UNVERSTYO CA FORNIA SAN DIEGO 
 
 3 1822 02244 9847
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORN A SAN D EGC 
 
 3 1822022449847
 
 THE POOR LAW REPORT 
 
 of 1909
 
 MACM1LLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ION DON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 THE 
 
 POOR LAW REPORT 
 
 OF 1909 
 
 A Summary 'Explaining the Defects of the 
 Present System and the Principal 'Recom- 
 mendations of the Commission^ so far as 
 relates to ILngland and Wales. 
 
 BY 
 
 HELEN BOSANQUET 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1911
 
 RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.B. 
 AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. 
 
 First Edition, February, 1909 
 
 Reprinted, March and August, 1909. 
 
 Shilling Edition, 1911.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN attempting to summarise and explain within 
 moderate compass the main recommendations of 
 the Report of the Poor Law Commission and the 
 grounds upon which they are based, it has been 
 necessary to make considerable omissions. In 
 order that the reader may know in general what 
 has been omitted I have appended a table showing 
 the contents of the Report itself, but will also call 
 attention to the chief points here. In the first 
 place, I have refrained from introducing many 
 technical details, which, however important in 
 themselves and to those actually engaged in 
 administration, seemed not essential to the under- 
 standing of the general position. In the second 
 place, I have also refrained, and this time with 
 more reluctance, from attempting to summarise 
 those sections of the Report which are mainly 
 historical, or descriptive of conditions outside the 
 immediate sphere of the Poor Law itself. More 
 especially of importance are Chapter I of Part VI. 
 and Part VII. The first of these contains in a 
 concise and interesting form a mass of information
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 concerning industrial developments since 1834, 
 which is here for the first time made accessible in 
 a consecutive narrative, and is of special signifi- 
 cance in connection with the history and present 
 position of unemployment. The second, Part VII., 
 which is a comprehensive survey of the charities 
 of the country and their administration, is no less 
 important from the point of view of the charitable 
 relief of distress ; and if the reader of the following 
 chapters fails to find them convincing, he may 
 confidently look for their fuller justification in the 
 Report itself. The marginal references are to the 
 Parts, chapters and paragraphs of the Report. 
 
 Notwithstanding all omissions, however, I hope 
 that I may have succeeded in making clear the 
 main intention of the Report. That intention, in 
 few words, is to substitute a vital and organic 
 system of combined public and voluntary assist- 
 ance for the mechanical routine of the Poor Law 
 on the one hand, and the confused chaos of charity 
 on the other. If this intention is to be carried 
 into effect it can only be by the combined effort 
 of all who are interested in bringing help and 
 strength to the poorer and weaker members of the 
 community. 
 
 OXSHOTT, 
 
 February, 1909.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PROBLEM 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 STATISTICS AND CAUSES OF PAUPERISM . . . .13 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE AGED ........... 43 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CHILDREN ........ . .64 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE ABLE-BODIED ......... 90 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PUBLIC ASSISTANCE AUTHORITY ..... 144 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE USE AND ABUSE OF "OUTDOOR RELIEF" . . 169 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MEDICAL RELIEF ......... 2o8 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 DETENTION UNMARRIED MOTHERS INSURANCE DIS- 
 
 FRANCHISEMENT ........ 241 
 
 APPENDIX I. CONTENTS OF THE REPORT OF THE 
 
 ROYAL COMMISSION ON POOR LAWS, 1909 . . . 26l 
 
 APPENDIX II. LIST OF APPENDIX VOLUMES TO THE 
 REPORTS OF THE POOR ^AW COMMISSION FOR 
 ENGLAND AND WALES, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND . 264

 
 THE POOR LAW REPORT 
 OF 1909 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PROBLEM 
 
 WHAT is the Poor Law, and who are the people 
 to whom it applies ? 
 
 Every civilised country has a different answer 
 to give to this question, but in their main outlines 
 all answers will coincide. 
 
 In the first place, the law which we in England call 
 the Poor Law, but which receives more appropriate 
 names in other countries, is that law which regu- 
 lates the administration or distribution of assistance 
 from public funds to private individuals on the 
 ground of their failure to provide for themselves. 
 
