Apprenticeship to the sea service[650] had, previously to 1894, been

left outside the scope of the orders regulating other apprenticeships,

being subject to special provisions under the Merchant Shipping Acts,

and also regulated by the Board of Trade. That Board made some

alterations in the form of indenture in 1895, and the Local Government

Board issued a circular to guardians calling attention to the changes.

The master was required to pay to the superintendent any balance of

spending money, share of salvage and other perquisites due to an

apprentice after his daily or weekly allowance had been paid, and the

superintendent was to apply such sums for the boy's benefit in the

expenses of holidays, payment of fines, or other ways. This provision

was considered by the Local Government Board to be of great importance,

as it would "enable the magistrates in many cases to punish a boy for

breaches of discipline, without committing him to prison." The new form

of indenture also required the master to allow each apprentice a

reasonable holiday in every year.

[650] _See ante_, p. 17.

The same circular referred to recommendations made by Mr. Davy and Mr.

Berrington, in a Report on the Fishing Apprenticeship System, as to the

desirability of continued supervision by the guardians after the boys

were apprenticed, and of arranging for reports to be made to the

guardians in cases of absconding or other grave offence on the part of

the boys, and also as to the expediency of giving future apprentices

some preliminary instruction in cooking.[651]

[651] Circular of 2nd March 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report,

1895-6, p. 118.

So far as we can make out from the published documents, the use of the

power of apprenticeship is--in the view of the guardians and the Central

Authority alike--practically limited to the children maintained in Poor

Law institutions (indoor paupers), numbering 50,669 on 1st January 1906,

together with those outdoor pauper children who are either "boarded out"

(in the technical sense), numbering 8,781, or maintained in certified

schools, etc., numbering 9,364, making an aggregate total of 68,814

children to whom the Central Authority's policy of apprenticeship is

assumed to be applicable.[652] We do not find any suggestion that any

similar policy is applicable to the other 166,258 children on outdoor

relief,[653] about the starting in life of whom we can find no

documents.

[652] Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, pp. cxxx, cxxxi.

[653] Omitting children receiving medical relief only; and the

casuals and insane (_ibid._ p. cxxxi).

(vii.) _Adoption_

From 1871 to 1889 the powers and responsibilities of Poor Law

authorities with regard to children whose parents claimed the control of

them were, as against the parents, extremely limited. The Central

Authority clung to the principle of parental authority. In 1887, Mr.

Ritchie said:

"No doubt there are some instances in which the interests of children

are prejudiced by their parents claiming them from the guardians, but I

should not be prepared to propose legislation which would enable a board

of guardians to withhold a child from its parent when claimed by

him."[654]

[654] _Hansard_, 28th May 1887, vol. 315, p. 857. The policy of

the Central Authority was apparently against allowing the

guardians to assume parental responsibilities. In 1889 Mr. Ritchie

had prepared a Bill "to provide that, on application to the

justices, an Order might be made detaining a child already under

the care of the guardians or boarded out" (_Local Government

Chronicle_, 23rd March 1889, p. 238), but not extending the duties

or responsibilities of the guardians.

Two years later Parliament over-rode this contention of official

irresponsibility, and passed the first of a series of Acts under which

guardians might themselves assume parental responsibilities and

unsuitable parents might be deprived of the custody of their children;

and the guardians of the poor might become _in loco parentis_, even up

to eighteen years of age. By the Act of 1889, "where a child is

maintained by the guardians of any union and was deserted by its

parent," or if the "parent is imprisoned under a sentence of penal

servitude or imprisonment in respect of an offence committed against a

child," "the guardians may at any time resolve that such child shall be

under the control of the guardians until it reaches the age, if a boy,

of sixteen, and, if a girl, of eighteen years"; such a resolution of the

guardians is not irrevocable; they may rescind it, or, without

rescinding it, "permit such child to be either permanently or

temporarily under the control of such parent, or of any other relative

or of any friend." If the parent is aggrieved by the resolution, he may

appeal to a Court of Summary Jurisdiction, and the Court, if satisfied

"that the child has not been maintained by the guardians, or was not

deserted by such parent, or that it is for the benefit of the child that

it should be either permanently or temporarily under the control of such

parent, or that the resolution of the guardians should be determined,

may make an Order accordingly, and any such Order shall be complied with

by the guardians, and if the Order determines the resolution, the

resolution shall be thereby determined." The "powers and rights" of a

parent which the guardians may assume are subject to one limitation, in

that no resolution can authorise them to have the child educated in any

religious creed other than that in which the child would otherwise have

been educated, _i.e._ that of its parents.[655]

[655] Poor Law Act 1889, 52 & 58 Vic. c. 56. sec. 1.

The Central Authority duly commended the Act among other legislation of

the session to the notice of the boards of guardians in an official

circular.[656]

[656] Circular of 28th September 1899, in Twenty-ninth Annual

Report 1889-1900, p. 48.

Such was the original form of this law; but the experiences of the

Central Authority and the guardians as to its working led them to get

passed successive measures developing its details in various respects.

The Court's power of determining the resolution of the guardians was

limited by the Act of 1890, which provides that: "where a parent has

(_a_) abandoned or deserted his child; or (_b_) allowed his child to be

brought up by another person at that person's expense, or by the

guardians of a Poor Law union, for such a length of time and under such

circumstances as to satisfy the Court that the parent was unmindful of

his parental duties, the Court shall not make an order for the delivery

of the child to the parent unless the parent has satisfied the Court

that, having regard to the welfare of the child, he is a fit person to

have the custody of the child." Under this law, therefore, not only the

Poor Law guardians, but any other person who has brought up the child at

his own expense may acquire the right of custody in the place of the

parent. This Act is not to "affect the power of the Court to consult the

wishes of the child ... or diminish the right which any child now

possesses to the exercise of its own free choice." The Court was also

given the power to make such order as it may think fit, "to secure that

the child be brought up in the religion in which the parent has a legal

right to require that the child should be brought up."[657]

[657] Custody of Children Act, 54 Vic. c. 3, secs. 3, 4.

The class of children to which the law applies was, at the instance of

the Central Authority, considerably enlarged in 1899, and it is worth

considering how extensive it now is. "Where a child is maintained by the

guardians of a Poor Law union, and: (i.) the child has been deserted by

its parent; or (ii.) the guardians are of opinion that by reason of

mental deficiency, or of vicious habits, or mode of life, a parent of

the child is unfit to have the control of it; or (iii.) a parent is

unable to perform his or her parental duties by reason of being under

sentence of penal servitude or of being detained under the Inebriates

Act 1898; or (iv.) a parent of the child has been sentenced to

imprisonment in respect of any offence against any of his or her

children; or (v.) a parent of the child is permanently bedridden or

disabled, and is the inmate of a workhouse, and consents to the

resolution hereinafter mentioned; or (vi.) both the parents (or in the

case of an illegitimate child, the mother of the child) are (or is)

dead; the guardians may, at any time, resolve that until the child

reaches the age of eighteen years, all the rights and powers of such

parent as aforesaid, or, if both parents are dead, of the parents, in

respect of the child shall, subject as in this Act mentioned, vest in

the guardians." Penalties were also enacted against any person who shall

knowingly assist or induce any child adopted by the guardians to leave

their control. If any child maintained by the guardians is, with their

consent, adopted by some other person, their responsibility for the

child does not at once cease, for they are required, during three years

after the date of the adoption, to cause the child to be visited at

least twice a year, by some person appointed by them for the purpose;

and they have the power, if they see fit, to revoke their consent to the

adoption, and reassume custody of the child.[658]

[658] Poor Law Act, 1899, 62 & 63 Vic. c. 37, secs. 1-3.

Some boards of guardians--often on the suggestion of the

inspectorate--promptly made use of their new powers. On 1st June 1902,

the number of children already adopted up to that date was no fewer than

7724, of whom 1503 were then over fifteen.[659] It is to be noted that,

though the powers are applicable to all pauper children, the Central

Authority has not suggested their use except in respect of the children

in Poor Law institutions (including, however, the "ins and outs"),[660]

together with those technically "boarded out," or in certified schools;

and we do not find that they have ever been made use of for any of the

children maintained by the guardians on outdoor relief, however

disastrous is their upbringing.

[659] Thirty-second Annual Report, 1902-3, pp. lxii-lxiii.

[660] _Decisions of the Local Government Board_, 1903-4, by W. A.

Casson, 1905 p. 45.

_E._--THE SICK

We broke off the description of the policy of the Central Authority with

regard to the sick with the suggestive quotation from the Annual Report

of the Poor Law Board in 1870, over Mr. Goschen's signature. "The

economical and social advantages," said the last President of the Poor

Law Board, "of free medicine to the poorer classes generally as

distinguished from actual paupers, and perfect accessibility to medical

advice at all times under thorough organisation, may be considered as so

important in themselves as to render it necessary to weigh with the

greatest care all the reasons which may be adduced in their

favour."[661]

[661] Twenty-second Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1869-70,

p. lii.

(i.) _Domiciliary Treatment_

So far as published documents go, we cannot find that any inquiry was

made by the Local Government Board (at any rate on its Poor Law side) as

to the advantage and feasibility of this suggestion of providing free

medical assistance, under thorough organisation, to the poorer classes

generally. There was no breach of continuity in the policy, begun in

1865, of transforming the provision for the sick paupers in the

workhouse, into elaborately equipped, adequately staffed, and separately

administered general hospitals, which were called Poor Law infirmaries.

But in the general crusade against outdoor relief, initiated by the able

and zealous inspectorate in 1871, there was no exception made for

outdoor medical relief.[662] There was accordingly (just as we have

shown to be the case in regard to widows and the aged) no limitation,

corresponding to the express exceptions of the General Orders in favour

of the sick, in the phrases condemnatory of outdoor relief generally,

which are to be found in the Annual Reports and Circulars of these

years. The inspectors, it is clear, made no distinction, in their

persistent pressure against "outdoor relief," between medical and other

relief, between hygienic advice and money doles. Mr. Longley, indeed,

went so far as to condemn, expressly because it provided medical relief

otherwise than in the workhouse, the whole system of Poor Law

dispensaries which the Central Authority had itself just initiated

and practically forced on the Metropolitan Boards of Guardians.[663]

This report of Mr. Longley's was honoured by notice in the annual

volume, and commended by the Local Government Board for "careful

consideration."[664] There is, therefore, some warrant for the

inference that the Local Government Board, under Mr. Stansfeld and Mr.

Sclater-Booth, had not only put aside the suggestion of providing free

medical attendance for the poorer classes generally, but also that

it had now become the policy of the Central Authority--so far as we

can discover, for the first time since 1834--to restrict, as far as

possible, even such domiciliary medical attendance as was being given

under the Poor Law to the sick poor.

[662] Mr. Longley, indeed, in his Report on the Administration of

Outdoor Relief in the Metropolis, seems to allude to the official

dictum of the Poor Law Board under Mr. Goschen, in favour of "free

medicine to the poorer classes generally." He sternly condemns

"any gradual drifting into a system of medical State charity," and

deprecates the fact that this tendency "has received higher

sanction than that of the prevalent belief of the poor, or even of

the practice of Boards of Guardians" (Third Annual Report of the

Local Government Board, 1873-4, p. 161).

[663] "The dispensary system should be regarded, in common with

every improved form of out-relief, not as a final object of Poor

Law administration, but merely as a means of administering with

greater efficiency that legal relief which, as I have attempted to

show elsewhere, is most safely and effectually given in the form

of indoor relief. It would, of course, be idle, and worse than

idle, to stifle all attempts to reform the administration of

out-relief, on the ground that it is desirable, and may, at some

remote period, be possible to abolish, or at least greatly to

curtail it; and no reform of the practice of relief was probably

more urgently needed, or has proved more effectual, than that now

under consideration. It must not, however, be forgotten that side

by side with Poor Law dispensaries, has grown up, also under the

sanction of the Metropolitan Poor Act, a system ... which by

encouraging and affording special facilities for the grant of

indoor relief to sick paupers, must, if the policy of the Act be

unflinchingly carried out, eventually tend ... to the gradual

abolition of out-relief to the sick, other than those incapable of

removal from their homes. If this be so, Poor Law dispensaries ...

must ultimately be found to have had for the most part a merely

temporary place in the system of relief in London.... The

character of permanence should not be hastily affixed to the

system which they represent" (Mr. Longley's Report on Indoor

Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, pp.

41-42). In spite of this criticism, the Central Authority

continued to sanction Poor Law dispensaries. Elaborate

institutions on the London plan were established in other unions

under the general powers of the Act of 1834; _see_, for instance,

the Special Order of 9th June 1873, to Portsea Island Union; those

of 4th March and 28th August 1880, to Birmingham; those of 30th

November 1885, and 9th January 1895, to Plymouth.

[664] Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. xxi.

It is, however, fair to say that this policy of restricting outdoor

medical relief was not expressed in any alteration of the General

Orders, nor, explicitly, in any published minute or circular of the

Central Authority itself. In the 1871 Circular, discouraging outdoor

relief generally, it is, for instance, merely suggested that all paupers

receiving relief on account of temporary sickness--among whom there were

at that date apparently some 119,000 sick persons[665]--should be

visited at least fortnightly by the relieving officer.[666] The Central

Authority clung to the general disqualification of paupers, even those

in receipt of medical relief only, though the Parliamentary Secretary

had to admit that: "No doubt the Legislature had made an exception in

the cases of vaccination and of education, and it might be that the

exception should be extended to infectious diseases."[667] But when it

was pressed to impose a limit of one month to each grant of outdoor

relief, the request was, on the cautious advice of the permanent

advisers, definitely refused, lest hardship should be caused in cases of

sickness; though it was said that the guardians themselves might put

such a limit, "where such ... may properly be imposed."[668]

[665] _See_ the statistics in Twenty-second Annual Report of the

Poor Law Board, 1869-70, p. xxiv.

