CHAPTER III

THE POOR LAW BOARD

We have seen that between 1834 and 1847 the Central Authority settled down to a certain empirical policy as to the administration of relief, which was embodied, as regards workhouse management throughout the whole country, in the General Consolidated Order of 1847; and (as regards outdoor relief in the different geographical regions into which England and Wales had been divided) in the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844, in that Order coupled with a Labour Test Order, and in the series of separate Orders to be presently consolidated in the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of 1852. The policy thus adopted was, as we have seen, in various important respects not that of the "principles of 1834." It is significant of the difficulty which was experienced in putting those principles into operation that there was, during the whole period 1847-71, no attempt to bring the general policy into conformity with that of the Report of 1834. We see no attempt at revision--indeed practically no criticism or desire for revision--of the great Orders of 1844, 1847 and 1852. What happened was a slow and almost unselfconscious development of a supplementary policy in respect to certain favoured classes of paupers, notably children and the sick--classes which had been practically ignored in the 1834 Report. This supplementary policy was avowedly based, not on the principle of a minimum relief of destitution with deterrent conditions, but on that of supplying whatever was necessary for adequate training or treatment, without objecting to the incidental result that this meant placing out in the competitive world the persons thus dealt with in a position of positive advantage as compared with the lowest class of independent labourers, who plainly could get no such training or treatment. It does not appear necessary, for this period, to separate the analysis of the statutes from that of the orders of the Central Authority. Though the Acts of Parliament are numerous--one or two for every session--they relate principally to the machinery of administration,[286] and (except in the case of children) deal only slightly with policy. Parliament had, in fact, ceased to be interested in the Poor Law, and furnished for many years practically neither independent criticism nor initiative. "The Poor Law Board," observed Sir George Cornewall Lewis in 1851, "has now become purely administrative and has no character or policy of its own."[287] It got from Parliament just what additional powers it chose to ask for.[288] We may therefore include in one analysis both the statutes and the orders relating to relief policy.

[286] It is a noticeable fact that certain classes of paupers are never mentioned in the legislation of this period, presumably because Parliament was satisfied with the result of giving wide powers to the Central Authority, and did not wish to interfere with its discretion. Apparently there is no single clause dealing with the treatment either of the able-bodied or of the aged. Women are almost equally ignored, wives only being referred to, and they merely in connection with questions of chargeability, and in such a way as to indicate their complete dependence on their husbands. Children, on the other hand, are the subject of numerous enactments, and the sick, lunatics and vagrants also obtain recognition.

[287] Lewis to Head, 19th May 1851, in _Letters of Sir G. C. Lewis_, edited by Sir G. F. Lewis, 1870, p. 245.

[288] Thus, under the Poor Relief Act, 1849, the Commissioners might make rules "for the management and government of any house or establishment wherein any poor person shall be lodged, boarded or maintained, for hire or remuneration, under any contract or agreement entered into by the proprietor, manager or superintendent, ... with any guardians," unless such an institution be a county lunatic asylum, a hospital registered or house licensed for the reception of lunatics, or a "hospital, infirmary, school or other institution, supported by public subscriptions, and maintained for purposes of charity only" (12 & 13 Vic. c. 13, secs. 1, 2). By the Metropolitan Poor Act 1867 (30 & 31 Vic. c. 6), they were given power to combine Metropolitan unions and parishes into districts for the provision of sick, insane, infirm or other asylums (see sections on the sick and lunatics) and to direct the erection or adaptation of the necessary buildings; what use the Central Authority made of these powers will be seen presently. Another Metropolitan Poor Act in 1871 extended the application of the former to "any ship, vessel, hut, tent, or other temporary erection which may be used by the managers, with the approval of the Poor Law Board, for the reception of paupers, or otherwise for the purposes of the asylum" (34 Vic. c. 15, sec. 1). The Central Authority was also enabled (by the Paupers Conveyance Expenses Act 1870) to "direct in what cases (other than those expressly provided for by law) and under what regulations, the guardians ... may pay the reasonable expenses incurred ... in conveying any person chargeable ... from one place to another in England" (33 & 34 Vic. c. 48, sec. 1).

_A._--_The Able-bodied_

So far as may be gathered from new statutes, new general orders, or new circulars of the Central Authority, there was, between 1847 and 1871, no new policy prescribed to the local Poor Law authorities[289] for the relief of the able-bodied. It is true that in August 1852, revised in December 1852, we have a great General Order (still in force), the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, which permitted outdoor relief to the able-bodied, unconditionally for women, and subject to test work for men. This, however, was but a codification, with slight amendments, of the separate Outdoor Labour Test Orders that had been issued between 1835 and 1852. It might, therefore, be inferred that the Central Authority did not, between 1847 and 1871, change its policy.[290]

[289] The episode of the Lancashire Cotton Famine, and its relief works, in which the boards of guardians were concerned only as nuisance-abatement authorities, will be dealt with under the head of Municipal Work for the Unemployed.

[290] It should perhaps be said that the Central Authority sought to widen the category of able-bodied, so as definitely to include persons over sixty, but in no way disabled (_Official Circular_, April 1849, No. 24, N.S., p. 63); and also "Children competent to render service" (Poor Law Board to Evesham Union, 3rd April 1869, in Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, p. 5).

(i.) _National Uniformity_

No attempt was made to secure national uniformity with regard to the treatment of the able-bodied.

Union after union was brought under one or other of the three systems which we have already described until, by 1871, with half-a-dozen exceptions, the whole area was covered. The Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844 (forbidding, with certain exceptions, outdoor relief to the able-bodied, whether men or women) continued in force in, or was issued anew to, certain unions. This Order, coupled with an Outdoor Labour Test Order (sanctioning outdoor relief to able-bodied men and their families subject to test work by the man, but prohibiting outdoor relief to able-bodied independent women), continued in force in, or was issued anew to, certain other unions. To a third set of unions there was issued the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order (permitting outdoor relief to able-bodied women unconditionally, and to able-bodied men subject to test work). These three systems of outdoor relief to the able-bodied remained, between 1847 and 1871, essentially as they had been elaborated between 1834 and 1847.

But meanwhile a great change in the policy of the Central Authority was silently taking place. The areas over which the three systems were applied completely shifted in relative importance. In 1847 the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, issued alone, which may be said to come nearest to the "principles of 1834," had been imposed on 396 unions; the two other systems standing out only as relatively small exceptions, temporarily applicable to 142 places in all.

It is clear that at that period the Central Authority was "of opinion that where there is a commodious and efficient workhouse, it is best that _the able-bodied paupers_ should be received and set to work therein."[291]

[291] Circular of 25th August 1852 in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, pp. 21-2. Note the limitation which we have italicised.

Yet for the next twenty years the part of England and Wales to which the Central Authority sought to apply this policy steadily shrank. In 1871, the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, issued alone, applied only to 307 unions, containing a steadily declining proportion of the total population.

That Order was mitigated in 217 unions, comprising a steadily increasing population, by being accompanied by a Labour Test Order. Finally, the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, since 1852 adopted as a permanent policy, had crept over the Metropolis, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, and the majority of urban centres elsewhere, to the number of no fewer than 117. In these important districts the Central Authority had become convinced, to use its own words, that it was "_not expedient ... to prohibit out-relief to any class of paupers_."[292]

[292] _Ibid._ p. 22.

The able-bodied in the workhouse remained under the General Consolidated Order of 1847 essentially as we have already described them.

(ii.) _Municipal Work for the Unemployed_

We must here mention the episode of the public works undertaken in 1863-6 by the municipal and public health authorities of Lancashire, etc., as a means of relieving the distress caused by the cotton famine. As this has been so clearly described by various writers, it will suffice here to draw attention to the fact that although directed by the Poor Law Board, these works of municipal improvement formed no part of its Poor Law policy. The Central Authority began by sanctioning "a large amount of relief given at variance with the provisions of the General Relief Regulations Order."[293] The problem was then tackled by extensive charitable funds. Finally the Poor Law Board itself came to the conclusion that "it appeared highly desirable that the large bodies of able-bodied men who had been so long deprived of their usual employment should not continue to be relieved either in idleness, or on the performance of a task of unremunerative labour, but should rather, if possible, have work at adequate wages placed within their reach which would enable them to obtain an independent livelihood."[294] What was then adopted was the policy of using public orders for necessary work as a means of partially filling the gap in the aggregate volume of employment caused by the stoppage of the mills. Various minor relief works, in the ordinary sense of the term, were started by local committees and private persons. But the main experiment, fostered by Government loans of nearly two millions, and the advice of a Government engineer, took the form of the execution by the municipalities, and other local authorities, of necessary works of public improvement, which, far from being artificially created in order to give employment, would in any event have had to be executed, and were, in fact, long overdue.[295] There was no attempt to set all the unemployed to work, and no desire to confine to them the staff that was engaged. As a matter of fact, about a third of the men taken on were workmen skilled in the

## particular work to be done, and these do not appear to have been drawn

from the unemployed class at all. But for the mere unskilled manual work volunteers were (in some, but not all the cases) asked for among the distressed cotton operatives, from amongst whom the necessary number of labourers were selected, to be engaged _at labourers' rates of pay_. Thus, although in this utilisation of public orders to regularise the volume of employment there was just this element of relief works, that in some of the towns and some of the works use was made, for the unskilled manual labour, of the services of selected unemployed cotton operatives, the Lancashire authorities escaped what we have elsewhere called the essential dilemma that attends the artificial employment of the unemployed. As they were in the exceptional position of having to offer unskilled labourers' work to skilled and normally highly-paid operatives--and as they did not pretend to take on "the unemployed" as such, but merely asked for so many volunteers from among the cotton operatives to the exclusion of the actual labouring class--the wages that they gave, though sufficient for livelihood, offered no attraction to any of those whom they employed who had the alternative of returning to their accustomed occupation. The boards of guardians were concerned in these works only in their capacity as public health authorities. But the fact is important that in this emergency, the Poor Law Board itself, beginning with a mere relaxation of its regulations, turned then, as an alternative, to even less strictly regulated charity, and finally came to the conclusion that the best policy was to use the municipal orders for waterworks, sewers, and paving works, as far as possible, to make up a definitely ascertained deficiency in private orders. It was, we suggest, just because these were not relief works in the usual sense of the term, but merely public works of utility and even of necessity that were long overdue, and because they were, in the main, executed as such by labourers engaged at wages in the ordinary way, and not with a view of offering work to all who demanded it, that the Poor Law Board could come unhesitatingly to the conclusion that the experiment had been a great success. The success, however, of the Government loan of nearly two millions lay at least as much in the stimulus given to sanitary improvement and municipal enterprise as in the comparatively small amount of relief thereby directly afforded to the distressed cotton operatives.[296]

[293] Fifteenth Annual Report, 1862-3, p. 14.

[294] Sixteenth Annual Report, 1863-4, p. 15. The boards of guardians did not, in this emergency, always turn round as quickly as did the Central Authority. Thus, in December 1863, the Manchester Town Council, which was building its Prestwich Reservoir, and applying for a loan of £130,000 under the new Act, offered to the Manchester Board of Guardians to take on any able-bodied paupers as labourers. That body, instead of gladly accepting under proper arrangements, passed a series of abstract resolutions, to the effect "that this Board conceives that the payment by boards of guardians of wages in return for labour to poor persons chargeable or seeking to become chargeable upon the rates, or the holding themselves responsible for the providing of such labour for wages--thus impairing the self-reliance of the poor--is opposed to the whole spirit and intent of the Poor Law, and it is inexpedient both upon social and economical grounds." The town council (which duly received its share of the Government loan from the Poor Law Board) persisted in its desire to be helpful in the great crisis, and let the work to a contractor, who undertook to employ only such unemployed operatives as were recommended by the board of guardians or any other body to be named by the town council, but with full control and right of dismissal. We do not find evidence that the guardians named any one (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 3rd and 10th December 1863).

[295] "No work has been executed ... which was not desirable as a work of permanent utility and sanitary improvement, altogether independent of the circumstances which, during the existence of the cotton famine, gave rise to the special Acts of Parliament.... During the rapid growth of these towns works necessary to health, comfort and trade, such as main sewering ... had not been executed as rapidly as they were required" (Rawlinson's Report of 12th January 1866, in Eighteenth Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1865-6, pp. 44, 46).

[296] For this, the leading case in England of national relief works, see Professor Smart's Memorandum on the Poor Law Board, in Report of the Poor Law Commission, 1909, Appendix, vol. 12; Annual Reports of the Poor Law Board, 1862-3 to 1865-6 inclusive; _History of the English Poor Law_, by T. Mackay, 1899, vol. iii., pp. 398-424; _The Facts of the Cotton Famine_, by Dr. John Watts, 1866; _History of the Cotton Famine_, by R. A. (afterwards Sir Arthur) Arnold, 1864; _Lancashire's Lesson_, by W. T. M'Cullagh Torrens, 1864; _Public Works in Lancashire for the Relief of Distress_, 1863-6, by Sir R. Rawlinson, 1898.

An incident of this great experiment is worth recording, as possibly affording a hint and a precedent. In October 1862--before the Government loans had actually started the municipalities engaging in municipal works--the Central Authority authorised the Manchester Board of Guardians to give outdoor relief to able-bodied men for whom a labour test could not be provided, on condition that they attended educational classes arranged by the guardians. This permission was largely acted upon. One whole trade union (the Society of Makers Up), asked "to be sent to school, instead of to labour." Not only were reading and writing taught, but what we should now term university extension lectures were delivered (by Professor Roscoe, etc.).[297]

[297] MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 30th October, 20th November, and 3rd December 1862.

_B._--_Vagrants_

We left the Poor Law Commissioners, in 1847, at last awake to the fact that the policy of the Report of 1834--that vagrants should be treated like any other able-bodied male paupers, and offered "the House"--had been a conspicuous failure. The new "union workhouses," rising up all over the country, afforded to the habitual tramp a national system of well-ordered, suitably situated, gratuitous common lodging-houses, of which he took increasing advantage.[298] Confronted by this growth of vagrancy, the Poor Law Commissioners, towards the end of their term, had pressed on boards of guardians a new vagrancy policy--that of making the night's lodging disagreeable to the wayfarer. By statute and order the Central Authority had authorised compulsory detention for four hours and the exaction of a task of work. This policy had not been generally adopted, nor particularly successful where tried. In the bad years of 1847-9 vagrancy was still increasing at a dangerous rate, and one of the first duties of the new Poor Law Board was to issue instructions on the subject.

[298] Reports and Communications on Vagrancy, 1848.

The instructions given by Mr. Charles Buller, the first President of the Poor Law Board, adumbrated in the guise of a policy what were really two distinct and inherently incompatible lines of action. The Central Authority, on the one hand, pressed on boards of guardians the advisability of discriminating between the honest unemployed in search of work and the professional tramp--"the thief, the mendicant and the prostitute, who crowd the vagrant wards"--even to the extent of refusing all relief whatsoever to able-bodied men of the latter class, who were not in immediate danger of starvation. It seems as if the Central Authority was at this point almost inclined to press on boards of guardians the Scottish Poor Law policy of regarding the able-bodied healthy male adult as ineligible for relief. "As a general rule," it was laid down, the relieving officer "would be right in refusing relief to able-bodied and healthy men; though in inclement weather he might afford them shelter if really destitute of the means of procuring it for themselves."[299] Acting on this suggestion many boards of guardians closed their vagrant wards,[300] and the Bradford Guardians decided to "altogether dispense with" the meals heretofore given "at the vagrant office."[301] The honest wayfarer in temporary distress might, it was suggested, be given a certificate showing his circumstances, destination, object of journey, etc., upon production of which he was to be readily admitted to the workhouses, and provided with comfortable accommodation.[302]

[299] Minute of Poor Law Board, 4th August 1848, in _Official Circular_, 1848, No. 17, N.S., p. 271.