 In the second place, the ultimate fact upon which 
 all systems of public assistance are based is the 
 fact that there are in every country persons who, 
 for one reason or another, are found to be without 
 the necessaries of life, whether provided by their 
 
 I
 
 2 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 own exertions or by their friends and relations. 
 In the absence of any legal provision, these persons 
 either die or are maintained by the charity of the 
 benevolent. In most Christian communities it 
 has originally been considered that the charity 
 either of private persons or of religious com- 
 munities should be sufficient to meet the need, 
 and under these conditions begging has become a 
 recognised means of obtaining a living. In a 
 small community, where begging is only an appeal 
 from one neighbour to another, the arrangement 
 may serve well enough ; but it leads to intolerable 
 evils, both of fraud and neglected suffering, where it 
 prevails in larger communities ; and sooner or 
 later it has always been considered necessary for 
 the law to intervene and regularise the situation. 
 That has been done by defining where the respon- 
 sibility for the maintenance of these people lies, 
 and by making the responsibility one to be 
 enforced by law. 
 
 In England the duty was laid in the first 
 instance upon the family, and failing this upon the 
 parish, until at the beginning of last century it 
 was found that for many reasons the parish was 
 too small an area for effective administration. 
 Under the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 
 parishes were then grouped into unions, and each
 
 i THE PROBLEM 3 
 
 union of parishes became responsible first for 
 administering, and finally for providing, the neces- 
 sary funds within their area. Since then the 
 responsibility of administration has remained with 
 the union, but there has been a constant tendency 
 to widen the area of financial responsibility by 
 means of subsidies from various sources until at the iv. 4, 177 
 present time the percentage of expenditure on poor 
 relief which is not met from local sources is about^ 
 20 per cent, m* London the tendency has been 
 pushed so far that 70 per cent, of the total iv. 4, 178 
 expenditure by Boards of Guardians is now borne 
 by the grants made out of sums raised by Imperial 
 taxation or other receipts in aid, or by rates levied 
 throughout London in the proportion of the rate- 
 able value of the unions. 
 
 Thus the legal responsibility lies in the first 
 place upon the individual if capable to main- 
 tain himself ; in the second place it lies upon his 
 family ; and failing both these it lies ultimately 
 upon the ratepayers of the union and county, and 
 the taxpayers of the country. 
 
 Now at first sight it seems obvious that it is to 
 the interest of the community that the number of 
 those who are dependent upon public assistance 
 should be as small as possible. And ultimately, 
 also, this is indisputable : the community, from an 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 economic point of view, is only the sum of its 
 members, and if half of these fail to maintain 
 themselves, the other half will have twice as many 
 to maintain. But the statement needs modifying 
 in its immediate application. It pays the com- 
 munity far better in the long run to gather in the 
 waifs and strays of children for whom no one is 
 caring, than to leave them to grow up as loafers 
 and criminals. It would pay it far better, again, 
 to maintain its loafers and vagrants in labour 
 colonies, where they could be made to do some 
 work before eating, than to leave them to maintain 
 themselves by begging and theft. But unless a 
 community is to become bankrupt it must keep 
 steadily in view the importance of enforcing upon 
 the individual the primary duty of being self- 
 supporting. 
 
 It is this which constitutes one of the chief 
 difficulties of any scheme of public assistance. 
 The mere fact that a provision exists for those 
 who fail in this primary duty causes many to fail 
 who might otherwise have succeeded. It is 
 difficult for anyone not intimately acquainted 
 with Poor Law administration to realise that many 
 of those who claim relief are suffering from sheer 
 laziness. The workhouse inmate who declared 
 that " So long as 1 can get sixteen ounces of pie
 
 for my dinner, and my two children kept for life, 
 and they don't ask me to do any more than polish 
 the stair bannisters, I'm not going to work," was 
 perhaps more outspoken, but not more lazy, than 
 many another of his kind. Nor is it widely 
 enough known how many who are incapable are so 
 through their wilful violation of the laws of sobriety 
 and morality. It is not of course true that poverty 
 is always a crime ; the sternest administrator has 
 never thought or said so. But the poverty which 
 is due to excess or self-indulgence is a crime, and 
 should be more frankly recognised as such. 
 
 Thus the problem of public assistance presents it- 
 self as the problem of offering help in such a way as 
 to diminish rather than to increase the number of 
 those requiring it. There are two lines of policy which 
 offer a solution of the problem the one to make I* 
 the conditions of assistance so disagreeable that no 
 one will accept thgm who can possibly jielp ft ; 
 the other to make the assistance so effective that it 1 
 will ultimately remove the cause of distress. 
 There have been times in the history of the Poor 
 Law when both these considerations were practically 
 in abeyance, when relief was given on easy terms to 
 anyone who demanded it, while yet there was no 
 effective assistance such as could restore the 
 recipients to independence.
 