[666] Circular of 2nd December 1871; in First Annual Report of the

Local Government Board, 1871-2, p. 67.

[667] Mr. Salt, as Secretary of the Local Government Board, on

Disqualification by Medical Relief Bill, _Hansard_, 11th December

1878, vol. 243, p. 630. In 1876 the disqualification had been

explicitly re-enacted in the Divided Parishes and Poor Law

Amendment Act (39 & 40 Vic. c. 61, sec. 14), promoted by the

Central Authority itself, whose Parliamentary representatives

continued for years to resist all proposals for its abolition or

attenuation. In 1883 it was incidentally undermined by maintenance

and treatment in the infectious diseases hospitals of the

Metropolitan Asylums Board being declared not to be parochial

relief (Diseases Prevention Act 1883, 46 & 47 Vic. c. 35). Not

until 1885 did the Central Authority consent to its abolition, as

regards persons in receipt of medical relief only, in the Medical

Relief Disqualification Act 1885 (48 & 49 Vic. c. 46). Even then

the "stigma of pauperism" was preserved, by omitting to repeal

sec. 14 of the 1876 Act above cited, so that persons in receipt of

medical relief only are still nominally disqualified from voting

at an election of a Poor Law guardian, "or in the election to an

office under the provisions of any statute."

[668] Local Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor Law

Conference, 12th May 1877; in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p.

55.

The Central Authority was willing to consider any proposal to amend the

law, so as to allow of the compulsory removal to the workhouse of sick

persons who had no proper lodging accommodation.[669] But even to a

person who had refused to enter the workhouse, the guardians were not to

deny outdoor medical relief if sick,[670] and in no case were the sick

to be removed from their homes unless certified by the medical officer

as physically able to endure the journey.[671] There was thus, even

between 1871 and 1885, no explicit reversal, on grounds of Poor Law

principle, of the old policy which, it will be remembered, had not been

condemned by the 1834 Report of outdoor relief to the sick. If a

"destitute young husband or wife were sick," Mr. Sclater-Booth, speaking

as President of the Local Government Board, told the House of Commons in

1876, "they would not be taken into the workhouse, but would receive

outdoor relief."[672] Two years later the Central Authority actually

declared itself in favour of supplying to the sick poor who were under

domiciliary treatment, not only medical attendance and maintenance, but

also skilled professional nursing. There was, it said in reply to

influential medical pressure, "nothing to prevent the guardians

supplying such assistance," and the Central Authority was even "desirous

of encouraging this arrangement as much as possible," though the

insufficient supply of qualified nurses was likely to "render

impracticable for some time to come any general application of the

system of paid nurses in the treatment of the poor at their own

homes."[673]

[669] _Ibid._ p. 54.

[670] Local Government Board decision, in _Local Government

Chronicle_, 11th June 1904, p. 635.

[671] Circular of 23rd May 1879, in Ninth Annual Report, 1879-80,

p. 92.

[672] _Hansard_, 13th June 1876, vol. 229, p. 1780 (in Committee

on Poor Law Amendment Bill).

[673] Local Government Board to Dr. Mortimer Glanville (_Lancet_

Memorial on Poor Law Medical Relief Reform), 12th November 1878;

in Eighth Annual Report, 1878-9, pp. 91-2. In spite of this

official answer, we may infer a certain internal conflict of

policy with regard to these salaried outdoor Poor Law nurses.

Though the Central Authority expressed itself as "desirous of

encouraging" the experiment, we cannot find that it issued the

Order, without which no board of guardians could create a new

salaried office, for nearly fourteen years. The District Nurses

Order, which was merely permissive, and which, therefore, could

not have been delayed merely because there were, in 1878, not

enough trained nurses to supply every union in the Kingdom, was

not issued until 27th January 1892 (Twenty-second Annual Report,

1892-3, pp. 12-13). We cannot find that any "paid nurses in the

treatment of the poor at their own homes" were sanctioned before

that date. Moreover, even then, it is difficult to feel sure that

the Central Authority was still, to use its words of 1878,

"desirous of encouraging this arrangement as much as possible." In

sending the Order to boards of guardians, it accompanied it by a

circular, which can scarcely be deemed encouraging. It was of

opinion that "it can only be under exceptional circumstances that

a sick pauper, whose illness is of such a character as to require

that the services of a nurse should be provided by the guardians,

can, with propriety, be relieved at home. At the same time it

appears ... that where circumstances render it desirable the

nurses employed in such attendance should be duly appointed

officers of the guardians, having recognised qualifications for

the position, and being subject in the performance of their duties

to the control of the guardians, and the Board have consequently

decided to empower boards of guardians to appoint such officers"

(Circular of 1st February 1892; in Twenty-second Annual Report,

1892-3, p. 9). Fifteen more years have elapsed; but we do not

gather that the experiment, which the Central Authority in 1878

was desirous of encouraging, has been very strenuously pressed by

the inspectors, or the power made publicly known. The result is

that we cannot find that it has yet taken shape even to the extent

of as many as a dozen salaried Poor Law nurses for the outdoor

sick from one end of the Kingdom to the other.

(ii.) _Institutional Treatment_

Meanwhile, however, the substitution of indoor for outdoor relief in the

case of the sick[674] was being supported on grounds, not of Poor Law

principle, but of medical efficiency. The transformation of the

workhouses into what the Poor Law inspectors themselves began to call

"State hospitals" made more striking than ever the contrast between the

light, clean, and airy newly-built infirmary ward, with trained nurses,

a resident doctor, complete equipment, and a scientifically determined

dietary, on the one hand; and the insanitary and overcrowded hovel or

slum tenement, on the other, in which the sick pauper had no other food

than was provided by the pittance of outdoor relief, no further nursing

than his family could supply, and no better medical attendance than the

grudgingly accorded order on the district medical officer could command.

Quite irrespective of "Poor Law principles," the case for institutional

rather than domiciliary treatment of nearly every sick case became, to

the medical experts who now advised the Central Authority, simply

overwhelming. "The treatment which in sickness the poor receive in

workhouses constitutes," said the Central Authority in 1878, "one of the

most valuable forms of medical relief. _With a considerable portion of

the population, indeed, it is the only mode in which, when overtaken by

sickness, their medical needs can be adequately met._"[675] This policy

led not only to an incessant pressure on boards of guardians to provide

the "State hospitals" which had, from 1865 onwards, been expected from

the guardians of all populous unions,[676] but also to a positive

encouragement of sick persons, whether or not actually destitute in the

technical sense of the term, to take advantage of them. We see this

first with regard to infectious diseases. The hospitals of the

Metropolitan Asylums Board, maintained out of the Poor Rate exclusively

for paupers, and technically only workhouses like any others, soon came

to be used, free of charge, by small-pox and fever patients who were not

paupers.[677] It became the official policy, well understood by the

Central Authority, to get removed to these Poor Law institutions every

patient, whether destitute or not, who could not be adequately isolated

at home.[678] Already in 1875 the Central Authority expressly authorised

the medical superintendent to admit without an order any small-pox or

fever patient presenting himself, if refusal to admit might involve

danger,[679] and in 1887 it expressly permitted even non-urgent cases

to be admitted on the certificate of any medical practitioner.[680]

Nevertheless, in 1877 the Central Authority was still taking the line

that "the hospitals ... of ... the Metropolitan Asylums Board are

essentially intended to meet the requirements of the destitute class,

and that the admission ... of persons not in need of poor relief is

altogether exceptional."[681] Two years later, however, by a statute

promoted by the Central Authority itself, the Metropolitan Asylums Board

were expressly empowered to receive non-pauper patients, though only

under contracts with the local public health authorities, by which they

were to be paid for.[682] We cannot discover which vestries and district

boards, if any, entered into such contracts. Not until 1883, when these

fever and small-pox hospitals had been a dozen years in use by

non-paupers, was the position temporarily legalised by the Diseases

Prevention Act of 1883[683]--a measure also carried by the Central

Authority itself--which, whilst leaving these hospitals as Poor Law

institutions, administered by a Poor Law authority, and kept up out of

the poor rate, declared that admission, treatment, and maintenance

therein should--whether the patients were or were not otherwise

paupers--not be deemed parochial relief, or carry with it any

disqualification whatever.[684] Since that day we have the remarkable

spectacle of the Poor Law Authorities, Central and Local, annually

congratulating themselves on the fact that, year after year, they were

managing to attract into these expensive Poor Law institutions, for

gratuitous maintenance and treatment, a larger and larger percentage of

the total number of cases notified.[685]

[674] "The sick" were held to include not only acute cases, but

also cases of "chronic disease requiring regular medical treatment

and trained nursing" (and also venereal and skin diseases,

including the itch). (Local Government Board to Poplar Union,

October 1871; MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 6th October

1871).

[675] Local Government Board to Dr. Mortimer Glanville (_Lancet_

Memorial on Poor Law Medical Relief Reform), 12th November 1878;

in Eighth Annual Report, 1878-9, p. 91.

[676] The more old-fashioned guardians failed to keep pace with

the Central Authority in its ignoring of the principle of "less

eligibility" with regard to the sick; _see_, for instance, _The

New Pauper Infirmaries and Casual Wards_, by a Lambeth Guardian,

1875, in which the elaborate hospital requirements are objected to

as being far too good for paupers. Where the guardians persisted

in refusing to provide the elaborate and expensive new infirmary

accommodation considered necessary, the Central Authority at last

issued a peremptory Order requiring them to submit plans within a

month, under penalty of having plans "prepared at the expense of

the union" and of being deprived of "the benefit of participation

in the Common Poor Fund" (Local Government Board to St. Olave's

Union, June 1873; see _Local Government Chronicle_, 5th July 1873,

p. 379).

[677] For unions out of London we have to note an extraordinary

provision of 1879, proposed by the Central Authority itself.

Boards of guardians in rural districts were empowered to transfer

any of their buildings (into which only destitute persons could

legally be received) from themselves as Poor Law authorities to

themselves as public health authorities (in which case the

buildings became available, without the stigma of pauperism, for

all classes of the population) (Poor Law Act 1879 (42 & 43 Vic. c.

54, sec. 14)). We cannot discover in which cases, if any, this

provision was acted upon, and the necessary confirmatory Order

issued by the Central Authority; or what difference it made to the

buildings.

[678] This was, in effect, to hold that inability to secure

isolation, when isolation was required, amounted to destitution,

so far as this kind of medical relief was concerned, just as a man

requiring an expensive surgical operation was legally within the

definition of destitute for the purpose of the operation if he

could not pay the market price of it, even if he had ample food,

clothing, and shelter. We cannot discover, however, that this

explanation was actually given in an official document. Under it,

not merely "a considerable portion of the population," but

practically five-sixths of it would, in cases of infectious

disease, have to be deemed destitute.

[679] Order of 10th February 1875, art. 4.

[680] Circular of 8th July 1887, in Seventeenth Annual Report,

1887-8, p. 9.

[681] Circular of 2nd January 1877, in Sixth Annual Report,

1876-7, p. 33.

[682] Poor Law Act 1879 (42 & 43 Vic. c. 54, sec. 15).

[683] 46 & 47 Vic. c. 35.

[684] The Central Authority was apparently loth to accept the

situation. The statute was deliberately made only a temporary one,

expiring in a year. But it was annually renewed, and in 1891 the

provision was made permanent in the Public Health (London) Act of

that year. Meanwhile the Poor Law Act 1889 (52 & 53 Vic. c. 56,

sec. 3), had expressly authorised the admission of non-paupers,

entitling the guardians to recover the cost from the patients if

the guardians chose; but making their expenses, in default of such

recoupment, chargeable (as were the expenses of the pauper

patients) on the Common Poor Fund. We cannot discover that any

attempt was made to recover the cost from the patients; and in

1891 the very idea was abandoned.

[685] Annual Reports of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, 1889-1906.

In 1888, in anticipation of the necessary amendment of the law,

the Central Authority authorised the admission of diphtheria cases

(Local Government Board to Metropolitan Asylums Board, October

1888; _Local Government Chronicle_, 27th October 1888, p. 986;

Poor Law Act 1889 (52 & 53 Vic. c. 56, sec. 3); Order of 21st

October 1889, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1889-90, p. 96). The

boards of guardians outside the Metropolis failed, we believe

everywhere, to respond to the invitations of the Central Authority

to provide similar accommodation for infectious diseases. In 1876

the inspector was doing his utmost, by special Order of the

Central Authority, to induce the Manchester, Salford, Chorlton,

and Prestwich Boards of Guardians to unite in establishing out of

the poor rates a hospital for infectious diseases, which should

admit non-paupers on payment (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of

Guardians, 17th February 1876).

A similar enlargement of the sphere of the Poor Law institution has, of

late years, been going on in other than infectious cases. "The poorer

classes generally," to use Mr. Goschen's words, "as distinguished from

actual paupers," came more and more to appreciate the practical

distinction between the workhouse and the Poor Law infirmary; and,

especially in the Metropolis and the large towns, the latter became more

and more freely used as a general hospital.[686] This tendency was

facilitated in London by the operation of the Metropolitan Common Poor

Fund established by the Central Authority itself, which, from 1870

onward, bore the bulk of the cost of maintenance of the Poor Law

infirmaries, as of the hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board.[687]

The Central Authority saw with approval the increasing attractiveness of

these institutions, not only in London but throughout the country. In an

official memorandum communicated to all boards of guardians in 1892, it

observed that: "The sick poor can usually be better tended and nursed by

skilled nurses in well-equipped sick wards than in their own homes; and

the regularity, neatness, and order of the wards _tend to diminish the

repugnance to entering the workhouse_, which is often evinced by the

sick poor of the better class when reduced to want by failing

health."[688] It did not refuse to permit them to be made use of by

paying patients, where--as is usually the case in rural districts--no

"non-pauper institution" was available. "If," writes the Central

Authority in 1902, there is "a sick person who is in receipt of an

allowance from a benefit club or similar society," and who "is unable to

obtain in a non-pauper institution such treatment as the illness from

which he suffers requires," the Central Authority will "offer no

objection to his admission to the workhouse infirmary."[689]

[686] In 1889, for instance, the Central Authority provided that,

in cases of sudden or urgent necessity, the medical superintendent

or his assistant should admit patients on his own responsibility,

without order from the relieving officer (Special Order to Mile

End Old Town, 10th October 1889).