[300] _On Vagrants and Tramps_, by T. Barwick L. Baker (Manchester Statistical Society, 1868-9, p. 62).

[301] MS. Minutes, Bradford Board of Guardians, 23rd November 1849. On this, the Central Authority evidently felt that it had gone too far. It informed the Bradford Guardians that the resolution must be rescinded; that "in affording relief to vagrants the guardians should be governed by the same rule that applies to relief in other cases, namely, the nature of the destitution and the amount of the necessity of the applicant. If the guardians or their officers are satisfied that there is no actual necessity, no danger to health or life, they will be justified in refusing to give more than shelter [Mr. Buller's circular had suggested refusing even shelter in weather not inclement]; but if the applicant appears to be really in want of food, it must be supplied" (Poor Law Board to Bradford Union, 29th November 1849; MS. Minutes, Bradford Board of Guardians, 30th November 1849).

[302] _Official Circular_, No. 17, N.S. July and August 1848, p. 270.

To aid in this discrimination, it was suggested that a police constable, who had knowledge of habitual vagrants and was feared by them, would be useful as an assistant relieving officer.[303] Nevertheless the other policy, that of the casual ward, admitting to its disagreeable and deterrent shelter every applicant who chose to apply for it, was not abandoned by the Central Authority. The orders and instructions about casual wards still remained in force, and continued to be issued or confirmed. These involved, not the refusal of relief to the able-bodied healthy male adult, but systematic provision for it, coupled with detention and a task of work.

[303] _Ibid._ p. 271.

Ten years later we find the Central Authority definitely abandoning, so far as the Metropolis was concerned, both its policy of discrimination among wayfarers and that of refusing, at any rate in weather not inclement, relief to the healthy able-bodied male vagrant. The London workhouses had become congested "by the flocking into them of the lowest and most difficult to manage classes of poor."[304] They were now to be entirely relieved of the annoyance and disorganisation caused by the nightly influx of casual inmates. All persons applying for a night's lodging were to be subjected, whatever their antecedents, character, or circumstances, to a uniform "test of destitution," by being received only in "asylums for the houseless poor," six of which, conducted on a uniform system of employment, discipline, and deterrent treatment, were to be established in London apart from the workhouses.[305] This was admittedly a revival of the project of 1844,[306] which had failed from the "want of co-operation on the part of several of the boards of guardians."[307] The revived policy proved for six years equally unsuccessful and for the same reason. The six "asylums for the houseless poor" did not get built, and vagrants continued to be dealt with haphazard in the forty Metropolitan workhouses. In 1864 the Central Authority took what proved to be a decisive step. The Metropolitan Houseless Poor Acts, 1864 and 1865, made it obligatory on Metropolitan boards of guardians to provide casual wards for "destitute wayfarers, wanderers, and foundlings."[308] At the same time it bribed them to adopt that policy for all wayfarers by making (in accordance with a recommendation of the House of Commons Select Committee on Poor Relief of 1864) the cost of relief given in the casual wards a common charge upon the whole of London.[309] The casual wards so made a common charge had to be conducted under rules to be framed by the Central Authority; and these we have in the Circular of October 26th 1864, recommending that the new casual wards should consist of two large "parallelograms," each to accommodate in common promiscuity as many of one sex as were ever expected; furnished with a common "sleeping platform" down each side, on which the reclining occupants were to be separated from each other only by planks on edge; without separate accommodation for dressing or undressing; and with coarse "straw or cocoa fibre in a loose tick," and a rug "sufficient for warmth."[310] To this was added, by the General Order of March 3rd 1866, a uniform dietary "for wayfarers" in these wards of bread and gruel only,[311] thus definitely marking the abandonment, so far as London was concerned, of all attempt, either at refusing a night's lodging to able-bodied healthy males, or at doing anything more or anything different for the honest unemployed wayfarer than for the professional tramp.

[304] Mr. Sotheron Estcourt (President of Poor Law Board), 15th July 1858, _Hansard_, vol. 151, p. 1500. "The nightly occupants of the vagrant ward interfere with the regular inmates, harass the officers, and at some seasons and in some workhouses render it impossible to preserve the order or to carry out the ordinary regulations of the establishment" (Circular of 30th November 1857, in Eleventh Annual Report, 1858, p. 29).

[305] _Ibid._ pp. 30-31.

[306] Mr. Sotheron Estcourt, 15th July 1858; _Hansard_, vol. 151, p. 1500.

[307] Minute of 23rd December 1863, in Sixteenth Annual Report, 1863-4, p. 31.

[308] 27 & 28 Vic. c. 116 (1864); 28 & 29 Vic. c. 34 (1865); Circular of 26th October 1864, in Seventeenth Annual Report, 1864-5, p. 77.

[309] The first expedient was to cause the sums so expended to be refunded by the Metropolitan Board of Works. In 1867 this was replaced by the Common Poor Fund.

[310] Circular of 26th October 1864, in Seventeenth Annual Report, 1864-5, p. 78. It may be added that from 1863 onward, the police acted as assistant relieving officers for vagrants in the Metropolis. The police complained of the filth and vermin brought to the police stations by applicants for relief, and they were relieved of the duty in 1872 (Report of Departmental Committee on Vagrancy, 1906, Cd. 2852, vol. i. p. 12). The police also acted for some rural boards of guardians, the police stations serving as "vagrant relief stations," e.g. at Bakewell, where they were discontinued in 1869 (MS. Minutes, Bakewell Board of Guardians, 15th March 1869).

[311] General Order of 3rd March 1866, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1867, p. 37.

Notwithstanding the apparent decisiveness of policy as to vagrants embodied in the Metropolitan Houseless Poor Act of 1864, we find the Central Authority, disturbed by the steady growth of vagrancy throughout the country,[312] still continuing to talk about discrimination. In 1868, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, in announcing that the Poor Law Board contemplated extending to the whole country the Metropolitan system of dealing with vagrants, added, with an inconsistency which we do not understand, that "it would be required ... that guardians should take the responsibility of a sound and vigilant discrimination between deserving travellers in search of work and professional vagrants not really destitute, by the appointment of officers capable of exercising such discrimination; and that, where practicable, the police should be appointed assistant relieving officers. The forthcoming Order would likewise suggest, in cases where it might be practicable, that the accommodation for deserving travellers should be different from that given to professional vagrants."[313] Yet even for the professional vagrant the promiscuous London casual ward of 1864 was not to be extended. "It was," said the President of the Poor Law Board in 1868, "very desirable that ... each person should have a separate or divided bed place."[314] The new policy, which the President seems to have thought was the London policy of 1864, but which was really a revival of Mr. Charles Buller's policy of 1848, was embodied in a Circular, which admittedly reproduced, in all essentials, the Minute of 1848--the necessity of discrimination, the employment of the police, the issue of tickets to genuine honest wayfarers, their comfortable accommodation in workhouses without task of work, and the desirability of uniformity of treatment in the different unions.[315]

[312] Reports on Vagrancy made to the President of the Poor Law Board, 1866.

[313] Sir M. Hicks Beach, 28th July 1868 (_Hansard_, vol. 193, p. 1910).

[314] Sir M. Hicks Beach, 28th July 1868 (_Hansard_, vol. 193, p. 1910).

[315] Circular of 28th November, 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 74-76. It is curious that the dietary suggested in this Circular allowed (without explanation), the guardians to give male adults eight ounces of bread and a pint of gruel, whereas the General Order to the Metropolitan Unions of the preceding year had definitely limited adult males to six ounces of bread and a pint of gruel.

It must be added that, before the end of its tenure of office, the Poor Law Board had become convinced that it had as completely failed to solve the problem of vagrancy as had the Poor Law Commissioners. In the Metropolis it was forced on its attention that "the great increase in the pauper population may be traced to the operation of the Houseless Poor Act, which has practically legalised vagrancy and professional vagabondism."[316] Throughout the whole country the number of vagrants nightly relieved in the workhouse, which had between 1858 and 1862 always been under 2000, rose between 1862 and 1870 to between five and six thousand, and to a maximum of 7946 on 1st July 1868, though falling to less in the exceptionally good trade of 1870-1.[317] The fact is that the boards of guardians felt themselves between the horns of a dilemma, against which the inconsistent see-saw policy of the Central Authority was no protection. If they refused relief to those whom their relieving officers deemed worthless loafers, these bad characters became "masterful beggars," pertinacious tramps, and sources of danger to the countryside, whilst in the bad times of 1866 some of those refused relief suffered hardship and even death.[318] Hence the general reversion to a policy of relief. The Central Authority, under Mr. Goschen's presidency, was at this point considering a new policy, that of penal detention after relief. Mr. Goschen explained to the House of Commons that this would amount, practically, to "a kind of imprisonment," and be "a stronger measure than the administration by the police of the law as at present existing," which had also been proposed, but "if Parliament were inclined to concede power to detain paupers for a longer period than they were now detained, and to keep them at work, he believed that would be a very effectual means of diminishing vagrancy and pauperism."[319]

[316] St. George's, Hanover Square, to Poor Law Board. The numbers of "casual and houseless poor" relieved in the Metropolis went up from 1086, on 1st July 1866, to 2085 on 1st July 1868, and 1760 on 1st July 1870 (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, p. xxiv).

[317] _Ibid._ pp. 394-5.

[318] _On Vagrants and Tramps_, by T. Barwick L. Baker (Manchester Statistical Society, 1868-9, p. 62).

[319] Mr. Goschen (President of Poor Law Board), 13th May, 1870, _Hansard_, vol. 201, pp. 660-2.

_C._--_Women_

Women, of whom there were always between 80,000 and 100,000 on outdoor relief, were almost wholly ignored in the Poor Law Legislation of 1847-71, as in the Orders of the Central Authority. The policy of the Central Authority, so far as it appears from the documents, continued to be to permit able-bodied independent women unconditionally to receive outdoor relief, whether or not they were in receipt of wages, so far as concerned the unions under the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order; and to forbid outdoor relief to such women in unions under the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, whether or not this Order was accompanied by an Outdoor Labour Test Order (for men).[320]

[320] The prohibition was made even more embracing in the _Official Circular_ for April and May 1848 (Nos. 14 and 15, N.S., pp. 227-8), where the term "able-bodied" (though the Central Authority expressed itself as willing to consider relief by gifts of clothing in special cases) was held to include females, not sick or disabled, who were nevertheless unable to earn sixpence a day at field work; "young females" just emancipated; persons of weak constitution, or having frequent ailments, but in receipt of "full wages"; and persons not of weak constitutions, but employed at low wages from inaptitude to labour. Thus, for outdoor relief in the part of England to which this Order applied, the term "able-bodied" ceased to have any relation to any physical conditions whatsoever, but was used as a term covering a heterogeneous class of men and women, strong or weak, healthy or subject to epileptic fits, able or unable to earn complete sustenance. On the other hand, within the workhouse, as we have seen, the same term was becoming more and more definitely restricted to adult persons on normal diet, requiring no medical treatment.

The women dependent on able-bodied men, whether themselves able-bodied or not, might be maintained in their homes, on condition of their husbands being employed in test work, not only in all unions under the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, but also in those in which the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order was accompanied by a Labour Test Order. On the other hand, such women, however feeble or infirm, were not allowed to be maintained in their homes, even if their husbands were willing to do test work, in those unions in which the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order was alone in force. No reason appears for these differences in policy as to the method of relief of identical categories of women in the different geographical regions into which the Central Authority had divided England and Wales. But although the policy of the Central Authority with regard to women remained, in each of the three regions into which England was divided by these Orders, apparently unchanged, the regions themselves, as we have mentioned, were being silently altered. The great enlargement of the territory to which the laxer Order was applied and the narrow limitation of the territory governed by the stricter Order, involved an enormous extension of the outdoor relief to women permitted by the Central Authority.

In that part of England and Wales which was under the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, a widow without children continued to be allowed to receive outdoor relief only during the first six months of her widowhood. In all the rest of the country she continued to be allowed to receive outdoor relief indefinitely. Widows with children continued to be allowed to receive outdoor relief under all the Orders.

We have, however, in these years, the first recognition (so far as we can trace) of the difficulty of the problem presented by the inadequate earnings of independent able-bodied women.[321] In Bermondsey, in 1850, where there was no Order in force as to outdoor relief, the Central Authority was forced to face the problem presented by "widows and other females who, though in very constant work as sempstresses or shirtmakers," obtained so trifling a remuneration as to be unable to live. The Central Authority admitted that it was lawful to grant them relief, but discouraged this course, "persuaded that the practice of making up insufficient earnings by outdoor relief must tend to produce and perpetuate the evil." The guardians were advised to refuse partial relief, so that some of the women might be wholly maintained in the workhouse and so taken off the labour market, when pressure of competition on the others would be thereby relieved and their wages would rise. The Central Authority did not, however, take the responsibility of issuing an Order specially enforcing this policy; and it is to be noted (as already mentioned) that by gradually substituting the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order for the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, the Central Authority was, in fact, retreating from the advice to the Bermondsey Guardians of 1850.[322]

[321] Besides the widows and deserted wives, and the unmarried mothers, the class of able-bodied single women unencumbered by children, in receipt of relief, was not insignificant. In 1859 there were 5173 such in receipt of outdoor relief (Twelfth Annual Report, 1859-60, p. 15; _see_ also corresponding figures in Thirteenth Annual Report, 1860-1, p. 13).

[322] In 1861, indeed, when the guardians asked advice of the Central Authority, the recommendation to offer relief in the workhouse was distinctly limited to able-bodied males (Poor Law Board to St. James's, Westminster, 19th January 1861, in Thirteenth Annual Report, 1860-1, p. 35).

Not until 1869 (so far as we can trace) did the Central Authority face the problem presented by the widow with children. Mr Goschen's celebrated Minute of November 20th 1869, incidentally referred (as a frequent exception to the rule against a "rate in aid of wages") to the grant of partial relief "in the case of widows with families, where it is often manifestly impossible that the woman can support the family." Mr. Goschen does not appear to have made any definite suggestion of an alternative policy in these cases. He seems to have regarded it as merely an exception, of no great importance. But the Holborn Board of Guardians, in their reply to the Circular, pointed out that "the exception of widows would of itself constitute so large a proportion that the rule is virtually swallowed up thereby." The Holborn Guardians, apparently understanding that the Central Authority was hinting at the stoppage of outdoor relief in these cases, also pointed out that "it would be impossible to find workhouse accommodation for over 20,000 widows in the Metropolis and their 60,000 children." These figures were indeed exaggerated; but it was incidentally observed by the Central Authority itself that "the amount of destitution in the country generally, caused by the death, absence, or desertion of the male head of the family ... we should estimate ... to be 35 per cent of the whole."[323] In 1858, the "able-bodied widows relieved out of doors" in the whole country numbered 50,468, and the children dependent on them 126,658, making together over 25 per cent of the total pauper population.[324] In the Metropolis alone, out of an outdoor pauper population in 1869 of 121,012 (excluding lunatics and vagrants), the women relieved because of the death or absence of their husbands numbered 11,851, and their children 28,569, making a total of 40,420, or one-third of the whole outdoor pauperism.[325] It was perhaps in view of such statistics that the Central Authority, in reporting on the reply of the Holborn Board of Guardians, among other replies, made no criticism of the grant of outdoor relief to widows with children, and offered no suggestion of an alternative policy. The only suggestions made were that there should be more relieving officers to check the overlapping of outdoor relief and private charity, and that the outdoor relief granted should be "adequate."[326] A special Commissioner (Mr. Wodehouse) was told off to make an official inquiry into the administration of outdoor relief, in which the facts were again laid bare.[327] We do not find that the Central Authority--now fully aware that the category of widows with children, "where" (to use Mr. Goschen's words) "it is manifestly impossible that the earnings of the woman can support the family," comprised about 177,000 persons, and made up at least a quarter of the whole outdoor pauperism--issued any order prescribing what ought to be done in these cases, or ever made any authoritative suggestion on the subject. The Holborn and other boards of guardians had therefore warrant for believing that the grant of outdoor relief to widows with children, even in supplement of earnings, permitted as it was by the Orders, continued, as from 1834 onwards, to have the sanction of the Central Authority.