 6 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 But the true test of good administration is the 
 degree of success which it achieves in combining a 
 policy which shall not encourage laziness and self- 
 indulgence with one which shall be really remedial 
 in the assistance afforded. It fails when it is 
 attractive to the profligate, but it fails no less 
 when it is deterrent to those who might be restored 
 by its services to health and independence. 
 
 How far does the Poor Law, as administered in 
 England to-day, satisfy this test ? 
 
 The answer will be given more in detail in 
 subsequent chapters. Here we may note certain 
 broad conclusions from facts which have revealed 
 themselves in the course of the enquiry. 
 
 i. With respect to certain classes of the children 
 the administrators of" tFe Poor Law may claim a 
 very remarkable success, in the sense that those of 
 whom they have taken entire charge, and for 
 whom they have made special provision, have been 
 almost entirely rescued from the pauper class and 
 given a fair start to a healthy and independent life. 
 There are, however, other and larger classes of 
 children dependent upon public assistance for whom 
 little attempt has been made to secure that they 
 are properly brought up, and it is to be feared that 
 many of these will contribute to the pauperism of 
 the next generation (see Ch. 4).
 
 i THE PROBLEM 7 
 
 2. With regard to the sick, again, very marked 
 success has attended the constant efforts of the 
 Poor Law authorities in many places to improve 
 the treatment of patients who enter their institu- 
 tions. If the treatment of out-door patients has 
 been less emphatically successful, it has been 
 largely due to the difficulty of enforcing proper 
 conditions in the home (see Ch. 8). 
 
 3. In our treatment of the aged, also, both 
 success and failure have to be recorded. Of those 
 in institutions some find comfort and luxury far 
 beyond the attainment of the independent members 
 of their own class, others lead monotonous and 
 dejected lives in costly buildings under extravagant 
 management, and others again are dreary in dreary 
 surroundings. Amongst those receiving out-relief 1 
 the discrepancies are even greater ; many are half- 
 starved on an utterly inadequate allowance, while 
 many more who have no need of public assistance 
 at all receive allowances at the expense of neigh- 
 bours who are more independent but hardly , 
 better off (see Ch. 3). 
 
 4. The most serious failure in recent years has 
 been in dealing with the able-bodied. Here the 
 policy of the authorities has aimed at being 
 deterrent, and its failure has been twofold. It has 
 failed conspicuously to deter the idle and worthless
 
 8 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 0i who are indifferent to humiliation so long as they 
 are well-fed ; while its failure to make separate 
 provision for the more respectable has given rise 
 to the spasmodic and ill-regulated attempts of 
 amateur agencies to supply the deficiency (see 
 Ch. 5). 
 
 The fact that success and failure are so mingled 
 suggests that the defects to be remedied must 
 be sought more in the administration of the 
 law than in the law itself; hence it is the 
 administration which the Commissioners in their 
 recommendations mainly seek to improve. If all 
 Boards of Guardians had been working as well 
 as the best, there would probably have been no 
 demand for an enquiry, and little need of change. 
 But in a subsequent chapter we shall see how very 
 far that is from being the case, and what imperative 
 need there is in many places to find administrators 
 who will be more disinterested, more honest, and 
 more intelligent. 
 
 There is no doubt that the work is one of great 
 difficulty. The population which comes within 
 the scope of the Poor Law is made up of the most 
 heterogeneous elements. Individuals of every age, 
 of every shade of character, of every degree of 
 physical or moral incapacity, with every variety of 
 disease or disability, are all brought together by
 
 THE PROBLEM 
 
 9 
 
 the one common fact that they demand to be 
 maintained at the cost of the community. It ha& 
 been argued by some members of the Commission 
 that the differences are so great as to outweigh the 
 common element, and that the responsibility for pro- 
 viding for each particular need should be assigned 
 to a special authority, regardless of whether the 
 people to be provided for were to be maintained by 
 the ratepayers or not. Thus, the children would 
 be assigned to the Education authority and the 
 sick to the Sanitary authority. The majority of' 
 
 the Commission hpldy on the contrary, that the 
 common element ''is so important as to justify 
 indeed, to necessitate the existence of a special 
 law to authorise and regulate the relief of these 
 people, and of a special authority to apply and to 
 administer that law. When an individual claims to 
 be maintained "at the cost of the community, it is 
 clear that the claim cannot be an unconditional 
 No State has ever yet offered, or ever can 
 
 one. 
 
 offer, free maintenance to everyone who likes to 
 apply for it, whatever his circumstances may 
 be ; and it becomes necessary that every claim 
 should be immediately submitted to a judicial 
 authority which will decide whether the applicant 
 is entitled to receive public assistance. Upon this 
 authority there naturally devolves also the duty of
 
 A^^La-rviv. 
 