[687] Under the Metropolitan Poor Amendment Act 1870, the cost of

the maintenance of adult paupers in workhouses and sick asylums,

to the extent of 5d. per head per day, was thrown on the

Metropolitan Common Poor Fund. To two-thirds of the Metropolitan

unions, including all the poorer ones, this operated as a bribe in

favour of indoor (or infirmary) treatment as against domiciliary

or dispensary treatment. Mr. Longley wished to go much further. In

order practically to compel all the Metropolitan boards of

guardians to provide these elaborate and expensive hospitals, he

recommended that the whole cost of indoor maintenance of the sick,

when in infirmaries separated in position and administration from

the ordinary workhouses, should be made a charge on the

Metropolitan Common Poor Fund (Mr. Longley's Report on Indoor

Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. 54).

[688] Memorandum on Nursing in Workhouse Sick Wards, April 1892;

in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 114.

[689] Decision of Local Government Board in _Local Government

Chronicle_, 18th October 1902, p. 1051.

To those boards of guardians who clung to the policy of "deterring" the

sick poor from obtaining medical relief--which, as we have shown, Mr.

Gathorne Hardy had, on behalf of the Central Authority, in 1867

expressly repudiated[690]--all this official encouragement to enter Poor

Law institutions seemed revolutionary. The fact that the sick poor came

more and more to draw a distinction between the workhouse on the one

hand, and the Poor Law infirmary or isolation hospital on the other,

appeared seriously objectionable. When it was noticed that the Central

Authority officially styled the separate institution for the sick "an

asylum for the sick poor,"[691] or "the hospital," or simply the

"infirmary,"[692] the Manchester guardians revolted, and definitely

instructed their medical and relieving officers "to avoid using the word

'hospital' or 'infirmary,' and simply to use the word 'workhouse.'"[693]

Other boards, we believe, insisted--although "the infirmary" was an

entirely distinct institution--that it should be entered only through

the workhouse itself. Against this lingering objection on grounds of

Poor Law policy to get the sick cured in the most efficient way, we see

the inspectorate in the later years more and more explicitly protesting.

"I wish it were possible," said Mr. Preston-Thomas in 1899, "to get rid

of the name of workhouse (which, by the way, has become singularly

inappropriate), for I believe that it is to the associations of the name

rather than to the institution itself that prejudice attaches. The

disinclination of the independent poor to enter the hospitals of the

Metropolitan Asylums Board, which was considerable at first, has now

practically vanished, and I do not see why there should not be the same

change of feeling with regard to Poor Law infirmaries in the

country."[694]

[690] _Hansard_, 8th February 1867, vol. 185, p. 163; _see_ ante,

pp. 120-21.

[691] Metropolitan Poor Act 1867 (30 & 31 Vic. c. 6); Special

Order to Central London Sick Asylum District, 13th May 1873.

[692] Special Order to Lambeth, 25th August 1873.

[693] MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 14th August

1879. Some of the inspectors seem to have shared this objection.

As late as 1901 we find one reporting that "the admission into our

workhouse infirmaries of persons above the pauper class, and not

destitute, is, I fear, increasing" (Mr. J. W. Preston's Report, in

Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p. 97).

[694] Mr. Preston-Thomas's Report, in Twenty-eighth Annual Report,

1898-9, p. 135.

In the same spirit we see the Central Authority in these three decades

persistently pressing Boards of Guardians to build new workhouse

infirmaries.[695] The report becomes current in the Poor Law world that

Local Government Board officers, in interviews, went so far as to say

that a certain board of guardians was morally guilty of manslaughter in

refusing to embark on extensive new building operations. The official

architect's criticisms on the Poor Law infirmary plans submitted to him

are all on the lines of making these into up-to-date general hospitals.

The proposals sanctioned by the Central Authority go up to a capital

outlay of £350 per bed. The Central Authority even sanctions special

hospitals established by the guardians at the expense of the poor rate,

for particular classes of patients, such as the "West Derby, Liverpool

and Toxteth Park Hospital, ... for the reception of persons suffering

from tuberculosis," many of whom are so little destitute that they pay

the cost of their treatment and maintenance;[696] or, as at Croydon,

Kingston, and Richmond, "for the reception of epileptic and

feeble-minded persons," who cannot be certified as of unsound mind.[697]

Persons in receipt of medical relief only are no longer disqualified as

paupers from being registered as Parliamentary and Municipal electors,

and it has even been held that admission to a Poor Law hospital, sick

asylum, or infirmary because of ill-health, and for the purpose of being

medically treated, amounts to medical relief only, even though it

incidentally involves also maintenance at the expense of the poor

rate.[698] By 1903 we have the Central Authority laying it down in

general terms, "that it is the guardians' duty to provide for their sick

poor, and no sanction ... is necessary to sending such cases to

institutions for curative treatment ... and ... paying reasonable

expenses involved in so doing."[699] The Central Authority seems,

indeed, to exhaust official ingenuity in securing the best possible

treatment and also the comfort of the patients in the sick wards.[700]

Any reasonable fee may be paid for calling in consultants whenever the

medical officer thinks it "necessary or desirable," without any special

sanction being requisite.[701] We need not recite the constant struggle

to get more nurses and better. As early as 1879 a president could

(perhaps with some ministerial optimism) declare that: "in the new

infirmaries I have succeeded in abolishing pauper help almost

entirely."[702]

[695] "the curtailment of the stage of convalescence," urged the

medical inspector in 1875, on a hesitating board of guardians,

"alone rapidly covers any additional outlay that may have been

incurred in structural arrangements, whilst the increased chances

of recovery to the sick and afflicted are not to be measured by

any mere money standard" (Dr. Mouat, medical inspector of Local

Government Board, in Report on Infirmary of Newcastle Union; MS.

archives, Newcastle Board of Guardians, 26th November 1875).

Already by 1891 the Central Authority is able to inform Parliament

that the number of "sick beds" provided in Poor Law Institutions

throughout the country--irrespective of the mere infirm aged--is

no less than 68,420 (House of Commons, No. 365 of 1891;

Twenty-first Annual Report, 1891-2, p. lxxxvi). In 1896 there were

58,551 persons occupying the workhouse wards for the sick, of whom

19,287 were merely aged and infirm, whilst there were in

attendance 1961 trained nurses, 1384 paid but untrained nurses

(probationers), and 3443 pauper helpers, of whom 1374 were

convalescents (Twenty-sixth Annual Report, 1896-7, p. lxvi; House

of Commons, No. 371 of 1896).

[696] Special Orders to West Derby, Liverpool and Toxteth Park,

5th April 1900 and 25th January 1901. In 1888 two other Boards of

Guardians were even urged and authorised to combine in the taking

over and maintenance of a specialised hospital for a particular

class of diseases, and to conduct it as a Poor Law institution

with the aid of a small annual subsidy from national funds, on the

understanding that all local cases were taken. There was to be no

sort of "deterrent" influence. Patients, suffering from these

diseases, were to be admitted on the authority of the medical

superintendent of the hospital, without there being necessarily

any order from the relieving officer; and without any express

restriction to the destitute. The well-understood object of this

Poor Law institution was, in fact, positively to encourage all

persons suffering from the diseases in question to come in and be

cured. There was to be no obvious sign that it was a Poor Law

institution. It was especially ordered that it should be styled

"The Aldershot Lock Hospital" (Special Orders to Farnham and

Hartley Wintney Unions, 19th September 1888 and 16th November

1894). This went on for seventeen years, and was given up in 1905

(_ibid._ 30th December 1905).

[697] Special Order to Croydon, Kingston, and Richmond, of 27th

December 1904. We gather that this institution has not been

established. A similar one exists at Manchester.

[698] By some Revising Barristers under the Medical Relief

Disqualification Removal Act 1885 (48 & 49 Vic. c. 46).

[699] _Decisions of the Local Government Board_, 1902-3, by W. A.

Casson, 1904, p. 7. The Poor Law Act 1879 had, in fact, expressly

authorised boards of guardians to subscribe to charitable

institutions to which paupers might have access. It was held, for

instance, that boards of guardians may, if they choose, send their

sane adult epileptics to an epileptic colony, and pay the cost of

their maintenance there (_Local Government Chronicle_, 29th

October 1904, p. 1123). In 1901, the Central Authority sanctioned

the payment of £70 by the Bramley Board of Guardians for a cot in

the sanatorium of the Leeds Association for the Cure of

Tuberculosis (Local Government Board to Bramley Union, February

1901, in _Local Government Chronicle_, 23rd February 1901, p.

184).

[700] In 1903 it sanctioned the expenditure involved in the

setting up of Röntgen Ray apparatus in a Poor Law infirmary

(_Decisions of the Local Government Board_, 1902-3, by W. A.

Casson, 1904, p. 10).

[701] _Decisions of the Local Government Board_, 1903-4, by W. A.

Casson, 1905, p. 39.

[702] _Hansard_, 24th July 1879, vol. 248, p. 1173.

The guardians are reminded that the epileptics are especially to be

incessantly accompanied by trained nurses, lest they should be

suffocated in their fits.[703] The sick men in the workhouse may be

allowed tobacco and snuff, the sick women tea, in addition to that

prescribed in the dietary table.[704] The doctor is expressly reminded

that it is his duty to "order such food as he may consider

requisite."[705] When a complaint was made that beer was supplied in a

Norfolk workhouse, the Central Authority refused to interfere with a

"beer allowance" to sick paupers, given and renewed from week to week by

direction of the medical officer.[706] The guardians are even reminded

of the importance of providing illustrated books and newspapers for the

sick.[707]

[703] Local Government Board decision, in _Local Government

Chronicle_, 1st November 1902, p. 1102.

[704] General Order of 8th March 1894, in Twenty-fourth Annual

Report, 1894-5, pp. xcix, 4-5.

[705] Circular of 29th January 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual

Report, 1895-6, p. iii.

[706] Mr. Long in House of Commons (23rd June 1904; _Hansard_,

vol. 136, p. 971).

[707] Circular of 23rd January 1891; Twentieth Annual Report,

1890-1, p. xc; Report of Royal Commission on Aged Poor, 1895, vol.

iii. p. 967, (Cd. 7684 II).

Meanwhile the standard of equipment, of resident medical attendance, and

especially of trained nursing[708] required by the Central Authority in

the Poor Law institutions is constantly rising, in correspondence with

the progress of hospital science. We see all this reflected in the

advice and criticisms pressed by the inspectorate on the boards of

guardians. "The workhouses of a past and bygone age," says Mr. Hervey in

1903, "are no longer refuges for able-bodied, but are becoming every day

more of the nature of State hospitals for the aged, sick, and infirm.

_As such, they should be furnished with the very best nursing

procurable._"[709]

[708] _See_ the references to nursing in Circulars of 29th January

1895 and 7th August 1897; and the General Order (Nursing of the

Sick in Workhouses) 6th August 1897; Twenty-fifth Annual Report,

1895-6, pp. 109-110; Twenty-seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, pp.

27-31.

[709] Mr. Hervey's Report, in Thirty-second Annual Report, 1902-3,

p. 69. The total cost of Poor Law medical relief in 1904-5 was

£518,994 indoor (to which might be added £640,833 for what are now

called the "public health purposes" of the greatest of all Poor

Law authorities, the Metropolitan Asylums Board); and £268,537

outdoor (Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, pp. 251, 589, 590).

This aggregate total of £787,531 (excluding the fever hospitals of

the Metropolitan Asylums Board) omits the maintenance of the sick

themselves, but includes, however, some items not previously

included. For comparative purposes we must take the figure for

1903-4 (£423,554), which includes only doctors' salaries and

drugs. This may be compared with the corresponding figure for 1881

of £310,456; for 1871, of £290,249; and for 1840 of £151,781

(Twenty-second Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1869-70, p.

227; Eleventh Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1881-2,

p. 237).

(iii.) _The Municipal Medical Service_

It may be that it is on the Public Health side, which was in 1871 added

to the Poor Law work of the Central Authority, that we may trace the

influence of the suggestion that was under discussion at the Poor Law

Board under Mr. Goschen's presidency, just prior to its merging in the

Local Government Board. The idea of "free medicine to the poorer classes

generally, as distinguished from actual paupers, and perfect

accessibility to medical advice at all times under thorough

organisation"--which the new permanent secretary, Sir John Lambert, may

have brought back from his official visit to Ireland--finds a certain

expression in the Public Health Act of 1872, re-enacted with additions

in 1875, which created "one local authority for all public health

purposes in every place, so that no area should be without such an

authority, or have more than one." In the rural districts the board of

guardians became this authority. As such they came under a series of

responsibilities based upon ideas diametrically opposed to those of the

Poor Law. Instead of confining their action to actual applicants for

help, they had to search out cases of nuisance or dangerous disease.

