. |
Hastings |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Hatfield |P. |P. |P. |
Havant |P. |P. |P. |
Haverfordwest |P. |P. |P. |
Hawarden |... |P. |P. |Formed in 1853 of
| | | | parishes, formerly part
| | | | of Great Boughton (now
| | | | called Tarvin) Union.
| | | | In 1871 largely
| | | | reconstructed, many
| | | | parishes being added
| | | | to Chester Union, and
| | | | others added from
| | | | Wrexham Union.
Hay |P. |P. |P. |
Hayfield |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Headington |P. |P. |P. |
Headley |C.(G.I.) | | |Dissolved in 1869.
| | | | Parishes added to
| | | | Alton and Petersfield
| | | | Unions.
Helmsley |Nil. |P. |P. |Named "Helmsley
| | | | Blackmoor Union" till
| | | | 1887. See Kirkby
| | | | Moorside.
Helston |T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Hemel Hempstead |P. |P. |P.T. |
Hemsworth | |R. |R. |Formed in 1850. In 1847
| | | | nearly all the parishes
| | | | were managed under 43
| | | | Eliz.
Hendon |C. |R. |R. |See Willesden.
Henley |P. |P. |P. |
Henstead |P. |P. |P. |
Hereford |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Hertford |P. |P. |P. |
Hexham |P. |P. |P.T. |
Highworth and | | | |
Swindon. | | | |
See Swindon | | | |
and Highworth. | | | |
Hinckley |P. |P.T. |P.T. |See Bedworth.
Hitchin |P. |P. |P.T. |
Holbeach |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Holbeck |(Township|R.(U.) |R.(U.) |Union formed in 1869.
|under 43 | | | In 1847 the Township of
|Eliz. | | | Holbeck was managed
|c. 2.) | | | under 43 Eliz., the
| | | | other Townships being
| | | | included in the
| | | | Carlton Incorporation.
Holborn |Nil. |R. |R. |See James, St.,
| | | | Clerkenwell, and Luke,
| | | | St., Middlesex.
Hollingbourne |P. |P. |P. |
Holsworthy |C. |P.T. |P. |
Holyhead | |R. |P. |Formed in 1852.
| | | | Formerly part of
| | | | Anglesey Union.
Holywell |P. |P. |P. |
Honiton |P. |P. |P. |
Hoo |P. |P. |P. |
Horncastle |P. |P. |P. |
Horsham |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Houghton-le-Spring |P. |P. |P.T. |
Howden |P. |P. |P. |
Hoxne |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Huddersfield |Nil. |R. |R. |
Hungerford and |P. |P. |P. |Named "Hungerford
Ramsbury | | | | Union" till 1896.
Hunslet |(Township|R.(U.) |R.(U.) |In 1847 the Township of
|under 43 | | | Hunslet was managed
|Eliz. | | | under 43 Eliz. Some
|c. 2.) | | | other parishes in the
| | | | union, which was formed
| | | | in 1869, were formerly
| | | | in Carlton and Great
| | | | Preston Incorporations.
Huntingdon |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Hursley |P. |P. |P. |
| | | |
Ipswich |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Islington |Nil.(L.P)|R.(S.P.)|R.(S.P)|Board of guardians
| | | | declared in 1867.
Ives, St. |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
| | | |
James, St., |Nil.(L.P)|... |... |Added to Holborn
Clerkenwell | | | | Union in 1869.
James, St., |Nil(L.P.)|... |... |Included in Westminster
Westminster | | | | Union in 1868.
John, St., Hampstead| | | |
See Hampstead | | | |
| | | |
Keighley |T. |R. |R. |
Kendal |C. |R. |R. |
Kensington |Nil(S.P.)|R.(S.P.)|R.(S.P)|
Kettering |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Keynsham |P. |P. |P. |See Keynsham and
| | | | Warmley Out-Relief
| | | | Unions.
Kidderminster |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Kingsbridge |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Kingsclere |P. |P. |P. |
Kings Lynn |C. |B. |P. |
Kings Norton |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
| | | |
Kingston-upon-Hull |Nil.(L.I)|R.(L.I.)|R.(L.P)|Incorporation consisted
| | | | in 1847 and 1871 of
| | | | two united parishes.
| | | | In 1906 there was only
| | | | one parish, but it was
| | | | styled an incorporation
Kingston-on-Thames |C. |P.T. |P.T. |
Kington |P. |P. |P. |See Presteigne.
Kirkby Moorside |... |P. |P. |Formed in 1848.
| | | | Formerly part of
| | | | Helmsley Blackmoor
| | | | (Helmsley) Union.
Knaresborough |... |P. |P. |Formed in 1854. In 1847
| | | | nearly all the parishes
| | | | were managed under 43
| | | | Eliz.
Knighton |P. |P. |P. |See Presteigne.
| | | |
Lambeth |Nil.(S.P)|R.(S.P) |R.(S.P)|Named "St. Mary,
| | | | Lambeth" till 1901.
Lampeter |T. |R. |R. |
Lancaster |Nil. |R. |R. |See Caton.
Lanchester |P. |P. |P.T. |
Langport |P. |P. |P. |
Launceston |P. |P. |P. |
Ledbury |P. |P. |P. |
Leeds |Nil.(S.P)|R.(U.) |R.(U.) |The Leeds Union was
| | | | formed in 1869 and
| | | | included the Township
| | | | of Leeds, and also
| | | | parishes from Barwick
| | | | in Elmet, Carlton, and
| | | | Great Preston
| | | | Incorporations.
Leek |P. |P.T. |P.T. |See Alstonfield.
Leicester |T. (U.) |R.(U.) |R.(S.P)|Parishes in union
| | | | united to form one
| | | | parish in 1896.
Leigh |Nil. |R. |R. |
Leighton Buzzard |P. |P.T. |P.T. |See Woburn.
Leominster |P. |P. |P. |
Leonard, St., |Nil. |R. |R. |Board of guardians
Shoreditch |(L.P.) |(S.P.) |(S.P.) | constituted in [1858
| | | | and] 1868.
Lewes |P. |P. |P. |See Chailey and West
| | | | Firle.
Lewisham. |C. |R. |R. |See Woolwich.
Lexden and |P. |P. |P. |See Witham.
Winstree | | | |
Leyburn |P. |P. |P. |
Lichfield |P. |P. |P. |
Lincoln |P. |P. |P.T. |
Linton |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Liskeard |P. |P. |P. |
Liverpool |Nil. |R. |R. |
(L.P.) |(L.P.) |(L.P.) | |
Llandilo Fawr |P. |P. |P. |
Llandovery |P. |P. |P. |
Llanelly |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Llanfyllin |P. |P. |P. |
Llanrwst |T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Loddon and |P. |P. |P. |
Clavering | | | |
London, City of |Nil. |R. |R. |See London, East, and
| | | | London, West.
London, East |Nil. | | |Dissolved in 1869--
| | | | parishes added to City
| | | | of London Union.
London, West |Nil. | | |Dissolved in 1869--
| | | | parishes added to City
| | | | of London Union.
Long Ashton |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |Named "Bedminster
| | | | Union" till 1899.
Longtown |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Loughborough |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Louth |P. |P. |P. |
Ludlow |P. |P. |P. |
Luke, St., Chelsea. | | | |
See Chelsea. | | | |
Luke, St., Middlesex|Nil. | | |Added to Holborn Union
|(L.P.) | | | in 1869.
Lunesdale |R. |R. | |Formed in 1869. In 1847
| | | | about half of the
| | | | parishes were managed
| | | | under 43 Eliz.; most
| | | | of the remainder were
| | | | in Caton Incorporation.
Luton |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Lutterworth |P. |P. |P. |See Bedworth.
Lymington |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
| | | |
Macclesfield |C. |P.T. |P.T. |
Machynlleth |T. |P. |P. |
Madeley |P. |P. |P.T. |
Maidenhead |P. |P. |P.T. |Named "Cookham Union"
| | | | till 1896.
Maidstone |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Maldon |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |See Witham.
Malling |P. |P. |P. |
Malmesbury |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Malton |P. |P. |P. |See Malton and Norton
| | | | Out-Relief Unions.
Manchester |Nil.(U.) |R.(S.P.)|R.(S.P)|The Manchester Union was
| | | | dissolved in 1850; the
| | | | Township of Manchester
| | | | township; the other
| | | | parishes in the union
| | | | were included in the
| | | | Prestwich Union.
Mansfield |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Margaret, St., |Nil.(L.P)|... |... |Included in St. George's
and St.John, | | | | Union in 1870.
Westminster. | | | |
Market Bosworth |P. |P. |P. |See Bedworth.
Market Drayton. See | | | |
Drayton. | | | |
Market Harborough |P. |P. |P. |
Marlborough |P. |P. |P. |
Martin, St., in |Nil.(S.P)|... |... |Added to Strand Union
the Fields. | | | | in 1868.
Martley |P. |P. |P. |
Mary, St., and | | | |
St. Andrew, | | | |
Whittlesey. | | | |
See Whittlesey. | | | |
Mary, St., Islington| | | |
See Islington. | | | |
Mary, St., Lambeth. | | | |
See Lambeth. | | | |
Mary, St., Newington|Nil.(L.P)|... |... |Added to St. Saviour's
| | | | Union (now Southwark
| | | | Union) in 1869.
Mary, St., |Nil.(L.P)|... |... |Added to St. Olave's
Rotherhithe | | | | Union (now Bermondsey
| | | | Parish) in 1869.
Marylebone, St. |Nil.(L.P)|R.(S.P.)|R.(S.P)|Board of guardians
| | | |declared in 1867.
Mary Magdalen, St., | | | |
Bermondsey. See | | | |
Bermondsey, St. Mary| | | |
Magdalen. | | | |
Medway |P. |P. |P. |
Melksham. | | | |
See Trowbridge | | | |
and Melksham. | | | |
Melton Mowbray |P. |P. |P. |
Mere |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Meriden |P. |P. |P. |
Merthyr Tydfil |T. |P.T. |P.T. |See Pontypridd.
Middlesbrough |... |... |R. |Formed in 1875.
| | | | Formerly parts of
| | | | Guisborough, Stockton,
| | | | and Stokesley Unions.
Midhurst |P. |P. |P. |See Sutton.
Mildenhall |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Mile End Old Town |... |R.(S.P.)|R.(S.P)|Declared separate in
| | | | 1857 Formerly part of
| | | | Stepney Union.
Milton |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Mitford and |P. |P. |P. |
Launditch | | | |
Monmouth |P. |P. |P.T. |
Montgomery and Pool |Nil.(L.I)|... |... |Dissolved in 1870.
| | | | Parishes included in
| | | | Forden Union.
Morpeth. |P. |P. |P. |
Mutford and |Nil.(L.I)|R.(L.I) |R.(U.) |Incorporation dissolved
Lothingland. | | | |and union formed in 1893
| | | | See Yarmouth, Great.
| | | |
Nantwich. |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |See also Whitchurch
| | | | Salop.
Narberth. |P. |P. |P. |
Neath. |P. |P. |P.T. |See Pontardawe.
Neot's, St. |P. |P. |P. |
Newark. |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Newbury. |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Newcastle-in-Emlyn. |P. |P. |P. |
Newcastle-under-Lyme|P. |P. |P. |
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.|T. |R. |R. |
Newent. |P. |P. |P. |
New Forest. |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Newington, St. Mary.| | | |
See St. Mary, | | | |
Newington. | | | |
New Winchester. See | | | |
Winchester. | | | |
Newhaven. |P. |P. |P. |
Newmarket. |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Newport (Monmouth) |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Newport (Salop). |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Newport Pagnell. |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Newton Abbot. |P. |P. |P. |
Newtown and |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Llanidloes. | | | |
Northallerton. |T. |P. |P. |
Northampton. |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
North Aylesford. See| | | |
Strood. | | | |
North Bierley. |... |R. |R. |Formed in 1848. In 1847
| | | | formed part of Bradford
| | | | (Yorks) Union. See
| | | | Bradford for changes
| | | | in 1987.
Northleach. |P. |P. |P. |
Northwich. |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
North Witchford. |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Norwich. |Nil.(L.I)|R.(L.I.)|R.(L.P)|In 1890 the parishes in
| | | | the incorporation were
| | | | united to form one
| | | | parish.
Nottingham. |Special |R.(U.) |R.(S.P)|The parishes in the
| (U.) | | | union were united to
| | | | form one parish in 1899
| | | | See also Radford.
Nuneaton. |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
| | | |
| | | |
Oakham. |P. |P. |P. |
Okehampton. |P. |P. |P. |
Olave, St. See | | | |
Bermondsey. | | | |
Oldham. |Nil. |R. |R. |
Ongar. |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Ormskirk |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Orsett. |P. |P. |P.T. |
Oswestry. |Nil.(L.I)|P.(L.I.)|PT.(LI)|
Oundle. |P. |P. |P. |
Ouseburn, Great |Nil.(G.I)|P.(U.) |P.(U.) |Union formed in 1854.
| | | | Some of the parishes
| | | | included in the union
| | | | were in 1847 managed
| | | | under 43 Eliz.; and
| | | | see Barwick in Elmet.
Oxford |Nil.(L.I)|P.T.(LI)|P.T(LI)|
| | | |
Paddington |Nil(S.P.)|R.(S.P.)|R.(S.P)|
Pancras, St. |Special |R.(S.P.)|R.(S.P)|Board of guardians
|(L.P.) | | | declared in 1867.
Pateley Bridge |Nil. |R. |R. |
Patrington |P. |P. |P. |
Pembroke |P. |P. |P. |
| | | |
Penistone |... |R. |R. |Formed in 1849. In 1847
| | | | certain of the parishes
| | | | were other parishes
| | | | formed part of Wortley
| | | | Union.
Penkridge. | | | |
See Cannock. | | | |
Penrith. |P. |P. |P. |
Penzance. |P. |P. |P. |
Pershore. |P. |P. |P. |
Peterborough |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Petersfield |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |See Headley.
Petworth |P. |P. |P. |See Sutton.
Pewsey |P. |P. |P. |
Pickering |P. |P. |P.T. |
Plomesgate |P. |P. |P. |
Plymouth |Nil.(L.I)|R.(L.I.)|R (L.P)|The parishes in the
| | | | incorporation were
| | | | united in 1898 to form
| | | | one parish.
Plympton, St. Mary |P. |P. |P. |
Pocklington |T. |P. |P. |
Pontardawe |... |... |R. |Formed in 1875. Formerly
| | | | part of Neath and
| | | | Swansea Unions.
Pontefract |... |Nil. |P.T. |Formed in 1862. In 1847
| | | |about four-fifths of the
| | | | parishes were managed
| | | | under 43 Eliz., others
| | | | formed part of Barwick
| | | | in Elmet and Great
| | | | Preston Incorporations.
Pontypool |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Pontypridd |... |P.T. |P.T. |Formed in 1862. Formerly
| | | | part of Cardiff and
| | | | Merthyr Tydfil Unions.
Poole |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Poplar |Nil. |R. |R. |The name of this Poor
| | | | Law Union is now
| | | | (1907) "Parish of
| | | | Poplar Borough."
Portsea Island. | | | |
See Portsmouth. | | | |
Portsmouth |P. (U.) |P.T.(U.)|P.T(SP)|Named "Portsea Island
| | | | Union" till 1900, when
| | | | the united to form one
| | | | parish.
Potterspury |P. |P. |P. |
Prescot |Nil. |R. |R. |
Presteigne |T. |R. |... |Dissolved in 1877.
| | | | Parishes added to
| | | | Kington and Knighton
| | | | Unions.
Preston |Nil. |R. |R. |
Preston, East. See | | | |
East Preston. | | | |
Preston, Great |Nil.(G.I)|... |... |Dissolved in 1869. All
| | | | but four of the
| | | | parishes were added to
| | | |Pontefract and Tadcaster
| | | | of the remainder were
| | | | added to Hunslet, Leeds
| | | | Selby, and Wakefield
| | | | Unions.
Prestwich |... |R. |R. |Formed in 1850. Nearly
| | | | all the parishes were
| | | | formerly part of
| | | | Manchester Union.
Pwllheli |P. |P. |P. |
| | | |
Radford |Nil. |R. |... |Dissolved in 1880.
| | | | Parishes added to
| | | | Nottingham Union
| | | | (now Parish).
Reading |P.(U.) |P.(U.) |P.T(SP)|Parishes united to form
| | | | one parish in 1905.
Redruth |P. |P. |P.T. |
Reeth |P. |P. |P. |
Reigate |P. |P. |P. |
Rhayader |T. |R. |P. |
Richmond (Surrey) |C. |R. |R. |
Richmond (Yorks) |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Ringwood |P. |P. |P. |
Ripon |... |P. |P. |Formed in 1852. In 1847
| | | | nearly all the parishes
| | | | were managed under 43
| | | | Eliz.
Risbridge |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Rochdale |Nil. |R. |R. |
Rochford |P. |P. |P. |
Romford |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Romney Marsh |P. |P. |P. |
Romsey |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Ross |P. |P. |P. |
Rothbury |P. |P. |P. |
Rotherham |C. |R. |R. |
Rotherhithe. See | | | |
Mary, St., | | | |
Rotherhithe. | | | |
Royston |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Rugby |P. |P. |P.T. |See Bedworth.
Runcorn |T. |P. |P. |
Ruthin |P. |P. |P. |
Rye |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
| | | |
Saddleworth |Nil(G.I.)|R.(S.P.)|R.(U.) |Named "Saddleworth with
| | | | Quick Incorporation"
| | | | till 1853. In 1853
| | | | board of guardians
| | | | declared. In 1894 a
| | | | union was formed.