[323] Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xxviii, 9, 17-22.

[324] Eleventh Annual Report, 1858, p. 166; _see_ the corresponding statistics in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Annual Reports.

[325] Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, p. xxi.

[326] _Ibid._ pp. xxxii-xxxiii, 9-30.

[327] Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, pp. 32-93.

_D._--_Children_

It was with regard to children that the policy of the Central Authority in this period made the greatest advance. This, however, applies chiefly to the 40,000 children who were being relieved in institutions. With regard to the children being maintained on outdoor relief--who were at least five times as numerous--we do not find that the Central Authority in this period took any cognisance of their condition,[328] except to some small extent with regard to their schooling. Even this was a new feature. In 1844, as already mentioned, the Central Authority had expressly refused to allow 2d. a week to be paid for the schooling of such a child, or even to permit that sum to be added to the outdoor relief to the parent with the same object.[329] This decision was emphasised by a Circular in 1847, laying down that pauper children living at home were not to be educated at the expense of the poor rate.[330] For years the Manchester Board of Guardians, under the leadership of Mr. Hodgson, had tried to get some of their outdoor pauper children to school, the guardians actually maintaining a primitive day school of their own for this purpose. The Central Authority refused to sanction this experiment, forbade its extension, questioned the lawfulness of the guardians' action, and between 1850 and 1855 seems always to have been complaining about it.[331] In 1855, however, Parliament reversed the policy of non-responsibility for outdoor pauper children, so far as to allow the boards of guardians, if they chose, to pay for the schooling of such children between the ages of four and sixteen.[332] They were, however, expressly forbidden to make it a condition of relief that the child should attend school, for fear of exciting religious jealousies, all schools being then denominational. The Central Authority, in transmitting this statute ("Denison's Act") to the boards of guardians, laid stress on its permissive character. No instructions or suggestions were given as to the kind of school to be chosen, though if the guardians in their exercise of their discretion did pay the fees of any children, they were to satisfy themselves of their due attendance.[333] But it trusted that "it will be soon brought into extensive operation," and presently 3986 out of the 200,000 outdoor pauper children were at school.[334] Special efforts were made during the Lancashire cotton famine to get the Act carried out,[335] and gradually more of the boards of guardians adopted the policy.[336] In 1870 the Elementary Education Act made education compulsory over a large part of the country, and authorised boards of guardians not only to pay fees, but also to make attendance at school a condition of relief. This, however, came as part of the educational policy of Parliament, not as part of the Poor Law policy of the Central Authority. So far as these children were concerned (though nominal fees continued to be paid out of the poor rate until 1891), the provision of schooling became merged in the general communistic provision of schooling for the whole population. By this beginning of communistic provision of education for the whole population (completed by the Free Education Act of 1891), the Poor Law authorities were enabled to escape--so far as education was concerned--from the embarrassing dilemma of either placing the pauper child in a position of vantage, or of deliberately bringing up the quarter of a million pauper children in a state of ignorance similar to that of the children of the poorest independent labourer prior to 1870. In respect of everything but education the problem remained. So far as regards the couple of hundred thousand children maintained on outdoor relief, the Central Authority left the boards of guardians without advice on this dilemma.

[328] The Central Authority observed in 1858 that "more than one-third of the paupers are children under sixteen." The numbers at that date were 44,989 indoors, and 263,994 out of doors, or 37·4 per cent of the whole (Eleventh Annual Report, 1858, p. 166). It is not clear to us whether this total of children on outdoor relief includes in all cases the children of men in receipt of medical relief only.

In 1869, in answer to Mr. Goschen's Minute, the Holborn Board of Guardians forced on the attention of the Central Authority the fact that they, like the other Metropolitan guardians, were allowing for each child on outdoor relief 1s. and one loaf of bread. "No one can pretend," they said, "that this amount is of itself adequate support" (Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, p. 20). The Holborn Board of Guardians practically defied the Central Authority to find any other policy. The Central Authority did not reply to this challenge.

[329] _Official Circular_, 31st January 1844, No. 31, pp. 178-9.

[330] _Ibid._ 1st September 1847, No. 9, N.S. p. 131.

[331] MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 1850-5.

[332] 18 & 19 Vic. c. 34 (Education of Poor Children Act 1855). "An enactment involving the important admission that want of education was a form of destitution, which ought to be adequately relieved" (_History of the English Poor Law_, by T. Mackay, 1899, vol. iii. p. 428).

[333] Circular of 9th January 1856, in Ninth Annual Report, 1857, pp. 13, 15. In 1856 it was reported that there were in Lancashire and the West Riding 48,412 children on outdoor relief, of whom about 30,000 ought to be at school. Yet down to December 1855, the boards of guardians had taken no steps to get them to school, in spite of the inspector's protests (Eighth Annual Report, 1855, p. 63).

[334] House of Commons Return, No. 437 of 1856; Ninth Annual Report, p. 8. Newcastle-on-Tyne adopted it at once (MS. Minutes, Newcastle Board of Guardians, 10th October 1855).

[335] Fifteenth Annual Report, 1862-3, p. 18; Circular of 29th September 1862.

[336] MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 9th October 1862. The Manchester Guardians, whose early school experiment we have already mentioned, largely nullified their own action (and apparently contravened the spirit, if not the letter of the law), by insisting on the attendance of the outdoor paupers exclusively at the guardians' own school, which gave "undenominational" religious instruction, and refusing to pay fees for children to go to any other schools (except for a short time in 1862-3 when their own schools were over-full). In vain did the Roman Catholics and the Manchester and Salford Education Aid Society protest, pointing out that the children were in consequence growing up untaught (_ibid._ 26th May, 23rd and 30th June, and 10th November 1864; 19th June 1865). The Central Authority does not appear to have intervened.

Passing now to the 40,000 children in Poor Law institutions, we have described how, between 1834 and 1847, the Central Authority, in disregard of the recommendations of the 1834 Report,[337] had adopted the policy of having one common workhouse for each union, under a single head, and with an almost identical regimen for all classes of inmates. It was necessarily incidental to the policy of the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order which was then widely prevalent, that the wife and children of the destitute man should be relieved only in the workhouse. These institutions came, therefore, to be the homes and places of education of not only orphans and foundlings, but also of tens of thousands of other children, who were often immured in them from birth until they could be placed out in service. Apparently the idea of one general workhouse for each union, under one uniform discipline, was too deeply rooted in the Poor Law Commissioners to allow of any provision being made for children in the Orders concerning workhouse management. No provision was made for the children going out for walks or games or play.[338] No Order required the guardians to appoint a qualified schoolmaster, or, indeed, any teacher at all, or to buy any school-books. Year after year the returns from many unions continue to state "No teachers in workhouse," without evoking from the Central Authority any compulsory Order.[339]

[337] That the children should be accommodated in a separate building, under a separate superintendent, and educated by "a person properly qualified to act as a schoolmaster" (page 307 of Report of 1834, reprint of 1905).

[338] The children in the Bakewell Workhouse were found, in 1855, to be in a dreadful state of health, owing to the literal application throughout the workhouse of the principles of the General Consolidated Order of 1847. The inspector protested at last, and recommended special arrangements for the children in the way of more nourishing diet and outdoor exercise. The guardians framed a new dietary, ordered "the swings, etc. recommended by the inspector," and directed the schoolmistress "to take the girls out for a walk every day when the weather is fine" (MS. Minutes, Bakewell Board of Guardians, 1st October 1855 and 29th September 1856.)

[339] From 1846 onwards the Committee of the Privy Council on Education had, as part of the nation's educational policy, actually made grants to the boards of guardians to pay the salaries of qualified workhouse schoolmasters and schoolmistresses. In 1848 it was announced to the boards of guardians that, whereas "no comprehensive effort has hitherto been made" to raise the standard of efficiency, henceforth the inspector of pauper schools will examine the schools and the qualifications of the teachers as part of the conditions for sharing in the grant (MS. Minutes, Newcastle Board of Guardians, 31st March 1848).

It is to the credit of the new Poor Law Board that it at once admitted that the much-vaunted general workhouse system was, so far as the children were concerned, simply manufacturing paupers. "Too many of those brought up in the workhouse," said Mr. Charles Buller in 1848, "were marked by a tendency to regard the workhouse as their natural and proper home.... They had been accustomed to the workhouse from their earliest infancy and ... to the confinement, ... and when they became adults there was nothing to deter them from entering it."[340] The remedy now proposed was the removal of all children from the workhouses to separate Poor Law schools, and their education, irrespective of cost, in such a way "as may best tend to raise them from the class of paupers to that of independent labourers _and artisans_."[341] To attain this end the Central Authority secured another statute in amendment of the hitherto abortive Act of 1844, permitting the establishment of "district schools" by combinations of unions.[342] But what enabled this policy to be begun in the teeth of persistent opposition was a terrible outbreak of cholera at Mr. Drouet's establishment at Tooting, where the pauper children of many parishes had continued (as a survival of the old Poor Law, not yet interfered with by the Central Authority) to be "farmed out."[343]

[340] Hansard, vol. 100, p. 1217 (8th August 1848).

[341] Third Annual Report, 1850, p. 6. Few children of independent labourers' families could at that date rise to be artisans.

[342] Poor Law (Schools) Act 1848 (11 & 12 Vic. c. 82).

[343] Second Annual Report, 1849, p. 13. The Central Authority, which had for fourteen years let the establishments alone, now used its influence against them. Mr. Drouet's was closed. Another similar contractor's establishment (Mr. Aubin's at Norwood) was presently taken over by the Committee of the Central London School District and continued as a district school, with Mr. Aubin as salaried superintendent. Three or four other small places were discontinued. Two others at Margate, used for sick and convalescent young paupers, continued with the approval of the Central Authority. An act of Parliament (12 & 13 Vic. c. 13) was passed for their regulation (Second Annual Report, 1849, pp. 16-17).

In the course of the same year the Central Authority succeeded in forming half-a-dozen school districts, and approved the establishment of a gigantic boarding-school for each of them, accommodating 800, and even 1000 children. The General Order issued in 1849 for the government of these "district schools" did not prescribe the details of administration so precisely as did the General Consolidated Order of 1847; and much latitude was left to the enterprise of the governing body. Against the formation of these school districts the boards of guardians successfully rebelled, much preferring to have a separate school for each union, and outside London this was the system generally adopted by the more populous unions. These separate schools, which were in all cases distinct from the workhouse, were regulated by special Orders, providing in similar general terms for the elements of good administration, but also leaving much to the discretion of the guardians.[344] The Central Authority now pressed the policy of separate schools on the boards of guardians at every opportunity.[345] In 1856, for instance, we find it saying to the Holborn Guardians that it cannot "too strongly urge upon the guardians the importance of the children being so brought up as to preserve them, as far as possible, free from the habits and associations contracted in a workhouse; and of their receiving such instruction as will fit them to earn their own livelihood. These objects will be best secured by the removal of the children to a separate school."[346] The Central Authority made useful suggestions, and it also encouraged improvements by laudatory description of the best schools in the _Official Circular_ and the Annual Reports.[347] When it was objected by some boards of guardians that to teach writing and arithmetic to the pauper children was to give them advantages superior to those of the children of the independent labourer, the Central Authority replied that the provision of a good education for the children was not likely to encourage voluntary pauperism in the parents, and therefore there was no need to apply the principle of less eligibility in this case.[348]

[344] The Manchester Board of Guardians had had its own boarding-school at Swinton since 1844, where, on the advice of Mr. Tufnell (assistant Poor Law inspector), the children were eighteen hours a week "at school" and eighteen hours "at labour" (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 22nd August 1844). For the next few years we see them taking great pride in this school, and receiving the highest commendation from the inspectors. But the district auditor, in 1846, complains bitterly of the "costly establishment," warning the guardians that the expense of this school has "already reached an amount that is inconsistent with the class of children for whom the schools were designed," and is "creating dissatisfaction amongst the ratepayers" (_ibid._ 25th June 1846). And in 1861 the Central Authority itself deprecates the payment of so large a salary as £250 a year with board and lodging to the headmaster, and urges the great importance of the industrial as distinguished from the intellectual training of the children (_ibid._ 10th and 16th January 1861).

[345] In 1849, at the instance of the Committee of Council on Education, it issued a Circular extending to workhouse schools the privilege of getting at a low price the school-books of which the Government had arranged the publication for elementary schools (Circular of 25th January 1849, in the Second Annual Report, 1849, p. 25).

[346] House of Commons, No. 50 of 1867, p. 158 (Letter to Guardians of the Holborn Union).

[347] Thus, in 1850, it is reported with laudation that "there are workhouses, like that of the Atcham Union, in which the children receive an education beyond all comparison better than is within the reach of labourers in any part of the county. In the girls' school of the Ludlow Union the children now receive an education in all respects superior to what the humbler ratepayers are able to purchase for their children. This high standard of workhouse education is fast ceasing to be exceptional" (Third Annual Report, 1850, p. 7).

[348] _Official Circular_, No. 17, N.S. July and August 1848, p. 264.