Instead of restricting their administration to those who were willing

and anxious for it, they were charged with compelling to be done all

that was required. Instead of being limited in purview to a small class

specially stigmatised as paupers, the guardians had to consider the

whole population as needing their attention without distinction of class

or subjection to stigma. They were expressly authorised, not merely to

repress nuisances, but to provide hospitals "for the use of the

inhabitants," without any limitation to infectious or any other

diseases.[710] They were even empowered, with the consent of the Central

Authority, to "provide or contract with any person to provide a

temporary supply of medicine and medical assistance for the poorer

inhabitants of their district."[711] The Central Authority eagerly

pressed on the local authorities the policy of the new Act.[712] We see

the Poor Law inspectors--who were "in possession of the views of the

(Local Government) Board on the subject"--explaining to boards of

guardians in unions having rural districts their new duties; the future

work of their new Public Health staff of medical officer of health and

sanitary inspectors; and their responsibility for maintaining and

improving the health, not of paupers only, but of the whole

community.[713] We are not here concerned with the progress of public

health administration, in which the boards of guardians cannot be said

to have been apt or willing disciples. It is not to the boards of

guardians, in 1907 still the sanitary authorities in non-urban

districts, that we owe the elaborate medical organisation of an

up-to-date Public Health Department, with its peripatetic health

visitors and diagnosing doctors, its milk depots and campaign against

infantile mortality, its gratuitous supply of anti-toxins and

diarrhoea medicine, its gratuitous hospitals and sanatoria no longer

confined to small-pox and fever. We need only notice here the gradual

appreciation, by the Central Authority and the Poor Law inspectors, of

the intimate connection between shortcomings in the public health

service and an excess of pauperism. Even from the narrowest standpoint

of Poor Law principles, the causal connection between disease and

pauperism could no longer be ignored. "The effect of bad house

accommodation on the health of the poor," writes Mr. Bagenal in 1902,

"has often been demonstrated by experts in public health. Not only are

serious illnesses more frequent, but damp and draughty dwellings lower

vitality to such an extent that the bodily vigour and activity, as well

as the spirits, are affected, and the system becomes unable to withstand

actual disease. Families are often pauperised on account of sickness

produced by living in unhealthy conditions. Labourers also often become

permanently disabled, and fall upon the rates, owing to premature old

age brought on by insanitary houses. To prevent sickness and to prolong

the working term of a labourer's life must be a gain to the ratepayers,

as well as to all classes of the community."[714] To take only one

specific instance, in the Redruth Union the reason for a high average of

pauperism in 1906 was found in the large amount of destitution produced

by "miner's phthisis," and the great number of widows and orphans which

it caused, "the total number of persons pauperised owing to this special

cause being ... 333," besides other cases of infirmity of the miners

themselves. "A substantial proportion of the excessive pauperism in the

Redruth Union is thus accounted for."[715]

[710] Sec. 131 of Public Health Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55).

[711] Sec. 133 of _ibid._ This had been already included in the

Sanitary Act of 1868 (31 & 32 Vic. c. 115, sec. 10).

[712] Circular of 17th August and 12th November 1872, in Second

Annual Report, 1872-3, pp. 19-20, 41-52.

[713] _See_, _e.g._ the letters of Mr. Hedley, in September 1872,

in MS. archives of Newcastle Board of Guardians.

[714] Mr. Bagenal's Report, in Thirty-first Annual Report, 1901-2,

p. 139.

[715] Mr. Preston-Thomas's Report, in Thirty-fifth Annual Report,

1905-6, pp. 471-2.

_F._--PERSONS OF UNSOUND MIND

It does not seem necessary to trace the slight changes in the law

relating to pauper lunatics, or in the orders and circulars of the

Central Authority. There appears to have been no alteration in the

relation of the Central Authority to the Lunacy Commissioners,

practically no steps being taken to initiate policy except upon the

suggestion of the latter, whose standard of accommodation and treatment

continues steadily to rise for pauper as for non-pauper lunatics.

The only point of interest is the continuance, virtually unchanged, of

the three methods of treatment, viz. maintenance in the workhouse,

treatment in a lunatic asylum, or grant of outdoor relief.

The number of persons of unsound mind in the workhouse continued

practically undiminished, without any steps being taken to prevent their

retention among the aged, the sick, and the children, who came more and

more to make up the workhouse population.[716] There were, in fact,

three classes of cases in which a lunatic might be detained in a

workhouse. Firstly, there is the old provision, under which "the

visitors of any asylum may, with the consent of the Local Government

Board and the Commissioners, and subject to such regulations as they

respectively prescribe, make arrangements with the guardians of any

union for the reception into the workhouse of any chronic lunatics, not

being dangerous, who are in the asylum, and have been selected and

certified by the manager of the asylum as proper to be removed to the

workhouse."[717] Secondly, "where a pauper lunatic is discharged from an

institution for lunatics, and the medical officer of the institution is

of opinion that the lunatic has not recovered, and is a proper person to

be kept in a workhouse as a lunatic, the medical officer shall certify

such opinion, and the lunatic may thereupon be received and detained

against his will in a workhouse without further order, if the medical

officer of the workhouse certifies in writing that the accommodation in

the workhouse is sufficient."[718] Thirdly, if it is necessary for the

welfare of a lunatic, or for the public safety, that he should

immediately be placed under care and control, pending regular

proceedings for his removal, he may be taken to a workhouse (if there is

proper accommodation therein) by a constable, relieving officer, or

overseer, and may be detained there for three days, during which time

the proceedings are to be taken; and in any case in which a summary

reception order has been or might be made, he may be further detained on

a justice's order till he can be removed, provided that the period does

not exceed fourteen days.[719] Moreover, any other lunatic might be

"allowed to remain in a workhouse as a lunatic" if "the medical officer

of the workhouse certifies in writing: (_a_) that such a person is a

lunatic, with the grounds for the opinion; and (_b_) that he is a proper

person to be allowed to remain in a workhouse as a lunatic; and (_c_)

that the accommodation in the workhouse is sufficient for his proper

care and treatment, separate from the inmates of the workhouse not

lunatics, unless the medical officer certifies that the lunatic's

condition is such that it is not necessary for the convenience of the

lunatic or of the other inmates that he should be kept separate." Such a

certificate signed by the medical officer is sufficient authority for

detaining the lunatic in a workhouse for fourteen days, but no longer,

unless within that time a justice signs an order for his detention.

Failing such a certificate, or, after fourteen days, such an order, or

if at any time the lunatic ceases to be "a proper person to be allowed

to remain in a workhouse," he becomes "a proper person to be sent to an

asylum," and proceedings are to be taken accordingly.[720]

[716] It seems to have been entirely as an exception that the

Rochdale Guardians fitted up what was practically a lunatic asylum

in their workhouse, adequately equipped, staffed, and isolated;

and took in a number of Lancashire chronic lunatics (Special Order

of 13th April 1893; Twenty-third Annual Report, 1893-4, p. xcii).

[717] Lunacy Act, 1890, 53 Vic. c. 5, sec. 26.

[718] _Ibid._ sec. 25; cf. Lunacy Act 1889, 52 & 53 Vic. c. 41,

sec. 22.

[719] Lunacy Act 1890, secs. 20, 21; cf. Lunacy Act 1885, 48 & 49

Vic. c. 52, secs. 2 and 3.

[720] _Ibid._ sec. 24.

Meanwhile the Central Authority continued to permit the grant of outdoor

relief in cases of lunacy; and about 5000 were always so maintained.

Regulations for the boarding-out of pauper lunatics first appear in the

Act of 1889. "Where application is made to the committee of visitors of

an asylum by any relative or friend of a pauper lunatic confined therein

that he may be delivered over to the custody of such relative or friend,

the committee may, upon being satisfied that the application has been

approved by the guardians of the union to which the lunatic is

chargeable, and, in case the proposed residence is outside the limits of

the said union, then also by a justice having jurisdiction in the place

where the relative or friend resides, and that the lunatic will be

properly taken care of, order the lunatic to be delivered over

accordingly." The authority liable for such a lunatic's maintenance is

to pay an allowance for his support to the person who undertakes his

care; the medical officer of the district is to visit him and report to

the visiting committee every quarter, and two visitors may at any time

order the lunatic to be removed to the asylum.[721] Any two

Commissioners have also the right to visit any pauper lunatic or alleged

lunatic not in an institution for lunatics or in a workhouse, and call

in a medical practitioner; if the latter signs a certificate, and they

think fit, the Lord Chancellor may direct that the lunatic be received

into an institution.[722]

[721] Lunacy Act 1889, sec. 40.

[722] _Ibid._ sec. 42.

For the paupers of unsound mind in the Metropolis there was even a

fourth alternative, namely, the "district asylums" of the Metropolitan

Asylum Board. On the opening of the Darenth Asylum, the Central

Authority quoted, without disapproval, the following remarks of the

Lunacy Commissioners: "The withdrawal, for proper care, of helpless

children of this kind [idiots] from the households of many of the

industrious and deserving poor is a frequent means of _warding off

pauperism in the parents_."[723] We do not find, however, any more

explicit statement on this point. What the Central Authority continued

to press on the Boards of Guardians was, not so much the importance of

relieving the struggling poor from the burden of their insane or idiotic

dependants, nor yet the freeing of the workhouses from the presence of

persons of unsound mind; but rather of appropriate discrimination. "It

is of great importance not merely to exclude from the [district] asylums

those who, by reason of violence or irritability, are proper subjects

for the county asylum, but also those who, from old age or disease, are

unfit for the journey to the asylum, or who, from the slight degree to

which their mind is affected, might more properly remain in the

workhouse."[724] "The removal of helpless, bedridden persons, whose

mental weakness is, in many cases, the result of old age, to asylums

situated a considerable distance from the Metropolis, is calculated, on

the one hand, to be injurious to the persons thus removed, and, on the

other, to occupy the district asylums with a different class of persons

from that for which they were constructed."[725] Imbecile children are

to be kept in the workhouse till they are five years old, and may then

be sent to the asylum at Darenth.[726] Outside the Metropolis there is

no specialised Poor Law provision for idiots, who, if not received into

the county asylum, must either be placed in non-Poor-Law institutions at

considerable expense, or detained in the workhouse. In 1885 the Central

Authority even suggested that harmless and aged lunatics had, on grounds

of economy, better be retained in the workhouse, rather than removed to

an asylum.[727] We hear incidentally of a Special Order in 1900 under

which certain chronic lunatics were actually transferred from the

Suffolk County Asylum to the workhouse of the Mildenhall Union.[728] As

late as 1905 we find the Central Authority expressing regret that so

many cases of senile imbecility were removed from the workhouses to

asylums.[729]

[723] Eighth Annual Report, 1878-9, p. xli.

[724] First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. xxix.

[725] Circular Letter, "Metropolitan Asylums for Imbeciles," 12th

February 1875, in Fifth Annual Report, 1875-6, p. 3.

[726] Circular Letter, "Age of Children sent to Imbecile Asylums,"

24th July 1882, in Twelfth Annual Report, 1882-3, p. 17.

[727] Local Government Board to West Ham, January 1885; _Local

Government Chronicle_, 24th January 1885, p. 77.

[728] Special Order of 21st March 1900 (apparently not published);

referred to in Thirtieth Annual Report 1900-1, p. ci.

[729] Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. clxxi.

Under this policy the number of paupers of unsound mind receiving

outdoor relief diminished very slightly, being 4736 on 1st January 1906;

those in the asylums of the Metropolitan Asylums Board and in county and

borough lunatic asylums rose to no fewer than 92,409; whilst those in

workhouses nevertheless did not fall off from the total of thirty-five

years previously, being, in fact, on 1st January 1906, 11,484, or an

average of nineteen in each workhouse.[730]

[730] _Ibid._ p. clxx.

Towards the latter part of the time we begin to find the inspectors,

somewhat in disaccord with the suggestions of the Central Authority

itself, protesting against the presence in the workhouses even of the

chronic lunatic, the harmless idiot, or the senile imbecile, on the new

ground that their presence caused annoyance to the sane

inmates--annoyance which had, for seventy years, been apparently either

unnoticed or not considered. "I am sorry to say," reported Mr.

Preston-Thomas in 1901, "that in all but six of the workhouses in my

district imbeciles mix freely with the other workhouse inmates. Many of

them are mischievous, noisy, or physically offensive.

In some instances, even if their bodily ailment is very slight, they

sleep in the sick wards in order that they may come under the

supervision of the nurses, and they frequently disturb other patients at

night. By day they are a source of much irritation and annoyance, and in

a small workhouse I have known the lives of a number of old men made

seriously uncomfortable by a mischievous idiot for whom no place could

be found in an asylum.... I am much afraid," prophetically continued Mr.

Preston-Thomas, "that ... the question will be postponed indefinitely,

and six or eight years hence the idiots will still be worrying the sane

inmates of workhouses.... It is in the country workhouses, sometimes

with only a dozen imbeciles or less, divided among the sexes, that the

chief difficulty arises.... A good many are often found useful in the

laundry and other domestic work of the institution, but I do not think

this consideration ought to outweigh what may almost be characterised as

the cruelty of requiring sane persons to associate, by day and by night,

with gibbering idiots."[731] When the Select Committee on the Bill to

establish Cottage Homes for the Aged Poor in 1900 strongly recommended

the removal of all imbeciles from workhouses, the Central Authority,

observing that the advisability of this step had been repeatedly brought

to its notice by guardians and others, declared that the question must

be deferred.[732]

[731] Mr. Preston-Thomas's Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report,

1900-1, pp. 122-3.

[732] Circular of 4th August 1900, in Thirtieth Annual Report,

1900-1, p. 18.