 10 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 deciding what form the assistance to be given shall 
 take. In doing this it has to bear in mind 
 the interests both of the recipient and of the 
 community at whose expense he is asking to 
 be maintained. It does not follow that the man 
 who asks for help necessarily knows what will 
 help him most ; the fact that he has failed to 
 maintain his independence often means that he 
 does not know. What is needed is a disinterested 
 authority, practised in looking at all sides of 
 a question, and able to call in skilled assistance. 
 
 _V-jk ^ ^M*" ^MM^mM^HaMHMMHMMM 
 
 The specialist is too apt to see only what interests 
 
 him to be a safe guide in the first instance. For 
 the community, again, the paramount interest 
 is that those who are incapable of maintaining 
 themselves should be as few as possible ; 
 and, as we have already said, it is the duty 
 of the administrator on the one hand to 
 endeavour to remedy real incapacity, on the 
 other hand to discourage wilful incapacity. By 
 wilfully incapable persons we mean those who 
 wantonly destroy their powers of work by self- 
 indulgence, or wilfully refuse to exercise them 
 because they prefer to be kept by the work of 
 others. The number of those persons is increased 
 at once by a relaxation in the vigilance of the
 
 A^ 
 
 i THE PROBLEM 11 
 
 administrator. Hence arises the necessity both of 
 employing skilled officials to ascertain the true, 
 circumstances of every applicant, and of guarding 
 against the danger that dependence should be 
 made more attractive than independence. The 
 majority of the Commission are convinced that 
 it would be quite impracticable for the Education 
 authority and the Sanitary authority to carry out 
 these duties of discrimination and adjudication 
 effectually, and that it is necessary that there should 
 continue to be a special authority for the purpose. 
 Moreover, and this should be carefully noted, it is 
 more than doubtful whether the " specialised 
 services " would do the work even as well as it is 
 now being done in many unions. It is very largely 
 due to failure of the Education authorities to train 
 the children under their care that so many seek 
 help in after life from sheer incapacity to do any- 
 thing useful. And it is very largely due to grave 
 neglect of the Sanitary authorities to fulfil their 
 present duties that so many victims of ill-health 
 are reduced to pauperism. It would be folly to 
 throw back upon proved incompetency the task of 
 restoring the victims of that incompetency. It 
 needs highly-skilled workers, practised in dealing 
 with specially difficult cases, and qualified by
 
 12 THE POOR LAW REPORT CH. i 
 
 training and experience for the task of restoration ; 
 it needs, in short, officers such as those in charge 
 of the best Poor Law schools and infirmaries. 
 
 Since 1834 the special authority for administer- 
 ing the Poor Law has been the Board of Guardians 
 in each union, elected by the ratepayers, and 
 working under the general supervision and control 
 of the Local Government Board. The Commission 
 i recommends great changes in the constitution of 
 I this authority, and in order to understand their 
 recommendations and the reasons for them it is 
 necessary to describe in more detail the actual 
 work done by the Guardians and the condition of 
 the people under their care. In ascertaining this 
 the Commissioners have not been content to take 
 the evidence of other people only ; they have been 
 at great pains to see for themselves so far as that 
 was practicable in the limited time at their disposal. 
 They have visited unions in all parts of the 
 country, they have attended Board Meetings and 
 Relief Committees, they have seen institutions of 
 all types, and have talked with the recipients of 
 out-relief in their own homes. Thus they may 
 fairly claim to have a first-hand general knowledge 
 of the working and effect of the Poor Law as at 
 present administered.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE population dealt with yearly by the Poor 
 Law is large, and constantly changing. It is 
 generally reckoned for the purposes of official 
 statistics by returns from each union, which are 
 combined to show the total number of persons 
 relieved on certain selected days. Of these returns, 
 the most detailed are those which give the 
 numbers relieved on January ist and July 1st in 
 each year. The summer pauperism is always 
 considerably lower than the winter, and in order to 
 obtain an estimate of the general level of pauperism 
 throughout the year, the practice is to take the 
 mean of these two returns as representing the 
 average pauperism for the year to which they 
 relate. The result obtained in this way for 1907 
 by combining the January and July counts was 
 793,519 : a population considerably larger than 
 
 13
 
 ' ' 
 
 14 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 that of Liverpool, and representing 22-7 per 1,000 
 of the whole population of England and Wales. 
 