Saddleworth with | | | |
Quick. See | | | |
Saddleworth. | | | |
Saffron Walden |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Salford |Nil. |R. |R. |
Salisbury |Nil.(L.I)|... |... |The incorporation was
(Incorporation). | | | | in 1869 added to
| | | | Alderbury (now named
| | | | Salisbury) Union.
Salisbury (Union) |P. |P.T. |P.T. |Named "Alderbury Union"
| | | | till 1895. See
| | | | Salisbury
| | | | Incorporation.
Samford |P.(L.I.) |P.(U.) |P.(U.) |Incorporation
| | | | dissolved and union
| | | | formed in 1849.
Saviour's, St. | | | |
See Southwark. | | | |
Scarborough |P. |P. |P. |
Sculcoates |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Sedbergh |Nil. |P. |P. |
Sedgefield |P. |P. |P. |
Seisdon |P. |P. |P. |
Selby |P. |P. |P. |See Preston, Great.
Settle |T. |R. |R. |
Sevenoaks |P. |P. |P. |
Shaftesbury |P. |P. |P. |
Shardlow |P. |P. |P. |
Sheffield |C. |R. |R. |
Sheppey |P. |P. |P. |
Shepton Mallet |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Sherborne |P. |P. |P. |
Shiffnal |P. |P. |P. |
Shipston-on-Stour |P. |P. |P. |
Shoreditch. See | | | |
Leonard, St., | | | |
Shoreditch | | | |
Shrewsbury |Nil(L.I.)|... |... |Dissolved in 1871.
| | | | Parishes added to
| | | | Atcham Union.
Skipton |T. |R. |R. |
Skirlaugh |P. |P. |P. |
Sleaford |P. |P. |P. |
Smallburgh |... |P. |P. |Formed in 1869. One
| | | | parish was formerly
| | | | Erpingham Union, in
| | | | the other parishes
| | | | formed the Tunstead
| | | | and Happing
| | | | Incorporation.
Solihull |P. |P. |P. |
Southam |P. |P. |P.T. |
Southampton |Nil.(L.I)|R. (L.I)|R.(L.I)|
South Molton |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
South Shields |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
South Stoneham |P. |P. |P. |
Southwark |Nil. |R. |R. |Named St. Saviour's
| | | | Union till 1901. See
| | | | St. Mary, Newington.
Southwell |P. |P. |P. |
Spalding |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Spilsby |P. |P. |P. |
Stafford |P. |P. |P.T. |
Staines |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Stamford |P. |P. |P. |
Stepney |Nil. |R. |R. |See Mile End Old Town.
Steyning |P. |P. |P. |
Stockbridge |P. |P. |P. |
Stockport |Nil. |R. |R. |
Stockton |T. |P.T. |P.T. |See Hartlepool and
| | | | Middlesbrough.
Stoke Damerel. See | | | |
Devonport. | | | |
Stokesley |C. |P. |P. |See Middlesbrough.
Stoke-upon-Trent |P.T.(S.P)|P.T.(SP)|P.T.(U)| Union formed in 1894.
Stone |P. |P. |P. |
Stourbridge |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Stow |P. |P. |P. |
Stow-on-the-Wold |P. |P. |P. |
Strand |Nil. |R. |R. |See Martin, St., in the
| | | | Fields and
| | | | Westminster.
Stratford-on-Avon |P. |P. |P. |
Stratton |C. |P.T. |P. |
Strood |P. |P.T. |P.T. |Named "North Aylesford
| | | | Union" till 1884.
Stroud |P. |P. |P. |
Sturminster |P. |P. |P. |
Sudbury |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Sunderland |T. |R. |R. |
Sutton |C. (G.I.)|... |... |Dissolved in 1869.
| | | | Most of the parishes
| | | | were added to Petworth
| | | | Union, the remainder
| | | | were added to East
| | | | Preston, Midhurst,
| | | | Thakeham and
| | | | Westhampnett Unions.
Swaffham |P. |P. |P. |
Swansea |P. |P. |P.T. |See Gower and
| | | | Pontardawe.
Swindon and |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |Named "Highworth and
Highworth | | | | Swindon" till 1899.
Tadcaster |... |Nil. |P. |Formed in 1862. In 1847
| | | | several were managed
| | | | under 43 Eliz. Others
| | | | were in Barwick-in
| | | | -Elmet and Great
| | | | Preston Incorporations
Tamworth |P. |P. |P. |
Tarvin |T. |P. |P. |Named "Great Boughton
| | | | Union" till 1871. See
| | | | also Chester,
| | | | Hawarden, and
| | | | Whitchurch (Salop).
Taunton |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Tavistock |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Teesdale |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Tenbury |P. |P. |P. |
Tendring |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Tenterden |P. |P. |P. |
Tetbury |P. |P. |P.T. |
Tewkesbury |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Thakeham |P. |P. |P. |See Sutton.
Thame |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Thanet, Isle of |P. |P. |P. |
Thetford |P. |P.T. |P.T. |See Guiltcross.
Thingoe |P. |P. |P. |
Thirsk |P. |P. |P. |
Thomas, St. |P. |P. |P. |
Thornbury |P. |P.T. |P.T. |See Barton Regis.
Thorne |P. |P. |P. |
Thrapston |P. |P. |P.T. |
Ticehurst |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Tisbury |P. |P. |P. |
Tiverton |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Todmorden |Nil. |R. |R. |
Tonbridge |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Torrington |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Totnes |P. |P. |P. |
Towcester |P. |P. |P. |
Toxteth Park |... |R. |R. |Declared a separate
| | | | Township in 1857.
| | | | Formerly part of West
| | | | Derby Union.
Tregaron |T. |R. |R. |
Trowbridge and |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |Named Melksham Union
Melksham. | | | | till 1898.
Truro |C. |P. |P. |
Tunstead and Happing|P. (L.I.)|... |... |Dissolved in 1869.
| | | | Parishes included in
| | | | Smallburgh Union.
Tynemouth |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
| | | |
Uckfield |P. |P. |P. |
Ulverston |C. |R. |R. |See Barrow-in-Furness.
Uppingham |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Upton-on-Severn |P. |P. |P. |
Uttoxeter |P. |P. |P. |
Uxbridge |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
| | | |
Wakefield |Nil. |R. |R. |See Preston, Great.
Wallingford |P. |P. |P. |
Walsall |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Walsingham |P. |P.T. |P.T. |See Brinton.
Wandsworth |Nil. |R. |R. |Named "Wandsworth and
| | | |Clapham Union" till 1904
Wangford |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Wantage |P. |P. |P. |
Ware |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Wareham and Purbeck |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Warminster |P. |P. |P. |
Warrington |T. |R. |R. |
Warwick |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Watford |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Wayland |P. |P. |P. |See Guiltcross.
Weardale |P. |P. |P. |
Wellingborough |P. |P. |P. |
Wellington (Salop) |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Wellington (Som.) |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Wells |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Welwyn |P. |P. |P. |
Wem |P. |P.T. |P.T. |See also Whitchurch
| | | | (Salop)
Weobley |P. |P. |P. |
Westbourne |P. |P. |P. |
West Bromwich |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Westbury-on-Severn |P. |P. |P. |
Westbury and |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Whorwellsdown | | | |
West Derby |Nil. |R. |R. |See Toxteth Park.
West Firle |P. |P. |... |Dissolved in 1898.
| | | | Parishes added to
| | | | Eastbourne, Hailsham,
| | | | and Lewes Union.
| | | |
West Ham |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Westhampnett |P. |P. |P. |See Sutton.
Westminster |... |R. |R. |Union formed in 1868.
| | | | Part was formerly under
| | | | Local Act (James, St.,
| | | | Westminster),
| | | | remainder was formerly
| | | | in Strand Union.
West Ward |P. |P. |P. |
Wetherby |... |R. |R. |Formed in 1861. In 1847
| | | | about half the Parishes
| | | | were managed under 43
| | | | Eliz.--See also Barwick
| | | | -in-Elmet and Carlton.
Weymouth |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Wharfedale |... |R. |R. |Formed in 1861. In 1847
| | | | about half the Parishes
| | | | were managed under 43
| | | | Eliz.--See also
| | | | Carlton.
Wheatenhurst |P. |P. |P. |
Whitby |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Whitchurch (Hants) |P. |P. |P. |
Whitchurch (Salop) |Nil.(L.P)|Nil.(U.)|P.(U.) |Union formed in 1853.
| | | | Comprising the
| | | | Whitchurch
| | | | Incorporation and
| | | | Parishes formerly in
| | | | Ellesmere, Great
| | | | Boughton (Tarvin),
| | | | Nantwich, Wem and
| | | | Wrexham Unions.
Whitechapel |Nil. |R. |R. |
Whitehaven |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Whittlesey |P. (S.P.)|P.(S.P.)|P.(U.) |Named "Whittlesey
| | | | Parish" or "United
| | | | Parishes of St. Mary
| | | | and St. Andrew,
| | | | Whittlesey," till 1894.
| | | | Union formed in 1894.
Wigan |Nil. |R. |R. |
Wight, Isle of |Nil.(L.I)|R.(U.) |P.(U.) |Incorporation dissolved
| | | | and Union formed in
| | | | 1865.
Wigton |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Willesden |... |... |R.(S.P)|Separate Parish
| | | |declared in 1896.
| | | |Formerly part of
| | | |Hendon Union.
Williton |P. |P. |P. |
Wilton |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Wimborne and |P. |P. |P. |
Cranborne | | | |
Wincanton |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Winchcomb |P. |P. |P. |
Winchester |P. |P. |P. |Named New Winchester
| | | | Union till 1901.
Windsor |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Winslow |P. |P. |P. |
Wirrall |P. |P.T. |P.T. |See Birkenhead.
Wisbeach |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Witham |P. |P. |... |Dissolved in 1880.
| | | | Parishes added by
| | | | Braintree, Lexden and
| | | | Winstree and Maldon
| | | | Unions.
Witney |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Woburn |P. |P.T. |... |Dissolved in 1899.
| | | | Parishes added to
| | | | Ampthill and
| | | | Leighton Buzzard
| | | | Unions.
Wokingham |P.T. |P.T. |P.T. |
Wolstanton and |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Burslem | | | |
Wolverhampton |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Woodstock |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Woolwich |... |R. |R. |Formed in 1868.
| | | | Formerly part of
| | | | Greenwich and Lewisham
| | | | Unions.
Worcester |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
Worksop |P. |P. |P. |
Wortley |C. |R. |R. |See Penistone.
Wrexham |P. |P. |P. |See Hawarden and
| | | | Whitchurch (Salop).
| | | |
Wycombe |P. |P.T. |P.T. |
| | | |
Yarmouth, Great |P.T.(S.P)|P.T.(SP)|P.T.(U)|"Parish" till 1891
| | | | Union formed in 1891,
| | | | of the parish and of a
| | | | parish which was
| | | | formerly part of the
| | | | Mutford and
| | | | Lothingland
| | | | Incorporation.
Yeovil |P. |P. |P. |
York |C. |P. |P. |See Bishopthorpe,
| | | | Escrick, Flaxton,
| | | | and York Out-Relief
| | | | Unions.
| | | |
OUT-RELIEF UNIONS | | | |
| | | |
Belvoir |... |... |P. |Formed in 1894
| | | | [Part of Grantham
| | | | Union].
Bishopthorpe |... |... |P.T. |Formed in 1894
| | | | [Part of York Union].
Escrick |... |... |P.T. |Formed in 1894
| | | | [Part of York Union].
Flaxton |... |... |P.T. |Formed in 1894
| | | | [Part of York Union].
Grantham |... |... |P. |Formed in 1894
| | | | [Part of Grantham
| | | | Union].
Keynsham |... |... |P. |Formed in 1895
| | | | [Part of Keynsham
| | | | Union].
Malton | ... | ... | P. |Formed in 1894
| | | | [Part of Malton
| | | | Union].
Norton | ... | ... | P. |Formed in 1894
| | | | [Part of Malton
| | | | Union].
Warmley | ... | ... | P. |Formed in 1895
| | | | [Part of Keynsham
| | | | Union].
York | ... | ... | P.T. |Formed in 1894
| | | | [Part of York Union].
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Unions and Incorporations marked "C" in the table, a
regulation to the following effect was in force at the end of 1847:--
"If any able-bodied male pauper shall apply to be set to work by
the parish, one-half at least of the relief which may be afforded
to him or to his family shall be in kind."
The following special regulations were in force at the end of 1847:--
_Nottingham._--The Out-relief Rules contained in the early Regulations
Order were in special terms. A subsequent Order suspended
certain of those rules, and permitted outdoor relief to able-bodied
paupers, to "be given, as far as possible, in return for
piecework."
_St. Pancras._--The rules directed that "in the case of any able-bodied
persons the guardians may, until accommodation can be obtained
for the reception of such persons in the workhouse, give outdoor
relief, one-half of which, at least, shall be in kind; but such
relief shall only be given in return for labour at task work."
APPENDIX B[864]
EXTRACT FROM THE MINORITY REPORT FOR SCOTLAND, GIVING THE REASONS IN
FAVOUR OF THE COMPLETE SUPERSESSION OF THE POOR LAW
[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.
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 small-pox, 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]
[865] "The Majority Report," by Professor Bernard Bosanquet, in
_Sociological Review_, April 1909 (vol. ii. No. 2).
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.
[866] Circular of 10th March, 1906, of Local Government Board for
Scotland.
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 over-crowding, 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."[867] In 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.
[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.
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.
[869] _Unemployment_, by W. H. Beveridge, 1909.
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.