_G._--DEFECTIVES

For the first twenty years after 1871 there is no alteration of policy

to record with regard to defectives. In fact, the Central Authority does

not seem to have paid much attention to this class, whether mentally or

physically defective, during this period. It enjoined no policy for the

treatment of them till 1891. A Circular on "Blind and Deaf and Dumb

inmates of Workhouses" then required the inspectors to "continue to give

special attention" to children among this class, and urge their removal

from the workhouse when desirable. It was held that the guardians might,

if they chose, pay the whole of the maintenance of deaf and dumb

children sent to appropriate institutions. No limit has been fixed, but

in no case has more than £20 a year been sanctioned.[733] Adults also

were to be given instruction in reading and writing, if able to profit

thereby, and if such instruction could not be provided in the union,

they might be sent, under contract, to the workhouse of some other union

where teaching might be available, either in the workhouse or in the

town. It is also suggested that arrangements might with advantage be

made for reading aloud to the aged blind in the workhouse. But it was

held to be illegal to pay for the technical instruction of blind

workhouse inmates at a non-Poor-Law institution.[734] From 1903 onward,

however, we have the almost dramatic extension of the scope of the

Education Authority with regard to defective children of all kinds--a

change which has already gone far to transfer responsibility for the

treatment of the blind, the deaf and dumb, the crippled, the epileptic,

and the mentally defective children up to sixteen from the Poor Law to

the Education Authorities. The first step was the Act of 1893, which

required the local Education Authority to provide education for blind

and deaf children; but children sent to any institution from the

workhouse, or boarded out by the guardians, were expressly

excluded.[735] In 1899 similar provision was made for defective and

epileptic children; and the guardians were authorised to arrange with

the Education Authority to take over Poor Law cases on payment.[736]

Under these Acts provision is more and more being made, especially in

London, for the education, treatment, and even (where requisite)

maintenance in educational institutions of these children up to sixteen.

[733] _Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government

Board_, vol. i 1880, p. 53; vol. ii. 1883, p. 281; vol. iii. 1888,

p. 102.

[734] _Ibid._ vol. iii. 1888, p. 101.

[735] Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act 1893 (56

and 57 Vic. c. 42).

[736] Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act

1899 (62 and 63 Vic. c. 32).

In 1903 a Special Order provided for the transfer, from the Metropolitan

workhouses to the special homes of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, of

children who, without being certified as of unsound mind, were mentally

defective; and for their retention in such homes until twenty-one years

of age.[737] We do not find any corresponding provision with regard to

the mentally defective children outside the Metropolis; or for the

mentally defectives beyond sixteen years of age. In the rural

workhouses, at any rate, which make up three-fourths of the whole, it

would seem that in 1907, as it was officially reported in 1879, these

mentally defectives, together with "the imbeciles, are more or less

mixed up with the ordinary inmates of the class to which they

belong."[738]

[737] Special Order of 4th March 1903; Thirty-third Annual Report,

1903-4, p. ci.

[738] Mr. Courtenay Boyle's Report, in Eighth Annual Report,

1878-9, p. 120.

In recent years we see the Central Authority willingly sanctioning

special provision for individual cases. Thus, special assistance may be

given for starting in trade persons handicapped by their infirmities. In

one case, the Board sanctioned the purchase of tools for a blind man who

had been taught a trade.[739] In another case, "an adult having become

incapacitated by reason of accident from again following his usual

occupation, the guardians were desirous of paying a premium in

consideration of his being taught a trade which the nature of his

infirmity would not prevent his carrying on. On the proposal being

submitted to the Local Government Board, the Board observed that as the

person was too old to be bound as an apprentice, there was no authority

for the payment of the premium, but they suggested whether the

difficulty might not be overcome by out-relief being granted during the

period of learning."[740]

[739] _Local Government Chronicle_, 29th November 1902, p. 1203.

[740] _Ibid._ 6th December 1902, p. 1225.

A third instance is given as follows: "A boy, aged sixteen years, has

been a pupil at an institution for the blind, the fees for his board and

education having hitherto been paid by the said board [of guardians]

under the Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act 1893. The

boy is desirous of competing for a scholarship of the value of £40 a

year from the Institution for the Blind in London; total fees, £60 a

year. The guardians wish to contribute £13 a year, the father, who earns

on an average £2:2s. a week, being willing to pay the balance of £7, in

addition to travelling expenses and outfit. The Board hold that the

guardians can, assuming the boy is in need of relief, carry out their

proposal under 30 and 31 Vic. c. 106, sec. 21."[741] An interesting

feature of this case is the vagueness of the term "in need of relief,"

instead of "destitution."

[741] _Decisions of the Local Government Board_, 1902-3, by W. A.

Casson, 1904, p. 14.

_H._--THE AGED AND INFIRM

(i.) _Outdoor Relief_

The crusade of the inspectorate of 1871-85, in favour of the "workhouse

system" of Poor Law relief, made no exception in favour of aged persons,

whether deserving or undeserving, any more than it did in favour of

widows with young children or the sick. On the contrary, Mr. Longley

assumed, in every paragraph of his Report,[742] that the "workhouse

principle" was universally applicable to "the disabled"--the term he

used for the aged and infirm--as well as to the able-bodied. A rigid

adherence to the policy of "offering the House" would, he argued, lead

the poor to provide, or induce their relatives to provide, for old age

as well as for sickness and widowhood.[743] Further, Mr. Longley

strongly deprecated any deviation in particular cases from what he

euphemistically called "the offer of indoor relief." "That which an

applicant does not know certainly that he will not get," he forcibly

argued, "he readily persuades himself, if he wishes for it, that he will

get; and the poor, to whom any inducement is held out to regard

application for relief as a sort of gambling speculation, in which,

though many fail, some will succeed, will, like other gamblers, reckon

upon their own success."[744] For every "hard case" he relied on the

springing up in every union of intelligently directed private charity.

"It is, in fact, the very existence of charity"--assumed thus to be

always at hand whenever required--"which strengthens the hands of the

Poor Law administrator in adherence to rule."[745] Yet, with a certain

want of logic, he desired this charitable provision to remain

"precarious" and "intermittent;" something which it was possible to

argue would always be there when a "hard case" occurred, and which,

nevertheless, could not be counted upon by the poor themselves. In other

words, he seemed to imply that charitable outdoor relief was superior to

Poor Law outdoor relief for the very reason that though some applicants

for it would succeed, others in like circumstances would fail to get

it--thus inducing, one would have thought, exactly the spirit of

"gambling speculation" on the part of the poor that he clearly perceived

to arise from the adoption by boards of guardians of an intermittent and

uncertain relief policy.

[742] Report on the Administration of Outdoor Relief in the

Metropolis, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 136-209.

[743] "One of the chief defects," he said, "in the present

administration of the law in respect of the disabled class, and

especially of that large section of it which consists of the aged

and infirm ... is its failure to relieve the rates from the burden

of the maintenance of paupers whose relatives, whether legally

liable or not, are able to contribute to their support. It is, I

believe, within the experience of many boards of guardians, that

while there are persons who, even when in prosperous

circumstances, readily permit their aged relatives to receive

out-relief, an offer of indoor relief is frequently found to put

pressure upon them to rescue themselves, if not their relatives,

from the discredit incident to the residence of the latter in a

workhouse" (_Ibid._ p. 188). Another inspector expressly reported

that he urged guardians with regard to the aged "to apply the

workhouse test _in order to put a pressure on relatives who are

not legally liable_" (Mr. Culley's Report in Third Annual Report,

1873-4, p. 76). So again, in 1875, Mr. Longley argued that the

"deterrent discipline" of the workhouse was "the keystone of an

efficient system of indoor relief," not merely for the

able-bodied, but also for the aged ("directly on the able-bodied,

and more remotely upon the disabled class of paupers," the term he

always used for the aged) (Report on Indoor Relief in the

Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. 47). It may,

however, be noted that Mr. Longley never pretended that this was

the policy of the Report of 1834, or of the Act of 1834. To him it

was "_a further and special development_ ... of the principles of

the Poor Law Amendment Act" (_Ibid._ p. 41).

[744] Mr. Longley's Report in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 144.

[745] _Ibid._

How far this policy of offering the House to all aged persons, deserving

or undeserving, was assumed by the other inspectors to be the official

policy, and how far it was pressed by them, on boards of guardians

throughout the country, we have been unable to ascertain. Apart from the

approval of Mr. Longley's views implied by the publication of his

Reports and the circulation of them among boards of guardians, the

Central Authority maintained, between 1871 and 1896, an absolute

silence[746] on the question of outdoor relief to the aged.

[746] We ought, perhaps, to mention that, already in January 1895,

under Sir Henry Fowler's presidency, we find the Central Authority

writing to a board of guardians, to bespeak greater consideration

for the aged and infirm, who needed outdoor relief. The Bradford

Guardians had been in the habit of requiring their outdoor paupers

to come every week to the workhouse to receive their doles. The

Central Authority, far from deprecating this outdoor relief,

spontaneously pointed out that the system involved very long walks

for many infirm people, and suggested that the guardians should

institute four local pay stations (Local Government Board to

Bradford Union, 8th January 1895; in MS. archives, Bradford Board

of Guardians).

All the more surprising to boards of guardians must have been the sudden

and unexpected reversal of this policy by the Central Authority between

1896 and 1900. In July 1896, the Central Authority, under the presidency

of Mr. Chaplin, issued a Circular to boards of guardians outside the

Metropolis, drawing attention to the importance of the relieving

officers and medical officers discharging their duties with the greatest

particularity. In a concluding paragraph the Central Authority

significantly reminds the guardians of the recommendations of the Royal

Commission on the Aged Poor, of which an extract is appended. "We are

convinced," run the recommendations thus exceptionally brought to the

guardians' notice, "that there is a strong feeling that in the

administration of relief there should be greater discrimination between

the respectable aged who become destitute and those whose destitution is

distinctly the consequence of their own misconduct; and we recommend

that boards of guardians, in dealing with applications for relief,

should inquire with special care into the antecedents of destitute

persons whose physical faculties have failed by reason of age and

infirmity; and that _outdoor relief in such cases should be given_ to

those who are shown to have been of good character, thrifty according to

their opportunities, and generally independent in early life, and who

are not living under conditions of health or surrounding circumstances

which make it evident that the relief given should be indoor

relief."[747] But this is not all. The poor, far from being left

uncertain as to the grant of outdoor relief, were to be specially told

that they would receive it if only they led deserving lives. "It

accordingly appears to us eminently desirable," continue the

recommendations, as communicated by the Central Authority to the boards

of guardians, "that boards of guardians should adopt rules in accordance

with the general principles which we have indicated, by which they may

be broadly guided in dealing with individual applications for relief,

and _that such rules should be generally made known for the information

of the poor of the union, in order that those really in need may not be

discouraged from applying_."[748]

[747] Circular of 11th July 1896; in Twenty-sixth Annual Report,

1896-7, pp. 8-9. No mention is made of this Circular in the Annual

Report itself.

[748] _Ibid._ p. 9. In September 1896, under Mr. Chaplin's

presidency, the Central Authority "saw no objection" to a proposal

of the Poplar Guardians to "board out" an aged married couple in a

country cottage at 12s. a week, and added that its sanction was

not required, if the case fell within "exception 2 to art. 4" of

the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order. It was simply "non-resident

relief." But the Central Authority declared that it was impossible

for such relief to be made chargeable on the Metropolitan Common

Poor Fund, as "boarding-out" was outdoor relief (Local Government

Board to Poplar Union, 25th September 1896; MS. archives, Poplar

Board of Guardians). The expenses of "boarded-out" children had

been placed upon the fund by statute, the Metropolitan Poor

Amendment Act 1869.

How far this reversion to the policy contemplated by the 1834 Report,

and continued, as we have shown, by the Poor Law Commissioners, and the

Poor Law Board down to 1871, obtained the adhesion of the inspectors who

had grown up in the traditions of Mr. Longley's Reports of 1871-5, we

have been unable to ascertain.[749] Nor is it clear that the partial

circulation[750] by the Central Authority of the recommendations of the

Royal Commission affected the admonitions against outdoor relief

generally, which the inspectors had for nearly thirty years been

addressing to the boards of guardians.[751] Four years later the Central

Authority took an even more decisive step.

[749] Some of them hardly concealed their dismay. "In some

instances," says Mr. Davy, "where Guardians have been for years

endeavouring with patient care to administer the Poor Law strictly

... the opinion of the [Local Government] Board with reference to

outdoor relief to certain classes of paupers, has been the cause

of some change, if not of opinion, at all events of practice, with

the result that the amount paid weekly as outdoor relief has

increased largely.... This has been notably the case in the

Faversham Union.... During the last six months the expenditure has

increased about 25 per cent.... In some other Unions ... the

effect of the Circular has been still more marked, for the

recommendation that adequate relief should be given has been made

the occasion for increased grants of outdoor relief all round, the

word "adequate" being taken to refer to the amount of money given

only.... It cannot be too strongly insisted that adequate relief

means not only that the relief should be sufficient for the wants

of the pauper, but that it should be the most suitable form of

relief for each particular case." Mr. Davy went on to intimate

pretty plainly that, in his view, normally and typically, "the

only adequate form of relief is an offer for the workhouse"

(Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, pp. 87-9).

[750] To Boards of Guardians "outside the Metropolis" only.

[751] It seems, at any rate, not to have affected their practice

of compiling statistical tables in which the Unions were

contrasted one with another, according to the percentage of the

paupers on outdoor relief--irrespective, as we have already

observed, of the relative proportions of the aged, among their

several populations; and (as must now be added) of the policy of

the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor, which the Central Authority

had promulgated.