 But a return so obtained does not tell the whole 
 story. To a large extent the pauper population is 
 a changing one ; many people go off the relief 
 lists during the year, many others come on, a con- 
 siderable number are constantly going off and 
 coming on again. Thus it happens that a " day 
 count " shows only how many are being relieved 
 at a given time, and not the whole number who at 
 one time or another during the year obtain relief. 
 
 In order to get fuller information for the Com- 
 mission as to what proportion of the population 
 belongs either continuously or intermittently to 
 the pauper class, a special record was kept in 1907 
 giving full particulars of every case dealt with 
 during the whole year by each Board of Guardians. 
 The results of this record are of great interest in 
 many ways, and show amongst other facts that the 
 number of persons dealt with throughout the year 
 is more than twice as great as the number obtained 
 by the day count. During the year 1907 the 
 number of those who received relief of one kind or 
 11.5 another was ,706,592, or 47 per 1000 of the 
 total population. 1 Thus we may say that while 
 
 1 These figures are subject to possibly slight modification owing to 
 errors of duplication, &c. ; also they exclude casual paupers and certain 
 lunatics.
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 15 
 
 at any given time the proportion of paupers to 
 Dooulation will be between two and three in everv 
 
 population will be between two and three in every 
 
 hundred, yet the proportion liable to become 
 
 paupers some time during the year will be between 
 
 four and five in every hundred. It is this four or 
 five out of every hundred which constitutes the 
 population to be dealt with by means of public 
 assistance. 
 
 Many interesting facts as to the different classes 
 of whom this population is constituted are brought 
 out in Part II. of the Report : " Statistical Survey 
 of Poor Law Problems." A few of them may 
 be noted here. In the first place, it appears n. 6 
 that nearly half of the paupers on any given 
 day are women ; the other half including both 
 men and children. But this discrepancy tends 
 to disappear on the year's count, by which thejrate i 
 of pauperism for women is shown to be only slightly '; 
 in excess of that for men. The conclusion is that 
 the average duration of relief is longer amongst \ 
 women than amongst men. The men, that is, 
 apply more for short periods of help during 
 temporary disability ; while the women, especially 
 the widows with young children, if they need 
 assistance at all, need it for a considerable time. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking difference between 
 men and women is shown in the kind of relief
 
 16 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 they receive. Of the whole population receiving 
 n. 16, 17 assistance on January 1st, 1908, rather less than a 
 third were in institutions, and rather more than 
 two-thirds were receiving out-door relief. But 
 while more than half the men were in institutions, 
 four-fifths of the women and three-fourths of the 
 children were receiving out-door relief. To a 
 small extent this may be due to reluctance to grant 
 out-door relief to able-bodied men, but the excess 
 was mainly amongst the old. The greater facility 
 with which elderly men enter the workhouse than 
 do elderly women is very striking ; when visiting 
 the workhouses we nearly always found in them 
 twice as many old men as old women. The 
 explanation was generally the same that the old 
 men gave up sooner, while the old women could 
 keep their little homes nice, and even earn a few 
 pence to supplement the out-relief, to a much 
 greater age. 
 
 II. 24 IV To some extent this excess of men in Poor Law 
 II institutions is o? recent growth. A table in 
 ' paragraph 24 of Part II. shows that while female 
 and child pauperism have both decreased during 
 the last thirty years, male pauperism has actually 
 increased. Several causes are suggested which 
 may have contributed to this increase, but the 
 only one which would apply solelv (or mainly) to
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 17 
 
 men is the series of Workmen's Compensation 
 Acts, which have made it 
 
 a man to get work as he advances in years. It is 
 probable also that the large amount of relief 
 provided outside the Poor Law for the unem- 
 ployed has reduced some to pauperism by causing 
 them to rely upon other than their own resources. 
 
 Some interesting facts are brought out in H- 31 *? 
 connection with the " period and recurrence of 
 relief." Nearly one-tjiirdofthe whole number I 
 relieved in._j:ne year 1^06-7 were practically jj 
 permanent paupers, receiving relief throughout ' 
 the whole veafr. This class is made up chiefly 
 of the aged, the chronic sick, and orphan and I 
 deserted children. 
 