INDEX OF UNIONS AND OTHER PLACES MENTIONED
Aberayron, 322
Abergavenny, 322, 324
Aberystwith, 322
Abingdon, 23 _n._, 322
Albans, St., 322
Alcester, 322
Alderbury, 322, 337
Aldershot, 217 _n._
Alnwick, 322
Alstonfield, 322, 323, 331
Alton, 322, 330
Altrincham, 322, 325
Alverstoke, 322
Amersham, 322
Amesbury, 322
Ampthill, 322, 341
Andover, 75, 132, 322
Andrew, St. (Whittlesey), 340
Anglesey, 322, 330
Arrington, 326
Arundel, 322, 327
Asaph, St., 322
Ash, 323, 328, 329
Ashbourne, 322, 323
Ashby de la Zouch, 323
Ashford, 323
Ashton-under-Lyne, 27 _n._, 130 _n._, 323
Aston, 23 _n._, 323
Atcham, 109 _n._, 323, 337
Atherstone, 323, 324
Auckland, 323
Austell, St., 323
Australia, 141, 142
Axbridge, 323
Aylesbury, 323
Aylsham, 323
Aysgarth, 323
Bainbridge, 323
Bakewell, 98 _n._, 107 _n._, 180 _n._, 323
Bala, 323
Banbury, 323
Bangor, 323
Barnet, 323
Barnsley, 128 _n._, 323
Barnstaple, 323
Barrow-in-Furness, 323, 339
Barrow-on-Soar, 323
Barton Regis, 323, 325, 326, 339
Barton-upon-Irwell, 323, 326
Barwick-in-Elmet, 323, 331, 335, 338, 340
Basford, 323
Basingstoke, 323
Bath, 173, 323
Battle, 323
Beaminster, 323
Beaumaris, 323
Bedale, 177 _n._, 323
Bedford, 323
Bedminster, 157 _n._, 323, 332
Bedwellty, 322, 324
Bedworth, 323, 324, 328, 330, 332, 333, 336
Belford, 324
Bellingham, 324
Belper, 324
Belvoir, 329, 341
Berkhampstead, 324
Berkshire, 137 _n._, 138 _n._
Bermondsey, 101-102, 137 _n._, 324, 333
Berwick-on-Tweed, 324
Bethnal Green, 324
Beverley, 324
Bichester, 324
Bideford, 324
Biggleswade, 324
Billericay, 324
Billesdon, 324
Bingham, 324
Birkenhead, 324, 341
Birmingham, 163, 178, 186 _n._, 208 _n._, 324
Bishop Stortford, 324
Bishopthorpe, 341
Blaby, 324
Blackburn, 324
Blandford, 324
Blean, 324
Blofield, 324
Blything, 324
Bodmin, 224
Bolton, 324
Bootle, 324
Bosmere, 324
Boston, 26 _n._, 324
Boughton, Great, 324, 329
Bourne, 237 _n._, 324
Brackley, 324
Bradfield, 37-38, 138 _n._, 178, 252, 324
Bradford (Wilts), 324
Bradford (Yorks), 34 _n._, 35, 96, 167 _n._, 171, 183, 230-231 _n._,
234, 239, 240 _n._, 241 _n._, 254 _n._, 324, 334
Braintree, 325, 341
Bramley, 217 _n._, 325
Brampton, 325
Brecknock, 325
Brentford, 325
Bridge, 325
Bridgend, 325
Bridgnorth, 325
Bridgwater, 325
Bridlington, 325
Bridport, 325
Brighton, 325
Brinton, 325, 339
Bristol, 157 _n._, 253, 323, 325
Brixworth, 253, 325
Broadstairs, 188 _n._
Bromley, 325
Bromsgrove, 325
Bromyard, 325
Buckingham, 325
Bucklow, 322, 325
Builth, 325
Buntingford, 325
Burnley, 325
Burton-upon-Trent, 325
Bury, 325
Bury St. Edmunds, 325
Caistor, 237, 325, 329
Calne, 325
Camberwell, 139 _n._, 187, 325
Cambridge, 325
Camelford, 325
Canada, 142, 250
Cannock, 325, 335
Canterbury, 325
Cardiff, 325, 335
Cardigan, 325
Carlisle, 237 _n._, 325
Carlton, 325, 330, 331, 340
Carmarthen, 325
Carnarvon, 325
Castle Ward, 325
Catherington, 26 _n._, 325
Caton, 326, 331, 332
Caxton, 326
Cerne, 326
Chailey, 326, 332
Chapel-en-le-Frith, 326
Chard, 326
Charterhouse, 322
Cheadle, 326
Chelmsford, 326
Chelsea, 326
Cheltenham, 326
Chepstow, 326
Chertsey, 27 _n._, 326
Cheshire, 175 _n._
Chester, 245 _n._, 326, 329, 338
Chesterfield, 326
Chester-le-Street, 326
Chesterton, 326
Chichester, 326
Chippenham, 326
Chipping Norton, 326
Chipping Sodbury, 323, 326
Chorley, 326
Chorlton, 163 _n._, 168 _n._, 214 _n._, 249, 323, 326
Christchurch, 326
Church Stretton, 326
Cirencester, 326
Clapham, 339
Clavering, 333
Claydon, 324
Cleobury Mortimer, 326
Clerkenwell, 326
Clifton, 323, 326
Clitheroe, 326
Clun, 326
Clutton, 326
Cockermouth, 326
Colchester, 34, 326
Columb, St., 326
Congleton, 326
Conway, 326
Cookham, 137 _n._, 326, 332
Cornwall, 70
Corwen, 173, 326
Cosford, 326
Coventry, 326
Cowbridge, 325
Cowley, 112 _n._
Cranborne, 340
Cranbrook, 326
Crediton, 26 _n._, 326
Crickhowell, 327
Cricklade, 327
Croydon, 217, 327
Cuckfield, 327
Darenth, 224, 225
Darlington, 192 _n._, 327
Dartford, 327
Daventry, 327
Depwade, 327, 329
Derby, 327
Devizes, 327
Devonport, 327, 338
Dewsbury, 327
Docking, 327
Dolgelly, 327
Doncaster, 327
Dorchester, 327
Dore, 327
Dorking, 327
Dover, 327
Downham, 327
Drayton, 247 _n._, 327
Driffield, 327
Droitwich, 327
Droxford, 327
Dudley, 327
Dulverton, 327
Dunmow, 327
Durham, 327
Dursley, 327
Easington, 327
Easingwold, 327
Eastbourne, 327, 340
East Grinstead, 327
Easthampstead, 327
East Preston, 322, 327, 338
East Retford, 327
Eastry, 327
East Stonehouse, 327
East Ward, 327
Eccleshall Bierlow, 327
Edmonton, 327, 329
Elham, 327
Ellesmere, 327, 340
Ely, 327
Epping, 328
Epsom, 328
Erpingham, 328, 337
Escrick, 341
Eton, 328
Evesham, 90 _n._, 114 _n._, 328
Exeter, 328
Faith, St., 328
Falmouth, 328
Fareham, 328
Faringdon, 328
Farnborough, 328, 329
Farnham, 217 _n._, 323, 328
Faversham, 232 _n._, 328
Festiniog, 328
Flaxton, 341
Flegg, East and West, 328
Foleshill, 26 _n._, 324, 328
Forden, 328, 333
Fordingbridge, 328
Forehoe, 328
Forest Gate, 190, 194
France, 132
Freebridge Lynn, 328
Fulham, 328, 329
Fylde, 328
Gainsborough, 328
Garstang, 328
Gateshead, 238 _n._, 328
George, St., Bloomsbury, 328
George, St., Hanover Square, 240, 328, 333
George, St., in the East, 328
George, St., the Martyr, 328
George, St. (Union), 328
Germans, St., 240 _n._, 328
Germany, 132
Giles, St., (Camberwell) 328
Giles, St., in the Fields, 119, 328
Glanford Brigg, 329
Glendale, 241, 329
Glossop, 329
Gloucester, 329
Godstone, 329
Goole, 329
Gosport, 322
Gower, 329, 338
Grantham, 249 _n._, 329, 341
Gravesend, 329
Great Boughton, 326, 329, 340
Great Ouseburn, 323
Great Preston, 329, 330, 331, 335, 337, 338, 339
Great Yarmouth, 329, 334, 341
Greenwich, 329, 341
Grimsby, 325, 329
Guildford, 323, 329
Guiltcross, 326, 329, 339
Guisborough, 329, 333
Hackney, 246, 329
Hadleigh, 171
Hailsham, 329, 340
Halifax, 329
Halstead, 329
Haltwhistle, 329
Hambledon, 329
Hammersmith, 328, 329
Hampstead, 327, 329
Happing, 337, 339
Hardingstone, 329
Hartismere, 329
Hartlepool, 329, 338
Hartley Wintney, 217 _n._, 323, 328, 329
Haslingden, 329
Hastings, 329
Hatfield, 329
Havant, 329
Haverfordwest, 329
Hawarden, 326, 329, 338, 341
Hay, 329
Hayfield, 330
Headington, 330
Headley, 322, 330, 335
Helmsley, 330
Helston, 330
Hemel Hempstead, 330
Hemsworth, 25 _n._, 330
Hendon, 330, 340
Henley, 330
Henstead, 330
Hereford, 330
Hertford, 330
Hexham, 247 _n._, 330
Highworth, 330, 338
Hinckley, 324, 330
Hitchin, 330
Holbeach, 330
Holbeck, 325, 330
Holborn, 102, 103, 104 _n._, 109, 119, 158, 322, 330, 331, 332
Hollingbourne, 330
Holsworthy, 330
Holyhead, 322, 330
Holywell, 330
Honiton, 330
Hoo, 330
Horncastle, 330
Horsham, 330
Houghton le Spring, 330
Howden, 330
Hoxne, 330
Huddersfield, 330
Hungerford, 330
Hunslet, 325, 330, 336
Huntingdon, 330
Hursley, 330
Inns of Court, 322
Ipswich, 331
Ireland, 118, 219
Islington, 164 _n._, 331
Ives, St., 331
James, St. (Clerkenwell), 330, 331
James, St. (Westminster), 331, 340
Jarrow, 177 _n._
Keighley, 201, 247 _n._, 331
Kendal, 331
Kensington, 163, 170, 331
Kent, 70
Kent, East, 57, 60
Kettering, 331
Keynsham, 331, 341, 342
Kidderminster, 331
Kingsbridge, 331
Kingsclere, 331
Kings Lynn, 331
Kings Norton, 331
Kingston-upon-Hull, 331
Kingston-on-Thames, 217, 331
Kington, 331, 336
Kirkby Moorside, 330, 331
Kirkdale, 112 _n._
Knaresborough, 331
Knighton, 331, 336
Laindon, 170
Lambeth, 34, 212 _n._, 215 _n._, 260, 332
Lampeter, 331
Lancashire, 59 _n._, 90 _n._, 91, 92-94, 105, 129 _n._, 136 _n._, 142,
166, 222 _n._
Lancaster, 326, 331
Lanchester, 331
Langport, 331
Launceston, 331
Launditch, 333
Ledbury, 331
Leeds, 217 _n._, 323, 325, 331, 336
Leek, 322, 331
Leicester, 113 _n._, 165 _n._, 331
Leigh, 331
Leighton Buzzard, 332, 341
Leominster, 332
Leonard, St. (Shoreditch), 332
Lewes, 326, 332, 340
Lewisham, 332, 341
Lexden, 332, 341
Leyburn, 332
Lichfield, 332
Lincoln, 332
Lingfield, 171
Linton, 332
Liskeard, 332
Liverpool, 19, 55, 112 _n._, 120, 146 _n._, 217, 237, 332
Llandilo Fawr, 332
Llandovery, 332
Llanelly, 332
Llanfyllin, 332
Llanidloes, 334
Llanrwst, 332
Loddon, 332
London, 14, 25, 34, 35, 91, 96-98, 99, 108, 112, 116, 118, 119, 120,
121, 122, 123, 127, 129, 136 _n._, 137 _n._, 139 _n._, 140, 145, 147
_n._, 148, 151, 156, 159, 160, 161, 163, 166, 168, 169 _n._, 174 _n._,
178, 186, 188 _n._, 190, 192 _n._, 207 _n._, 208, 212 _n._, 214, 215,
224, 225, 227, 231, 233 _n._, 235, 242, 243, 264, 332 Long Ashton,
323, 332
Longtown, 332
Lothingland, 334, 341
Loughborough, 332
Louth, 332
Ludlow, 109 _n._, 332
Luke, St. (Chelsea), 332
Luke, St. (Middlesex), 330, 332
Lunesdale, 326, 332
Luton, 332
Lutterworth, 324, 332
Lymington, 332
Macclesfield, 332
Machynlleth, 332
Madeley, 332
Maidenhead, 326, 332
Maidstone, 332
Maldon, 26 _n._, 332, 341
Malling, 332
Malmesbury, 332
Malton, 332, 342
Manchester, 92 _n._, 94, 104, 105 _n._, 108 _n._, 112 _n._, 118 _n._,
119 _n._, 120 _n._, 124, 141, 152, 153, 163, 168 _n._, 175, 178, 214
_n._, 215, 217 _n._, 333, 336
Mansfield, 333
Margaret, St., 328, 333
Margate, 108 _n._, 188 _n._, 241 _n._
Market Bosworth, 324, 333
Market Drayton, 333
Market Harborough, 333
Marlborough, 333
Marston Green, 186 _n._
Martin, St., 333, 338
Mary, St. (Islington), 333
Mary, St. (Lambeth), 333
Mary, St. (Newington), 333
Mary, St. (Rotherhithe), 333
Mary, St. (Whittlesey), 333, 340
Mary Magdalen, St., 324, 333
Marylebone, St., 145 _n._, 333
Medway, 333
Melksham, 333, 339
Melton Mowbray, 333
Mere, 333
Meriden, 333
Merthyr Tydfil, 333, 335
Middlesborough, 329, 333, 338
Midhurst, 333, 338
Mildenhall, 225, 333
Mile End New Town, 333
Mile End Old Town, 214 _n._, 333, 338
Milton, 329, 333
Mitcham, 127 _n._
Mitford and Launditch, 333
Monmouth, 333
Montgomery, 328, 333
Morpeth, 334
Mutford and Lothingland, 334, 341
Nantwich, 334, 340
Narberth, 334
Neath, 334, 335
Neot's, St., 334
Newark, 334
Newbury, 334
Newcastle in Emlyn, 334
Newcastle-under-Lyme, 334
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 34 _n._, 59 _n._, 105 _n._, 112-113 _n._, 114 _n._,
151 _n._, 158 _n._, 216 _n._, 220 _n._, 334
Newent, 334
New Forest, 334
Newhaven, 334
Newington, 152 _n._, 334
Newmarket, 334
Newport (Monmouth), 334
Newport (Salop), 334
Newport Pagnell, 334
Newton Abbot, 334
Newtown and Llanidloes, 334
Norfolk, 218
Northallerton, 334
Northampton, 334
North Aylesford, 334, 338
North Bierley, 324, 334
Northleach, 334
North Shields, 177 _n._
North Witchford, 334
Norton, 332, 342
Norwich, 25, 66, 109-111, 129, 201, 334
Norwood, 44, 108 _n._
Nottingham, 322, 334, 336, 342
Nuneaton, 26 _n._, 334
Oakham, 334
Okehampton, 334
Olave, St., 212 _n._, 324, 333, 334
Old Gravel Lane, 238 _n._
Oldham, 334
Ongar, 334
Ormskirk, 334
Orsett. 334
Oswestry, 334
Oundle, 334
Ouseburn, 335
Oxford, 112 _n._, 335
Paddington, 119 _n._, 335
Pancras, St., 322, 335, 342
Pateley Bridge, 335
Patrington, 335
Pembroke, 335
Penbridge, 325, 335
Penistone, 335, 341
Penrith, 335
Penzance, 335
Pershore, 335
Peterborough, 335
Petersfield, 330, 335
Petworth, 335, 338
Pewsey, 335
Pickering, 335
Plomesgate, 335
Plymouth, 28 _n._, 42 _n._, 125 _n._, 208 _n._, 335
Plympton, 335
Pocklington, 335
Pontadawe, 334, 335, 338
Pontefract, 323, 335, 336
Pontypool, 335
Pontypridd, 325, 333, 335
Pool, 328, 333
Poole, 335
Poplar, 63 _n._, 73, 121 _n._, 129, 142, 144 _n._, 157, 161-163, 164
_n._, 166 _n._, 169-171, 178, 211 _n._, 232 _n._, 236, 236-237 _n._,
241, 243, 260, 335
Portsea Island, 208 _n._, 335
Portsmouth, 335
Potterspury, 336
Prescot, 336
Presteigne, 331, 336
Preston, 336
Prestwich, 92 _n._, 214 _n._, 333, 336
Purbeck, 339
Pwllheli, 336
Radford, 334, 336
Ramsbury, 330
Reading, 336
Redruth, 221, 336
Reeth, 336
Reigate, 336
Rhayader, 336
Richmond (Surrey), 217, 336
Richmond (Yorks), 336
Ringwood, 336
Ripon, 336
Risbridge, 336
Rochdale, 222 _n._, 336
Rochford, 336
Romford, 336
Romney Marsh, 57, 336
Romsey, 336
Ross, 336
Rothbury, 336
Rotherham, 336
Rotherhithe, 119 _n._, 324, 333, 336
Rottingdean, 188 _n._
Royston, 77, 336
Rugby, 324, 336
Runcorn, 336
Ruthin, 336
Rye, 336
Saddleworth, 336, 337
Saffron Walden, 337
Salford, 105 _n._, 129 _n._, 214 _n._, 337
Salisbury, 322, 337
Samford, 337
Saviour's Street, 328, 333, 337
Scarborough, 337
Scotland, 95, 114, 343-363
Sculcoates, 337
Sedbergh, 337
Sedgefield, 337
Seisdon, 337
Selby, 336, 337
Settle, 337
Sevenoaks, 60, 337
Shaftesbury, 337
Shardlow, 337
Sheffield, 187 _n._, 337
Sheppey, 337
Shepton Mallet, 337
Sherborne, 337
Shiffnal, 337
Shipston-on-Stour, 337
Shoreditch, 337
Shrewsbury, 323, 337
Shropshire, 113
Skipton, 337
Skirlaugh, 337
Sleaford, 337
Smallburgh, 337, 339
Solihull, 337
Southam, 337
Southampton, 337
South Molton, 337
South Shields, 337
South Stoneham, 337
Southwark, 127 _n._, 152 _n._, 328, 333, 337
Southwell, 337
Spalding, 337
Spilsby, 337
Stafford, 337
Staines, 337
Stamford, 337
Stepney, 121 _n._, 161 _n._, 236, 333, 338
Steyning, 338
Stockbridge, 338
Stockport, 338
Stockton, 329, 333, 338
Stoke Damerel, 327, 338
Stokesley, 333, 338
Stoke-upon-Trent, 338
Stone, 338
Stourbridge, 338
Stow, 338
Stow-on-the-Wold, 338
Strand, 119 _n._, 333, 338, 340
Stratford-on-Avon, 338
Stratton, 338
Strood, 338
Stroud, 338
Sturminster, 338
Sudbury, 338
Suffolk, 225
Surrey, North, 188 _n._
Sussex, 70
Sutton, 327, 333, 335, 338, 340
Sutton Courtney, 23 _n._
Swaffham, 338
Swansea, 329, 335, 338
Swindon, 330, 338
Swinton, 108 _n._, 112 _n._
Tadcaster, 323, 336, 338
Tamworth, 338
Tarvin, 324, 326, 329, 338
Taunton, 338
Tavistock, 338
Teesdale, 117 _n._, 338
Tendring, 338
Tenterden, 338
Tetbury, 338
Tewkesbury, 338
Thakeham, 338
Thame, 338
Thanet, Isle of, 339
Thetford, 329, 339
Thingoe, 339
Thirsk, 339
Thomas, St., 339
Thornbury, 323, 339
Thorne, 339
Thrapston, 339
Ticehurst, 339
Tisbury, 339
Tiverton, 339
Todmorden, 339
Tonbridge, 339
Tooting, 108
Torrington, 339
Totnes, 339
Towcester, 339
Toxteth, 217, 339, 340
Tregaron, 339
Trowbridge, 333, 339
Truro, 339
Tunstead, 337, 339
Tynemouth, 177 _n._, 339
Uckfield, 339
Ulverston, 323, 339
Uppingham, 339
Upton-on-Severn, 339
Uttoxeter, 339
Uxbridge, 339
Wakefield, 336, 339
Wallingford, 339
Walsall, 193 _n._, 339
Walsingham, 325, 339
Wandsworth, 339
Wangford, 339
Wantage, 339
Ware, 339
Wareham, 339
Warminster, 339
Warmley, 331, 342
Warrington, 157, 339
Warwick, 339
Watford, 339
Wayland, 329, 339
Weardale, 339
Wellingborough, 339
Wellington (Salop), 339
Wellington (Som.), 339
Wells, 339
Welwyn, 339
Wem, 339, 340
Weobley, 340
Westbourne, 340
West Bromwich, 193 _n._, 340
Westbury, 340
Westbury-on-Severn, 340
West Derby, 216, 339, 340
West Firle, 327, 329, 332, 340
West Ham, 225 _n._, 340
Westhampnett, 338, 340
Westminster, 102 _n._, 128 _n._, 331, 338, 340
West Ward, 340
Wetherby, 323, 325, 340
Weymouth, 340
Wharfedale, 325, 340
Wheatenhurst, 340
Whitby, 340
Whitchurch (Hants), 340
Whitchurch (Salop), 327, 334, 338, 339, 340, 341
Whitechapel, 158 _n._, 170, 171, 260, 340
Whitehaven, 340
Whittlesey, 340
Whorwellsdown, 340
Wigan, 330
Wight, Isle of, 340
Wigton, 340
Willesden, 330, 340
Williton, 340
Wilton, 340
Wimborne, 340
Wincanton, 340
Winchcombe, 341
Winchester, 341
Windsor, 341
Winslow, 341
Winstree, 332, 341
Wirral, 247 _n._, 324, 341
Wisbeach, 341
Witham, 325, 332, 341
Witney, 341
Woburn, 322, 341
Wokingham, 137 _n._, 341
Wolstanton, 341
Wolverhampton, 341
Woodbridge 242 _n._, 341
Woodstock, 341
Woolwich, 239 _n._, 329, 332, 341
Wootton Bassett, 327
Worcester, 341
Worksop, 341
Wortley, 335, 341
Wrexham, 329, 340, 341
Wycombe, 341
Yarmouth, 329, 334, 341
Yeovil, 341
York, 192 _n._, 341, 342
Yorkshire, 59 _n._, 91, 105 _n._, 234, 322
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Able-bodied, the, attendance at classes as condition of relief, 94;
not to be allowed out to look for work, 80;
but so allowed, 260;
beer granted to, 246-247;
classification of, 32-33;
detention of, 268, 291;
definition or want of definition of, 4, 11, 13, 15, 22-23, 32, 51, 90,
100-101;
discrimination among, 3-4, 259;
disfranchisement of, 261;
under Distress Committees, 260-262;
emigration of, 260;
employment of, under Poor Law, 4-6, 10, 28, 74-75, 121, 133, 246;
employment of, at wages, 29, 83, 260-261;
families of, 28, 158-159, 170-171, 184;
in Farm Colonies, 260;
in 1834 Report, 3-6, 11, 13, 236;
Ins and Outs among, 288;
ineligible for relief in Scotland, 95, 356-361;
industrial and reformatory institutions for, 235;
labour test for, 36, 84, 154, 156-158, 259-262;
luncheon allowed to, 246;
under Majority Report, 275;
Manchester rules as to, 152;
mental trainer for, 260, 265;
migration of, 260;
under Minority Report, 297;
and Modified W. T. Order, 158-159, 170-171;
and non-resident relief, 53;
outdoor relief to, 4-8, 13, 15, 22-32, 51, 54, 83-87, 90-91, 130, 149,
152-158, 167, 257-259, 260-262;
at Poplar, 260;
power of Central Authority to regulate, 12-13, 21;
and Principle of Curative Treatment, 265;
and Principle of Less Eligibility, 3-11, 83-84, 259-261;
and Principle of National Uniformity, 3-4, 83, 90-91, 257;
relief in kind for, 39, 42, 43, 130;
relief on loan, 11;
in Scotland, 95, 356-361;
Test Workhouse for, 159-164, 243, 358-359;
women as, 3, 15;
and the workhouse, 5-6, 9-10, 32-33, 61, 74-75, 83-85, 91, 121, 128,
134, 140, 151, 154-160, 165, 235-236, 244-247, 259-260, 262, 268.