On the other hand, it has to be recorded that there were apparently opposing influences at work, as the Norwich Board of Guardians found to its cost in 1854. That board had in 1846, apparently of its own accord, begun a most interesting experiment. As the workhouse was old and overcrowded, and obviously contaminating to the hundreds of children it contained, separate "Boys' and Girls' Homes" were established, away from the workhouse and under separate management. At these early types of Poor Law schools the children received both scholastic and industrial training. Their special feature was, however, that the boys of sufficient age were placed out in situations in the town, continuing to use the institution as their home, and contributing the wages that they earned towards the cost of their maintenance. The Norwich Guardians had found, as others have done since, that the old style of indoor apprenticeship was nearly extinct. They had resorted to what they called "outdoor apprenticeship." "In nineteen cases out of twenty the apprentices bound out ... have been outdoor apprentices and have resided with their parents, and received certain weekly allowances. Masters will not consent to take into their houses pauper apprentices."[349] The Central Authority had objected to this, and had insisted on enforcing the usual apprenticeship order.[350] Apparently it was not found possible to place boys out on this obsolete system, and the plan was adopted of getting the boys situations at wages, low at first, and not for some years amounting to enough fully to maintain them. This experiment had been undertaken with the full knowledge of the Poor Law inspectors, who constantly visited the homes, and who expressed themselves in high praise of their success, and it had even been specially described in print, with great commendation, by the inspector of pauper schools. Indeed, the eighty-seven boys who had already passed out of the homes (presumably as soon as their wages were big enough to keep them) were, with fewer than a dozen exceptions, well launched in the world and doing well. In 1854, however, after eight years, the Central Authority intimated that the whole expenditure on the homes was illegal, as being unauthorised, and it was in fact disallowed. It added that, whilst it was prepared to sanction the continuance of the homes as mere schools, it could not permit them to be used as homes for the elder boys who went out to work. The grounds on which this decision was arrived at are not clear. In one place it is stated that the Poor Law Board "conceive it to be unjust to the children of the independent poor," presumably unjust to give the pauper boys such advantages. In another place it is stated that the Poor Law Board had only been induced to permit the homes temporarily on the understanding that they were self-supporting--a contention hardly consistent with that of their illegality--whereas the boys who went out to work proved to cost something to the rates, though admittedly less than they would have cost in the workhouse. In a third place it is pointed out that the projected new workhouse will amply accommodate all the children, so that the homes will be unnecessary even as schools--an argument which seems inconsistent with the general policy of the Poor Law Board, unless we are to infer that it wanted only district schools by combinations of unions. We may note, as a final hint of the uncertainty that prevailed, that, after three years' correspondence, the Poor Law inspector advised the guardians to ask the Central Authority to sanction temporarily the continuance of the homes, as "it is quite possible ... that within the next two years the Legislature may resolve on communicating greater vitality to the provisions for the establishment of district schools." He had told the clerk to the guardians verbally that it was probable that Parliament would make it compulsory to provide for pauper children in establishments apart from workhouses, but that he saw "with regret how strongly different views are pressed" in regard to these homes; and that the guardians would meanwhile do well to delay proceeding with any but the adults' wards of the new workhouse.[351]

[349] MS. Minutes, Norwich Board of Guardians, 1845.

[350] Special Order of 30th January 1845.

[351] MS. Minutes, Norwich Board of Guardians, 3rd January and 7th February 1854, 1st April 1856, and 6th January 1857. We gather that the inspector's prescience was so far justified that the Norwich Guardians managed to retain their children's homes, which were in existence a generation later.

No such legislation as was thus foreshadowed took place, but the policy of removing the children from the workhouses was meanwhile incidentally promoted by an Act of 1849, which enabled use to be made of any establishment in which paupers were maintained by contract "for the education of any poor children therein."[352] Similarly the various Industrial Schools Acts opened up another class of schools to pauper children.[353] Finally, the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1869 enabled training ships to be established by school districts and the Metropolitan Asylums Board for the education of pauper boys for the sea service.[354] Already by 1856 it was reported with satisfaction that 78 per cent of the children under boards of guardians in the Metropolis were in separate schools--statistics, however, which continued to ignore the much larger number of children on outdoor relief, of whose existence the Central Authority only gradually became aware.[355]

[352] 12 & 13 Vic. c. 13, sec. 1 (The Poor Law Relief Act 1849). Out of this sprang the Certified Schools Act of 1862 (25 & 26 Vic. c. 43), and the provision in the Poor Law Amendment Acts of 1866 and 1868 (29 & 30 Vic. c. 113, sec. 14, and 31 & 32 Vic. c. 122, sec. 23), enabling the Central Authority peremptorily to order the removal to a certified school of a child of non-Anglican parents, when the board of guardians refused to allow religious freedom.

[353] 20 & 21 Vic. c. 48 of 1857; 24 & 25 Vic. c. 113 of 1861; 29 & 30 Vic. c. 118 of 1866.

[354] 32 & 33 Vic. c. 63, sec. 11 (Metropolitan Poor Act of 1869); these ships were regulated by Special Orders.

[355] "The vast number of the (outdoor) pauper children in London is as melancholy as it is remarkable" (Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, p. xxii).

During the next twenty years we see this policy of separate boarding schools for such of the Poor Law children as were on indoor relief being constantly pressed on boards of guardians. The erection of these costly barrack schools, which were each regulated by a separate Special Order, differing slightly from school to school,[356] the steady improvement in their accommodation and diet, and the continuous rise in the educational standard attained, which is the great feature of the ensuing period (though in accordance with the recommendations of the 1834 Report), marks a definite abandonment, as regards the children, of the principle that the condition of the pauper should always be less eligible than that of the lowest class of independent labourer. But although in the course of the period 1847-71, in the Metropolis and various large towns, the greater number of the boys and girls between five and fourteen were removed from the workhouses to these "barrack schools" and similar institutions, such schools were not made compulsory; the retention of children in the workhouse was not forbidden, and in hundreds of unions[357] they remained unaffected by the new policy of the Central Authority, which apparently felt unable to require the boards of guardians to adopt it. Even when the bulk of the children were placed in separate schools, there were always some in the workhouse itself; and it is remarkable that the Central Authority made no attempt to modify for these the provisions of the General Consolidated Order of 1847, the effect of which upon the workhouse administration of the period we have already described.[358]

[356] _See_, for instance, as to the Swinton school of the Manchester Board of Guardians, Special Order of 6th July 1852; as to the Cowley school of the Oxford Board of Guardians, Special Order of 24th November 1854; as to the Kirkdale School of the Liverpool Select Vestry, Special Order of 7th August 1856.

[357] Even so populous a town as Newcastle-on-Tyne refused to remove its children from the workhouse. We see the Poor Law inspector arranging a special visit to inspect them, and to confer with the guardians to urge a district school (MS. Minutes, Newcastle Board of Guardians, 10th August and 21st September 1849). He then presses for a joint conference, which does nothing but adjourn (_ibid._ 17th January and 14th March 1850). Nothing is done. Six years after he finds the education is still in a deplorable state (_ibid._ 29th August and 3rd October 1856), and gets the infants into a separate building. The guardians will not appoint a resident schoolmaster (_ibid._ 12th December 1856; 23rd January, 29th May, 18th August, 4th September 1857). It takes three months and three urgent appeals to get them to appoint an additional infants' mistress (_ibid._ 19th November 1858; 21st January, 11th February, 25th February 1859).

[358] The disfavour with which, as we have noted, the Central Authority regarded apprenticeship, seems to have continued. The Special Orders of 31st December 1844, and 29th January 1845 (issued to several hundred unions), severely restricting apprenticeship, and the amending Special Orders of 15th and 22nd August 1845, which slightly mitigated these restrictions, were continued in force. Some of the provisions were relaxed in special cases (_e.g._ Special Order of 11th August 1855, to Leicester Union for a deaf and dumb girl). No General Order seems to have been issued on the subject between 1847 and 1871; nor do we trace any instructions or advice to boards of guardians as to the steps to be taken to place boys and girls out in advantageous callings. A few decisions on legal points tended rather to restrict apprenticeship. The Central Authority held that a child could not be apprenticed to domestic service as it was not a "trade or business"; nor bound to a married woman, nor beyond the age of twenty-one (_Official Circular_, No. 54, N.S., 1856, p. 38; _ibid._ No. 46, N.S., February 1851, p. 17; _ibid._ No. 34, N.S., February 1850, pp. 17-18). In 1851, Parliament passed the Poor Law (Apprentices) Act (14 & 15 Vic. c. 11), for preventing cruelty to apprentices; and the Central Authority, in transmitting this statute to the boards of guardians, carefully abstained from any indication of policy, as to how pauper children should be placed out in life (Circular Letter, 26th June 1851, in Fourth Annual Report, 1851, pp. 19-21). As a minor instance of the merging of branches of the Poor Law into the general treatment of all classes of the community, it may be noted that this Act was repealed in 1861, its provisions being practically embodied in the Offences against the Person Act (24 & 25 Vic. c. 100, sec. 26).

Meanwhile the "workhouse schools" continued to improve very slowly in educational efficiency. The policy of the Central Authority was apparently to develop industrial training--agricultural work, the simpler handicrafts, and domestic service--on the model of the "Quatt School" in Shropshire. Whether or not this industrial work militated against more intellectual accomplishments is a moot point, but we hear of "the reports of 'the stagnant dulness of workhouse education' which annually proceed from Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools."[359]

[359] Eighth Annual Report, 1855, p. 58.

Whether or not from a certain divergence of aim between the departments, the connection was in 1863 severed,[360] and the Poor Law Board thenceforward had its own inspectors of Poor Law Schools, whose criticisms and complaints, all in favour of the large district schools as compared with the single union school, appear from 1867 onward in the Annual Reports.[361]

[360] Circular of 5th September 1863; in Sixteenth Annual Report, 1863-4, pp. 19, 34.

[361] _See_ the first set, in Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, pp. 128-58.

At the very end of the period we may note the beginning of a reaction against the "barrack schools." It was pointed out by those acquainted with the Scottish system of boarding-out, as well as by persons experienced in English Poor Law administration, that these expensive boarding schools were not answering so well as their admirers claimed, especially as regards the girls. During 1866-9 the alternative of "boarding-out" children in private families at 4s. a week (now 5s.) was warmly discussed, and experimentally adopted in a few places.[362] In 1869 the Central Authority so far yielded to the criticisms made upon these institutions as to permit, under elaborate restrictions and safeguards, the "boarding-out," in families beyond the limits of the union, of the comparatively small class of children who were actually or practically orphans.[363] In these cases all idea of making the condition of the pauper child less eligible than that of the lowest independent labourer was definitely abandoned. The whole concern of the Central Authority was to see that the provision for the boarded-out child was good and complete. Far from being assimilated to the children of the lowest independent labourers, the boarded-out children were only to be entrusted to specially selected families superior to the lowest, who undertook to bring them up as their own, to provide proper food, clothing and washing, to train them in good habits as well as in suitable domestic and industrial work, and to make them regularly attend school and place of worship. For all this the foster parents were to receive with each child a sum three or four times as great as was, with the sanction of the Central Authority, commonly allowed for the maintenance of each of the couple of hundred thousand children at that date on outdoor relief; and which (as Professor Fawcett vainly objected) was far in excess of what the ordinary labourer could afford to expend on his own children.[364] "A plan," observed Mr. Fowle, "which cannot be defended on any sound principles of Poor Law."[365] "It is indeed impossible," says Mr. Mackay in this connection, "to deny that apparently every provision for pauper children may be regarded as a contravention of this rule.... Professor Fawcett's ... argument has been tacitly neglected."[366]

[362] _Home Training for Pauper Children_, 1866; _Children of the State_, by Miss F. Hill, 1869; _The Advantages of the Boarding-out System_, by Col. C. W. Grant, 1869; _Pall Mall Gazette_, 10th April 1869; debate in House of Commons, 10th May 1869.

[363] Poor Law Board to Evesham Union, 3rd April 1869; House of Commons, No. 176 of 1869; Circular of 30th October 1869; Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 25-6; House of Commons, No. 176 of 1870, pp. 123-189; Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. lii-lv and 2-8. It was explained to boards of guardians that they were at liberty to board-out children within the area of the union at their own discretion, "no orders or regulations to the contrary having been issued" (Poor Law Board to Newcastle Union, 17th March 1871).

[364] _Pauperism_, by H. Fawcett, 1871, pp. 79-91.

[365] _The Poor Law_, by Rev. T. Fowle, 1881, p. 144.

[366] _History of the English Poor Law_, by T. Mackay, 1899, vol. iii. p. 434.

_E._--_The Sick_

We have shown that, between 1834 and 1847, it was not contemplated that persons actually sick would be received in the workhouse, and that there was no trace in the documents of any desire on the part of the Central Authority to interfere with the usual practice of granting to them outdoor relief, which had not been in any way condemned or discredited by the 1834 Report. The same may be said of the Statutes, Orders, and Circulars of 1847-71. We find no suggestion that the boards of guardians ought not to grant outdoor relief in cases of sickness, or that sick paupers ought to be relieved in the workhouse. On the contrary, the exceptions specifically made in favour of sick persons seem to be even widened in scope. Thus, in 1848, the Central Authority laid it down that widows with illegitimate children were not to be refused outdoor relief, if the children were sick.[367] By the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of December 1852, it was definitely provided that outdoor relief might be given in case of sickness in the family, even if the head of the family was simultaneously earning wages.[368] The same policy was embodied in the corresponding General Order issued on 1st January 1869, to certain Metropolitan unions.[369] Further, in the panic about cholera in 1866, the Central Authority informed the boards of guardians by circular that in cases of emergency they might call in any medical and other assistance that was needed, and even provide whatever sustenance, clothing, etc., was required,[370] apparently irrespective of "destitution" and of all General Orders, etc., to the contrary. Moreover, early in this period we note the beginning of the special definition of "destitution" as regards medical relief which has since been acted upon, that is to say, the inability to pay for the medical attendance that the nature of the case requires. Thus it was declared by the Central Authority in 1848 that the parish doctor might attend sick servants living in their master's household, who were plainly not destitute in the ordinary sense, as not being without food and lodging, but who, if there were no wages due to them, might be unable to pay for medical attendance.[371] A similar line of thought may be traced in that provision of the Act of 1851 which authorised boards of guardians to make annual subscriptions out of the poor rate to public hospitals and infirmaries, to enable these non-pauper institutions the better to provide "for the poor."[372] "The sick wards of the workhouses," as the Central Authority explained in 1869, "were originally provided for the cases of paupers in the workhouse who might be attacked by illness; and not as State hospitals into which all the sick poor of the country might be received for medical treatment and care. So far is this, indeed, from being the case that at least two-thirds of the sick poor receive medical attendance and treatment in their own homes."[373] When in 1869-71, the Central Authority obtained elaborate reports showing, for all parts of England, the practice that prevailed of normally giving outdoor relief to the sick, and of taking them into the workhouse infirmaries only when this was called for by (_a_) the nature of the disease, (_b_) the wishes of the patient, or (_c_) the nature of the home, and then only where suitable infirmary accommodation was available, there is no indication that any objection was entertained to the policy of outdoor relief to this large class.[374]

[367] _Official Circular_, Nos. 14 and 15, N.S. April and May 1848, p. 228.

[368] Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of 14th December, 1852.

[369] General Order of 1st January 1869, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 28, 79-82.

[370] Circular of 27th July 1866, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1866-7, p. 39.

[371] _Official Circular_, No. 20, N.S. Nov. and Dec. 1848, p. 297.

[372] Fourth Annual Report, 1851, p. 15; 14 & 15 Vic. c. 105, sec. 4.

[373] Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, pp. 27-8.

[374] Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xxiv-xxvii, 38-108; Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, pp. xliv-lii, 173-188.

What is new in this period is the appearance, as a positive policy, of bringing pressure to bear on the boards of guardians to improve the quality of the medical attendance and medicine supplied. This led to an explicit disavowal, so far as regards the sick paupers, of any application to them of the principle of making the pauper's condition less eligible than that of the lowest grade of independent labourers. It is noteworthy that this new departure applied to outdoor medical relief quite as much as to institutional medical treatment, in which it has subsequently been sometimes excused on the ground that the superior treatment is accompanied by a loss of liberty. The new departure took three directions. It was definitely laid down that the medical attendance afforded to the outdoor paupers was to be of good quality, and thus necessarily above that obtained by the poorest independent labourer, or even by "the poor" generally. This was the outcome of a long campaign on behalf of the poorer members of the medical profession, of which Wakley was the leader in the House of Commons, and the _Lancet_ the efficient organ.[375] In 1853 the Poor Law Board considered that the qualifications of the Poor Law medical officers "ought to be such as to ensure _for the poor_ a degree of skill in their medical attendants equal to that which can be commanded by the more fortunate classes of the community."[376] On the suggestion of the House of Commons Committee on Poor Relief[377] it was authoritatively enjoined on boards of guardians in 1865 by a special circular that they were to supply freely quinine, cod-liver oil, and "other expensive medicines" to the sick poor;[378] although it must have been plain that such things were beyond the reach of the independent labourers consulting the "sixpenny doctor," and even beyond the usual resources of the provident dispensaries of the period.[379] Finally, in 1867, the Metropolitan Poor Act authorised the establishment throughout London of Poor Law dispensaries. These institutions were consistently pressed on the Metropolitan boards of guardians by the Central Authority, as having been successful in Ireland in reducing the amount of sickness among the poor, and as ensuring, not only regular and more successful medical attention, but also a sufficient supply of medicines and medical appliances of standard quality.[380] By this elaborate systematisation of outdoor medical relief, the Central Authority not only put within the reach of the sick paupers medical attendance far superior to that accessible to the lowest grade of independent labourers, but even placed the sick pauper in the Metropolis, without loss of liberty, in a position equal to that of the superior artisan subscribing to a good provident dispensary.