 Another large class consists of those who are n. 34 
 relieved for very short periods. " Over 200,000 
 persons were relieved for less than one week, and a 
 further 320,000 for less than a month. The two 
 groups comprise nearly one-third of the total 
 number of persons relieved, and embrace cases of 
 very differing character. The vast majority are 
 cases of the most temporary destitution and were 
 relieved but once during the year, but a consider- 
 able minority were relieved for short periods on 
 two or more occasions. If any considerable and^ 
 permanent reduction in pauperism can be effected 
 
 c
 
 18 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 it should be more easily accomplished amongst the 
 persons mcludedjn these groups." 
 
 II. 35 Another large class consists of those whose relief 
 exceeded one month in duration, but was not 
 continuous over the whole year. Of these, 43 1,801 
 persons were relieved only once during the year. 
 ** Amongst them are those who are generally in 
 receipt of relief, but who manage in one way or 
 another, probably during the summer months, to 
 regain a precarious independence for a very limited 
 period. Some again are seasonal paupers, persons 
 \ whose occupation lasts for a portion only of the 
 year, and who . . . resort to the Poor Law during 
 the vacant periods." 
 
 A smaller, though still considerable, class con- 
 sists of those who are constantly on and off the 
 
 II- 36 relief lists. "^There were 26,179 persons who 
 received relief on at least five different occasions, 
 and those of them who were relieved in the work- 
 houses belong to the class known as * ins-and-outs.' 
 Cases have been brought to our notice of persons 
 who have been in and out of the workhouse more 
 than fifty-two times during the year. . . . Mr. 
 Lockwood mentions two cases, one of a woman of 
 eighty-one who had been in and out of the work- 
 house 163 times in the year 1901, and the other
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 19 
 
 of a man who has been in and out 593 times since 
 1884." 
 
 The rate of pauperism i.e., the proportion of 
 paupers to population differs very much in 
 different parts of the country and in different 
 unions. There are various reasons why this 
 should be so ; the policy of the Guardians always 
 affects the rate one way or another, and in some 
 districts the occupations of the people or the 
 sanitary conditions under which they live may 
 contribute largely to pauperism. It would even n. 70, 71 
 seem as if racial characteristics could be traced by 
 the figures which tell the story of dependence and 
 independence, for the northern counties show a 
 rate markedly lower than prevails in other parts j- 
 of the country. In Yorkshire, for instance, the ^ 
 rate for the West Riding is only 15-7 per xt fUt ^ 
 1,000 as against 38*5 in Norfolk, and 37-3 in j-^. 1 
 Dorset. 
 
 The divergences between particular unions are | n. 72 
 still greater, and the proportion varies from 8-5 perl 
 i ,000 in the Fylde Union (Lancashire) to 73-1 per 
 1,000 in the Strand Union, 56*8 per 1,000 in the 
 Poplar Union (London), and 56-7 per 1000 in 
 the Thingoe Union (Suffolk). The Poplar Union 
 
 C 2
 
 20 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 is unfortunate in combining two of the causes of 
 high pauperism which we have mentioned an 
 extreme Socialistic administration with low-class 
 industries. 
 
 Thingoe is a rural union, and is illustrative of 
 the fact that pauperism is, generally speaking, 
 higher in the rural unions than in the urban. 
 Apart from causes peculiar to certain localities, 
 there is no doubt that the higher rural pauperism 
 is largely owing to the drift of the younger and 
 stronger members of the population into the 
 towns, leaving a large proportion of aged and 
 See helpless people in the country. This seems to 
 
 Diocesan , -,i i , -j 
 
 Reports accord ill with the almost unvarying evidence we 
 have received to the effect that in country districts 
 there is little or no real poverty. The discrepancy 
 is only to be explained by the attitude of country 
 Guardians towards out- relief to the aged ; both 
 givers and recipients regard it as an old-age pension, 
 to be given irrespective of other considerations to 
 those who attain a certain age. 
 
 Another point to note is that though the rate of 
 pauperism is higher in country districts than in 
 towns, nevertheless it is decreasing faster ; and pre- 
 sumably its rate of decrease will be still further 
 accelerated as more of the old people become 
 eligible for old age pensions.
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 21 
 
 The greatest problem for the administrator n. s 
 which is revealed by the statistics is the problem of 
 London. Amongst other things, they show " that 
 London is maintaining 15,800 more paupers than 
 it was in the 'eighties,' that the rate per 1,000, I 
 which was generally below that for the rest of | 
 England and Wales, has risen above it, that the ' 
 larger numbers maintained in London chiefly con- I 
 sist of men relieved indoors, the increase being I 
 relatively greater than elsewhere, and that this 
 increase is not due to a transference from the out- 
 door lists. There is, thus, abundance of statistical 
 evidence to show that the present position is more 
 serious in London than in any other part of the 
 country." 
 