See also _Unemployed_ and _Vagrants_
---- Test Workhouse, 159-164, 170, 243, 358-359
Aged and infirm, 3, 8-9, 12, 51-53, 89 _n._, 128-130, 132, 148, 229-240,
265, 271;
definition of, 51, 52;
grant of outdoor relief to, 6-7, 8-9, 15, 18, 51-52, 65 _n._, 84,
128-130, 131 _n._, 149-153, 207, 229-235, 258, 262, 265;
in workhouse, 56, 61, 71-72, 79, 84-85, 134, 222, 235-240, 242, 243;
separate building for, 6, 9, 52, 83, 85, 121 _n._, 236, 258;
employment of, 67, 74, 237 _n._, 246;
diet of, 68, 69, 138, 139 _n._, 237 _n._, 240, 242;
married couples, separate accommodation for, in workhouse, 65-66, 81,
236 _n._, 238;
application of workhouse test to, 52-53, 85-86, 150, 152, 229-230,
258;
boarding out of, 232 _n._, 241;
in workhouse of another Union, 161;
no national uniformity in treatment of, 84, 234, 258;
statistics of, 130-131 _n._, 233 _n._, 235 _n._;
Bill for establishment of District Infirmaries for, 49, 52;
for establishment of Cottage Homes for, 226
---- Poor, Royal Commission on, 231, 232
Alcohol for paupers, 19, 68, 218, 246-247
Alcoholism, 304-306
Allowance system, 24, 87
Almshouses for deserving aged, 258
Anstie, Dr., 119
Apprentices, obligation of householders to receive, 17
Apprenticeship, 4, 8, 12, 17, 45-46, 113 _n._, 200-203;
to sea service, 17, 202-203;
payment of premiums for, 45, 46, 50, 265;
"outdoor," 110
---- orders, 45-46, 113 _n._
Arnold, Sir Arthur, 94 _n._
Aschrott, Dr. P. F., vi
Assistant Commissioners. See _Commissioners, Assistant_
Association for the Cure of Tuberculosis, 217-218 _n._
---- for Improving the Condition of the Sick Poor, 119
---- of Poor Law Unions, 249
Asylums for houseless poor, 14, 35, 97;
for insane, 50, 89 _n._;
for sick, 89 _n._, 121;
of Metropolitan Asylums Board, for idiots, 224-225
Aubin, Mr., 44, 108 _n._
Auditor, disallowance by, of toys for sick children, 189;
of beer, 247
Bagenal, Mr., 221, 233 _n._, 234 _n._
Baines, Mr., 117 _n._
Baker, Mr. T. Barwick L., 96 _n._, 100 _n._
Balfour, Mr. Gerald, 169 _n._
Band of Hope, donation by guardians to funds of, 190
"Barrack Schools," 112, 114, 186, 258.
See also _Schools, Poor Law_
Bastardy, recommendations of 1834 Report about, 7
Berrington, Mr., 203
Beveridge, Mr. W. H., 356
Blind, 128 _n._, 184, 227;
relief to, 18, 50, 228-229;
institutional treatment of, 8, 50, 127-128, 227, 241;
apprenticeship of, 45, 50.
See also _Children, Defective_
"Block system," 186
Board of Education, 195
---- of Guardians. See _Guardians_
---- of Trade, 202
Boarding-out, orders for, 130;
declared to be outdoor relief, 232 _n._
See also _Aged, Children_, and _Unsound Mind, Persons of_
---- Committee. See _Committee_
Boards, District, 166, 168, 213
Bone-pounding, 75
Bosanquet, Mrs. B., 274
Bosanquet, Prof. B., 280, 350
Bowen, Mr. John, 132 _n._
Boyle, Mr. Courtenay, 228 _n._
Boys in workhouses, 61, 66-67, 76, 110-111;
at Norwich Homes, 110-111;
working home for, at Keighley, 202
Bridges, Dr. J. H., 139 _n._, 186 _n._
Buchanan, Dr., 119 _n._
Bulkley, Miss M., ix
Buller, Mr. Charles, 95, 96 _n._, 99, 107
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 167
"Canary Wards," 76
Carr, Dr., 119
Casson, Mr. W. A., 199 _n._, 202 _n._, 206 _n._, 217 _n._, 218 _n._, 229
_n._, 240 _n._, 241 _n._, 245 _n._, 247 _n._, 250 _n._
Casual labourers, excluded from Lancashire relief works, 166
---- Poor Act (1882), 174 _n._, 245 _n._
---- wards, 33, 35-36, 64, 80, 96-99, 133, 163 _n._, 172, 173 _n._,
174 _n._
See also _Vagrants_
Central Authority, establishment of, 2;
regulations made by, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17-18, 18-19, 21;
powers of, 12, 54-55, 89 _n._;
approval by, of grant of outdoor relief to able-bodied, 13, 29, 30,
31, 43-44;
of emigration of poor persons, 19;
of married couples living together, 65.
See also _Local Government Board_, _Poor Law Board_, and _Poor Law
Commissioners_
Certified Schools Act (1862), 111 _n._
Chadwick, Sir Edward, 282
Chamberlain, Mr. Joseph, 164-165, 166, 167, 168, 261
Chance, Sir W., vi, vii, 253 _n._
Chaplain, workhouse, 77-78
Chaplin, Mr. Henry, 164 _n._, 199, 231, 232 _n._, 233, 238
Charge and recovery, 7, 198 _n._, 295, 361, 363
Charity, function of, in Majority Report, 281-283;
in the Minority Report, 307-311;
to deal with hard cases, 4, 230;
overlapping of, 103
Charity Organisation Society, 274, 282
Chevalier, Mons. E., vi
Children, classed as able-bodied, 90 _n._;
adoption of, 196, 203-206, 268;
apprenticeship of, 17, 45-46, 200-203, 265;
baptism of, 79 _n._;
boarding out of, 80, 84, 114-115, 130, 184, 195-206, 227, 232 _n._,
241, 258;
in certified schools, 203, 206;
defective, 46, 226-227;
deserted, 12 _n._, 142, 195-196, 250-251, 268;
detention of, 204 _n._, 268;
education of, 7, 12-16, 73, 82-83, 104-106, 109, 121 _n._, 146, 180
_n._, 191-195, 264-269;
emigration of, 142, 250;
farming out of, 44, 108, 187 _n._;
illegitimate, 16, 196;
imbecile, 224-228;
in industrial schools, 261-262;
institutional provision for, 83-85, 104, 106-114, 133 _n._, 184,
187-195, 203, 236, 258, 262-265;
ophthalmic, 189, 192 _n._;
orphan, 3, 12 _n._, 80, 83-84, 104-106, 114, 142-143, 195-196,
250-251, 268;
out-relief to, 16, 43-44, 179-188, 195-199, 203, 206, 258, 265;
parental authority over, 268;
under pauper care, 125 _n._, 188, 190;
and Principle of Less Eligibility, 109, 114, 146-149, 187, 192, 200,
250, 261-262, 265;
and Principle of National Uniformity, 258;
and relief on loan, 143, 253;
religious teaching of, 16, 77-78, 191, 193, 204-205;
on remand, 192 _n._;
Roman Catholic, 241;
school fees for, 44, 104-106;
and stigma of pauperism, 262;
underfed at day school, 183-184, 253;
in the workhouse, 7, 9, 12-16, 43-45, 71-72, 80, 82-83, 106-107,
112-113, 121 _n._, 133-134, 138, 160, 177, 181-182, 185, 188-192,
195-196, 224-226, 238, 242-243, 259.
See also _Infant_
Children Act (1908), 312, 314
Children's Care Committees, 310-311
Cholera, 116, 119 _n._;
patients suffering from, not to be admitted to workhouse, 119 _n._
Christmas Day, no extra dinner allowed on, 69;
extra allowed, 70
Church Army, 171
Circulars of Central Authority, 21, 22
Clothing, as outdoor relief, 25 _n._, 100 _n._;
purchase or redemption of, by voluntary agencies, 144
Cod-liver oil, supply of, 117
Commission, Royal, on Aged Poor, 231-232;
on the Blind, etc., 189;
on the Feeble-minded, 312, 314, 345, 354-355, 361;
of 1832-1834, 3-11, 257-263;
of 1905-1909, 274-319
Commissioners, Assistant, 57, 147
Committee, Departmental, on weighing rations, 249;
on vagrancy, 174
---- Parliamentary, of 1838, 35, 37;
of 1864, 97, 117-118; of 1888, 174;
of 1892, 167-168; of 1900, 226
---- of Privy Council on Education, 107 _n._, 109 _n._
Committees, boarding-out, 196-200
---- Visiting, of lunatic asylum, 222, 223, 224
---- Visiting, of workhouse, 77, 125, 238, 244, 247-248
---- Women's, 189
Common Poor Fund.
See _Metropolitan Common Poor Fund_
Commons, House of, 148, 153
Compulsion, 270-272;
principle of, 263, 267-268;
in Majority Report, 276
Constable may take children to workhouse, 181
Continuous treatment, 276
Convict, emigration of family of, 141
Corbett, Mr., 140 _n._, 145 _n._, 147 _n._, 148, 155 _n._, 157 _n._, 158
_n._, 159, 161 _n._, 162 _n._, 175 _n._, 178, 183, 186, 198 _n._,
251
Corn-grinding, 75, 164 _n._, 246
Cost of Minority Report proposals, 297-300;
recovery of, 294-295
Cottage homes, 185-187, 226, 258, 264
Cotton famine in Lancashire, 90 _n._, 91-93, 105, 142, 166
Councils of Social Welfare, sphere of, under Minority Report, 311
Country Holiday Fund, 310-311
Creed register, 77
Criminal Lunatics Act (1838), 18 _n._
Cripples, 127-128, 255
Culley, Mr., 150 _n._, 158 _n._, 177 _n._, 229 _n._, 253 _n._
Curative treatment, 263-266, 269-272;
principle of, 263-266;
in Majority Report, 275
Custody of Children Act, 205
Davy, Mr., 181, 203, 232 _n._
Deaf and dumb, 18, 50, 127, 184, 241.
See also _Children, Defective_
Defectives, 50, 74, 85, 127-128, 226-229.
See also _Blind_, _Deaf and Dumb_, and _Children, Defective_
---- mentally.
See _Unsound Mind, Persons of_
Denison's Act, 105, 179
Destitution, causes of, 300, 347;
definition of, as regards medical relief, 116, 212 _n._;
want of education a form of, 105 _n._
---- authority, plea for, in Majority Report, 278-281;
necessity for, in 1834, 278;
not to apply to mentally defective, 279;
connection of, with "moral" defect, 281;
incompatibility of, with principle of curative treatment, 284-289;
with principle of compulsion, 289-292;
with principle of universal provision, 292-295;
the officials of a, 285;
inability of, to deal with incipient stage, 286-287;
inability of, to search out, 287-288;
inability of, to deal with ins and outs, 288-289;
inability of, to deal with unemployed, 291;
overlapping of other authorities with, 293;
Prof. Bosanquet's argument for, 350-361
Detention. See _Workhouse_
---- Colony, 307
Disciplinary supervision as substitute for deterrence, 316-317
Dietaries and Accounts Order, 170, 171 _n._, 240 _n._, 245, 248, 249
Diseases Prevention Act, 209 _n._, 213
Disfranchisement of able-bodied, 168 _n._, 261;
of sick, 209, 213, 217
Dispensaries, Poor Law, 118, 146, 208, 258, 264;
provident, 118
Dissenters. See _Nonconformists_
Distress Committee, 172;
powers and constitution of, 169;
employment of able-bodied by, 169 _n._, 260, 261, 262
Distress from want of employment, Committee of House of Commons on, 167
District medical officers. See _Medical Officers, District_
---- Nurses Order, 181, 210 _n._ See also _Nurses_
Divided Parishes and Poor Law Amendment Act, 175 _n._, 209 _n._, 245
_n._
Dodson, Mr., 151-152
Doyle, Mr., 148
Drink, 304-306
Drouet, Mr., 108
Dumsday, Mr. W. H., 197 _n._
Ebrington, Lord, 137 _n._
Education, provision of, for paupers, 126, 266-267, 271.
See also _Children, Education of_
---- Aid Society, Manchester and Salford, 105 _n._
---- Department, 180
---- Acts (1870-1909), 105-106, 177, 179 _n._, 180 _n._, 198, 201, 227
_n._, 228, 312, 313, 344, 361
---- (Administrative Provisions) Act (1907), 312
---- of Poor Children Act (1855), 105 _n._
---- (Provision of Meals) Act (1906), 312, 313
---- (Scotland) Act (1908), 312, 344, 361
Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act (1893), 227 _n._, 228
---- (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act (1899), 227 _n._
Emigration, 10, 19, 141-143, 169, 249-251, 260, 266
Epileptics, 217, 218, 255
Estcourt, Mr. Sotheron, 96 _n._, 97 _n._
Factory Acts, 198
Family, how the Minority Report deals with the, 301-302, 348-349
Farm colonies, 169-172, 255, 260, 265, 270
Fawcett, Professor H., 115
Feeble-minded, 80;
proposed authority for the, 354-355;
Royal Commission on, 312, 314, 345, 354, 355, 361.
See _Unsound Mind, Persons of_
Fels, Mr. Joseph, 170
Fever wards, 122
Fleming, Mr. Baldwyn, 181-182, 192, 234 _n._, 254 _n._
Fowle, Rev. T. W., vi, 115
Fowler, Sir Henry (Lord Wolverhampton), 167, 230 _n._, 238
Franchise, extension of, 148
Free Education Act (1891), 106
Friendly societies, out-relief to members of, 47, 48, 148, 253-255, 265
Froment, Mons. G. E. de, vi
Fust, Mr. Jenner, 190-191
Gambling, 304
Gardiner, Colonel Lynedoch, 145 _n._
General Board of Health, 146
---- Consolidated Order (1847), 32-33, 35-36, 46, 54, 56, 61-62, 79,
81-82, 88, 91, 107-108, 113, 126-127, 133, 170, 188, 235-237, 240,
249, 260
---- Orders or Rules, 21-22, 48, 61-62
Gilbert's Act, 321
Girls, employment of, 67;
in workhouse, 66-67, 134
Glanville, Dr. Mortimer, 210 _n._, 211 _n._
Goschen, Mr. G. J. (Lord Goschen), 100, 102, 103, 104 _n._, 123,
144-145, 147 _n._, 148, 149, 207, 214, 219, 253, 254, 255, 266,
282-283
Grant, Colonel C. W., 114 _n._
Greater Eligibility, Principle of, 263, 264, 265
Guardians, grant of relief by, 12;
apprenticing of children by, 17;
consent of, for building new workhouse, 19, 54;
opposition of, to establishment of vagrant districts, 35, 97;
to establishment of boarding-schools, 45;
subscriptions by, to voluntary institutions, 63 _n._, 116, 217 _n._;
refractory paupers brought before, 76;
part taken by, in provision of relief works, 90 _n._, 93-94, 165, 166,
167;
nomination of members of Distress Committees by, 169;
Conference of, in London, 178 _n._, 198 _n._;
proceedings taken against parents by, for neglect of children, 180,
181, 184;
inspection of boarded-out children by, 199-200;
in country, conservatism of, 187, 192;
election of, 209 _n._, 247;
in rural districts, the public health authorities, 212 _n._, 219-220;
combination of, for classification by workhouses, 243-244
Guilds of Help, sphere of, under Minority Report, 311
Hanway's Act, 17 _n._
Hardy, Mr. Gathorne, 120, 215
Harries, Mr. Thomas, 137 _n._
Hart, Dr. Ernest, 119
Head, Sir Edmund, 86
Head, Sir Francis, 57, 58, 60, 86, 131
Health Societies, 311
---- visitors, 220, 310
Hedley, Mr., 151 _n._, 220 _n._
Henley, Mr., 163
Hervey, Mr., 187 _n._, 219
Hibbert, Sir J., 189
Hicks-Beach, Sir M. (Lord St. Aldwyn), 98-99
Hill, Miss F., 114 _n._
Hill, Miss Octavia, 145 _n._, 253
Hodgson, Mr., 104
Homes, Children's, 109-111, 201;
convalescent, 241, 255;
for aged, 239 _n._
See _Cottage Homes_
Hospitals, relation of Poor Law to, 63 _n._, 116, 119, 120, 216-217,
220, 241, 255, 266
House of Lords. See _Committees, Parliamentary_
Houseless Poor, 35 _n._
See also _Vagrants_
Idiots, 63, 123, 224-225, 242.