In the famous pronouncement on Poor Law Administration generally which

Mr. Chaplin issued to all boards of guardians in 1900, systematic and

adequate outdoor relief to all aged persons who were at once destitute

and deserving was laid down as the definite policy of the Central

Authority. "It has been felt," runs this Circular, "that persons who

have habitually led decent and deserving lives should, if they require

relief in their old age, receive different treatment from those whose

previous habits and character have been unsatisfactory, and who have

failed to exercise thrift in the bringing up of their families or

otherwise. The Board consider that aged deserving persons _should not be

urged to enter the workhouse at all_ unless there is some cause which

renders such a course necessary, such as infirmity of mind or body, the

absence of house accommodation, or of a suitable person to care for

them, or some similar cause, but that they should be relieved by having

adequate outdoor relief granted to them. The Board are happy to think

that it is commonly the practice of boards of guardians to grant outdoor

relief in such cases, but they are afraid that too frequently such

relief is not adequate in amount. They are desirous of pressing upon the

guardians that such relief should, when granted, be always

adequate."[752] Nor did the Central Authority content itself with merely

issuing the Circular. Letters were sent in a few months' time to all the

boards of guardians asking what action had been taken with regard to the

suggested grant of outdoor relief to aged deserving persons, and, in

particular, whether the practice was to grant an adequate amount to each

case. The effect was (to use the words of an inspector) to produce "a

good deal of discussion ... upon the question of the amount of outdoor

relief granted to aged deserving persons."[753] "I rather fear," said

another inspector, "that in some unions it has rather been regarded as

a sort of mandate to increase the system of out-relief generally. This

the Circular did not intend."[754] On the other hand, yet another

inspector remarks that only "a few boards have looked at the (Local

Government) Board's suggestions from a sympathetic point of view, and

have increased their regular allowances to the aged out-paupers, but in

a large majority of the unions the guardians state that alteration is

not called for.... The principle is ... warding off destitution, not

providing maintenance."[755] Whatever was the intention of the Central

Authority, it is evident that the replies (which were not published and

which we have not seen) that it received to its repeated inquiries must

have revealed an enormous diversity of practice, utterly at variance

with the principle of national uniformity. In one union there would be

hardly any cases for which the guardians would grant outdoor relief at

all. In the next union practically every aged applicant would get it.

The conception of adequacy revealed in the replies must have been

equally various. In the West Riding the amount allowed per aged person

ranged from 1s. 6d. a week to as much as 7s. 6d. a week, whereas in the

East Riding the variations were only between 2s. 6d. and 5s. for each

person.[756] We happen to know that the Bradford Guardians reported

that, with greater uniformity, they gave 5s. a week for each deserving

aged person.[757] We have not been able to ascertain what action, if

any, was taken by the Central Authority on these replies. No objection

appears to have been taken, and no criticism to have been made, either

in respect of the virtual refusal of outdoor relief to the deserving

aged in some unions, or in respect of its almost indiscriminate bestowal

in others, or again, in respect of the wide range of variation between

union and union, in the amount allowed for each person. It is thus not

clear what is now the policy of the Central Authority on these points.

Its latest utterance is the Circular of 1900. Since then, so far as we

can discover, it has been silent on the subject.

[752] Circular of 4th August 1900; in Thirtieth Annual Report,

1900-1, pp. 18-19. This momentous new departure is not referred to

in the Annual Report itself. Returns published in the previous

year had shown that of the 286,929 paupers over sixty-five on 1st

January 1900, only 74,597 were indoor paupers, and of these, only

40,809 were in the workhouses as distinguished from infirmaries,

etc. The other 212,332 had outdoor relief. Outside the Metropolis,

indeed, eight out of every ten had outdoor relief; one was in the

infirmary, and there was only one in the workhouse (Twenty-ninth

Annual Report, 1899-1900, p. lvii).

[753] Mr. Bagenal's Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p.

154.

[754] Mr. Wethered's Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1,

p. 133.

[755] Mr. Baldwyn Fleming's Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report,

1900-1, pp. 112-113.

[756] Mr. Bagenal's Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p.

154.

[757] Local Government Board to Bradford Union, 10th January 1901;

Bradford Union to Local Government Board, 26th January 1901; in

MS. archives, Bradford Board of Guardians.

(ii.) _Indoor Relief_

Meanwhile there had accumulated in the workhouses of the Metropolis

(where the effect of the Metropolitan Common Poor fund had been to offer

a premium on indoor relief to two-thirds of the unions), and in those of

the unions up and down the country in which Mr. Longley's policy had

been more or less carried out, a large number of aged people, who became

permanent residents.[758] This fact, already noticeable and officially

recorded in 1867,[759] did not lead to any change in the policy of

workhouse administration laid down by the Central Authority. The General

Consolidated Order of 1847, framed essentially to deal with workhouses

in which the able-bodied were the most important feature, was not

amended to meet the new conditions. The structural improvements which,

as we have already described, began to be adopted after the _Lancet_

inquiry of 1865, continued to be pressed for, and eventually insisted

on, so far as regards new workhouses. In this respect the old people in

particular unions shared in the general benefit. But we do not find that

the Central Authority, after 1871, had any policy of altering the

general _régime_ of the old people's wards, corresponding to that which,

as we have described, took place with regard to the sick wards. On the

contrary, we must note, as part of Mr. Longley's policy, his emphatic

warning in 1873, that the workhouses had already become so "attractive

to paupers," as to furnish "no test of destitution."[760] He made no

exception in favour of the old people's wards. It was, in fact, the

"_deterrent discipline_" of the workhouse that he regarded as "the

keystone of an efficient system of indoor relief," not merely for the

able-bodied, but also, through its effect on the minds of those who were

still young, and on the relations of those who were old, also for the

aged.[761] We may, therefore, understand why it is that we find, between

1871 and 1892, practically nothing in the way of expression of the

policy of the Central Authority with regard to the indoor treatment of

the aged. It stood by the General Consolidated Order of 1847.[762] Even

the attempt made in 1867-75 to revert to the policy of the 1834 Report,

so far as to have specialised institutions for the aged, the sick, and

the able-bodied, as well as for the children, was not persisted in, so

far as the aged were concerned. No other unions were found to adopt the

joint arrangements of Poplar and Stepney under which the aged and infirm

of both unions had a workhouse to themselves, and even this one was

brought to an end in 1892.[763]

[758] It was not so much that the "offer of the House" increased

the aggregate population of the workhouses. Between 1871 and 1891,

this only rose, outside the Metropolis, from 131,334 to 139,736.

(In the Metropolis, owing to the development of the infirmaries

into general hospitals, and the working of the Common Poor Fund,

the rise was more considerable, viz. from 36,739 to 58,482). But

the workhouse population gradually changed in character, the

able-bodied being replaced by the aged. On 1st January 1900, there

were found to be, in the workhouses themselves, no fewer than

40,809 persons over sixty-five, and in the workhouse infirmaries,

etc., 33,788 more, making a total over sixty-five of 74,597; being

more than 38 per cent of the total inmates (Twenty-ninth Annual

Report, 1899-1900, p. lvii).

[759] "Able-bodied people are now scarcely at all found in them

during the greater part of the year.... Those who enjoy the

advantages of these institutions are almost solely such as may

fittingly receive them, viz. the aged and infirm, the destitute

sick and children. Workhouses are now asylums and infirmaries"

(Dr. E. Smith, Medical Officer to the Poor Law Board; in Twentieth

Annual Report, 1867-8, p. 43).

[760] Office Minute of 1873.

[761] "Directly on the able-bodied, and more remotely, upon the

disabled class of paupers," the term he always used for the aged

(Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual

Report, 1874-5, p. 47).

[762] See _ante_, pp. 54-82.

[763] Special Order of 18th April 1892; Twenty-second Annual

Report, 1892-3, p. lxxix. The only item of policy as regards the

aged in the workhouse, to be noted between 1871 and 1892, seems to

be the insistence by Parliament in 1876 that married couples (who

if both persons were over sixty could not since 1847 be made to

live separately) might, if the guardians chose to allow it, live

together if either person were over sixty, infirm, aged, or

disabled (39 and 40 Vic. c. 61, sec. 10). This was communicated to

the boards of guardians in 1885 (Circular of 3rd November 1885, in

Fifteenth Annual Report, 1885-6, p. 23.) No great attempt was made

to get the guardians to provide the necessary separate

accommodation, or to make it decently habitable. Thus, at Poplar,

there were no rooms for married couples until 1884, and then they

were left for fifteen months without any means by which they could

be warmed. At last the Central Authority called attention to it

(Local Government Board to Poplar Union, 27th May 1886; MS.

Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 4th June 1886). It should be

noted, too, that it was held that newspapers and periodicals might

be provided (_Selections from the Correspondence of the Local

Government Board_, vol. iii. 1888, p. 134); and the employment of

old men in three workhouses in northern counties in teazing hair,

which was excessively distasteful to them, and liable to be

injurious to their health, was discontinued at the instance of the

inspector (Twentieth Annual Report, 1890-1, pp. 245-6).

In 1892 the note changes. From that date onward we get a distinct

reversion, as regards the aged indoor pauper, to the policy indicated in

the 1834 Report ("the old might enjoy their indulgences"), from which

the Poor Law Commissioners of 1834-47, and the successive Central

Authorities of 1847-1892, had turned away.

It is interesting to see that the new departure began over tobacco.[764]

The Liverpool Select Vestry determined to give the well-conducted old

men in the workhouse the indulgence of a weekly screw of tobacco,

whether or not they were employed on disagreeable duties. The auditor

objected. The vestry insisted. The Central Authority was obdurate. The

local body appealed to its Parliamentary representatives. It was

suggested as a compromise that the medical officer might be got to

include it in the dietary table, when the Central Authority would not

refuse to sanction it.[765] The vestry declined to compromise, and

insisted on allowing tobacco as a non-dietetic indulgence. Finally, the

inspector was instructed to say that the objection was withdrawn. No

publicity was given to the concession, but it gradually leaked out.

During the year 1892 we see the Central Authority sanctioning by letter,

without any official publication on the subject, such applications as

were made by individual boards of guardians to be permitted to allow an

ounce of tobacco weekly to the men over sixty in the workhouse.[766] At

last, in November 1892, a General Order was issued permitting it in all

unions, irrespective of sex, and without limit of amount.[767] Little

more than a year later, as some compensation to the old women (though

they had not been excluded, in terms, from the indulgence of tobacco or

snuff), they were allowed "dry tea," with sugar and milk, irrespective

of that provided for in the dietary table.[768] Presently, this indulgence

is extended to "dry coffee or cocoa," if preferred, and the men also are

allowed to receive it.[769] At last, the Central Authority, by two lengthy

Circulars in 1895 and 1896,[770] under the presidency of Sir Henry Fowler

and Mr. Chaplin respectively, systematically laid down principles of

workhouse administration, so far as the aged were concerned, in sharp

contrast with those advocated by Mr. Longley, or indeed, with those

which had been inculcated from 1835 to 1892. It was expressly stated

that as the character of the workhouse population had so completely

changed since 1834, the administration no longer needed to be so

deterrent. The old idea of fixed uniform times of going to bed and

rising and taking meals was given up, it being expressly left to the

master and matron to allow any of the aged (as well as the infirm and

the young children) to retire to rest, to rise and to have their meals

at whatever hours it was thought fit. The visiting committees of

workhouses were now specially enjoined to see that the aged were

properly attended to, and recommended to confer with them as to any

grievances without any officials being present.[771] It was suggested that

the great sleeping wards should be partitioned into separate cubicles.

The guardians were reminded that aged or infirm couples might be

provided with separate rooms. The well-behaved aged and infirm were to

be allowed, within reasonable limits,[772] to go out for walks, to visit

their friends, and to attend their own places of worship on Sunday. The

rules were to be relaxed to allow them to receive visits in the

workhouse from their friends. There was to be no distinctive dress.

Those of them who were of good conduct, and who had "previously led

moral and respectable lives" were to be separated from the rest, who

"are likely to cause them discomfort," and were to have the enjoyment of

a separate day-room. The whole note of the administration of the old

people's wards of the workhouses was, in fact, to be changed, so far as

the Central Authority could change it. In the words of the 1834 Report,

the old were to "enjoy their indulgences." Four years later another

Circular was issued in stronger terms, reiterating the suggestions of

privileges that the guardians ought to allow to the deserving inmates

over sixty-five--freedom to rise and go to bed and have their meals when

they liked, to have their own locked cupboards for their little

treasures, in all cases to have their tobacco and dry tea, to be free to

go out when they chose, and to be allowed to receive the visits of their

friends. They were to be given separate cubicles to sleep in, and

special day-rooms, "which might, if thought desirable, be available for

members of both sexes ... and in which their meals, other than dinner,

might be served at hours fixed by the guardians."[773] "It is hoped that,

where there is room, the guardians will not hesitate to take steps to

bring about improvements of the kind indicated in the arrangements for

the aged deserving poor."[774] Four or five months later the guardians

were stirred up by letter, and asked what they had done towards creating

the specially privileged class of deserving aged inmates that had been

so strongly pressed on them.[775]

[764] It is not clear from the published documents at what date,

or in what unions, the Central Authority had first allowed

tobacco. In 1880, it decided that it could not legally be given to

workhouse inmates (not being sick), if it had not been specially

ordered by the medical officer under arts. 107 and 108 of the

General Consolidated Order of 1847 (_Selections from the

Correspondence of the Local Government Board_, vol. ii. pp. 3,

72). Yet, by 1885, at any rate, the allowance of tobacco or snuff

to non-able-bodied paupers, or to such as were "employed upon work

of a hazardous or specially disagreeable character," with

permission to smoke in such room as the guardians might determine,

had been exceptionally granted in particular cases; _see_, for

instance, Special Order to Carlisle of 22nd June 1885, not

published in the Annual Report.

[765] "It is the invariable practice," said Mr. Ritchie

approvingly, "to provide for the aged paupers a better diet than

that for the other classes" (Mr. Ritchie in House of Commons, 6th

May 1892; _Hansard_, vol. 4, p. 277).

[766] Local Government Board to Bourne Union, August 1892 (_Local

Government Chronicle_, 13th August 1892, p. 678); Local Government

Board to Caistor Union, September 1892 (_Ibid._ 8th October 1892,

p. 859).

[767] General Order of 3rd November 1892: Circular of 9th November

1892; Twenty-second Annual Report, 1892-3, pp. lxxxv, 35-6.