 Finally, before proceeding to consider in detail 
 the particular causes of pauperism, we may note 
 what has been the general tendency of pauper- 
 ism. It is a matter for congratulation that 
 V since 1834 there has been an almost continuous 
 ', decrease in the proportion of paupers to popula- 
 ' tion ; between the period 1871-2 to 1879-80 and n. -?. 
 1907-8 there has been a decrease from 31 '2 per 
 1,000 to 22'i per 1,000. But it is a matter for 
 grave consideration that the rate of decrease is 
 \ diminishing very rapidly, and that in some years 
 
 I there has been an actual increase. 
 _ " ' * " "
 
 22 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 II. 44 The situation is the more serious because this 
 check to progress is accompanied by a largely 
 increased expenditure, especially since 1889. The 
 total yearly expenditure has increased from 
 8,440,821 in 1887-8 to 14,035,888 in 
 1905-6 ; while the amount per head of the 
 total population has increased from 6s. o|^. to 
 
 n. 67 8j. 2f d. over the same period. " Summing up 
 the general situation in regard to the increase 
 in expenditure, we find that, whilst the expendi- 
 ture per inhabitant has increased from 71. Q\d. to 
 8j. i\d. since 1871-2, and is only 7\d. less than 
 it was in 1834, the expenditure per pauper has 
 I increased from 7 I2/. id. to 15 I2s. 6d. in the 
 same period. The country is maintaining a multi- 
 tude of paupers not far short of the number main- 
 | tained in 1871-2, and is spending more than 
 double the amount upon each individual. . . . 
 Such advance as the nation has made has been 
 accomplished at an enormous cost, and absorbs an 
 annual amount which is now equivalent to nearly 
 one-half of the present expenditure upon the 
 Army." 
 
 This tendency, as revealed by statistics, for 
 I Poor Law relief to become at once more costly 
 
 I ^^_^^^__^_ - ..I. . . -A. 
 
 and on the whole less effective, has been corrobor-
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 23 
 
 ated by evidence of a more concrete and detailed 
 kind. It gives the clue to the policy elaborated 
 by the Commissioners and expressed in their 
 recommendations. " While the rise in expendi- iv. 10,584 
 ture was accompanied by a diminution in pauper- 
 ism it was possible to regard it with some degree 
 of acquiescence. It is worth while to pay highly 
 for the restoration of paupers to independence. 
 But there are indications that the present adminis- 
 tration has reached the limits of its remedial 
 powers, and needs once more to be reinforced. It 
 must, we are convinced, extend its policy both of 
 cure and of prevention still further, and it is 
 in this sense that we have made our recommenda- 
 tions." 
 
 If this policy of cure and of prevention is to 
 become a reality, it is essential that far more 
 account should be taken in future of the causes of 
 pauperism than has been done in the past. The 
 Commission have not been able to make a detailed 
 study of this branch of the subject that can only 
 be done by local administrators in actual touch 
 with the people. But they have received a large 
 amount of evidence on the question from persons 
 well qualified from various points of view to form 
 a judgment ; they have also caused special investiga- 
 tions to be made on certain points, and they have
 
 24 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 IV. 10 brought together the main results of this evidence 
 in their Report. 
 
 Perhaps the cause most often assigned for 
 pauperism is old a^e. In itself this is hardly a// 
 cause of pauperism ; only a very small percentage 
 
 IV. 10,522 of old people are paupers. " But when combined 
 with, or following upon, other causes, such as low 
 earning power, drink or thriftlcssness, it becomes 
 a very large factor in the situation. And when 
 old age appears, it naturally tends to obscure the 
 previous causes which have played their part and 
 disappeared." 
 