See _Unsound Mind, Persons of_
Imbeciles. See _Unsound Mind, Persons of_
Impotent, 8-9, 18, 51. See also _Aged_
Industrial Schools. See _Schools, Industrial_
---- Schools Acts, 111
Inebriates Act, 206
Infants, in workhouse, 56, 61, 62, 63-64, 66, 67, 72.
See also _Children_
Infectious disease, 126, 245 _n._, 271;
provision for, by Guardians, 62 _n._, 119, 136, 214 _n._;
by Metropolitan Asylums Board, 123, 209 _n._, 212-213.
See also _Hospitals_
Infirm. See _Aged and Infirm_
Infirmaries, Bill for establishment of District, 49, 52
---- Poor Law, 121, 207, 235 _n._;
pressure on Guardians to provide, 211-212, 216;
cost of maintenance in, borne by Common Poor Fund, 214;
increasing popularity of, 214-216;
admission to, 214 _n._, 215;
maintenance in, held to be medical relief only, 217.
See also _Workhouse, Sick in_
"Ins and Outs," 132, 192 _n._, 206;
detention of, 244-245
Insane. See _Unsound Mind, Persons of_
Inspectors of Local Government Board, 147, 181-182, 190, 206, 216, 225,
241; strict policy urged by, 148-153, 159, 164, 175, 178, 207-208,
229, 232, 243, 251, 252; test workhouse advocated by, 159-161, 163,
243;
conferences of, 151
---- of Lunacy Commissioners, 125
---- of Schools, 113, 114
Justices, granting of relief by, 12, 13, 14, 18;
committal of lunatics to asylum by, 18;
detention of lunatics in workhouse by order of, 222, 223
Kennedy, Mr., 182 _n._, 187 _n._
Labour colonies for vagrants, 171 _n._
---- Exchanges Act (1908), 346
---- Exchanges of Distress Committees, 169, 172, 270;
in Majority Report, 277;
in Minority Report, 358-359
---- Test, 156-158, 165, 178, 261
_Laisser faire_, 270
Lambert, Sir John, 153 _n._, 219
_Lancet, The_, 117, 134, 210 _n._, 211 _n._, 235
Land, cultivation of, 165, 168-170, 246
Landquist, Mr. J. F., 188 _n._
Lansbury, Mr. G., 170
Lefevre, Mr. Shaw (Lord Eversley), 167, 168 _n._
Less Eligibility, Principle of, how far applicable, 1, 3, 11, 45, 83-85,
88-89, 109, 112, 114, 117-118, 122, 125-126, 172, 187, 192, 200, 212
_n._, 250, 256, 259-263, 265-266, 269, 271
Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 86, 89
Lewis, Sir G. F., 89 _n._
Local Authorities, position of, 2, 12
---- Government Board for England and Wales, 146-255, 263
---- Government Board for Scotland, order of, as to phthisis, 344, 345,
352
Lock Hospital at Aldershot, 217 _n._
Lockwood, Mr., 163 _n._
London County Council, 310
---- Hospital, 63 _n._
Long, Mr. Walter, 169, 218 _n._, 245, 250
Longley, Sir Henry, 148, 150 _n._, 151, 154 _n._, 159-160, 161 _n._, 177
_n._, 207 _n._, 208, 214 _n._, 229, 230, 232, 235, 237, 243, 247,
251 _n._
Longman, Miss M., ix
Lonsdale, Miss S., vii
Lunacy Acts, 124 _n._, 222 _n._, 223 _n._
---- Commissioners, 125-127, 133, 221, 222, 224
Lunatics, 8, 18, 25 _n._, 49, 50, 63, 89 _n._, 123-126, 252, 267, 271.
See _Unsound Mind, Persons of_
Lushington, Mr., 195 _n._, 238 _n._
Lying-in cases, 62, 63, 136
M'Culloch, Mr. J. R., 132
Mackay, Mr. T., vi, vii, 87 _n._, 94 _n._, 105 _n._, 115, 151 _n._
Macmorran, Mr., 195 _n._, 238 _n._
Magistrates, police, 162
Majority Report, 274-295;
repudiates "Principles of 1834," 275;
adopts "Principles of 1907," 275;
pleads for a single Destitution Authority, 278-281;
reverts to "Principles of 1834," 281-283;
summary of, 313-314
Makers Up, Society of, 94
"Manchester Rules," 152, 153, 175, 179 _n._
Markham, Dr., 139 _n._
Married couples, separate accommodation for, in workhouse, 65-66, 81,
236 _n._, 238
---- Women's Property Act, 175 n.
Martineau, Harriet, 85-86, 131
Master of Workhouse, 70, 72, 74, 76, 77, 238, 244 _n._
Matron of Workhouse, 70, 73, 74, 238
"Medical extras," 25 _n._, 48
---- inspection and treatment, in Majority Report, 277
---- Officer, District, 211, 231;
qualifications and remuneration of, 48, 117, 251-252, 264;
inspection by, of boarded-out children, 199;
of boarded-out lunatics, 224
Medical officer of workhouse, 8, 60, 68-69, 74, 138, 189, 237 _n._,
246, 247;
appointment and duties of, 71
---- Relief Disqualification Act. 209 _n._, 217 _n._
---- Relief, 4, 8, 13, 18, 117, 123, 143, 153, 210, 211, 219-220, 264
Medicines, supply of free, to sick poor, 123, 219;
supply of, by Public Health Authorities, 220;
expensive, supply of, by Guardians, 117, 264
Mentally defective, proposed Authority for the, 354-355.
See _Unsound Mind, Persons of_
Merchant Shipping Acts, 17, 202
Metropolitan Asylums Board, infectious diseases hospitals of, 123, 209
_n._, 212-213, 214, 216;
establishment of training-ships by, 112;
provision made by, for idiots, 127, 224-225, 227-228;
for "remand children," 192 _n._;
expenditure of, 219 _n._, 243 _n._
---- Board of Works, 97 _n._, 164-165
---- Common Poor Fund, 97 _n._, 168, 170, 185, 212, 213, 214, 232, 235
---- Houseless Poor Acts, 97, 98, 99
---- Police District, 19, 55
---- Poor Acts, 89 _n._, 112, 118, 160, 161, 208 _n._, 214 _n._, 215
_n._, 232 _n._
Migration, 144, 169, 260 _n._
"Miners' phthisis," 221
Minority Report, 274, 296-311;
adopts Principles of 1907, 296-297;
adds to them Principle of Prevention, 297-304;
economy of, 298-300;
the "Moral Factor" in, 304-307;
drink in, 304-306;
unemployment in, 306-307;
voluntary agencies in, 307-311;
summary of, 314-317
"Moral Factor," the, 304-309, 350-361
Mouat, Dr., 216 _n._
Mozley, Mr., 185 _n._
Municipalities, relief works undertaken by, 92-94, 165-168;
regularisation of work of, 168
National Committee to Promote the Break-up of the Poor Law, 274
---- Labour Exchange, 359
---- Uniformity, Principle of, 1-3, 11, 12, 22-23, 83-84, 90-91,
153-154, 173, 174, 234, 256-259, 271
Nichols, Sir George, vii, 86
Nonconformists, provision for, 77-79
Non-parishioners, relief to, 13, 14
Non-residents, relief to, 53-54, 128 _n._, 130, 187-188, 232 _n._,
240-242, 254 _n._
North-Eastern Metropolitan District, 35
Nurses, for indoor sick, 67, 120, 211, 216 _n._, 218, 219;
for outdoor sick, 210, 211 _n._, 258, 264;
in lunatic ward, 126;
for epileptics, 218.
See also _District Nurses Order_
Oakum-picking, 75, 157, 161-164, 178
Obligation, mutual, between community and individual, 269-270
Offences against the Person Act (1861), 113 _n._
Old Age Pensions Act (1908), 312, 344, 354
---- Age Pensions, in Majority Report, 277;
in Minority Report, 363
Operations, surgical, 264
Orders of Central Authority. See _General Orders_, _Special Orders_,
_Outdoor Relief_, and _Outdoor Labour Test Order_
Orphans. See _Children_
Outdoor Labour Test Order, 26, 29, 30-31, 36, 39, 41, 43, 46, 49, 83-84,
88, 90-91, 100-101, 149, 154, 156, 167-168, 261 _n._
---- Medical Relief. See _Medical Relief and Sick_
---- Relief to able-bodied, 4-8, 13, 15, 22-32, 39, 43, 51, 54, 83-87,
90-91, 94, 130, 149, 154-155, 167, 228, 257-259, 262;
to be always adequate, 103, 145, 258, 265;
to aged and infirm, 6-9, 15, 18, 51, 52, 65 _n._, 84, 128-131, 149,
182-183, 232 _n._, 258, 262, 265;
to the blind, 50;
charitable supplementation of, 103, 144;
to children, 43, 83, 104 _n._, 179-185, 196, 201-202;
to the deaf and dumb, 50;
to deserted wives, 36, 40, 101, 175;
discouragement of, 87 _n._, 143-153, 179, 207-209, 229-230, 232, 243,
265;
discrimination in grant of, 2, 27-28, 42, 258, 262;
enquiries into, 103, 145 _n._, 149, 229;
to Friendly Society members, 47, 265;
in kind, 28, 36, 39, 42-43, 128-130;
on Labour Test, see _Outdoor Labour Test Order_;
Sir H. Longley on, 151, 207;
on loan, 47, 232 _n._, 253;
to lunatics, 49, 123, 223;
as maintenance in voluntary institution, 255;
"Manchester Rules" as to, 152-153, 175;
medical, 25 _n._; under Modified W. T. Order, 170-171, 260;
to mothers of illegitimate children, 7-23;
to non-residents, 53, 54;
orders as to, in different unions, 321-342;
to partially disabled, 27;
proposed prohibition of, 13, 85-87;
sanctioned by Central Authority, 43-44;
to the sick, 6-9, 15, 17, 46-48, 63 _n._, 84, 115-118, 131, 149, 155
_n._, 210;
statistics as to, 130-131, 154, 155;
supplementing other resources, 144, 253-255;
weekly payment of, 128;
to widows, 101-104, 115, 154, 176-178;
to women, 7, 23, 36-38, 42, 83, 90-91, 101-104, 115, 154, 175-179, 258
Outdoor Relief Friendly Societies Act (1904), 254, 255 _n._
---- Relief Prohibitory Order (1844), 23, 25 _n._, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32,
36, 40, 42, 43, 46, 49, 54, 83, 88, 90, 91, 100, 101, 102, 106, 130,
131, 132, 149, 153, 154, 155, 156, 241, 260, 261
---- Relief Regulation Order (1852), 23, 25 _n._, 27, 39, 41, 43, 46,
49, 88, 90-91, 100, 101, 102, 115, 128-130, 149, 154, 156, 158-159,
171, 175, 232, 241, 261
Overlapping, 293;
in Scotland, 343-346, 349, 354-355
Overseers, 5, 12, 13, 14, 86, 131
Owen, Sir Hugh, 167
Paget, Mr. R. H., M.P., 253 _n._
Parental responsibility, 306-307, 358
Parish Apprentices Act, 17
"Particular orders," 21
Pashley, Mr. Robert, Q.C., 133 _n._
Pauper Inmates Discharge and Regulation Act, 172, 173 _n._, 244 _n._
Pauperism, statistics of, 103, 150 _n._, 232 _n._;
connection between disease and, 221
Paupers Conveyance Expenses Act, 89 _n._
Pell, Mr. Albert, M.P., 153 _n._
Pensions, attachment of, in repayment of cost of relief, 20;
to aged, 266-267, 271
---- Act (1908), 20 _n._
Phelps, Rev. L. R., 282-283
Phthisis, how dealt with by voluntary agencies, 308;
by Local Health Authority, 309;
order of Local Government Board for Scotland as to, 344, 345, 352
Playfair, Dr. Lyon (Lord Playfair), 137 _n._
Police, 147;
service of, as assistant relieving officers, 95, 98, 98 _n._, 99, 173;
administration of relief to vagrants by, 100
Poor Law Acts Amendment Act (1834), 1, 2, 11-20, 21-22, 33, 46, 50, 51,
54, 77, 85-87, 321
---- areas, list of, 321-342;
cost of, v
---- Royal Commission on (1832-1834), 1, 2-11, 85-87; (1905-1909),
274-319, 343-363
---- attempt to restrict operations of, 145-146;
revival of public interest in, 147-148
---- (Apprentices) Act, 113 _n._
---- Board, 25 _n._, 88-146;
establishment of, 86, 87;
made permanent, 146;
abolition of, 130, 146, 147
---- Certified Schools Act, 128 _n._
---- Commissioners, 21-87, 95, 99, 140, 141.