[375] _See_, for instance, _The Administration of Medical Relief to the Poor--Reports by the Poor Law Committee of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association_, 1842; _Life and Times of Thomas Wakley_, by S. Squire Sprigge, 1897.

[376] Mr. Baines (President of the Poor Law Board), 12th July 1853; _Hansard_, vol. 129, p. 138.

[377] Sixteenth Annual Report, 1863-4, p. 108.

[378] Circular of 12th April 1865, in Eighteenth Annual Report, 1865-6, pp. 23-24.

[379] Some boards of guardians rebelled in this connection against a departure from the principle of "less eligibility" that they did not understand. When the circular of the Central Authority inviting compliance with the recommendation of the House of Commons Committee reached the Manchester Board of Guardians, it was referred to a committee. When the committee, after eighteen months' delay, recommended compliance, its report was rejected (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 20th April 1865, and 25th October 1866).

[380] Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xliv-lii.

The most remarkable change of front was, however, that relating to the institutional treatment of the sick. Down to 1847, it is not too much to say that "what may be called the hospital branch of Poor Law administration"[381] was ignored alike by Parliament, public opinion, and the Central Authority. We have shown that the institutional provision for the sick was not so much as mentioned in the Report of 1834, and that it remained practically ignored in all the Orders, Circulars, and Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners. The same is true of the first eighteen years of the Poor Law Board. Few and far between are the incidental references to the "sick wards" of the workhouses. There is not even a hint of a suggestion that relief to the sick poor could most advantageously take the form of an offer of "the House." On the contrary, it was held in 1848 that applicants for admission suffering from "fever" might even be refused admission, the relieving officer being enjoined to find lodging elsewhere for them,[382] though how this was to be done the Central Authority did not, in 1848, say. In 1857, the Metropolitan Boards of Guardians were recommended to send such cases to the London Fever Hospital[383] (involving a payment by the guardians of 7s. weekly). Finally, in 1864-5, we have an outburst of public indignation, at the condition into which the sick wards of the workhouses had been allowed to drift. The death of a pauper in Holborn workhouse, and of another in St. Giles's workhouse, under conditions which seemed to point to inhumanity and neglect, led to an enquiry by three doctors (Anstie, Carr, and Ernest Hart), commissioned by the _Lancet_ newspaper, the formation of an "Association for improving the condition of the sick poor," and a deputation to the Poor Law Board.[384] The publication of various reports on the workhouse infirmaries, in which terrible deficiencies were revealed,[385] led to public discussion and Parliamentary debates. The Central Authority at once accepted the new standpoint. It made no attempt to resist the provision of the necessarily costly institutional treatment for the sick poor, whether or not their ailments were infectious or otherwise dangerous to the public. The progressive improvement of "the hospital branch of Poor Law administration," to use the phrase of the Central Authority itself, which had in the preceding thirty years grown up unawares, was now definitely accepted as an important feature of its policy. Statutory powers were obtained for the provision of hospitals in the Metropolis by combinations of boards of guardians. Urgent letters were written pressing the boards of guardians to embark on the expenditure required to enable them to provide efficiently for the sick paupers.[386] From 1865 onward, we see the Central Authority, on the public-spirited initiative of Mr. W. Rathbone and the Liverpool Select Vestry, pressing on the boards of guardians the employment of salaried and qualified nurses to attend to the sick paupers, whatever their complaints.[387] We have even in 1867, so far as the sick are concerned, the explicit disavowal by the Central Authority of the very idea of the deterrent workhouse, which had formed so prominent a part of the policy of 1834-1847. Mr. Gathorne Hardy, speaking as President of the Poor Law Board, said "there is one thing ... which we must peremptorily insist on, namely, the treatment of the sick in the infirmaries being conducted on an entirely separate system, because the evils complained of have mainly arisen from the workhouse management--which must to a great degree be of a deterrent character--having been applied to the sick, _who are not proper objects for such a system_."[388]

[381] _Ibid._ p. x.

[382] _Official Circular_, Nos. 14 and 15, N.S., April and May 1848, p. 237.

[383] Circular of 1st August 1857, in Tenth Annual Report, 1857, p. 37. The Central Authority did not, prior to 1867, face the responsibility of deciding to require boards of guardians to provide hospital accommodation even for infectious diseases. In 1863, indeed, under fear of small-pox, it got so far as to transmit to Metropolitan boards of guardians an alarmist letter by Dr. Buchanan, and to permit the taking of temporary premises for "the destitute poor attacked by contagious or infectious disease" (Circular of 30th April 1863, in Fifteenth Annual Report, 1862-3, pp. 37-9). We believe that practically nothing was done upon this. In 1866, when cholera was imminent, another Circular was sent which, significantly enough, makes no mention of temporary hospitals, but points to an increase of the outdoor medical relief, disinfectants, sustenance and clothing to meet the "great increase of destitution" to be apprehended. "As far as practicable ... the admission of cholera patients into the workhouse should be prevented" (Circular of 27th July 1866, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1866-7, pp. 39-40).

[384] _See_ for all this the Eighteenth Annual Report, 1865-6, pp. 15-16; Nineteenth Annual Report, 1866-7, pp. 15-18, 39; Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, pp. 25-28; Report of Dr. E. Smith on Metropolitan Workhouse Infirmaries and Sick Wards, in House of Commons, No. 372 of 1866; _The Condition of the Sick in London Workhouse Infirmaries_ (Association for the Improvement of the London Workhouse Infirmaries, 1867); _Opinions of the Press upon the Conditions of the Sick Poor in London Workhouses_ (_ibid._ 1867); _The Management of the Infirmaries of the Strand Union, the Rotherhithe and the Paddington Workhouses_ (1867?).

[385] The provincial newspapers took up the work that the _Lancet_ had begun. On 31st January 1865, a long report appeared in the _Manchester Examiner_ revealing serious deficiencies in the Manchester Workhouse sick wards.

[386] Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, pp. 17-21. This new departure of the Central Authority was long strenuously resisted by many of the boards of guardians who prided themselves on the purity of their Poor Law policy. Thus, the published complaints of the Manchester Workhouse Infirmary led to an inquiry by the inspector, who made various suggestions for improvement. The board of guardians, on the advice of their own medical officer, held that the existing conditions were sufficiently satisfactory. Finally, after fifteen months, the Central Authority censured the master, asked for more nurses and (while avoiding any censure of the guardians for their past policy) practically invited them to adopt the new standpoint (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 1st February 1865; 22nd February and 3rd May 1866). Two years later, Manchester was still objecting. When a conference of important North Country boards of guardians in 1862 (W. Rathbone presiding) had recommended a national grant-in-aid to improve the "pauper hospitals," the Manchester Board of Guardians formally dissented (though now only by a majority of one), protesting: "That the much higher system of medical treatment and nursing and the other advantages sought to be introduced into workhouse hospitals by the proposed measures would tend to discourage the provident habits and self-reliance of the industrious poor by providing for them therein far better accommodation and treatment than they can usually secure for themselves in cases of sickness" (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 20th February 1868).

[387] Circular of 5th May 1865; Eighteenth Annual Report, 1865-6, pp. 16, 24-5, 62-8; _Nurses in Workhouses and Workhouse Infirmaries_, by Miss Wilson, 1890.

[388] _Hansard_, 8th February 1867, vol. 185, p. 163.

At first the new policy of the Central Authority for the institutional treatment of the sick took the form of the erection of special hospitals by "Sick Asylum Districts."[389] Presently, however, it came to the conclusion that this involved an unnecessary expense, and that it would be cheaper to revert to the idea of the Report of 1834, and use the existing workhouse buildings by a system of classification by institutions.[390] So definitely was this recognised as a reversion to 1834 that the Central Authority actually quoted the passage of the 1834 Report in justification of its plan.[391] From this point may be dated the adoption of the policy of the provision, in connection with the workhouse, but practically as a separate institution, of what is now called the Poor Law Infirmary.[392] In 1870 the Central Authority took pains to collect special statistics as to the extent to which this recently developed provision for the sick was being taken advantage of. It observes (and, significantly enough, without expression of disapproval) that "the numbers on the lists of relieving officers may be swollen by poor persons who in previous years, though really poor, refrained from coming on the rates, but whom changes in the law or in the mode of its administration have since attracted."[393] "Workhouses," it notes, "originally designed mainly as a test for the able-bodied, have, especially in the large towns, been _of necessity_ gradually transformed in to infirmaries for the sick. The higher standard for hospital accommodation has had a material effect upon the expenditure. So again it has been considered necessary to attach to workhouses separate fever wards; and wherever it was possible, these wards have been isolated by the erection of a separate building."[394] The extent to which the Poor Law had become the public doctor was indeed remarkable. The number of persons on outdoor relief who were "actually sick," apart from mere old age infirmity, and without their families, was found to be 13 per cent of the whole, equal to about 119,000. The number in the workhouses who were "actually sick," irrespective of "the vast number of old people disabled by old age, but not actually upon the sick list," varied in different unions from 14 to 39 per cent in the provinces, and up to nearly 50 per cent in some Metropolitan Unions; amounting, for the whole country, to about 60,000 actual sick-bed cases.[395] Taking indoor and outdoor patients together, the total simultaneously under medical treatment in the twelfth week of the half-year ending Lady Day 1870, was estimated at 173,000, being three quarters of one per cent of the population, and perhaps one out of four of all the persons under medical treatment in the whole population. The story from this date is one continuous record, on the one hand of an ever-increasing number of patients treated, and, on the other, of never slackening pressure by the Central Authority to induce apathetic or parsimonious boards of guardians to expend money in making both the outdoor medical service and the workhouse infirmaries as efficient and as well adapted and as well equipped for the alleviation and cure of their patients--without the least notion of "the principle of less eligibility"--as the most scientifically efficient hospitals and State medical service in any part of the world. After 1867, indeed, there was developed, for the Metropolitan paupers suffering from infectious diseases, the splendid hospital system of the Metropolitan Asylums Board.[396] At the very end of the existence of the Poor Law Board, Mr. Goschen seems almost to have been contemplating a yet further extension. "The economical and social advantages," he observed, "of _free medicine to the poorer classes generally as distinguished from actual paupers, and perfect accessibility to medical advice at all times under thorough organisation_, may be considered as so important in themselves as to render it necessary to weigh with the greatest care all the reasons which may be adduced in their favour."[397]

[389] _See_, for instance, the Special Orders for the Poplar and Stepney Sick Asylum District, 23rd April and 16th May 1868, and 7th March 1871; and that for the Central London Sick Asylum District of 2nd May 1868.

[390] Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 16-18; Circular of 30th October 1869; Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xxxvii-xli.

[391] The "policy of providing workhouses for separate classes of the poor was fully recognised by the Commissioners of Inquiry into the operation of the Poor Law in 1834, who in their Report recommended 'that the Central Board should be empowered to cause any number of parishes to be incorporated for the purpose of workhouse management, and for providing new workhouses where necessary, and to assign to those workhouses separate classes of poor though composed of the poor of distinct parishes.' And in another part of the same Report they say that it appears to them 'that both the requisite classification and the requisite superintendence may be better obtained in separate buildings than under a single roof. Each class then might receive an appropriate treatment; the old might enjoy their indulgences without torment from the boisterous, the children be educated, and the able-bodied subjected to such courses of labour and of discipline as will repel the idle and vicious'" (Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 16-17).

[392] For a Special Order for such an Infirmary, _see_ that of 27th June 1871.

[393] Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, p. xi.

[394] _Ibid._ p. x.

[395] _See_ the statistical inquiries summarised in the Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xxiv-xxviii; House of Commons, No. 312 of 1865; No. 372 of 1866; No. 4 of 1867-8; No. 445 of 1868; House of Lords, No. 216 of 1866.

[396] _See_ the Special Orders of 15th May, 18th June, and 17th July 1867; and 23rd December 1870.

[397] Twenty-second Annual Report of Poor Law Board (G. S. Goschen, president), 1869-70, p. lii. Already in 1846 and again in 1853 the Central Authority had expressed its "decided opinion ... that money judiciously expended ... in the improvement of the sanitary condition of the poorer classes, and in the prevention or removal of causes of disease, has a direct tendency to diminish or prevent future destitution and pauperism; and will thus be found to be most profitably expended, even in reference to the more direct object of the duties of the guardians" (Circular of 21st September 1853; in Sixth Annual Report, 1853, p. 36).

_F._--_Persons of Unsound Mind_

It is difficult to discover what was the policy of the Central Authority during this period with regard to lunatics, idiots, and the mentally defective. Lunacy had always been, and remained, a ground of exception from the prohibition to grant outdoor relief. The provision of a lodging for a lunatic was, moreover, an exception to the prohibition of the payment of rent for a pauper. As a result of these exceptions, there were on 1st January 1852, 4107 lunatics and idiots on outdoor relief,[398] and this number had increased by 1859 to 4892[399] and by 1870 to 6199.[400] The Central Authority took no steps to require or persuade boards of guardians not to grant outdoor relief to lunatics, nor yet to get any appropriate provision made for them in the great general workhouses on which it had insisted. Parliament in 1862 (in order to relieve the pressure on lunatic asylums) expressly authorised arrangements to be made for chronic lunatics to be permanently maintained in workhouses, under elaborate provisions for their proper care.[401] These arrangements would have amounted, in fact, to the creation, within the workhouse, of wards which were to be in every respect as well equipped, as highly staffed, and as liberally supplied as a regular lunatic asylum.[402] The Central Authority transmitted the Act to the boards of guardians, observing, with what almost seems like sarcasm, that it was not "aware of any workhouse in which any such arrangements could conveniently be made";[403] and the provisions of this Act were, we believe, never acted upon. Whilst consistently objecting to the retention in workhouses of lunatics who were dangerous, or who were deemed curable, we do not find that the Central Authority ever insisted on there being a proper lunatic ward for the persons of unsound mind who were necessarily received, for a longer or shorter period, in every workhouse.[404] Moreover, the Central Authority took no steps to get such persons removed to lunatic asylums. In 1845 it had agreed with the Manchester Board of Guardians (who did not want to make any more use of the county asylum than they could help) that they were justified in retaining in the workhouse any lunatics whom their own medical officer did not consider "proper to be confined" in a lunatic asylum.[405] In 1849 it expressly laid it down that a weak-minded pauper or, as we now say, a mentally defective, must either be a lunatic, and be certified and treated as such, or not a lunatic, in which case no special treatment could be provided for him or her in the one general workhouse to which the Central Authority still adhered.[406] We can find no indication of policy as to whether it was recommended that such mentally defectives should be granted outdoor relief, or (as one can scarcely believe) required to inhabit a workhouse which made no provision for them.[407]

[398] Fifth Annual Report, 1852, pp. 7, 152.