[768] General Order of 8th March 1894; Twenty-fourth Annual

Report, 1894-5, pp. xcix, 4-5.

[769] Special Order to Gateshead, 15th February 1896; _see also_

the "Specimen Order" given in Macmorran and Lushington's _Poor Law

Orders_, second edition, 1905, p. 1061.

[770] Circular on Workhouse Administration of 29th January 1895;

Memorandum on Visiting Committees of June 1895; Circular on

Classification in Workhouses of 31st July 1896; Twenty-fifth

Annual Report, 1895-6, pp. lxxxv, 107-112, 121-3; Twenty-sixth

Annual Report, 1896-7, pp. lxxxviii-lxxxix, 9-10.

[771] Memorandum on the Duties of Visiting Committees, June 1895;

in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 122.

[772] Sunday morning, and one day a month, was held to be not

sufficient outing. "In the case of aged inmates of respectable

character," said Mr. Chaplin "leave of absence might well be

allowed on weekdays more frequently than is now the case" [at Old

Gravel Lane Workhouse] (_Hansard_, 23rd May 1898, vol. lviii, p.

326).

[773] Circular of 4th August 1900, in Thirtieth Annual Report,

1900-1, p. 19.

[774] _Ibid._ p. 20. Nor was this merely a formal expression. We

see, in the next few years, the Central Authority cordially

sanctioning the provision, at no small extra expense in capital

and annual maintenance, of new old people's wards in some unions,

of specialised old men's and old women's homes in others; even to

the extent of permitting (as at Woolwich) the location of the most

respectable and best conducted of the aged in a comfortable

private mansion conducted with the minimum of rules, and without

outward sign of pauperism.

[775] _See_, for instance, Local Government Board to Bradford

Union, 10th January 1901, in MS. archives, Bradford Board of

Guardians. There were then, in the Bradford workhouse, twenty aged

paupers of the first class, and seventeen of the second class.

Both these day wards had cushioned armchairs, lockers with keys

for each inmate, carpets on the floor, curtains to the windows,

and were made comfortable with cushions, coloured table-cloths,

pictures, and ornaments. The inmates had special dormitories

(Bradford Union to Local Government Board, 26th January 1901). The

General Consolidated Order of 1847 was still nominally in force.

During these years the dietaries for the aged and infirm were being

altered in the direction of liberality, variety, and freedom of choice.

Not only were hot meat or fish dinners provided ("with sauce"), but also

tea, coffee, cocoa, milk, sugar, butter, seed cake, onions, lettuce,

rhubarb or stewed fruit, sago, semolina, and rice pudding. In 1900

"provision is also made for ... the inmates on special infirm diet ...

to receive daily, before bedtime, or at such time as the guardians may

fix, a small allowance of milk pudding or similar food to break the

interval between the usual meals."[776] The Central Authority in 1904 made

no objection to a board of guardians subscribing to a lending library,

in order to obtain a constant supply of books for the deserving aged

workhouse inmates, and held that no special sanction was required.[777]

Finally, "it is open to guardians, if they think fit, to incur

reasonable expenses in providing a piano, for use at divine service [and

therefore, presumably also at other times, once it was installed] held

in a workhouse infirmary for old and infirm inmates;"[778] or to provide a

harmonium at the cost of the poor rate for the use of the inmates of the

workhouse.[779]

[776] Circular of 11th October 1900; Workhouse Regulations

(Dietaries and Accounts) Order, 1900; in Thirtieth Annual Report,

1900-1, pp. 65-6. But the Central Authority struck at afternoon

tea! The St. George's, Hanover Square, Guardians were informed

that it was "not prepared to assent to the proposal of the

guardians for the infirm men, and all men over the age of

sixty-five years to have half a pint of tea daily at 3.30 P.M.,

between the mid-day and evening meals" (Local Government Board to

St. George's, Hanover Square, November 1900; see _Local Government

Chronicle_, 17th November 1900, p. 1147).

[777] _Local Government Chronicle_, 27th August 1904, p. 898;

_Decisions of the Local Government Board_, 1903-4, by W. A.

Casson, 1905, p. 97.

[778] Local Government Board's Decision, _Local Government

Chronicle_, 1st November 1902, p. 1102; _Decisions of the Local

Government Board, 1902-3_, by W. A. Casson, 1904, p. 72.

[779] Local Government Board to St. German's Union, December 1898;

_Local Government Chronicle_, 24th December 1898, p. 1192.

_I._--NON-RESIDENTS

There is no change to record in 1871 in the expressed policy of

preventing relief to paupers not resident within the union. Such relief

(given in order to avoid the expense and hardship of removal) continued

in many cases, but was repeatedly blamed by the inspectors.

"Non-resident relief is given in almost all the unions ... sixteen per

cent of the outdoor paupers of Glendale Union were non-resident."[780]

In 1878 the Central Authority suggested that such relief "might be

almost entirely discontinued."[780] There has been no explicit

abrogation of this policy down to the present day; even in face of

representations that it is "harsh and totally out of keeping with the

spirit of the times."[781] But from 1871 onwards we have the force of

the maxim weakened by the growth of whole classes of cases which the

guardians are allowed, and even encouraged, to send to places outside

the union, and maintain there. We need do no more than allude to the

boarded-out children. Another growing class is that of paupers who are

placed in certified schools or homes, either by way merely of

boarding-school (frequently recommended as a method of disposing of

Roman Catholic children); or for residence in any industrial or

reformatory school; or (irrespective of age) for maintenance in an

institution for special treatment (blind, deaf and dumb, crippled,

epileptic, idiot, etc.); or merely in an asylum for the aged and

infirm;[782] or for curative treatment in a hospital, convalescent home,

seaside home, or sanatorium.[783] Even able-bodied aged paupers may, as

the Poplar Guardians were informed in 1896, be boarded out in country

families, under the guise of non-resident relief. The Central Authority

has not objected to the transfer of workhouse inmates, provided these do

not actively protest, to country workhouses, there to be maintained as

non-resident paupers.[784] In one case, indeed, the Central Authority

allowed a union to abolish its workhouse altogether (retaining only a

casual ward), and approved "arrangements for the boarding-out of the

indoor poor in the workhouses of other unions for a period not exceeding

five years."[785] It is, therefore, not easy to determine how much is

left of the policy of preventing non-resident relief as such.

[780] Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 78.

[781] Memorandum relating to the Administration of Out-relief,

February 1878, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p. 224. "The

suggestion that non-resident relief should be absolutely abolished

is one in which the president is quite disposed to concur, with

perhaps, some reservation regarding existing cases" (Local

Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th

May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p. 56).

[782] Bradford Union to Local Government Board, 13th September

1901, forwarding resolution: "That ... the prohibition of

non-residential relief to the widow and children of a person who

may have died in the union of his settlement is harsh and totally

out of keeping with the spirit of the times; and that the

provisions of the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, 1844, and the

Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, 1852, call for urgent revision."

This received only an acknowledgment (Local Government Board to

Bradford Union, 16th September 1901).

[783] _Decisions of the Local Government Board_, 1903-4, by W. A.

Casson, 1905, p. 26.

[784] If guardians wish to make use of the Margate Homes for Sick

Paupers, they may do so (as the Central Authority expressly

informed them in 1874) _by granting non-resident relief_ (Circular

of 1874; _see Local Government Chronicle_, 23rd May 1874, p. 334).

[785] _Local Government Chronicle_, 15th October 1904, p. 1072.

[786] Local Government Board to Woodbridge Union, 26th April 1898;

in _Local Government Chronicle_, 14th May 1898, p. 474.

_J._--THE WORKHOUSE

We left the Central Authority in 1871, fully accepting the view that the

workhouse was not merely a "test" which few only might be expected to

pass or to endure for long, but a place of permanent or long-continued

residence for whole classes of paupers. The workhouse population on 1st

January 1871 numbered, in fact, 168,073. The Central Authority,

reverting to the proposals of the 1834 Report, had accordingly started

out to differentiate the workhouse into separate institutions for

particular classes (the children, the sick, and, in the Metropolis, also

the imbeciles and idiots); to impose an altogether new standard of

expensive structural efficiency on the boards of guardians; to press

incessantly for new buildings of approved pattern; to increase the

healthiness and comfort of the wards for the sick, the aged, and the

children; and to make the dietaries for these classes better adapted to

their likings and their needs. "Those who enjoy the advantages of these

institutions," had said the Central Authority's own medical officer in

1867, "are almost solely such as may fittingly receive them, viz. the

aged and infirm, the destitute sick, and children. Workhouses are now

asylums and infirmaries."[787] There was, after 1871, no change and no

arrest in this policy.[788] So far as the children, the sick, and the

aged and infirm were concerned, we have already described its

continuance and its progressive development. The improvement of the

institutional provision for the pauper, by removing some of the

objections to the indiscriminate general workhouse of 1835-65, fitted

in, we may say, with the new crusade of the inspectorate against outdoor

relief as such. That crusade was, however, for the first twenty years,

pushed without regard to whether or not the particular boards of

guardians had accepted the new idea of the specialised institutional

treatment for particular classes, or were still wedded to the

indiscriminate common workhouse, which aimed at being "deterrent." Mr.

Longley realised that the higher standard of comfort that was coming to

be allowed to the aged, the sick, and the children in a general

workhouse inevitably tended to prevent the necessary strictness and

severity being applied to the able-bodied. The inspectorate accordingly

strove in London to get specialised institutions for the able-bodied

also, the result being the "Poplar test workhouse" that we have already

described.

[787] Dr. E. Smith, in Twentieth Annual Report of the Poor Law

Board, 1867-8, p. 43.

[788] We may gain an idea of the energy put into the provision of

improved accommodation for the indoor poor since 1868, by the

total capital expenditure sanctioned for workhouses, etc., by

order or letter of the Central Authority. The total so sanctioned

during the thirty-four years, 1835-1868, including the initial

provision of workhouses after 1834, was £7,079,126 (Twenty-first

Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1868-9, pp. 316-17), or no

more than an average of £208,209 annually. For the thirty-seven

years, 1869-1905, the corresponding sum was no less than

£24,609,035 (Thirty-fifth Annual Report of the Local Government

Board, 1905-6, p. 608), or an average of £665,109. To this must be

added the expenditure of the Metropolitan Asylums Boards for Poor

Law purposes only, sick asylums, district schools, etc., which in

the first period of thirty-four years was only £571,401, and in

the second period of thirty-seven years was £6,810,140

(Twenty-first Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1868-9, pp.

317-18; Thirty-fifth Annual Report of the Local Government Board,

1905-6, p. 609). The total capital outlay sanctioned by the

Central Authority for Poor Law purposes during the last

thirty-seven years has, therefore, amounted, on an average, to

nearly £1,000,000 annually,--the amount for 1905 being

£789,373--as compared with little over one-fifth of that sum in

the first thirty-four years of the new Poor Law.

In 1874 the Central Authority expressed its regret at the slow progress

"towards the permanent classification in separate establishments of the

various classes of indoor paupers, other than the sick.... We attach the

utmost importance to this improvement of the classification of indoor

paupers, which we believe to be a necessary condition of the maintenance

of that discipline which lies at the root of an effective administration

of indoor relief. This improvement, however, cannot be effected, except

at an enormous and almost prohibitory cost, otherwise than by the

combination of several boards of guardians for this purpose. Their

existing workhouses would, in that event, become available for the

separate accommodation of various classes of indoor paupers chargeable

to the several combined areas. We are advised that in the existing state

of the law it is doubtful whether such a combination can be effected

otherwise than by the voluntary action of boards of guardians, which we

trust may still take place, and the desirableness of which we shall

continue to press upon the guardians."[789] No such combinations took

place, and the Central Authority, baffled by the expense and apparently

not prepared to adopt the heroic expedient of issuing orders merging

several unions in one, abandoned the attempt to get classification by

institutions, except with regard to the children and the sick. The

able-bodied had to be dealt with in a general workhouse; and we must

note, for twenty years after 1871, battling with the ameliorative

efforts of the departmental architect, the departmental medical officer,

and the departmental educational experts, on behalf of particular

classes of inmates, an attempt to make the workhouse more "deterrent" to

other classes of paupers.

[789] Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. xxv-xxvi.

The most marked increase of severity was directed against the class of

"ins and outs," called in America "revolvers," and it took the form of

enlarged powers of detention. By an Act of 1871 the guardians were

enabled to detain a pauper (other than a vagrant) who gave notice to

quit, in any case for twenty-four hours; if he had already discharged

himself once or oftener within a month before giving the notice, for

forty-eight hours; and if he had so discharged himself more than twice

within two months, for seventy-two hours.[790] Under the Act of

1899[791] a pauper may even be compulsorily detained for 168 hours (one

week) "if he has, in the opinion of the guardians, discharged himself

frequently without sufficient reason."

[790] Pauper Inmates Discharge and Regulation Act 1871, 34 & 35

Vic. c. 108, sec. 4.

[791] Poor Law Act, 62 & 63 Vic. c. 37, sec. 4. The guardians are

not obliged to adopt these periods of detention, and if they do

so, provision is made for cases of hardship by allowing them, or

in the intervals between their meetings the visiting committee, to

"exempt, either wholly or partially, any pauper from the operation

of this section." The master of the workhouse, too, "may, if the

board of guardians be not sitting or the visiting committee be not

in attendance, discharge any pauper to whom this section shall

apply before the expiration of any such period as aforesaid, if

any circumstances shall, in his opinion, require this to be done."