See also _Poor Law Inquiry Commissioners_
Poor Law Conferences, 151, 152-153
---- Inquiry Commissioners, 159;
Report of, 1-11, 12, 19, 21, 22, 27, 33, 36, 42, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52,
54, 55, 57, 59, 74, 75, 82-83, 84-85, 88, 95, 106, 112, 115, 118,
121, 128, 131, 141, 148, 160, 210, 229 _n._, 232, 236, 239, 242,
256, 257, 258, 259, 262, 263, 267, 268
---- Loans Act, 185 _n._
---- Schools. See _Schools, Poor Law_
---- (Schools) Act, 108 _n._
Poor Relief, Committee of House of Commons on, 97, 117;
of House of Lords on, 174
Preston, Mr. J. W., 215 _n._
Preston-Thomas, Mr. H., v., 179 _n._, 216, 221 _n._, 225-226, 246 _n._
Prevention, different meanings of, 308
---- of destitution, 346-349
---- of Cruelty to Children Acts, 180-181, 184
Principles of 1834, 1, 11, 36, 82-87, 88, 91, 148, 149, 151, 164,
256-262, 267, 269, 270, 271, 272;
abandonment of by L.G.B., 237-273;
repudiation of by Royal Commission of 1905-1909, 275
Privy Council, General Rules of Central Authority disallowable by, 21;
Committee of, on Education, 107 _n._, 109 _n._;
public health service of, 146
Provident dispensaries. See _Dispensaries_
---- sick clubs, 48
Public Assistance Authority, only for the undeserving, 282-283;
argument for and against, 350-363
Public Health Acts, 213 _n._, 219-220
---- Authorities, 92, 94, 213, 262;
service of Guardians as, in rural districts, 212 _n._, 219-220;
medical service of, 219-221
Quatt School, 113
Quinine, supply of, 117
"Rate in aid of wages," 27, 37, 41-42, 102
Ratepayers, consent of required, 19, 54
Rathbone, Mr. W., 120
Rawlinson, Sir R., 93 _n._, 94 _n._
Relatives, contributions from, 126, 150, 152, 229, 261
Relief in kind, 4, 25
---- on loan, 10-11, 16, 20, 143, 153, 176, 183-184, 251-253
---- works, for unemployed, 90, 92-94, 164-169, 172
Relieving officer, 96, 103, 119, 128, 145, 157, 173, 199, 209, 214, 217,
231, 252
Remand children. See _Children on remand_
Rent, payment of for paupers, prohibited, 25 _n._, 123
Revising barristers, 217 _n._
"Revolvers," 244
Ritchie, Lord, 166, 200 _n._, 203, 204 _n._, 237 _n._
Röntgen rays, 218 _n._
Roscoe, Sir Henry, 94
Salt, Mr., 290 _n._
Salvation Army, 171
Sanitary Act (1868), 220 _n._
Sanitation, 123 _n._, 266, 267, 271
Scattered Homes for Children, 185-187, 191, 258
School districts, Act for, 107-108;
combination of parishes into, 16;
in Metropolis, 108, 186
Schoolmasters for pauper children, 73, 107-109, 113
Schools, certified, 111, 147, 185, 195, 241, 255, 258
---- District, 16, 45, 108, 111-112, 133, 185-188, 193, 264
---- industrial, 187, 241, 262
---- maintenance of, for children on out relief, 104, 105 _n._
"Schools for Mothers," 310
---- separate Poor Law, 16, 45, 107-114, 133, 185-188, 190, 193-195,
243, 264
---- workhouse, 10, 16, 113, 185, 193
Sclater-Booth, Mr., 208, 210
Scotland, Minority Report for, 343-363;
overlapping in, 344;
proposed introduction of Principle of Less Eligibility into, 357-358;
application of Minority Report to, 361-363
Scottish National Committee to Promote the Break-up of the Poor Law, 343
Senior, Mr. Nassau, 282
Sick in 1834 Report, 6-8, 84, 210;
almost ignored in orders of Central Authority, 82;
asylum districts formed for, 89, 121, 161, 215;
attendance on and nursing of, 67, 136, 146, 160, 211-219, 242-243,
262;
beer for, 218;
compulsory removal of, to workhouse, 209-210;
definition of, 211;
detention of, 268;
deterrence abandoned with regard to, 217, 261-263;
dietary for, 68-69, 138, 242;
disfranchisement of, 217, 264;
domiciliary treatment of, 6-8, 15-17, 46-48, 63, 84-85, 115-119, 131,
143, 149-153, 155, 207-211, 229, 251-252;
Mr. Goschen's proposed gratuitous treatment of, 207-208, 219, 266;
use of hospitals for, 49, 63;
illustrated books for, 218;
institutional
treatment of, 47-49, 56, 62-63, 67-69, 71, 85, 116-123, 133-134, 136,
138, 146, 150, 160, 207-208, 211-219, 236, 242-243, 258, 261-263;
separate institutions for, 160, 211-219, 236, 242, 262-263;
members of friendly societies, 48;
under Metropolitan Asylums Board, 212-213, 216, 243;
nursing of outdoor, 210, 264;
out relief to, 6-8, 15-17, 46-48, 63, 84-85, 115-119, 131, 143,
149-153, 155, 207-211, 229, 251-252;
Principle of Curative Treatment applied to, 263-264;
Principle of Less Eligibility not applicable to, 3, 117-118, 121-122,
212, 215, 261-263;
Principle of National Uniformity not applied to, 258;
under Public Health Authorities, 219-221;
relief on loan to, 143, 251-252;
statistics of, 89, 122, 216;
suggested free medical attendance for, 207-208, 219, 266;
tea for, 218;
treatment of, in cholera panic, 116, 119;
in workhouses, 47-49, 56, 62-63, 67-69, 71, 85, 116-123, 133-134, 136,
138, 146, 150, 160, 207-208, 211-219, 236, 242-243, 258, 261-263
"Sixpenny Doctor," 118
Smart, Professor W., 94 _n._
Smith, Dr. E., 134 _n._, 135 _n._, 137, 235 _n._, 242 _n._
"Special Orders," 21-30, 51, 69
Spencer, Mrs. F. H., ix
Sprigge, Mr. S. Squire, 117 _n._, 132 _n._
Stansfeld, Mr., 148, 151, 208
Stevens, Mr., 37
Stone-breaking or pounding as task, 75, 157, 161, 246
Stoneyards, 84, 157-158
"Sudden or urgent necessity," 13, 29, 37, 42, 60, 214 _n._, 252
Sunday Schools, children sent to, 191
Surgical appliances, 264
Tea, 69, 139, 238-240
Test workhouse, 159-164, 170, 243, 270, 358-359
Tobacco, 237-239
Tools, provision of, 25, 144
Torrens, Mr. W. T. M'Cullagh, 94 _n._
Town Councils, relief by, 90, 92-94, 167
Training ships, 112
Trollope, Sir John, 129
Tufnell, Mr. E. Carleton, 45 _n._, 108 _n._, 264
Underfed children. See _Children_
Unemployed, the, 90, 92-96, 98-99, 148-172, 164-169, 250, 257, 261-262;
in Scotland, 356-361;
how the Majority Report deals with, 275-279, 282, 291;
how the Minority Report deals with, 306, 317, 358-360. See
_Able-bodied_
Unemployed Workmen Act (1905), 169, 250, 257-258, 261, 297, 312-313,
317;
in Scotland, 344
Unions, list of, 321-342
Universal Provision, Principle of, 263, 266-272;
in Majority Report, 277;
in Minority Report, 298-299
Unsound mind, persons of, 49-50, 62-63, 80, 123-127, 133, 138, 143, 146,
188, 221-228, 242, 268, 270, 279, 297-299, 312;
in Scotland, 354-355, 362
Vaccination, 266-267
Vagrancy, Departmental Committee on, 174, 312
Vagrant Acts, 14, 34, 77, 81, 89, 184, 244
Vagrants, 6, 13-14, 33-36, 62, 64, 80, 89, 95-100, 133, 171-174, 257,
259, 262, 266-267, 281, 288, 297, 312;
in 1834 Report, 6, 13-14, 259;
in Departmental Committee Report of 1904-1906, 174, 312;
in Majority Report, 281, 288;
in Minority Report, 297;
in Scotland, 344;
Acts as to, 13-14, 34, 77, 81-89, 184, 244;
orders as to, 36;
asylums for, 14, 35;
casual wards for, 64, 133, 259;
classification of, 62, 64;
detention of, 14, 35, 88, 95-96, 100, 172-174, 257-259, 267;
dietary for, 36, 98-99;
discrimination, policy of, 95-99, 172, 174, 259;
labour colonies for, 171;
Principle of Curative Treatment not applied to, 266;
Principle of Less Eligibility adhered to, 172, 257, 259, 266;
Principle of National Uniformity aimed at, 257, 259;
task of work for, 14, 33, 35, 95-96, 99, 172-173, 257, 259.
See also _Casual Wards_
Vestries, 10, 12; Metropolitan, 166, 168, 213
Vestry of Liverpool, 112, 120, 146, 237
Villiers, Mr. C. P., 134 _n._, 140, 142
Visiting Committee. See _Committee, Visiting_
Voluntary Agencies, sphere of; co-operation of, 144-146, 255;
proper sphere of, 307-311
---- Aid Committee in Majority Report, 281; purpose of, 282
Wakley, Mr. Thomas, 117, 132
Watts, Dr. John, 94 _n._
Weekly, Mr. John, 188 _n._
"Weighting the alternatives," 318
Wethered, Mr., 234 _n._
Widows, 6-7, 12, 15-16, 23, 36-38, 40, 42, 79, 85, 101-104, 115, 130,
149, 153, 176-179, 183, 207, 229, 241;
in 1834 Report, 6-7, 36;
with illegitimate children, 37, 115;
statistics as to, 103, 176-179
Wilson, Miss, 120 _n._
Wives, 6-7, 12, 15, 36-42, 83, 89, 101, 143, 175-178;
of absentee husbands, 6-7, 15, 36, 40-42, 89, 101, 175-176;
accompanying husbands, 6, 36, 39, 41, 83, 178;
deserted, 6-7, 12, 15, 40, 175-176;
of prisoners, 176-178;
of soldiers and sailors, 6-7, 15, 36, 41-42, 176, 178;
test work for, 39-40
Wodehouse, Mr., 103, 148
Women, 6-7, 9, 15-16, 23-24, 27, 29, 30-31, 36-43, 64-65, 67, 74, 76,
79, 83-85, 89-91, 100-104, 134, 136, 138, 143, 149, 152, 154, 162,
174-179, 196, 254, 257, 258, 261;
in 1834 Report, 6-7, 9;
whether ever "able-bodied," 3, 6, 23-24, 27, 30, 36, 83;
dietary for, 138;
discrimination as to character among, 27, 42, 64-65, 76, 134, 136,
258;
oakum-picking for, 162, 164;
and Principle of Less Eligibility, 261;
statistics as to, 100-101, 178-179;
rate in aid of wages to, 37-38, 42, 100-102, 254;
task of work for, 31, 42, 162, 164, 178;
in the workhouse, 6, 9, 43, 64-65, 67, 74, 76, 79, 134, 136, 196.
See also _Wives_ and _Widows_
Workhouse, the, in 1834 Report, 5-19;
under the Poor Law Commissioners, 21-87;
under the Poor Law Board, 95-146;
under the Local Government Board, 152-240;
able-bodied in, 5, 83-85, 128, 235, 242;
admission to, 60-61, 71, 80, 247;
aged in, 5, 9, 83, 219, 222, 235, 237, 240-242, 258;
alcohol in, 19, 68, 218;
children in, 5, 7, 83, 106, 113, 181, 222, 236, 258;
detention in, 19, 80, 82, 164, 209-210, 268, 244-245, 276, 289-292;
dietary of, 67-70, 137-139, 171, 237, 240, 242, 245-246, 248-249;
punishments in, 19, 76, 82;
religion in, 19, 77-79, 82;
sick in, 8, 62, 116, 118-119, 122, 134, 136-137, 209-210, 216, 219,
222, 235, 242, 245, 277;
smoking in, 74c;
statistics as to, 45, 132, 140, 235, 242;
vagrants in, 95-97
---- system, the, 11, 256, 261, 271
---- test, the, 33-34, 52-53, 132, 150, 154-156, 158-159, 165, 258;
modified, 158-159, 170-171
Workmen's Compensation Act (1900), 177 _n._
Printed by R. & R. Clark, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
* * * * *
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
THE PREVENTION OF DESTITUTION
Demy 8vo (1911). Price 6s. net.
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.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAP.
I. DESTITUTION AS A DISEASE OF SOCIETY.
II. HOW TO PREVENT THE DESTITUTION THAT ARISES FROM SICKNESS.
III. DESTITUTION AND EUGENICS.
IV. HOW TO PREVENT THE DESTITUTION ARISING FROM CHILD NEGLECT.
V. SWEATING AND UNEMPLOYMENT AS CAUSES OF DESTITUTION.
VI. HOW TO PREVENT UNEMPLOYMENT AND UNDEREMPLOYMENT.
VII. INSURANCE.
VIII. THE ENLARGED SPHERE OF VOLUNTARY AGENCIES IN A PREVENTIVE CAMPAIGN
AGAINST DESTITUTION.
IX. THE NEED FOR A COMMON REGISTER AND A REGISTRAR OF PUBLIC ASSISTANCE.
X. THE MORAL FACTOR.
INDEX.
Longmans, Green & Co.
London, New York, Calcutta, and Bombay
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
GRANTS IN AID:
A CRITICISM AND A PROPOSAL
BY SIDNEY WEBB
Demy 8vo, 120 pp. (1911). Price 5s. net.
ADVERTISEMENT
This is the first volume dealing with Grants in Aid as an instrument of
government. In the United Kingdom, at the present time, a sum of about
thirty millions sterling is annually paid by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer to the various Local Governing Authorities of the Kingdom.
This large subvention has important effects on Local Government which
have never before been critically examined. The author's thesis is that
in the Grant in Aid we have unconsciously devised an instrument of
administration of extraordinary potency; and that its gradual adoption
during the past three-quarters of a century has created a hierarchy of
local government far superior to that of France and Germany on the one
hand (termed by the author "The Bureaucratic System"); and to that of
the United States on the other (which the author describes as "The
Anarchy of Local Autonomy"). But the efficiency of our English system
depends on the particular conditions upon which the Grants in Aid are
made; and the book concludes with a detailed proposal for the complete
revision, on novel principles, of all the existing subventions, and for
their extension to other services. An elaborate bibliography is
appended.
The book forms No. 24 of the Studies in Economics and Political Science,
issued under the Editorship of the Director of the London School of
Economics and Political Science.
CONTENTS
PREFACE.
CHAP.
I. WHAT THE GRANTS IN AID SEEM TO BE AND WHAT THEY REALLY ARE.
II. WHY HAVE GRANTS IN AID AT ALL?
III. HOW WE DISTRIBUTE THIRTY MILLIONS A YEAR IN GRANTS IN AID.
IV. THE GRANTS IN AID OF THE POOR LAW AUTHORITIES.
V. THE GRANTS IN AID OF THE LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES.
VI. THE LINES OF REFORM.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
INDEX.
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
ENGLISH POOR LAW POLICY
=Demy 8vo, pp. xiii and 379 (1910). Price 7s. 6d. net.=
In this volume, the authors of _Industrial Democracy_ and _English Local
Government_ present what is practically a history of the English Poor
Law, so far as the policy of the central authority is concerned, from
the Report of the Royal Commission of 1832-4 down to that of the Royal
Commission of 1905-9. For this work they have analysed, not only the
statutes, but also the bewildering array of General and Special Orders,
Circulars, Minutes, Inspectors' exhortations, and unpublished letters,
by means of which the Poor Law Commissioners, the Poor Law Board, and
the Local Government Board have sought to direct the policy of the
Boards of Guardians. No such history has before been attempted. For the
first time the gradual development of policy can be traced, with regard
to children, to the sick, to the aged and infirm, to vagrants, to the
able-bodied, etc. The reader is enabled to watch the gradual and almost
unconscious evolution, from out of the "principles of 1834," of what may
be called the "principles of 1907"; being the lines of policy to which
the experience of three-quarters of a century had brought the
administrator, when the recent Royal Commission overhauled the subject.
Two concluding chapters summarise and analyse the proposals of the
Majority and Minority Reports.
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
Demy 8vo, pp. xxvi and 664 (1907). Price 16s. net.
ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
(THE PARISH AND THE COUNTY)
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS ACT
This work, the result of eight years' research into the manuscript
records of the Parish and the County all over England and Wales--from
Northumberland to Cornwall, from Cardigan to Kent--combines history and
description in a continuous narrative of extraordinary interest.
Avoiding the questions of the origin of English local institutions, and
even of their mediæval development, the authors plunge at once into a
vivid description of the Parish Officers and the Vestry, Quarter
Sessions and the Justices of the Peace, the Lord-Lieutenant and the High
Sheriff, together with all the other authorities by which the internal
administration was actually carried on. An entirely new view is
presented of the social and political development of Parish Vestry and
Quarter Sessions, of their relations to the Squire and the Incumbent,
and of their attitude towards Parliament and the problems of their age.
But the book is more than a contribution to history and political
science. Practically all the counties of England and Wales, and
literally hundreds of parishes, find place in this unique record of life
and manners, in which are embedded not a few dramatic episodes of
absorbing interest. It is a new picture of English life between 1689 and
1835 as it actually was in country and town, with graphic tracings of
its results on national progress and on the social and economic problems
by which we are now confronted.
CONTENTS
THE PARISH
INTRODUCTION.
THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK OF THE PARISH.
(_a_) THE AREA AND MEMBERSHIP OF THE PARISH; (_b_) THE OFFICERS OF
THE PARISH; (_c_) THE SERVANTS OF THE PARISH; (_d_) THE INCUMBENT;
(_e_) THE PARISH VESTRY; (_f_) THE PARISH AS A UNIT OF OBLIGATION.
UNORGANISED PARISH GOVERNMENT.
(_a_) THE PARISH OLIGARCHY; (_b_) GOVERNMENT BY CONSENT; (_c_) THE
UNCONTROLLED PARISH OFFICERS; (_d_) THE RULE OF THE BOSS; (_e_) THE
TURBULENT OPEN VESTRY.
AN EXTRA-LEGAL DEMOCRACY.
(_a_) THE ORGANISATION OF THE PUBLIC MEETING; (_b_) THE CONTROL OVER
THE UNPAID OFFICERS; (_c_) A SALARIED STAFF; (_d_) THE PARISH
COMMITTEE; (_e_) AN ORGANISED DEMOCRACY; (_f_) THE RECALCITRANT
MINORITY.
THE STRANGLING OF THE PARISH.
(_a_) EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LEGISLATION; (_b_) THE STURGES BOURNE ACTS;
(_c_) THE STURGES BOURNE SELECT VESTRIES; (_d_) THE SALARIED
OVERSEER; (_e_) THE REFERENDUM; (_f_) THE DEATH OF THE PARISH.
THE LEGALITY OF THE CLOSE VESTRY.
(_a_) THE CLOSE VESTRY BY IMMEMORIAL CUSTOM; (_b_) THE CLOSE VESTRY
BY BISHOP'S FACULTY; (_c_) THE CLOSE VESTRY BY CHURCH BUILDING ACT;
(_d_) THE CLOSE VESTRY BY LOCAL ACT; (_e_) THE CONSTITUTIONS OF
CLOSE VESTRIES.
CLOSE VESTRY ADMINISTRATION.
(_a_) PROVINCIAL CLOSE VESTRIES; (_b_) METROPOLITAN CLOSE VESTRIES;
(_c_) CLOSE VESTRY EXCLUSIVENESS; (_d_) THE WORST AND THE BEST.
THE REFORM OF THE CLOSE VESTRY.
(_a_) THE ASSAULTS THAT FAILED; (_b_) A LONDON MOVEMENT; (_c_)
OPENING THE CLOSE VESTRY.
THE COUNTY
INTRODUCTION.
THE LEGAL CONSTITUTION OF THE COUNTY.
(_a_) THE AREA AND DIVISIONS OF THE COUNTY; (_b_) THE CUSTOS
ROTULORUM; (_c_) THE SHERIFF AND HIS COURT; (_d_) THE HIGH
CONSTABLE; (_e_) THE CORONER; (_f_) THE COMMISSION OF THE PEACE;
(_g_) COUNTY SERVICE; (_h_) AN ORGAN OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT. ON SOME
ANOMALOUS COUNTY JURISDICTIONS, INCLUDING THE COUNTIES PALATINE.
THE RULERS OF THE COUNTY.
(_a_) NUMBER AND DISTRIBUTION OF JUSTICES; (_b_) THE JUSTICE OF MEAN
DEGREE; (_c_) THE TRADING JUSTICE; (_d_) THE COURT JUSTICE; (_e_)
THE SYCOPHANT JUSTICE AND RURAL TYRANT; (_f_) THE MOUTH-PIECE OF THE
CLERK; (_g_) THE CLERICAL JUSTICE; (_h_) THE LEADER OF THE PARISH;
(_i_) LEADERS OF THE COUNTY; (_j_) THE LORD-LIEUTENANT AND THE HIGH
SHERIFF; (_k_) CLASS EXCLUSIVENESS.
COUNTY ADMINISTRATION BY JUSTICES OUT OF SESSIONS.
(_a_) THE "SINGLE JUSTICE"; (_b_) THE "DOUBLE JUSTICE"; (_c_) THE
SPECIAL SESSIONS; (_d_) PETTY SESSIONS; (_e_) THE SERVANTS OF THE
JUSTICES; (_f_) THE SPHERE OF JUSTICES "OUT OF SESSIONS."