[399] Twelfth Annual Report, 1859-60, p. 17.

[400] Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-71, p. xxiii.

[401] 25 & 26 Vic. c. 111, secs. 8, 20, 31 (Lunacy Acts Amendment Act, 1862).

[402] Sixteenth Annual Report, 1863-4, pp. 21, 38-9.

[403] Circular of 15th December 1862, in Fifteenth Annual Report, 1862-3, pp. 35-7.

[404] On 1st January 1859, the number of persons of unsound mind in the workhouses was 7963 (Twelfth Annual Report, 1859-60, p. 17). This had risen by 1870 to 11,243 (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-71, p. xxiii).

[405] Poor Law Commissioners, 24th December 1845; in MS. records, Manchester Board of Guardians.

[406] _Official Circular_, No. 25, N.S., May 1849, pp. 70-1.

[407] In 1868 visiting committees were recommended to see that weak-minded inmates were not entrusted with the care of young children (Circular of 6th July 1868 in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, p. 53).

The explanation of this paralysis of the Central Authority, as regards the policy to be pursued with persons of unsound mind, is to be found, we believe, in the existence and growth during this period of the rival authority of the Lunacy Commissioners, who had authority over all persons of unsound mind, whether paupers or not. The Lunacy Commissioners had not habitually in their minds the principle of "less eligibility"; and they were already, between 1848 and 1871, making requirements with regard to the accommodation and treatment of pauper lunatics that the Poor Law authorities regarded as preposterously extravagant. The records of the boards of guardians show visits of the inspectors of the Lunacy Commissioners, and their perpetual complaints of the presence of lunatics and idiots in the workhouses without proper accommodation; mixed up with the sane inmates to the great discomfort of both;[408] living in rooms which the Lunacy Commissioners considered too low and unventilated, with yards too small and depressing, amid too much confusion and disorder, for the section of the paupers for whom they were responsible.[409] Such reports, officially communicated to the Poor Law Board, seem to have been merely forwarded for the consideration of the board of guardians concerned. But other action was not altogether wanting. Under pressure from the Lunacy Commissioners, the Central Authority asked, in 1857, for more care in the conveyance of lunatics;[410] urged, in 1863, a more liberal dietary for lunatics in workhouses;[411] in 1867 it reminded the boards of guardians that lunatics required much food, especially milk and meat;[412] it was thought "very desirable that the insane inmates ... should have the opportunity of taking exercise";[413] it concurred "with the Visiting Commissioner in deeming it desirable that a competent paid nurse should be appointed for the lunatic ward," in a certain workhouse;[414] it suggested the provision of leaning chairs in another workhouse;[415] and, in yet another, the desirability of not excluding the persons of unsound mind from religious services.[416] In 1870 it issued a circular, transmitting the rules made by the Lunacy Commissioners as to the method of bathing lunatics, for the careful consideration of the boards of guardians.[417] But we do not find that the Central Authority issued any Order amending the General Consolidated Order of 1847, which, it will be remembered, did not include among its categories for classification either lunatics, idiots, or the mentally defective; and the Central Authority did not require any special provision to be made for them.

[408] MS. Minutes, Plymouth Board of Guardians, 28th January 1846.

[409] _Ibid._ 5th November 1847. Some of the rooms were only 3-1/4 feet long and 7 feet wide, in fact, mere cupboards, which the Lunacy Commissioners said were unfit for any one. Yet nothing was done, and the "rooms" were still occupied in 1854 when the district auditor mildly commented on the fact (Letter Book, Plymouth Board of Guardians, August 1854).

[410] Circular of 27th February 1857, in Tenth Annual Report, 1857, p. 34.

[411] House of Commons, No. 50, Session 1 of 1867, p. 247.

[412] Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, p. 60.

[413] House of Commons, No. 50, Session 1 of 1867, p. 444.

[414] _Ibid._ p. 426.

[415] _Ibid._ p. 407.

[416] _Ibid._ p. 114.

[417] Circular of 21st March 1870, in Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-71, p. 3.

The policy of the Lunacy Commissioners was to get provision made in every county for all the persons of unsound mind, whatever their means, in specially organised lunatic asylums in which the best possible arrangements should be made for their treatment and cure irrespective of cost, and altogether regardless of making the condition of the pauper lunatic less eligible than that of the poorest independent labourer. Unlike the provision for education, and that for infectious disease, the cost of this national (and as we may say communistic) provision for lunatics was a charge upon the poor rate. Under the older statutes, the expense of maintaining the inmates of the county lunatic asylums was charged to the Poor Law authorities of the parishes in which they were respectively settled; and the boards of guardians were entitled to recover it, or part of it, from any relatives liable to maintain such paupers, even in cases in which the removal to the asylum was compulsory and insisted on in the public interest.[418] The great cost to the poor rate of lunatics sent to the county lunatic asylums, and the difficulty of recovering the amount from their relatives, prevented the whole-hearted adoption, either by the boards of guardians, or the Central Authority, of the policy of insisting on the removal of persons of unsound mind to the county asylums. For the imbeciles and idiots of the Metropolitan Unions, provision was made after 1867 in the asylums of the Metropolitan Asylums Board.[419] But no analogous provision for those of other unions was made. The result was that, amid a great increase of pauper lunacy, the proportion of the paupers of unsound mind who were in lunatic asylums did not increase.[420] On the other hand the indisposition of the Central Authority to so amend the General Consolidated Order of 1847 as to put lunatics in a separate category, and require suitable accommodation and treatment for them--an indisposition perhaps strengthened by the very high requirements on which the Lunacy Commissioners would have insisted--stood in the way of any candid recognition of the fact that for thousands of lunatics, idiots, and mentally defectives, the workhouse had, without suitable provision for them, and often to the unspeakable discomfort of the other inmates, become a permanent home.

[418] There had apparently been a doubt as to whether a husband was legally bound to contribute towards the maintenance of a wife who had been removed under legal authority to a lunatic asylum. In 1850 the Central Authority got an Act passed to require him to pay (13 and 14 Vic. c. 101, sec. 4) on the ground that "great hardship has been frequently occasioned to parishes, who have been burthened with the heavy expense of such maintenance without the means of recovering from the husband even a partial reimbursement" (Third Annual Report, 1850, p. 16).

[419] Special Orders of 18th June 1867, 6th October 1870, 23rd December 1870, 17th June 1871, etc. It may be noted that in 1862 the Guardians of St. George's, Southwark, provided a separate establishment at Mitcham for their idiotic and imbecile paupers, which was regulated by Special Order of 30th April 1862.

[420] On 1st January 1852, the number in the county or borough asylums was 9412, and in licensed houses 2584; making a total of 11,996 out of 21,158 paupers of unsound mind (Fifth Annual Report, 1852, p. 152). On 1st January 1870, the number in asylums had risen to 26,634, and that in licensed houses had fallen to 1589, making a total of 28,223 out of 46,548 paupers of unsound mind (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-71, p. xxiii).

_G._--_Defectives_

During this period, the blind, the deaf and dumb, and the lame and deformed were increasingly recognised by Parliament as classes for whom the Poor Law authorities might, if they chose, provide expensive treatment. This was done by authorising boards of guardians, if they chose, to pay for their maintenance, whether children or adults, in special institutions.[421] We do not find that the Central Authority suggested the adoption of this or any other policy or gave any lead to the boards of guardians with regard to these cases.[422]

[421] 25 & 26 Vic. c. 43, sec. 10 (Poor Law Certified Schools Act of 1862); 30 & 31 Vic. c. 106, sec. 21 (1867); 31 & 32 Vic. c. 122, sec. 42 (1868).

[422] In 1849 the expenses of conveying a blind pauper to hospital were allowed to be paid under the head of non-resident relief in case of sickness (_Official Circular_, No. 24, N.S., April 1849, p. 64).

_H._--_The Aged and Infirm_

We have shown that neither the Report of 1834 nor the Central Authority between 1834 and 1847 even suggested any departure from the common practice of granting outdoor relief to the aged and infirm. This continued, so far as the official documents show, to be the policy of the Central Authority during the whole of the period 1847-1871.[423] The only two references to the subject in the Orders and Circulars of this period assume that the aged and infirm will normally be relieved in their own homes. Thus, in 1852, in commenting on the provision requiring the weekly payment of relief, the Central Authority said, "as to the cases in which the pauper is too infirm to come every week for the relief, it is on many accounts advantageous that the relieving officer should, as far as possible, himself visit the pauper, and give the relief at least weekly."[424] And in the first edition of the Out-relief Regulation Order of 1852 (that of 25th August 1852) the Central Authority, far from prohibiting outdoor relief to persons "indigent and helpless from age, sickness, accident, or bodily or mental infirmity," formally sanctioned this practice, by ordering that "one third at least of such relief" should be given in kind (viz., "in articles of food or fuel, or in other articles of absolute necessity"),[425] the object being expressly explained to be, not, as might nowadays have been imagined, the discouragement of such relief, but the prevention of its misappropriation.[426] This provision was objected to by boards of guardians up and down the country, on the ground that it would be a hardship to the aged and infirm poor. The Poplar Board of Guardians, for instance, stated "that there are a large number of persons under the denomination of aged and infirm whom the guardians have, in their long practical experience, found it expedient and not objectionable to relieve wholly in money, feeling assured that it would be beneficially expended for their use, and that in consequence of their infirmity the relieving officer or his assistant, if necessary, is thereby enabled to conveniently relieve them at their own house."[427] The Norwich Guardians stated that it would be difficult "to determine (especially for the aged and sick poor) what kind of food or articles should be given." They also communicated with forty other unions, summoning them to concerted resistance.[428] A deputation "from most of the large and populous unions in the north of England ... and from several Metropolitan parishes, representing in the aggregate upwards of 2,000,000 of population,"[429] assembled in London, and objected to nearly all the provisions of the Order.

[423] For instance, in 1861, the Central Authority, in reply to a request from the Guardians of St. James's, Westminster, recommended the application of the workhouse test for the able-bodied males, but as regards the aged and infirm, warmly approved the policy of the guardians, to "cheerfully supply all that their necessities and infirmities require" (Poor Law Board, 19th January 1861, in Thirteenth Annual Report, 1860-1, p. 36).

[424] Letter to Board of Guardians, Barnsley Union, 26th October 1852, in House of Commons, No. 111 of 1852-3, p. 17.

[425] General Order of 25th August 1852, art. 1 (in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, p. 17).

[426] Circular of 25th August 1852, in Fifth Annual Report 1853, p. 22.

[427] MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 18th October 1852.

[428] _Ibid._ Norwich Board of Guardians, 5th October 1852.

[429] _Ibid._ 7th December 1852.

Accompanied by about twenty-five members of Parliament, the deputation waited on the Poor Law Board, and specially urged their objection to being compelled to give a third of all outdoor relief in kind. After two hours' argumentative discussion, Sir John Trollope said that the board would reconsider the whole Order, which need not in the meantime be acted upon; and he hinted at a probable modification of the Article relating to relief in kind.[430] In response to these objections, the Central Authority does not seem even to have suggested that outdoor relief to the aged and infirm was contrary to its principles. It first intimated its willingness to modify the Order if its working proved to be "accompanied with hardship to the aged or helpless poor"[431] and then within a few weeks withdrew the provision altogether as regards any but the able-bodied.[432] It was expressly explained that the Order, as re-issued, was intended as a precaution "against the injurious consequences of maintaining out of the poor rate _able-bodied labourers and their families_ in a state of idleness," and that the Central Authority left to the boards of guardians "full discretion as to the description of relief to be given to indigent poor of every other class."[433] From that date down to the abolition of the Poor Law Board in 1871, we can find in the documents no hint or suggestion that it disapproved of outdoor relief to the aged and infirm. On 1st January 1871, nearly half the outdoor relief was due to this cause.[434]

[430] _Ibid._; also Circular of 14th December 1852, in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, pp. 28-31. The Salford Union took part in a meeting of Lancashire Guardians on the subject (Salford Union to Poor Law Board, 26th October 1855, in Eighth Annual Report, 1855, p. 50).

[431] Letter to Board of Guardians, Ashton-under-Lyne Union, 8th October 1852; in House of Commons, No. 111 of 1852-3, p. 14.

[432] General Order, 14th December 1852, and Circular of same date, in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, pp. 24, 29.

[433] Circular of 14th December 1852, in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, p. 29.

[434] Out of a total of outdoor paupers on 1st January 1871 (exclusive of vagrants and the insane) of 880,709, the destitution was "caused by old age or permanent disability" in the case of 423,206, viz. 117,681 men, 265,638 women, and 39,887 children dependent on them (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, p. 378).

_I._--_Non-Residents_

There was no change in the policy of preventing relief to paupers not resident within the union. The Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of 1852 embodied the prohibition with the same exceptions as had been contained in the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844, omitting, however, that of widows without children during the first six months of their widowhood. But, as has been already mentioned, at the very end of the period the Boarding-Out Orders of 1869, etc., permitted children to be maintained outside the union.

_J._--_The Workhouse_

We have seen that between 1834 and 1847 the Central Authority turned directly away from the express recommendations of the 1834 Report with regard to the institutional accommodation of the paupers. Instead of a series of separate institutions appropriately organised and equipped for the several classes of the pauper population--the aged and infirm, the children, and the adult able-bodied--the Central Authority had got established, in nearly every union, one general workhouse; nearly everywhere "the same cheap, homely building," with one common regimen, under one management, for all classes of paupers.

The justification for the policy which, as we have seen, Sir Francis Head induced the Central Authority to substitute for the recommendations of the 1834 Report, may have been his confident expectation, in 1835, that the use of the workhouse was only to serve as a "test," which the applicants would not pass, and that there was accordingly no need to regard the workhouse building as a continuing home.[435] This was the view taken by Harriet Martineau, who, in her _Poor Law Tales_, describes the overseer of the de-pauperised parish as locking the door of the empty workhouse when it had completely fulfilled its purpose of a test by having made all the applicants prefer and contrive to be independent of poor relief. By 1847, however, it must have been clear that, even in the most strictly administered parishes, under the most rigid application of the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, there would be permanently residing in the workhouse a motley crowd of the aged and infirm unable to live independently; the destitute chronic sick in like case; the orphans and foundlings; such afflicted persons as the village idiot, the senile imbecile, the deaf and dumb, and what we now call the mentally defective; together with a perpetually floating population of acutely sick persons of all ages; vagrants; girls with illegitimate babies; wives whose husbands had deserted them, or were in prison, in hospital, or in the Army or Navy; widows beyond the first months of their widowhood and other women unable to earn a livelihood; all sorts of "ins and outs"; and the children dragging at the skirts of all these classes. The workhouse population in 590 unions of England and Wales on 1st January 1849, was, in fact, 121,331.[436] The condition of these workhouse inmates, and the character of the regimen to which they were subjected, had been brought to public notice in 1847 in the notorious Andover case. The insanitary condition of the workhouses of the period as places of residence, and, in particular, their excessive death-rate, was repeatedly brought to notice not only by irresponsible agitators, but also by such competent statistical and medical critics as McCulloch and Wakley.[437] But the very idea of the general workhouse was now subjected to severe criticism. "During the last ten years," said the author of an able book in 1852, "I have visited many prisons and lunatic asylums, not only in England, but in France and Germany. A single English workhouse contains more that justly calls for condemnation in the principle on which it is established than is found in the very worst prisons or public lunatic asylums that I have seen. The workhouse as now organised is a reproach and disgrace peculiar to England; nothing corresponding to it is found throughout the whole continent of Europe. In France the medical patients of our workhouses would be found in 'hopitaux'; the infirm aged poor would be in hospices; and the blind, the idiot, the lunatic, the bastard child and the vagrant would similarly be placed each in an appropriate but separate establishment. With us a common _Malebolge_ is provided for them all; and in some parts of the country the confusion is worse confounded by the effect of Prohibitory Orders, which, enforcing the application of the notable workhouse-test, drive into the same common sink of so many kinds of vice and misfortune the poor man whose only crime is his poverty, and whose want of work alone makes him chargeable. Each of the buildings which we so absurdly call a workhouse is, in truth (1) a general hospital; (2) an almshouse; (3) a foundling house; (4) a lying-in hospital; (5) a school house; (6) a lunatic asylum; (7) an idiot house; (8) a blind asylum; (9) a deaf and dumb asylum; (10) a workhouse; but this part of the establishment is generally a _lucus a non lucendo_, omitting to find work even for able-bodied paupers. Such and so varied are the destinations of these common receptacles of sin and misfortune, of sorrow and suffering of the most different kinds, each tending to aggravate the others with which it is unnecessarily and injuriously brought into contact. It is at once equally shocking to every principle of reason and every feeling of humanity, that all these varied forms of wretchedness should be thus crowded together into one common abode, that no attempt should be made by law to classify them, and to provide appropriate places for the relief of each."[438]

[435] It must be remembered that, as already mentioned, it was no part of the policy of the Central Authority to relieve in the workhouse any of the aged and infirm or of the sick who preferred to remain outside, and who were (so far as the published documents show) to continue to receive outdoor relief.

