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.