THE COURT OF QUARTER SESSIONS.
(_a_) THE TIME AND PLACE OF MEETING; (_b_) THE CHAIRMAN OF THE
COURT; (_c_) THE PROCEDURE OF THE COURT; (_d_) ADMINISTRATION BY
JUDICIAL PROCESS; (_e_) THE GRAND JURY; (_f_) THE HUNDRED JURY;
(_g_) PRESENTMENTS BY CONSTABLES; (_h_)PRESENTMENTS BY JUSTICES.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN EXTRA-LEGAL CONSTITUTION.
I. THE COUNTY EXECUTIVE.
(_a_) THE HIGH SHERIFF AND HIS BAILIFFS; (_b_) THE HIGH CONSTABLE;
(_c_) THE CLERK OF THE PEACE; (_d_) THE COUNTY TREASURER; (_e_) THE
COUNTY SURVEYOR; (_f_) EXECUTIVE MAKESHIFTS; (_g_) COMMITTEES OF
JUSTICES.
II. AN INCHOATE PROVINCIAL LEGISLATURE.
III. AN EXTRA-LEGAL COUNTY OLIGARCHY.
THE REACTION AGAINST THE RULERS OF THE COUNTY.
(_a_) THE BREAKDOWN OF THE MIDDLESEX BENCH; (_b_) THE LACK OF
JUSTICES; (_c_) THE RESTRICTION OF PUBLIC HOUSES; (_d_) THE
JUSTICES' POOR LAW; (_e_) THE GROWTH OF COUNTY EXPENDITURE; (_f_)
THE SEVERITY OF THE GAME LAWS; (_g_) THE STOPPING UP OF FOOTPATHS;
(_h_) THE STRIPPING OF THE OLIGARCHY; (_i_) WHY THE JUSTICES
SURVIVED.
LONGMANS. GREEN & CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
Demy 8vo, pp. viii and 858, in 2 volumes (1908). Price 25s. net.
ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
(THE MANOR AND THE BOROUGH)
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS ACT
In this second instalment of their English Local Government the authors
apply their method of combined history and analysis to the fascinating
story of the towns and the manorial communities, of which several
hundreds find mention, belonging to all the counties of England and
Wales. An interesting new account is given, from unpublished materials,
of the organisation and development in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries of the Manor and its several Courts, with picturesque glimpses
of the hitherto undescribed part played by the Jury in the common-field
agriculture. But the Manor is shown to be also the starting-point for a
whole series of constitutional developments, passing through grade after
grade of Manorial Borough, hitherto undescribed, into the complete
Municipal Corporation. This, too, is analysed and described in a way
never before attempted, so as to make the strangely interesting life of
the towns live before us. A special chapter is devoted to the Boroughs
of Wales, in which their national peculiarities are brought out. Their
extensive study of the manuscript records enable the authors to set
forth the inner working of the "Municipal Democracies" that existed
alongside the chartered oligarchies, with their many analogies to
modern American cities; and to bring vividly to notice the conditions
and limitations of successive Democratic government. There is an
interesting sketch of English hierarchies of town government, chief
among them being the Cinque Ports, the constitutional position of which
is presented in a new light. The anomalous history of the City of
Westminster is explored by the light of the unpublished archives of its
peculiar municipal organisation. An altogether novel view is presented
of the constitutional development of the greatest municipality of all,
the Corporation of the City of London, to which no fewer than 124 pages
are devoted. The work concludes with a picturesque account of the
"Municipal Revolution" of 1835, and the Homeric combat of Brougham and
Lyndhurst which ended in the Municipal Reform Act of 1835.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.
THE LORD'S COURT--
(_a_) THE LAWYER'S VIEW OF THE LORD'S COURT.
(_b_) THE COURT BARON.
(_c_) THE COURT LEET.
THE COURT IN RUINS--
(_a_) THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS.
(_b_) THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED.
(_c_) THE COURT OF THE MANOR:
(i.) THE BAMBURGH COURTS.
(ii.) THE COURT LEET OF THE SAVOY.
(iii.) THE COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER.
(_d_) THE PREVALENCE AND DECAY OF THE LORD'S COURT.
THE MANORIAL BOROUGH--
(_a_) THE VILLAGE MEETING.
(_b_) THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP.
(_c_) THE LORDLESS COURT.
(_d_) THE LORD'S BOROUGH.
(_e_) THE ENFRANCHISED MANORIAL BOROUGH.
(_f_) MANOR AND GILD.
(_g_) ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT AND DECAY.
THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER--
(_a_) BURLEIGH'S CONSTITUTION.
(_b_) MUNICIPAL ATROPHY.
THE BOROUGHS OF WALES--
(_a_) INCIPIENT AUTONOMY.
(_b_) THE WELSH MANORIAL BOROUGH.
(_c_) THE WELSH MUNICIPAL CORPORATION.
THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION--
(_a_) THE INSTRUMENT OF INCORPORATION.
(_b_) CORPORATE JURISDICTIONS.
(_c_) CORPORATE OBLIGATIONS.
(_d_) THE AREA OF THE CORPORATION.
(_e_) THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE CORPORATION.
(_f_) THE SERVANTS OF THE CORPORATION.
(_g_) THE CHIEF OFFICERS OF THE CORPORATION.
(_h_) THE HEAD OF THE CORPORATION.
(_i_) THE BAILIFFS.
(_j_) THE HIGH STEWARD AND THE RECORDER.
(_k_) THE CHAMBERLAIN AND THE TOWN CLERK.
(_l_) THE COUNTY OFFICERS OF THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION.
(_m_) THE MAYOR'S BRETHREN AND THE MAYOR'S COUNSELLORS.
(_n_) THE COURTS OF THE CORPORATION.
(_o_) COURTS OF CIVIL JURISDICTION.
(_p_) THE COURT LEET.
(_q_) THE BOROUGH COURT OF QUARTER SESSIONS.
(_r_) COURTS OF SPECIALISED JURISDICTION.
(_s_) THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURTS OF THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION.
(_t_) THE MUNICIPAL CONSTITUTIONS OF 1689.
MUNICIPAL DISINTEGRATION--
(_a_) THE RISE OF THE CORPORATE MAGISTRACY.
(_b_) THE DECLINE OF THE COMMON COUNCIL.
(_c_) THE ESTABLISHMENT OF NEW STATUTORY AUTHORITIES.
(_d_) THE PASSING OF THE FREEMEN.
(_e_) THE MINGLING OF GROWTH AND DECAY.
ADMINISTRATION BY CLOSE CORPORATIONS--
(PENZANCE, LEEDS, COVENTRY, BRISTOL, LEICESTER, AND LIVERPOOL.)
ADMINISTRATION BY MUNICIPAL DEMOCRACIES--
(MORPETH, BERWICK-UPON-TWEED, NORWICH, AND IPSWICH.)
THE CITY OF LONDON--
(_a_) THE LEGAL CONSTITUTION OF THE CITY.
(_b_) THE SERVICE OF THE CITIZEN TO HIS WARD.
(_c_) THE PRECINCT.
(_d_) THE INQUEST OF THE WARD.
(_e_) THE COMMON COUNCIL OF THE WARD.
(_f_) THE DECAY OF WARD GOVERNMENT.
(_g_) THE COURT OF COMMON HALL.
(_h_) THE COURT OF COMMON COUNCIL.
(_i_) THE COURT OF ALDERMEN.
(_j_) THE SHRIEVALTY.
(_k_) THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD MAYOR.
(_l_) THE OFFICERS OF THE CORPORATION.
(_m_) A RATEPAYERS' DEMOCRACY.
THE MUNICIPAL REVOLUTION--
(_a_) TOWARDS THE REVOLUTION.
(_b_) INSTALMENTS OF REFORM.
(_c_) THE ROYAL COMMISSION.
(_d_) AN ALTERNATIVE JUDGMENT.
(_e_) THE WHIG BILL.
(_f_) THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS ACT.
INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
INDEX OF AUTHORS AND OTHER PERSONS.
INDEX OF PLACES.
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
_SOME PRESS NOTICES OF_
ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
"A book of the deepest, even of fascinating interest. Here for the first
time we have a real study of local life in England, in village and town
and country.... Everywhere we follow the gallant fights of humane and
just men whose stories are scattered through these pages, along with the
sharp dealings of the astute. Familiar names meet us--a great-uncle of
Cecil Rhodes making his 'Empire' in St. Pancras; the novelist Fielding
cutting down the gains of the magistrate who preyed on the poor....
Noble figures stand out among the ignoble. As in the parish, the rulers
of the county ... found themselves left free ... to administer as they
thought fit. They used the power fully; governed, legislated, silently
transformed their constitution, and showed themselves capable of the
same extremes as the men of the parish, except that they never
surrendered to the 'boss.' ... We have only touched here on the tale the
authors give, so absorbing in interest to any Englishman.... The best
tribute to the writers of this most valuable work is the difficulty of
turning away for comment or criticism from the subjects they present in
such a vigorous and human form.... They have opened a new chapter in
English history."--Mrs. J. R. GREEN, in _Westminster Gazette_.
"Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb's monumental work on our local institutions
must be a source at once of pride and of something a little like shame.
Here at last we have a book which is more than worthy to be placed
beside those of the great continental writers on the subject.... Mr. and
Mrs. Sidney Webb are as learned as the Prussian, as lucid as the
Frenchman, and as scholarly and careful as the Austrian.... If it is
literature to present a singularly vivid picture of a past stage of
society, to render it real and lifelike by a careful selection and
skilful grouping of illustrative details, and to explain its meaning
with clearness, sound judgment, and not infrequent touches of quiet
humour, then assuredly is this volume literary as well as learned....
Packed as it is with quotations and references, it is full of
transcripts from life which one reader at least has found more
fascinating than many of the efforts made to revivify the past through
the medium of historical romance or romantic history. The story of the
rise, the decline, and the fall of the parish autonomy and the old
county oligarchy is in itself a sort of epic not wanting in the
elements of adventure, and even of tragedy.... Here and there a
remarkable personality emerges."--Mr. SIDNEY LOW, in _Standard_.
"Without exaggeration it may be said that this work will necessitate the
rewriting of English history.... We are ushered into a new world, full
of eager and heated interest.... The authors have contrived to make
these dead bones live. Everywhere are peepholes into the lives of the
people, and occasionally a connected story ... throws a flood of light
on English society. There is not a chapter which is not full of facts of
general interest, while the whole volume ... will be altogether
indispensable to the serious student.... There is a fascinating tale of
the 'boss' of Bethnal Green.... A history of the English people, richer
in local colour, more comprehensive in its survey of social affairs, and
more truly human in its sympathies than any treatise hitherto given to
the public."--Mr. R. A. BRAY, in _Daily News_.
"Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb continue their laborious and luminous studies
of English local institutions. In the last two volumes we find the same
characteristics as those already published respecting the parish and the
county--a minute investigation conducted not in the spirit of the
antiquary, but with an eye to realities which are of interest to the
politician, the historian, and the economist; an examination of the vast
mass of printed matter on the subject, much of it practically
inaccessible; and exhaustive enquiry among unedited manuscript records,
some of them probably never before read. A few lines in the text or in a
footnote are the results of prolonged local investigation; a few
unobtrusive words at the close of a sentence, or qualifying some general
statement, are the fruits of a careful search among the muniments of
some corporation. We cannot speak too highly of the industry and
patience which these volumes attest. They possess even rarer merits. The
whole subject is set in a new light. We get away from traditional
formulæ and conceptions. We see the local institutions at work, and they
appear very different from what they are represented by lawyers to
be."--_Times._
"If it be true, as many deep thinkers maintain, that history affords the
only sure key to a thorough knowledge of political institutions, then
the work of which these two learned and elaborate volumes form a part
is indispensable to every serious student of English Local Government,
for the history of that subject has never yet been expounded with such
completeness and so scientific an impartiality.... A pioneer in a new
way of writing the history of institutions.... By the skill with which
they present the general movement of institutional developments as the
outgrowth of natural forces, and constantly illustrate it by particular
points of actuality and human interest, these writers have given new
life to a study too long neglected."--_Scotsman._
"Closely packed tomes, crowded with detail, and exhibiting the result of
a sum of research and investigation which leaves the indolent,
irresponsible reviewer almost wordless with respectful admiration....
Such a collection of original material has been weighed and sifted as
might move the envy of any German professor."--_Evening Standard._
"For years to come they will still be sifting, amassing, arranging, but
their reputation as the foremost investigators of fact now amongst us is
likely to be confirmed rather than shaken. Their work is as minute in
detail as it is imposing in mass. In their patience they possess their
intellect, and they remind us of the scholar with a magnifying glass in
a picture by Jan van Eyck."--_Observer._
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
THE BREAK-UP OF THE POOR LAW
BEING PART I. OF THE MINORITY REPORT OF THE POOR LAW
COMMISSION
EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION, BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
Demy 8vo, xx and 604 pp. 7s. 6d net. Uniform with
"English Local Government"
Bluebooks, it has been said, are places of burial. The original edition
of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law and the Agencies
dealing with the Unemployed is a ponderous tome of seven pounds weight,
crowded with references, footnotes, and appendices, impossible either to
handle or to read. Mr. and Mrs. Webb have, therefore, rescued from this
tomb the Minority Report signed by the Dean of Norwich, Messrs. Chandler
and Lansbury, and Mrs. Webb herself. By omitting all the notes and
references, and printing the text in clear type on a convenient octavo
page, they present the reader with something which he can hold with
comfort by his fireside.
This Minority Report is a new departure in such documents. More than
20,000 copies have already been disposed of, and it is still selling
like the last new novel. It is readable and even exciting. It is
complete in itself. It presents, in ordered sequence, page by page, a
masterly survey of what is actually going on in our workhouses and in
the homes of those maintained on Outdoor Relief. It describes in precise
detail from carefully authenticated evidence what is happening to the
infants, to the children of school age, to the sick, to the mentally
defective, to the widows with children struggling on their pittances of
Outdoor Relief, to the aged and infirm inside the workhouse and outside.
It sets forth the overlapping of the Poor Law with the newer work of the
Education and Public Health Authorities, and the consequent waste and
confusion. It gives a graphic vision of the working of the whole Poor
Law machinery in all parts of the United Kingdom, which is costing us
nearly twenty millions sterling per annum.
The volume concludes with a Scheme of Reform, of novel and far-reaching
character, which is elaborately worked out in detail, involving the
abolition of the workhouse, the complete disappearance of the Poor Law,
and the transfer of the care of the children, the sick, the mentally
defective, and the aged to the several committees of the Town and County
Councils already administering analogous services, in order that we may
now, in the twentieth century, set ourselves to prevent destitution,
instead of waiting until it occurs.
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
THE PUBLIC ORGANIZATION OF
THE LABOUR MARKET
BEING PART II. OF THE MINORITY REPORT OF THE POOR LAW
COMMISSION
EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION, BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
Demy 8vo, xvi and 332 pp. 5s. net. Uniform with
"English Local Government"
The Problem of the Unemployed, which the Royal Commission on the Poor
Law was incidentally set to solve, is the question of the day. Part II.
of the Minority Report deals with it in a manner at once comprehensive
and complete. The whole of the experience of the Poor Law Authorities,
and their bankruptcy as regards the destitute able-bodied, is surveyed
in vivid and picturesque detail. There is a brief account of the work of
Voluntary Agencies. A lucid description is then given, with much new
information, of the movement started by Mr. Chamberlain in 1886, which
culminated in the Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905. The story is told of
the various experiments and devices that have been tried during the past
twenty years, the Relief Works and the Farm Colonies, etc. This leads up
to an altogether novel descriptive analysis of the Unemployed of to-day,
who they actually are, and what they really need. The final chapter on
Proposals for Reform gives, in elaborate detail, the Minority's plan for
solving the whole problem of Unemployment--not by any vague and
chimerical panacea, but by a series of administratively practicable
reforms, based on the actual experience of this and other countries,
which are within the compass of the Cabinet, and could, if desired, be
carried in a single session of Parliament.
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
THE STATE AND THE DOCTOR
Demy 8vo, pp. viii and 276 (1910). Price 6s. net.
In this work a great deal that will be new to the ordinary citizen is
brought to light. The authors show that we do a great deal of State
Doctoring in England--more than is commonly realised--and that our
arrangements have got into a tangle, which urgently needs straightening
out. Everywhere there is a duplication of authorities, and more or less
overlapping of work. We are spending out of the rates and taxes, in one
way or another, directly on sickness and Public Health, a vast sum of
money annually--no man knows how much, but it certainly amounts to six
or seven millions sterling. Meanwhile, as is now being revealed to us, a
vast amount of sickness goes altogether untreated, with the result of
grave damage to our population, and unnecessary loss of productive
capacity to the community as a whole.
The authors suggest that we put up with this waste, and we allow our
statesmen to postpone the task of straightening out the tangle, very
largely because we are not aware of the facts. There has hitherto been
no popular description of our State Doctoring. Many worthy people,
thinking themselves educated, do not even know of its existence. There
is not even an official report setting forth exactly what is being done
and left undone for sickness and the Public Health in the different
parts of the kingdom.
But the authors do not content themselves with a picture of the costly
and wasteful muddle that our responsible statesmen allow, session after
session, to continue unreformed. The work concludes with a remarkable
series of proposals for "straightening out the tangle"--proposals based
on the very authoritative evidence received by the Royal Commission on
the Poor Law, supported not only by the administrators, but also by a
large section of the medical profession, and rapidly commending
themselves to the unprejudiced enquirer.
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
THE HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM
Demy 8vo; Tenth Thousand; New Edition, with New Introductory
Chapter; lvii and 558 pp. (1911).