[436] Second Annual Report, 1849, p. 159.

[437] _Life and Times of Thomas Wakley_, by S. Squire Sprigge, 1897. _See_, for a contemporary indictment, _The Russell Predictions on the Working Classes, the National Debt and the New Poor Law Dissected_, by John Bowen, 1850.

[438] _Pauperism and Poor Laws_, by Robert Pashley, Q.C., 1852, pp. 364-5.

During the period now under review, 1847-71, we see the Central Authority becoming gradually alive to the drawbacks of this mixture of classes. At first its remedy seems to have been to take particular classes out of the workhouse. We have already described the constant attempts, made from the very establishment of the Poor Law Board, to have the children removed to separate institutions and to get the vagrants segregated into distinct casual wards. It was the resistance and apathy of the boards of guardians that prevented these attempts being particularly successful,[439] and the Central Authority appears not to have felt able to issue peremptory orders on the subject. The policy of the Lunacy Commissioners drew many lunatics out of the workhouses, but this was more than made up by the increasing tendency to seclude the village idiot, so that the workhouse population of unsound mind actually increased.

[439] On 1st January 1871 we estimate that of the 55,832 children on indoor relief, only 4979 were in district schools, and some 9000 in union boarding schools, leaving about 40,000 living in the workhouses.

We do not find that there was during the whole period any alteration of the General Consolidated Order of 1847, upon which the regimen of the workhouse depended. In spite of the increasing number of the sick and the persons of unsound mind, the seven classes of workhouse inmates determined by that Order were adhered to, and received no addition, though the Poor Law Board favoured the sub-division of these classes so far as it was reasonably possible in the existing buildings, especially in the case of women. In a letter of 1854[440] it lamented the evil which arose "from the association of girls, when removed from workhouse union schools, with women of bad character in the able-bodied women's ward," and wished that it could be prevented. At the same time it stated that in the smaller workhouses it was "often impracticable to provide the accommodation" which would be necessary in order to maintain a complete separation; and while pointing out that it was legally competent for the guardians (with its approval) to erect extra accommodation, by means of which this contamination could be avoided, the Central Authority did not even remotely suggest that it was the guardians' duty so to do. By 1860 it "had given instructions that every new workhouse should be so constructed as to allow of the requisite classification."[441]

[440] Regulations relating to the Classification of Workhouse Inmates, in House of Commons, No. 485 of 1854.

[441] Mr. C. P. Villiers, _Hansard_, 4th May 1860, vol. clviii. p. 694.

From about 1865 onwards we note a new spirit in all the circulars and letters relating to the workhouse. The public scandal caused by the _Lancet_ inquiry into the conditions of the sick poor in the workhouses, and the official reports and Parliamentary discussions that ensued, seem to have enabled the Central Authority to take up a new attitude with regard both to workhouse construction and workhouse regimen. From this time forth the workhouse is recognised as being, not merely a "test of destitution" for the able-bodied, which they were not expected long to endure, but also the continuing home of large classes of helpless and not otherwise than innocent persons. "Able-bodied people," reported the Medical Officer in 1867, "are now scarcely at all found in them during the greater part of the year.... Those who enjoy the advantages of these institutions are almost solely such as may fittingly receive them, viz. the aged and infirm, the destitute sick and children. Workhouses are now asylums and infirmaries."[442]

[442] Dr. E. Smith, Medical Officer to Poor Law Board, in Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, p. 43.

From now onwards we see the Central Authority always striving to improve the workhouse. In the Circulars of 1868 much attention was paid to the sufficiency of space and ventilation. It was required that parallel blocks of building should be so far apart as to allow free access to light and air; blocks connected at a right or acute angle were to be avoided.

Ordinary wards were to be at least ten feet high and eighteen feet wide, the length depending on the number of inmates; 300 cubic feet of space were required for each healthy person in a dormitory, 500 for infirm persons able to leave the dormitory during the day, and 700 in a day and night room.[443] The Visiting Committee was to "ascertain not merely whether the total number for which the workhouse is certified has been exceeded, but whether the number of any one class exceeds the accommodation available for it."[444] No wards were to be placed side by side without a corridor between them; the corridors were to be six feet wide, and ordinary dormitories were to have windows into them. Windows and fanlights into internal spaces were to be made to open to be used as ventilators, and ventilation was also to be "effected by special means, apart from the usual means of doors, windows, and fire-places," air-bricks being recommended as a simple method.[445] No rooms occupied by the inmates as sleeping-rooms were to be on the boundary of the workhouse site. Hot and cold water was to be distributed to the bath-rooms and sick wards. Airing yards for the inmates were to be "of sufficient size"--with a rider that "if partially or wholly paved with stone or brick or asphalted or gas-tarred they are often better than if covered with gravel."[446] Yards for the children, sick, and aged were to be enclosed with dwarf walls and palisades where practicable, presumably with the object of giving a look-out, and making the yard slightly less prison-like.[447] "Small yards, and a work-room, and a covered shed for working in in bad weather," were to be provided for vagrants.[448] For workhouses having a large number of children the Poor Law Board recommended, "in addition to the school-rooms, day-rooms, covered play-sheds in their yards, and industrial work-rooms."[449] The staircases were to be of stone; the timber, Baltic fir and English oak; fire escapes were to be provided; these and many other details were laid down, all tending to make the building solid and capacious.[450] There was no mention of ornament, no regard to appearance, no hint that anything might be done to relieve the dead ugliness of the place; but it must be recognised that the Central Authority had, by 1868, travelled far from the "low, cheap, homely building" which it was recommending thirty years before.[451]

[443] Circular of 15th June 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 48-9; Circular of 29th September 1870, in Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, p. 9. This was the more important as Dr. Smith held that "_during the night at all seasons_, and during a large part of the day in cold and wet weather, the windows cannot be opened with propriety" (Report of Dr. E. Smith on Metropolitan Workhouse Infirmaries and Sick Wards, in House of Commons, No. 372 of 1866, p. 53).

[444] Circular Letter of 6th July 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, p. 55.

[445] Circular of 15th June 1868, in _ibid._ pp. 48-50.

[446] _Ibid._ p. 50.

[447] _Ibid._

[448] _Ibid._ p. 51.

[449] _Ibid._ p. 49.

[450] Circular of 15th June 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, p. 51.

[451] We soon see the effect of this action by the Central Authority in the rapid growth of the capital expenditure of the boards of guardians. The annual reports of the next few years record extensive new buildings. In the thirty-one years down to 1864-5, the total sum authorised for the building, altering, and enlarging of workhouses and schools had reached £6,059,571, or an average of £195,541 a year (Seventeenth Annual Report, 1864-5, pp. 328-9). Within six years this had risen to £8,406,215 (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, pp. 446-53). Of the new capital outlay in these six years of no less than £2,346,644 or £391,108 a year, half had taken place in the Metropolis, and a quarter in Lancashire.

Separate dormitories, day-rooms, and yards (apparently not dining-rooms) were required for the aged, able-bodied, children, and sick of each sex, and these were the only divisions laid down as fundamental, but the Circular went on to recommend provision (1) "so far as practicable for the sub-division of the able-bodied women into two or three classes with reference to moral character, or behaviour, the previous habits of the inmates, or such other grounds as might seem expedient," and (2) "in the larger workhouses" for the separate accommodation of the following classes of sick--

Ordinary sick of both sexes. Lying-in women, with separate labour room. Itch cases of both sexes. Dirty and offensive cases of both sexes. Venereal cases of both sexes. Fever and small-pox cases of both sexes (to be in a separate building with detached rooms). Children (in whose case sex was not mentioned).[452]

[452] Circular of 15th June 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 47-8.

In the furnishing of the wards the simplicity of 1868 was equally far removed from that of 1835. Ordinary dormitories contained beds 2 feet 6 inches wide, chairs, bells, and gas where practicable. Day-rooms were to have an open fireplace, benches, cupboards (or open shelves, which were preferred), tables, gas, combs, and hairbrushes. "A proportion of chairs" were to be provided "for the aged and infirm"; and of the benches, likewise, "those for the aged and infirm should have backs, and be of sufficient width for reasonable comfort." In the dining-rooms were to be benches, tables, a minimum of necessary table utensils, and if possible gas and an open fireplace. The sick wards were to be furnished with more care, and with an eye to medical efficiency. It is unnecessary to go into the long and detailed list of the medical appliances which were required. There is even some notice of appearances in a suggestion that "cheerful-looking rugs" should be placed on the beds, and of comfort in the arm and other chairs "for two-thirds of the number of the sick." There were also to be short benches with backs, and (but these only for special cases) even cushions; rocking-chairs for the lying-in wards, and little armchairs and rocking-chairs for the children's sick wards.[453] Dr. Smith had further recommended a Bible for each inmate, entertaining illustrated and religious periodicals, tracts and books, games, and a foot valance to the bed to "add to the appearance of comfort,"[454] These suggestions were not specifically taken up by the Central Authority, but Dr. Smith's report was circulated to the guardians, without comment.[455] We have the beginning, too, between 1863 and 1867, of the improvement of the food, which was regulated in each workhouse by a separate Special Order, prescribing a dietary, differing widely from union to union.[456] In 1866 the report of the medical officer in favour of skilled cooking, by a professional cook, instead of by a pauper inmate, really hot meals (even to the use of "hot water dishes"), and efficient service, so as to increase the comfort of the inmates, was circulated to the boards of guardians.[457] After many reports and elaborate inquiries, the Central Authority in 1868 issued a Circular of very authoritative suggestions for a general improvement in the workhouse dietaries. After a protest that no cause had been shown for any fundamental change in the principles which had been hitherto recommended, it was urged that there were various points which the guardians should remember in framing dietaries. The first of these points was the addition of several classes who were to have separate dietaries, viz.:--

(_a_) The aged and infirm not on the medical officer's book.

(_b_) Inmates on the medical officer's book for diet only and not on the sick list.

(_c_) Inmates allowed extra diets on account of employment, and those allowed alcohol for the same reason.

(_d_) Children aged nine to sixteen, if the guardians thought they should be separately dieted.

(_e_) Sick diets to be framed by the medical officer as before.

(_f_) Imbeciles and suckling women to be dieted as the aged, "with or without the substitution of milk porridge and bread at breakfast or supper or at both meals."

[453] Circular of 13th June 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 44-6.

[454] Report of Dr. E. Smith on Metropolitan Workhouse Infirmaries and Sick Wards, in House of Commons, No. 372 of 1866, pp. 51-2.

[455] Circular of 20th July 1866, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1866-7, p. 39.

[456] It appears from a Minute of Lord Ebrington that, on entering the Poor Law Board, he was much struck by there being no physiological information available in the office as to the proper amount of food required or as to the physiological equivalents of different foods. The dietaries had apparently all been sanctioned without reference to such an inquiry. He called for a report, and, we believe, had an investigation made by Dr. Lyon (afterwards Lord) Playfair. The Report (signed Thomas Harries, and dated June 1st 1850) reveals the most astounding differences between the amounts of food, the proportions and amounts of nitrogenous materials, and the cost of the dietaries sanctioned for 529 unions. (Eighty-four unions had no dietary sanctioned.) In Berkshire, for instance, the Central Authority had approved of the pauper in the Cookham Union getting only 15-9/10 oz. of nitrogenous ingredients (per day?), whilst the pauper in the Wokingham Union was allowed 24-1/10 oz. In the Metropolis, the inmates of the West London Workhouse had been directed to exist on 14-7/10 oz. a day, whilst those in the Bermondsey Workhouse had been permitted to consume 27-6/10 oz. It was found, contrary to the common belief, that the dietaries of the workhouses in the Metropolis and the great towns were, on an average, lower than those of rural unions. There had, moreover, been a total lack of quantitative definition of the ingredients of soups, puddings, etc., with the result of extraordinary diversity. Sometimes able-bodied women were allowed the same quantities as men; sometimes much smaller quantities. We cannot trace whether any

## action was taken on this Memorandum. No General Order or Circular

was issued on the subject at the time, or, indeed, for more than a dozen years; and the workhouse dietaries remained extremely diverse. But the Central Authority doubtless acted on the information in its possession. In September 1850, for instance, it demurred to approving a dietary proposed by the Bradfield Guardians, on the ground that it was "so decidedly less nutritious than those of other unions, in fact, only half what is given in some, and more than a quarter less than the general average." The Bradfield Guardians triumphantly retorted that their proposed dietary for paupers provided more nourishment than the independent labouring classes of the neighbourhood got in their own homes! (MS. Minutes, Bradfield Board of Guardians, 10th September 1850); which, considering the wages of the Berkshire farm labourers, is not unlikely to have been true.

[457] Circular of 14th September 1866, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1866-7, pp. 395-6.