If a pauper escapes from the workhouse during his detention, or

while an inmate refuses or neglects to work or to observe the

rules, he may be prosecuted as idle and disorderly under the

Vagrancy Act of 1824 (5 Geo. IV. c. 83, sec. 3); for a repetition

of the offence, or for destroying or damaging his own clothes or

any property of the guardians, he becomes liable to the heavier

penalty of the rogue and vagabond. The same penalties attach to

the wilfully giving a false name or making a false statement for

the purpose of obtaining relief, and this clause has been twice

revised, so that since 1876 (Divided Parishes and Poor Law

Amendment Act, 39 & 40 Vic. c. 61, sec. 44) any person who so

obtained relief may be proceeded against at any time while he

continues to receive it, and since 1882 (Casual Poor Act, 45 & 46

Vic. c. 36, sec. 5) the provision applies equally, whether the

person attempts so to obtain relief for himself or for any one

else. If a pauper escapes from a workhouse or asylum while

suffering from bodily disease of an infectious or contagious

nature, the justice convicting him of the offence may order that

he be taken back to the workhouse or asylum and kept there till

cured, or otherwise lawfully discharged, and that the warrant of

commitment then be put in execution.

With regard to the able-bodied pauper, at any rate for the first fifteen

years after 1871, there was to be no leniency. The spirit of the

administration, whether of the workhouse or of the casual ward, was that

subsequently expressed by Mr. Walter Long. "I would treat the wastrel

and the vagabond, and the man who makes his wife and children paupers

because of his own degraded habits, in a severe way, and I would make

life a burden to him while he remains in the workhouse. I try to insist

upon it that in the administration of our workhouses we should make such

men realise that if we are compelled to keep them out of the rates we

will do it at some discomfort to them."[792] But it was not, in fact,

found practicable to avoid improving the accommodation, even for the

able-bodied. For them, as for all other inmates, the Central Authority

insisted on a sufficient supply of blankets, sheets, bedroom furniture

and conveniences. For them, too, the Central Authority insisted on such

comforts as knives and forks to eat their meals with--in one case having

a long tussle with a recalcitrant board of guardians on this point.[793]

The able-bodied shared, too, in the improvement of the cooking which

took place, particularly after the general investigation which led to

the new Dietaries Order of 1900. "This Order," said an inspector, "has

certainly had two good incidental results. It has induced many boards of

guardians to engage paid cooks, instead of employing chance inmates

knowing nothing about the work ... and the cooking appliances have in

many cases been overhauled and improved. In some places they have been

of the most rudimentary character."[794] The able-bodied may even get

special privileges. Inmates employed on specially heavy work are

permitted to receive an extra meal, as lunch. The discretion in this

matter at first belonged to the medical officer, but now the guardians

have power to order lunch as they think fit. In no case can any inmate

claim it as a right, and it is not to be given merely on account of

household work. Lunch, when allowed, is very plain, and may not include

alcohol. The medical officer is to advise as to the degree of employment

necessitating lunch, but the Central Authority suggests that "heavy

work," earning lunch for able-bodied men and women, should be taken to

mean "an average day's work with sustained exertion, _e.g._

corn-grinding, pumping, stone-breaking or crushing, shifting heavy

goods, digging, scrubbing, washing, ironing, etc.," while heavy work for

the aged and infirm (or light work for the able-bodied) is "employment

without sustained exertion, _e.g._ wood-chopping and wood-bundling,

hoeing or weeding, sorting light articles, sewing, etc."[795] Beer was

particularly objected to. In 1877 the Hackney Board of Guardians, who

wanted to give beer to two paupers who assisted the coachman, were told

that they were "legally empowered to require from inmates such labour as

might be required without having recourse to exceptional

indulgences"--in this case the giving of beer--"which would only, in

effect, vitiate the principle of the workhouse being a pauper

test."[796] On the other hand, it appears that beer is habitually

allowed to the able-bodied inmates of certain workhouses at certain

times, in return for work. A number of boards of guardians, having land

to cultivate, have been permitted by Special Orders to "make to paupers

employed in harvest work on land belonging to the guardians such

allowance of food and _fermented liquor_ as may be necessary," without

any direction of the medical officer.[797] And when in 1903 an auditor

surcharged a workhouse master for beer allowed to certain inmates for

work done, it was explained "that if such allowance was withheld, _some

of the paupers would leave the workhouse_"--surely a strange threat to

make to a Poor Law authority--and with others "difficulties would arise

to get them to work." On this explanation the Central Authority (whilst

upholding the auditor's decision in point of law) remitted the

surcharge.[798] Finally, it may be observed that the shelter of the

workhouse was not to be denied to the able-bodied, even for bad conduct.

The master must admit all persons who present the proper order, at

whatever hour of the day or night. He may not refuse admission even to a

man in a state of drunkenness.[799] Nor could a man be punished for being

admitted whilst suffering from _delirium tremens_.[800]

[792] _Hansard_, 9th May 1902, vol. 107, p. 1276.

[793] _Local Government Chronicle_, 21st December 1889, p. 1051.

This was with the Chester Board, which refused "to allow the

workhouse inmates knives and forks at dinner except on Christmas

Day." The Central Authority peremptorily required them to be

provided for "all the inmates."

[794] Mr. Preston-Thomas's Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report,

1900-1, p. 126.

[795] Circular on Workhouse Dietaries, 11th October 1900, in

Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, pp. 63-4.

[796] Local Government Board to Hackney Union, January 1877, in

_Local Government Chronicle_, 13th January 1877, p. 31.

[797] Special Order to Wirrall Union, 11th June 1886; Special

Order to Drayton Union, 2nd September 1892. On the other hand, in

1901 the Keighley Guardians, for harvest work, were only allowed

to give extra "food and drink other than fermented liquor"

(Special Order to Keighley Union, 1st August 1901).

[798] _Local Government Chronicle_, 7th November 1903, p. 1091.

[799] Local Government Board to Hexham Union, April 1902; _Local

Government Chronicle_, 19th April 1902, p. 413; _Decisions of the

Local Government Board_, 1902-3, by W. A. Casson, 1904, pp. 14,

23.

[800] _Local Government Chronicle_, 13th June 1903, p. 577;

_Decisions of the Local Government Board_, 1902-3, by W. A.

Casson, 1904, p. 162.

There is, thus, a marked change of tone after 1885 in workhouse

administration, as in other branches of policy. This change of tone

becomes specially marked in the Circular of January and the Memorandum

of June 1895, in which the newly elected boards of guardians, chosen for

the first time on a democratic franchise and without any high rating

qualification, were specially instructed as to their administrative

duties. These authoritative documents breathe a spirit of humane

consideration for the pauper inmates, without excepting the able-bodied,

which Mr. Longley would, we think, not have regarded as "deterrent." The

medical officer, rather than the master, was to advise the guardians on

practically all the points on which the general regimen of the

institution depended. The visiting committees were to take care that all

the arrangements were in order; they "should satisfy themselves whether

there is any structural defect in any part of the house; whether

painting or lime-washing is required; whether the wards are clean and

provided with such conveniences as lockers or shelves, so that they may

be kept in proper order; whether there is any defect in the construction

of the sanitary arrangements or in the general sewerage of the house;

whether the yards are defective as airing courts or _places of

recreation_. The attention of the visiting committee should be carefully

directed to the subject of ventilation, which should be effected by

special means, apart from the usual means of doors, windows, and

fire-places, and should be so arranged that each ward may be brought into

uninterrupted communication with the open air."[801] The classes of

inmates are to be subdivided "with reference to their moral character or

behaviour, or to their previous habits."[802] The employment to be

provided is to be "unobjectionable in its character."[803] The clothing of

inmates when absent on leave from the workhouse "should not be in any

way distinctive or conspicuous in character."[804] The visiting committees

are to see that there is always enough underclothing in stock to allow

all the inmates the requisite changes; that "sufficient means for

ensuring personal cleanliness are provided; that a convenient lavatory,

as well as baths,[805] with water laid on, and supplied with towels, soap,

and combs, are accessible to each class."[806] "A piece of cocoa fibre

matting or other material, or a mattress, should be placed between the

bedstead and the bed. A sufficient supply of blankets, sheets, bedroom

furniture and conveniences should be provided."[807]

[801] Memorandum of June 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report,

1895-6, p. 121.

[802] Circular of 29th January 1895, in _ibid._ p. 108.

[803] Memorandum of June 1895, in _ibid._ p. 122.

[804] Circular of 29th January 1895, in _ibid._ p. 111.

[805] It had been ordered already in 1886 that, as regards the

bath, every person "should have the right to demand water which

has not been previously used" (Minute of Instructions, Bathing of

Workhouse Inmates, 2nd February 1886, in Sixteenth Annual Report,

1886-7, p. 1).

[806] Memorandum of June 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report,

1895-6, p. 122.

[807] _Ibid._ p. 121.

It remains only to mention the great improvement in the workhouse

dietary carried out, after prolonged inquiries, in the General Order of

1900.[808] During the preceding twenty years there had been but little

attention paid to the subject. The Central Authority had, in 1871,

sanctioned the use of Australian tinned meat.[809] It had also

authorised in over a hundred unions fish dinners once a week.[810] In

1892 it had drawn attention to the great variation among unions in the

amount of alcoholic drink consumed.[811] In 1896 it had engaged in a

prolonged struggle with the Chorlton Board of Guardians, and others

elsewhere, who objected to the waste involved in supplying each inmate

with a fixed and weighed-out allowance of bread, and who found by

experiment that much less was used (and very much less thrown into the

pig-trough) if the paupers were allowed to help themselves at meals

without stint. The Central Authority long resisted this subversive

proposal, and insisted on the General Consolidated Order of 1847 being

obeyed. When the rebellious boards persisted, the Central Authority gave

way--not, however, amending its Orders, but permitting, by letter, the

breach of them.[812] An official Departmental Committee appointed to

consider the matter advised the president that the injunction of the

Order to weigh out a fixed ration to each pauper might with advantage be

abandoned in the case of bread.[813] But when, in 1901, the Association

of Poor Law Unions asked that the same principle should be applied to

vegetables, the Central Authority consented only to bear the suggestion

in mind.[814]

[808] Workhouse Regulations (Dietaries and Accounts) Order, 1900,

in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, pp. cvii. 62-72.

[809] _Knight's Official Advertiser_, 21st October 1871, p. 196.

[810] Thirteenth Annual Report, 1883-4, p. lii.

[811] Circular of 15th December 1892, in Twenty-second Annual

Report, 1892-3, p. 43.

[812] MS. archives, Chorlton Board of Guardians, 1895, etc.;

_Local Government Chronicle_, 11th January 1896, p. 33; 8th

February 1896, p. 121.

[813] This was also permitted by letter to the Grantham Board of

Guardians (Local Government Board to Grantham Union, November

1901; _Local Government Chronicle_, 7th December 1901, p. 1209);

and doubtless to others. The Central Authority had, in fact,

intimated its willingness "to consider applications" for a similar

concession "from the guardians of large unions" (Local Government

Board to Association of Poor Law Unions, 13th March 1901; _Local

Government Chronicle_, 23rd March 1901, p. 295).

[814] Local Government Board to Association of Poor Law Unions,

13th March 1901; _Local Government Chronicle_, 23rd March 1901, p.

295. We cannot find that, down to the present day, any such

permission has been given.

In 1900 the new Dietaries Order, as we have already mentioned, greatly

increased the nutritive value, variety, and attractiveness of the diets

allowed; whilst the accompanying Memorandum formulated a whole code of

suggestions for the improvement of the meals.[815]

[815] On no account are the paupers, if allowed "milk," to be put

off with "skim milk" or "scald milk"; by a decision of 1903,

"milk" means always new milk (_Decisions of the Local Government

Board_, 1902-3, by W. A. Casson, 1904, p. 11.)

_K._--EMIGRATION

For many years after 1871 there is no change, either of policy or of

practice, to record as to emigration, beyond the continuance and slow

growth of a tiny trickle of child emigration to Canada. Down to recent

years, at any rate, the Colonies expressed a decided objection to any

Poor Law emigration of adults, being, as the Central Authority

explained, "unwilling to run the risk of thus receiving persons of bad

character, or those who, from weak health or other causes, might become

burdensome to them," and "in consequence of representations which have

been made by the Government of the United States" the Central Authority

feels itself "precluded from sanctioning any expenditure from the poor

rates in connection with the emigration to that country."[816]

Nevertheless, the Act of 1849 had not been repealed and the guardians

were not debarred from emigrating, not paupers only, but any poor

persons settled in their unions, whether in receipt of relief or not.

The number so emigrated (apart from orphan or deserted children)

continued, however, to be small.[817] In 1905 the Central Authority,

under Mr. Long's presidency, in connection first with the relief of the

unemployed by the guardians, and then under the Unemployed Workmen Act,

revived the old policy of 1835-53 and expressly encouraged the

emigration, at the public expense, of suitable persons, whether or not

otherwise in receipt of aid from the rates.[818]

[816] Memorandum on Emigration at the cost of the poor rate, in

_Local Government Chronicle_, 26th October 1889, pp. 884-5.

[817] In 1883-4 there were 296 persons emigrated; in 1885-6, 133

persons; between 1887 and 1898 the number fell from 301 to 12; it

began to revive in 1903, when it was 66; in 1905 it was 317 (_see_

Thirteenth, Fifteenth, Twenty-sixth, Thirty-third and Thirty-fifth

Annual Reports).

[818] Mr. Long in House of Commons, 2nd March 1905 (_Hansard_,

vol. 142, p. 184).

Meanwhile, the emigration of Poor Law children to Canada continued,

special applications for the sanction of the Central Authority having to

be made in each case.[819] The question of the superior position in

which such children were thus placed, compared with those of the lowest

grade of independent labourer, does not appear to have been raised. The

emigration and special supervision in Canada were the subject of

repeated circulars and correspondence.[820] The numbers of orphan and

deserted children thus removed to superior conditions rose, from 100 or

200 annually, to 398 in 1903 and 491 in 1905.[821]