=Price 7s. 6d. net.=
This work describes, not only the growth and development of the Trade
Union Movement in the United Kingdom from 1700 down to the end of the
nineteenth century, but also the structure and working of the present
Trade Union organisation in the United Kingdom. Founded almost entirely
on material hitherto unpublished, it is not a mere chronicle of Trade
Union organisation or record of strikes, but gives, in effect, the
political history of the English working class during the last one
hundred and fifty years. The opening chapter describes the
handicraftsman in the toils of the industrial revolution, striving
vainly to retain the mediæval regulation of his Standard of Life. In
subsequent chapters the Place Manuscripts and the archives of the Priory
Council and the Home Office enable the authors to picture the struggles
of the early Trade Unionists against the Combination Laws, and the
remarkable Parliamentary manipulation which led to their repeal. The
private records of the various Societies, together with contemporary
pamphlets and working-class newspapers, furnish a graphic account of the
hitherto undescribed outburst of "New Unionism" of 1830-34, with its
revolutionary aims and subsequent Chartist entanglements. In the course
of the narrative we see the intervention in Trade Union history of
Francis Place, Joseph Hume, J. R. M'Culloch, Nassau Senior, William the
Fourth, Lord Melbourne, Robert Owen, Fergus O'Connor, Thomas Slingsby
Duncombe, John Bright, the Christian Socialists, the Positivists, and
many living politicians. The hidden influence of Trade Unionism on
English politics is traced from point to point, new light being
incidentally thrown upon the defeat of Mr. Gladstone's Government in
1874. A detailed analysis is given of the economic and political causes
which have, since 1880, tended to divorce the Trade Union Movement from
its alliance with "official Liberalism." A new introductory chapter
brings the story down to the last few years. The final chapter describes
the Trade Union world of to-day in all its varied features, including a
realistic sketch of actual Trade Union life by a Trade Union Secretary,
and a classified census founded on the authors' investigations into a
thousand separate Unions in all parts of the country. A coloured map
represents the percentage which the Trade Unionists bear to the
population of each county. A bibliography of Trade Union literature is
appended (which, together with that given in _Industrial Democracy_,
affords a unique index of almost every available source of information).
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION.
PREFACE.
CHAP.
I. THE ORIGINS OF TRADE UNIONISM.
II. THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE (1799-1825).
III. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD (1829-1842).
IV. THE NEW SPIRIT AND THE NEW MODEL (1843-1860).
V. THE JUNTA AND THEIR ALLIES (1860-1875).
VI. SECTIONAL DEVELOPMENTS (1863-1885).
VII. THE OLD UNIONISM AND THE NEW (1875-1889).
VIII. THE TRADE UNION WORLD.
APPENDIX
ON THE ASSUMED CONNECTION BETWEEN THE TRADE UNIONS AND THE GILDS IN
DUBLIN--SLIDING SCALES--THE SUMMONS TO THE FIRST TRADE UNION
CONGRESS--DISTRIBUTION OF TRADE UNIONISTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM--THE
PROGRESS IN MEMBERSHIP OF PARTICULAR TRADE UNIONS--LIST OF
PUBLICATIONS ON TRADE UNIONS AND COMBINATIONS OF WORKMEN.
"A masterly piece of work."--_Times_.
"To the politician ... an invaluable guide."--_Observer_.
"An admirably lucid presentation of a great mass of complicated facts.
Its very footnotes display a wealth of material such as would have amply
sufficed to turn each note into an article of considerable length. In
the learning they exhibit, and the concise and decisive way in which
they settle important subsidiary questions and side-issues, they
remind us of the notes in such monuments of German industry and
erudition as Zeller's _Griechische Philosophie_.... The result is a
full, clear, and condensed history such as can have few parallels....
We may fairly repeat that the book is a masterpiece of lucidity of
knowledge. Every page is of value, and nearly every sentence contains a
fact."--_Speaker_.
"Readable every word of it. There is plenty of excitement and plenty
of romance in the book."--_Queen_.
"As fascinating reading as a well-written novel."--_Cotton Factory Times_.
"Infinitely painstaking, comprehensive, clear and acute, the first correct
and scholarly history of Trade Unionism in England.... Marked by
immense research.... The book must find a permanent place upon the
shelf of every student of Economics.... Undeniably marked by the
qualities of true history--fulness, accuracy, and clear connection in
the presentation of facts."--_Newcastle Chronicle_.
"It would not be easy to overestimate the value and importance of their
admirable and masterly work ... not likely to be superseded for some
time to come."--_Economic Review_.
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY
Demy 8vo; Tenth Thousand; New Edition in 1 vol., with New Introductory
Chapter; lxi and 929 pp. (1907), with Two Diagrams.
=Price 12s. net.=
ADVERTISEMENT
In this work the authors of _The History of Trade Unionism_ deal, not
with the past, but with the present. They describe, with the systematic
detail of the scientific observer, and in the same objective spirit, all
the forms of Trade Unionism, Factory Legislation, and other regulation
of industry to be found within the British Isles. The whole structure
and function of Labour Organisations and Restrictive Legislation in
every industry is analysed and criticised in a manner never before
attempted. The employer in difficulties with his workmen, the Trade
Unionist confronted with a new assault upon his Standard Rate, the
politician troubled about a new project for Factory Legislation, the
public-spirited citizen concerned as to the real issues of a labour
dispute, will find elucidated in this work the very problems about which
they are thinking. It is a storehouse of authenticated facts about every
branch of "the Labour Question," gathered from six years' personal
investigation into every industry in all parts of the Kingdom;
systematically classified; and made accessible by an unusually elaborate
Index. But the book is more than an Encyclopedia on the Labour Question.
Scientific examination of Trade Union structure reveals, in these
thousand self governing republics, a remarkable evolution in Democratic
constitutions, which throws light on political problems in a larger
sphere. The century-long experience of these working-class organisations
affords unique evidence as to the actual working of such expedients as
the Referendum, the Initiative, Government by Mass Meeting, Annual
Elections, Proportional Representation, Payment of Members, and,
generally, the relation between the citizen-elector, the chosen
representative, and the executive officer. The intricate relations of
trade with trade have an interesting bearing upon such problems as Local
Government, Federation, and Home Rule. Those who regard the
participation of a working-class electorate in the affairs of Government
as the distinctive, if not the dangerous feature in modern politics,
will here find the phenomenon isolated, and may learn how the British
workman actually deals with similar issues in his own sphere. The
intricate constitutions and interesting political experiments of the
thousand self-governing Trade Union republics are dissected and
criticised by the authors in such a way as to make the work a
contribution to Political Science, as to the scope and method of which
the authors, in describing their investigations, propound a new view.
The analysis of the working of Trade Unionism and Factory Legislation in
the various industries of the United Kingdom has involved a
reconsideration of the conclusions of Political Economy. The authors
give a new and original description of the working of industrial
competition in the business world of to-day; and they are led to
important modifications of the views currently held upon Capital,
Interest, Profits, Wages, Women's Labour, the Population Question,
Foreign Competition, Free Trade, etc. The latter part of the work is, in
fact, a treatise upon Economics.
A new Introductory Chapter deals at length with Compulsory Courts of
Arbitration and Wages-Boards in New Zealand and Australia.
CONTENTS
PREFACE.
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION.
PART I
TRADE UNION STRUCTURE
CHAP.
I. PRIMITIVE DEMOCRACY.
II. REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS.
III. THE UNIT OF GOVERNMENT.
IV. INTERUNION RELATIONS.
PART II
TRADE UNION FUNCTION
CHAP.
I. THE METHOD OF MUTUAL INSURANCE.
II. THE METHOD OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING.
III. ARBITRATION.
IV. THE METHOD OF LEGAL ENACTMENT.
V. THE STANDARD RATE.
VI. THE NORMAL DAY.
VII. SANITATION AND SAFETY.
VIII. NEW PROCESSES AND MACHINERY.
IX. CONTINUITY OF EMPLOYMENT.
X. THE ENTRANCE TO A TRADE.
(_a_) APPRENTICESHIP.
(_b_) THE LIMITATION OF BOY LABOUR.
(_c_) PROGRESSION WITHIN THE TRADE.
(_d_) THE EXCLUSION OF WOMEN.
XI. THE RIGHT TO A TRADE.
XII. THE IMPLICATIONS OF TRADE UNIONISM.
XIII. THE ASSUMPTIONS OF TRADE UNIONISM.
PART III
TRADE UNION THEORY
CHAP.
I. THE VERDICT OF THE ECONOMISTS.
II. THE HIGGLING OF THE MARKET.
III. THE ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF TRADE UNIONISM.
(_a_) THE DEVICE OF RESTRICTION OF NUMBERS.
(_b_) THE DEVICE OF THE COMMON RULE.
(_c_) THE EFFECT OF THE SECTIONAL APPLICATION OF THE
COMMON RULE ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF INDUSTRY.
(_d_) PARASITIC TRADES.
(_e_) THE NATIONAL MINIMUM.
(_f_) THE UNEMPLOYABLE.
(_g_) SUMMARY OF THE ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE
DEVICE OF THE COMMON RULE.
(_h_) TRADE UNION METHODS.
IV. TRADE UNIONISM AND DEMOCRACY.
APPENDICES
THE LEGAL POSITION OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IN ENGLAND--THE BEARING OF
INDUSTRIAL PARASITISM AND THE POLICY OF A NATIONAL MINIMUM ON THE FREE
TRADE CONTROVERSY--SOME STATISTICS BEARING ON THE RELATIVE MOVEMENTS OF
THE MARRIAGE AND BIRTH-RATES, PAUPERISM, WAGES, AND THE PRICE OF
WHEAT--A SUPPLEMENT TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TRADE UNIONISM.
* * * * *
"A permanent and invaluable contribution to the sum of human
knowledge.... We commend to the public a book which is a monument of
research and full of candour.... Indispensable to every publicist and
politician."--_Times_ (on day of publication).
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
=PROBLEMS OF MODERN INDUSTRY=
Post 8vo; Fourth Thousand; New Edition, with New Introductory
Chapter; xx and 286 pp. (1907).
=Price 5s. net.=
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION.
PREFACE.
CHAP.
I. THE DIARY OF AN INVESTIGATOR.
II. THE JEWS OF EAST LONDON.
III. WOMEN'S WAGES.
IV. WOMEN AND THE FACTORY ACTS.
V. THE REGULATION OF THE HOURS OF LABOUR.
VI. HOW TO DO AWAY WITH THE SWEATING SYSTEM.
VII. THE REFORM OF THE POOR LAW.
VIII. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CO-OPERATION AND TRADE UNIONISM.
IX. THE NATIONAL DIVIDEND AND ITS DISTRIBUTION.
X. THE DIFFICULTIES OF INDIVIDUALISM.
XI. SOCIALISM TRUE AND FALSE.
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
THE HISTORY OF
LIQUOR LICENSING IN ENGLAND
Small 8vo; Seventh Thousand; viii and 162 pp.
=Price 2s. 6d. net.=
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. THE FIRST CENTURY OF LICENSING.
II. A PERIOD OF LAXNESS.
III. REGULATION AND SUPPRESSION.
IV. FREE TRADE IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
V. LEGISLATIVE REPENTANCE.
APPENDIX--THE MOVEMENT FOR THE REFORMATION OF MANNERS.
"No book could be more opportune. The sale of alcoholic liquor has been
under statutory regulation by means of licences for 300 years; but the
period which Mr. and Mrs. Webb have taken as their special study
deserves the very careful examination they give to it, for within those
130 years we find periods of regulation and suppression, of laxness and
neglect in regard to the control of the liquor traffic, equally
instructive. There is during this period one brief six years wherein the
magistrates, awaking to their responsibilities and compelled to a
consciousness of the evil results of excessive gin-drinking, made a
general effort to improve the condition of things through the one means
in their power. To this remarkable episode the authors devote a valuable
chapter. Strangely enough, it has hitherto not been noticed by
historians, nor has it been mentioned in the voluminous literature of
the temperance movement. Yet the effort of the magistrates during those
six years was very far-sighted. It included--
"The deliberate and systematic adoption of such modern devices as early
closing, Sunday closing, the refusal of new licences, the withdrawal of
licences from badly conducted houses, the peremptory closing of a
proportion of houses in a district over-supplied with licences, and, in
some remarkable instances, even the establishment of a system of local
option and local veto, both as regards the opening of new public-houses
and the closing of those already in existence, all without the slightest
idea of compensation.
"All this in the closing years of the eighteenth century! But what a
contrast to this spasm of local statesmanship the earlier years of that
drink-sodden century display! Then, and not really till then, were sown
the seeds of drunkenness in England. Contrasted with that reign of orgy
the action of the magistrates in 1787 seems all the brighter, and the
disappearance of the fact from public memory the more remarkable.
Mr. and Mrs. Webb bring their detailed story to an end with the
Drink Bill of 1830, which led to another outbreak of the drinking
habit."--_Guardian._
"A valuable contribution to the history of the liquor
traffic."--_Political Science Quarterly._
"This little book, with its abundance of newly discovered facts, is
highly opportune."--_Economic Review._
"The book is of great interest, contains evidence of laborious
investigation, and provides an admirably clear history of a matter of
immediate practical importance."--_Speaker._
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
LONDON EDUCATION
BY SIDNEY WEBB
Small 8vo; viii and 219 pp. (1903).
=Price 2s. 6d. net.=
A Description of the Educational Organisation of London, with a Survey
of some of its Administrative Problems--avoiding both politics and
religion.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. THE EVOLUTION OF AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.
II. THE ORGANISATION OF THE UNIVERSITY.
III. THE ORGANISATION OF COMMERCIAL EDUCATION.
IV. THE ORGANISATION OF THE POLYTECHNICS.
V. THE ORGANISATION OF THE LIBRARY SERVICE.
VI. THE LION IN THE PATH.
"This small but important volume.... It is a noble ideal."--_Spectator._
"Patiently and laboriously he has surveyed our educational equipment ...
and he presents a creditably clear and comprehensible picture of the
whole field. It enables the administrator to see the various parts in
their due proportion. It lays a much-needed emphasis on higher
education; it suggests some administrative improvements, and forms an
indispensable starting-point for the far-reaching schemes of
co-ordination which it shows to be so sorely needed."--_Speaker._
"In dealing with elementary education, Mr. Webb is most practical;
in dealing with the nascent London University he is most
stimulating."--_Pilot._
"A debt of gratitude is due to Mr. Sidney Webb.... The book contains at
once ideal and practical proposals for the attainment of this
ideal."--_Daily News._
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT IN
GREAT BRITAIN
BY BEATRICE POTTER (Mrs. SIDNEY WEBB)
Crown 8vo; Second Edition (1893); Fifth Thousand; xii and 260 pp.,
with Coloured Map, Appendices, and Index.
=Price 2s. 6d.=
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. THE CO-OPERATIVE IDEA.
II. THE SPIRIT OF ASSOCIATION.
III. THE STORE.
IV. FEDERATION.
V. ASSOCIATION OF PRODUCERS.
VI. A STATE WITHIN A STATE.
VII. THE IDEAL AND THE FACT.
VIII. CONCLUSION.
APPENDIX
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION--LIST OF PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS
RELATING TO LABOUR QUESTION IN THIS CENTURY--CLASSIFIED TABLES OF
ASSOCIATIONS OF PRODUCERS--EXTRACT FROM LETTER FROM MR. D. F.
SCHLOSS--TABLE OF PERCENTAGES OF CO-OPERATIVE SALES PER HUNDRED OF
POPULATION--TABLE OF THE RELATIVE PROGRESS OF THE CO-OPERATIVE
MOVEMENT.
"Miss Beatrice Potter's luminous and suggestive volume is not a mere
bald, historical outline, but a thoughtful and pregnant study of
tendencies, causes, and effects."--_Times._
"The whole volume is full of suggestion, both to co-operators and
politicians.... It is without doubt the ablest and most philosophical
analysis of the co-operative movement which has yet been
produced."--_Speaker._
GEORGE ALLEN AND CO., LIMITED
RATHBONE PLACE, LONDON
WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
PUBLISHED BY GEORGE ALLEN AND CO., LIMITED
SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND
BY SIDNEY WEBB
Crown 8vo; Second Edition (1894), with New Introductory Chapter;
xxii and 136 pp.
=Price 2s. 6d.=
"The best general view of the subject from the moderate Socialist
side."--_Athenæum._
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY GEORGE ALLEN AND CO., LIMITED
THE LONDON PROGRAMME
BY SIDNEY WEBB
Crown 8vo; Second Edition (1894), with New Introductory Chapter;
viii and 214 pp.
=Price 2s. 6d.=
"Brimful of excellent ideas."--_Anti-Jacobin._
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED
THE EIGHT HOURS' DAY
BY SIDNEY WEBB, LL.B., AND HAROLD COX, B.A.
Crown 8vo; 280 pp. with Bibliography
=Price 1s.=
"The unique value of this little book lies in its collection of facts.
It is likely to hold the field as the handbook to one of the chief items
in the social politics of the immediate future."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY VANDENHOEK UND RUPRECHT (GÖTTINGEN)
DER SOCIALISMUS IN ENGLAND. Geschildert
von englischen Socialisten.
HERAUSGEGEBEN VON SIDNEY WEBB
Transcriber's Notes: The underscore markup indicates italics. The =
markup indicates bold font. The oe ligature has been expanded.
In order to make the index more clear, it has been displayed in a
single column, rather than the double column of the original. Some
formatting markup (such as italics markup) has been removed from
the large table in order to improve readability. Other than obvious
printing errors which have been corrected, the spelling and punctuation
are as in the original publication.
Some of the formatting markup in the large table have been removed in
order to improve readability.
Corrections in punctuation were made on pages 2, 12, and 192.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "English Poor Law Policy" ***
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