Then followed various detailed suggestions, some of which dealt with ingredients and methods of cooking. Soup or broth dinners were not to be given more than twice a week; nor were bread and cheese or suet pudding dinners, except to the able-bodied. Fresh vegetables were to be provided, if possible, five times a week, and boiled rice alone was not to be made a substitute for them. Rice pudding was not to be given as a dinner except to children under nine, and to them not more than twice a week. Children were not to have tea or coffee, except for supper on Sunday, but milk at breakfast and supper, and they were to be given two or three ounces of bread at 10 A.M. It was "suggested that tea, coffee, or cocoa, with milk and sugar, and accompanied by bread and butter or bread and cheese, should be allowed to all the aged and infirm women at breakfast and supper, and the same to aged and infirm men, or milk porridge with bread" might be given at one of those meals. The ordinary rations were--of meat (cooked, without bone), for men four ounces, for women three ounces; of soup, one to one and a half pints (containing three ounces of meat) for an adult; and of bread at breakfast or supper, six ounces for able-bodied men, for the aged, women, and children over nine five ounces, and proportionately less for younger children.[458]

[458] Circular of 7th December 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 41-4. In the different Metropolitan workhouses the Central Authority sought to obtain absolute uniformity, and to this end had a model drawn up which was submitted to the guardians for their adoption. It is strange that this dietary allowed less bread and more meat than was recommended by the Board in the circular just described, only a few months later--perhaps because larger allowances of meat were made in the dietaries already in force in London unions. This dietary, prepared by Dr. Markham, contained tables for the able-bodied, the aged, and inmates engaged on extra labour, in each case of both sexes, but not for the other classes named in the above-mentioned circular. The points chiefly dwelt upon were the necessity of good cooking, of giving reasonable quantities of food, sufficient but not wasteful, and of obtaining materials of good quality, so as to attain the greatest possible economy (Circular of 23rd April 1868, in _ibid._ pp. 35-41). It is to be noted that the Central Authority issued no order on the subject. The result was that in most cases the guardians practically ignored the suggestions, and continued in their diversity. Camberwell, for instance, continued to allow the able-bodied pauper 107 oz. of bread per week, whereas the Poor Law Board had suggested 76 oz. only. The hated oatmeal porridge and suet pudding were minimised (Report of Mr. J. H. Bridges, 15th May 1873).

The movement for the improvement of the workhouse thus initiated by the Central Authority in 1865-70 represents a vast departure, not only from the policy of the Poor Law Commissioners of 1835-47, but also from that of the Poor Law Board itself from 1847 to 1865. Unfortunately, in the absence of any embodiment of the new policy in a General Order, it was left to the slow and haphazard discretion of the six hundred boards of guardians how far it was carried into practice.[459] There is, however, evidence that by 1872, at any rate, the Metropolitan workhouses were reported to have become "attractive to paupers," and to contain "many persons ... who could maintain themselves out of doors; and, in short, that the workhouse furnishes no test of destitution."[460] Moreover, though the Central Authority sought to improve the physical conditions of workhouse life, and even to promote the comfort of the classes who now formed the great bulk of the workhouse population, it does not seem to have had any idea of remedying the mental deadness of the workhouse, the starvation of the intellect, the paralysis of the will, and the extinction of all initiative to which such an existence inevitably tended. The only hint that we can find during the whole period of any consciousness that the hundred and fifty thousand workhouse inmates had minds is a statement by Mr. C. P. Villiers in 1860 that "the board had readily consented to establish libraries" for the inmates.[461] We cannot find any order authorising the provision of workhouse libraries, or any circular suggesting them; nor do we discover their existence from such local records as we have been able to consult.

[459] The average cost of in-maintenance throughout the Kingdom (apart from buildings, repairs, rates, salaries, etc.) appears to have risen between 1863 and 1870 from £4·340 for the half-year to £4·781, or by over 10 per cent. The 125,368 indoor paupers on 1st July 1863 cost £521,292 for the half-year ended Michaelmas 1863 (Seventeenth Annual Report, 1864-5, pp. 189 and 198); whereas, the 144,470 indoor paupers on 1st July 1870 cost £690,812 for the half-year ended Michaelmas 1870 (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, pp. 349 and 367). In the Metropolitan unions the average cost for the half-year rose from 5·077 to 5·588, or by slightly over 10 per cent. We gather that the corresponding amounts for 1905 were not much above £6 for the whole country and £7 for the Metropolis, which does not seem a great further advance for a quarter of a century.

[460] Office Minute of 1873. This had been pointed out by Mr. Corbett in 1868. "In none of these workhouses is it possible to apply the workhouse as a test of destitution to single able-bodied men, nor can indoor relief be afforded to those with families in many instances in which it would be desirable" (Mr. Corbett's Report, 4th January 1868, in Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, p. 126).

[461] Mr. C. P. Villiers, President of the Poor Law Board, 4th May 1860, _Hansard_, vol. clviii. p. 694.

_K._--_Emigration_

Emigration was not made the subject, during this period, of statute, order, or circular. At first we find the Central Authority continuing the favour to it which had been expressed in the 1834 Report and in the documents and action of the Poor Law Commissioners. In 1849 the Central Authority got a Bill through Parliament increasing the powers of promoting and assisting emigration,[462] in support of which the Manchester Board of Guardians petitioned in characteristic phraseology.[463] In the same year the Central Authority even approved the sending out of a convict's family to join him; "the transportation of the convict is not a voluntary desertion of the family, and when the Government promotes the sending out of the family ... the expenditure of the poor rate in furtherance of that object may properly be sanctioned."[464] By 1852 the number of persons emigrated at the expense of the poor rate had risen to 3271 in a single year, four-fifths going to the Australian Colonies.[465] By this time the total number of persons assisted to emigrate at the expense of the poor rates, between 1834 and 1853, had mounted up to nearly 24,000.[466] The policy then changes. The number of persons emigrated at the expense of the poor rate suddenly declines, falling from 3271 in 1852 to 488 in 1853.[467] In 1854 it is recorded that the Central Authority had "declined during the past year to sanction any expenditure from the poor rate in aid of emigration to the Australian Colonies (except in ... special circumstances), on the ground that the condition of those colonies [appeared] to be such as of itself to attract largely voluntary and independent emigration"[468]--a reason, we may observe, which does not seem relevant to a discussion of the advantage or disadvantage of emigration as a means of reducing pauperism at home. It does not appear that the change of policy was due, as it might have been, to a conviction that a colony in a period of excitement over "gold rushes" was not a suitable place to which to send a young person in whose welfare one took a personal interest. It may be that the real reason was a political one, viz. objections expressed by the Australian colonies themselves. Whatever the motive, however, rate-aided emigration remained in disfavour. "We must consider," said the Poor Law Board in 1860, "that at present emigration cannot be considered as any practical remedial measure for the repression of pauperism."[469] In 1863, Mr. Villiers, speaking as President of the Poor Law Board, gave a new reason for the disfavour into which emigration had fallen. "I do not mean to say," he protested, on a discussion about the distress caused by the Lancashire Cotton Famine, "that the Government should discourage emigration.... [But] when we know the large amount of capital in the country, and the great increase of it, and are also cognisant of the demand for labour a few years since, I do not think it would be wise of the Government to expend public money in the promotion of emigration."[470] For the next seven years emigration at the expense of the poor rate practically ceases, the number of persons so assisted falling in 1866-7 to eighteen.[471] In the following year, 277 persons were sent from Poplar, then exceptionally distressed,[472] but there was no general resumption of the policy, so far as adults were concerned. In 1869 the Central Authority, whilst disavowing any intention of reviving the policy, tried to simplify the procedure with regard to emigration, but found the representatives of the colonies adverse.[473] In 1870 there was, however, a slight revival, accompanied by the new feature of the emigration to Canada of orphan or deserted children (Miss Rye's scheme),[474] destined to become thenceforth a constant feature, though not in any one year attaining any considerable magnitude. The total number of persons emigrated at the expense of the poor rate in the seventeen years between 1853 and 1870 was between three and four thousand, as contrasted with nearly 24,000 in the preceding nineteen years.[475]

[462] 12 & 13 Vic. c. 103, sec. 20; Second Annual Report, 1849, p. 12.

[463] "Your petitioners having had practical proof of the tendency of labour to accumulate beyond the bounds of remunerative investment for capital, consider that a well-arranged system of emigration is the present most feasible mode of preserving a correct equilibrium between the supply and demand for labour" (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 12th July 1849).

[464] Second Annual Report, 1849, p. 12.

[465] Fifth Annual Report, 1852, p. 7.

[466] _See_ the total given years later, in Ninth Annual Report, 1856, p. 119.

[467] Sixth Annual Report, 1853, p. 6.

[468] Seventh Annual Report, 1854, p. 8.

[469] Twelfth Annual Report, 1859-60, p. 19.

[470] Mr. C. P. Villiers, President of Poor Law Board, 27th April 1863, _Hansard_, vol. clxx. pp. 814-15.

[471] Nineteenth Annual Report, 1866-7, p. 19.

[472] Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, pp. 33, 398.

[473] Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. lvi.-lvii.

[474] Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, pp. xlvi., 441.

[475] _See_ the total in Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, p. 441.

_L._--_Relief on Loan_

We may note that the Central Authority did not advise making use of the statutory power to grant relief in the form of a loan, as a means of discouraging applicants, but regarded it solely as a way of saving the rates. Such relief was to be granted with due consideration and the _bona fide_ intention of recovering.[476] Relief could not be given on loan if it would be contrary to Order to grant it not on loan.[477] In fact, what might not lawfully be given, was not to be lent.[478] Whatever was granted on loan should always be strictly recovered in due time. "The power of lending is only to be exercised where the guardians think fit to do something less than absolutely give the relief applied for in cases where the application is lawful."[479] As examples of occasions suitable for relief on loan, the Central Authority adduced that of a mentally defective person having a regular and sufficient income, but yet occasionally destitute from incapacity to manage his expenditure.[480] Other cases are those of wives or children found destitute, when the relief may be made on loan to the husbands or parents.[481] A further instance is supplied by relief applied for by the mother of an illegitimate child who is entitled to periodical payments from the putative father. The putative father may be asked to make his payments in such a way as to facilitate the recovery of the loan from the mother.[482] We find no revival of the idea mooted in 1840 of granting medical relief on loan.

[476] Letter of 8th April 1850, in _Official Circular_, July 1850, No. 39, N.S. p. 108.

[477] Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, 25th August 1852, and 14th December 1852, in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, pp. 19, 26; General Order of 1st January 1869, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, p. 81.

[478] Circular of 25th August 1852, in Fifth Annual Report, 1853, p. 23.

[479] _Ibid._

[480] Letter of May 1849, in _Official Circular_, No. 25, N.S. 1849, p. 71.

[481] Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of 25th August and 14th December 1852, in Fifth Annual Report, 1852, pp. 19, 26; General Order of 1st January 1869, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, p. 81.

[482] _Official Circular_, September 1850, No. 41, N.S. p. 131.

_M._--_Co-operation with Voluntary Agencies_

A noteworthy feature of the very end of this period was the emphasis suddenly laid upon the importance of systematic co-operation between the Poor Law and voluntary charitable agencies. This was the novel feature of Mr. Goschen's celebrated Minute of 20th November 1869. His object was "to avoid the double distribution of relief to the same persons, and at the same time to secure that the most effective use should be made" of voluntary funds. With this view he sought "to mark out the separate limits of the Poor Law and of charity respectively, and [to find out] how it is possible to secure joint action between the two." He suggested that voluntary agencies should undertake the following:--

(_a_) The necessary supplementing of insufficient incomes--and he does not here distinguish between earnings, dividends, pensions, and family contributions--"leaving to the operation of the [Poor] Law the provision for the totally destitute."

(_b_) Donations of bedding, clothing, or other similar articles not provided by the guardians (as distinguished from food or money)[483] to persons in receipt of outdoor relief.

(_c_) Services to such persons which are beyond the power of the guardians (such as the redemption from pawn or the purchase of tools or clothes, and the expenses of migration).

It was suggested that charitable agencies and the relieving officers should bring to each other's notice all cases falling within each other's spheres, in order that none might be overlooked; systematically giving each other also information of all cases that were being relieved, so as to prevent any overlapping. Mr. Goschen seems to have thought it beyond the power of the Poor Law Board to do anything to set going any joint action between the Metropolitan boards of guardians and charitable agencies. He did not convene a conference or initiate a joint committee, or even circulate his proposal to the Metropolitan charities; though he had evidently been advised that the services both of the officers of the Poor Law Board and of those of the guardians could legally be used "to assist in systematising ... relief operations in various parts of the Metropolis," and "to facilitate the communication between the official and private agencies"; and that Poor Law funds could be drawn on for remuneration for their extra work and for the necessary printing. He confined himself literally to sending his Minute to the Metropolitan boards of guardians, with a request for their views upon it. In reply, he got little beyond a series of expositions of the apparent impracticability of his proposals. In commenting on these replies, the Central Authority did not pursue Mr. Goschen's suggestions, but urged only "increased vigilance and the appointment of more relieving officers" on the one hand,[484] and on the other the grant of "more adequate relief."[485] There the matter rested, for though systematic co-operation between charities and the Poor Law has since been assumed to be the policy of the Central Authority, we cannot find that there has ever been any second official statement on the subject.[486]

[483] The policy of the Central Authority seems, down to this date, to have contemplated the supplementing of outdoor relief, not only by charitable gifts in kind, but also by money. At Poplar, in 1868, a special committee draws attention to the "instruction" of the Poor Law Board that when relief is given to persons in receipt of charitable relief, the relief given must be only so much as, with the assistance of the charitable relief, will suffice for the relief of such person's actual necessities (MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 22nd September 1868).

[484] The number of relieving officers in the Metropolis had already increased from 102 in 1866 to 161 in 1870. It now rose further to 190 in February, 1873 (Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871, as reprinted for circulation in 1873). The number is now (1907) about 205.

[485] Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xxxii-xxxiv, 9-30. Mr. Goschen directed an inspector to make a special inquiry into the administration of outdoor relief in the Metropolis, and this was followed by similar inquiries in the provinces (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, pp. ix-xxi, 32-173; First Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1871-2, pp. xv, 88-215; Second Annual Report, 1872-3, pp. xvi-xviii; Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. xx, 66-116, 136-209). The reports that resulted revealed many defects and some malpractices, but we do not find that there was any action by the Central Authority.

[486] It should perhaps be mentioned that in the Third Annual Report, 1873-4 (pp. xvii. and 126-35), reports by Miss Octavia Hill and Colonel Lynedoch Gardiner, on the Co-operation of Charity with the Poor Law in Marylebone, are given and commended.

To the historian of Poor Law policy, Mr. Goschen's Minute is important as the first indication of what we shall see developing in the ensuing period--an attempt to restrict the range of operations of the Poor Law, which here began to battle with the opposite tendency to extend the range of those operations, and to improve their quality, which, as we have seen, had marked the whole reign of the Poor Law Board with regard to children and persons of unsound mind; and which had, from 1865, taken such a stride onwards in the provision of hospitals and dispensaries for the sick, and improved accommodation for the workhouse inmates.

_N._--_The Position in 1871_

In 1867 the Poor Law Board, which had been continued from time to time by temporary statutes, was made permanent,[487] and in 1871 it was merged in a new and permanent department, the Local Government Board, established to take over not only the Poor Law business, but also the Local Government Act Department of the Home Office and the growing public health service, which had, since the abolition of the General Board of Health, been under the Privy Council. This amalgamation, which was not brought about by anything to do with the Poor Law side, does not mark any significant epoch in Poor Law policy. It is therefore unnecessary to attempt any summary of the whole policy of the Poor Law Board as such. It need only be noted at this point that the new establishment of the Central Authority on a permanent basis, no longer dependent on temporary statutes, but definitely one of the departments of the national executive, with its President more frequently than not a member of the Cabinet, greatly strengthened the authority and augmented the confidence with which it dealt with boards of guardians. And this authority was in these years being fortified by the growth of an official staff, on a more permanent basis than the temporarily serving inspectors and assistant inspectors of a professedly temporary board. We are already conscious, at the end of this period, of a growing firmness of touch and an increasing consciousness of there being once more a deliberate policy, which the new department will strive to carry out and enforce.

[487] The Liverpool Vestry and various boards of guardians objected to the Poor Law Board being made permanent, as its very existence tended to lessen the sense of responsibility of the local Poor Law authorities (Report of Special Vestry Meeting, Liverpool, in _Liverpool Mercury_, 27th June 1867).

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