 The Commission note, however, certain indus- 
 trial cjaodltk>uft. which tend to give a special im- 
 portance to old age, " or rather increasing age," 
 in this connection. They have found a very 
 general opinion that the development of industry 
 is such as to make increasing demands upon the / 
 worker, and thus cause him to drop out of the ' 
 
 IV. 10,523 industrial ranks at an earlier age. " The move- 
 ment is intensified in the first place by the necessity 
 of earning the Trade Union minimum, since em- 1 
 ployers will not pay the standard wage to slow or 
 inferior workers ; and in the second place by the 
 operation of the Employers' Liability Act and 1 
 the Workmen's Compensation Acts." Atten- 5 
 tion has constantly been drawn to these difficul-
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 25 
 
 ties in the evidence, and the following extracts are 
 typical of many other statements to the same effect. 
 The first is from a relieving officer : 
 
 " From time to time a considerable number of middle- 
 aged men have applied for assistance, who have stated that 
 they have been unable to get work, employers giving the 
 preference to younger men as being less likely to make 
 any claims for compensation under the Act. These men 
 have been mostly able-bodied, and, in my opinion, capable 
 of doing a fair day's work." 
 
 The next is from the Report of the Peter- 
 borough Diocesan Conference : 
 
 " The following is a sample statement from a very large 
 factory parish, which reveals what the Committee fear 
 may be an increasing cause of unemployment as time 
 goes on : 
 
 " c There are workmen who are willing to work, but 
 who are not quite as quick, strong, or capable as others, 
 and the manufacturers are willing to employ them, but 
 they cannot, or will not, pay them the fixed minimum. 
 I have known also of several cases of worthy men, with 
 slight heart trouble or other defect, discharged since the 
 " Liability " Act came into force.' " 
 
 The evidence has come from so many and such 
 independent sources that it is impossible not to 
 
 attach much weight to it. But as a cause of 
 
 . 
 pauperism the tendency is beyond the influence of 
 
 Poor Law administrators. The remedy rests
 
 26 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 partly with the Trade Unions, which should 
 make universal their occasional practice of allow- 
 ing older men to earn a lower wage than the 
 young ; and will partly have to be found in a 
 system of insurance against unemployment. 
 
 I The causes of pauperism are generally fewer 
 and simpler in the country than in the towns,, 
 where the greater complication of life gives rise to 
 industrial and moral evils which may be hardly 
 known in the country. The following statement 
 from a relieving officer at Leeds illustrates the 
 diversity of evils which have to be combated in 
 the towns before we can hope to diminish greatly 
 the number of those who sooner or later inevitably 
 fall into dependence : 
 
 IV. 10,529 "The most important causes of pauperism are: (a) 
 Old age ; (b] the early marriage of persons dependent 
 upon casual labour. Large families are the rule. Owing 
 to the low wages earned no provision can be made to 
 meet such contingencies as non-employment, sickness, or 
 of imprisonment for debt. The latter is a crying scandal, 
 and I have had to relieve the families of hard-working 
 respectable men who have been committed for long periods 
 on non-compliance of a county court judge's order for a 
 few shillings. . . . (r) Imprisonment for criminal offences 
 is a large factor in pauperism ; (d] venereal disease also 
 i contributes largely ; much of the misery entailed by this 
 . disease would be obviated if it were made notifiable. Its 
 ramifications are appalling. (*) Intemperance is another
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 27 
 
 contribution, and in this I find females to be the worst 
 
 \ offenders. Many men are perforce paupers by the intem- 
 
 \ perance of their wives. ...(/) Indiscriminate relief by 
 
 private persons and religious bodies also contributes largely 
 
 to pauperism, and cases have occurred where relief has 
 
 been in the first instance given in this manner and the 
 
 recipients eventually become confirmed paupers, (g) Cases 
 
 are not wanting to show that pauperism is hereditary 
 
 I two generations being quite common, and third genera- 
 
 ) tions occasionally occur." 
 
 One cause which is common to both town and IV - I0 tS3i 
 country, and which would appear from a great 
 weight of evidence to be the most potent and 
 
 I widespread factor in the creation of pauperism, is 
 drink. " Some witnesses also indicate gambling as 
 a serious and growing cause ; but gambling, 
 1 though it wastes the resources of its victims, does 
 not lead to such physical and moral degeneration 
 as drink." One inspector furnished us with the 
 following details as to the inmates of two work- 
 houses in his district : 
 
 I. "At the time the information was obtained, there were iv. 10,532 
 in the body of the workhouse, as apart from the infirmary, 
 and excluding children and imbeciles, 170 men and 109 
 women, total 279. Of these 279 persons, seventy-four 
 men and thirty-six women were in the workhouse as the 
 direct result of intemperance. Of the above, twenty- 
 six men and twenty-seven women could not be allowed 
 out for a day's leave without fear of their returning
 
 28 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 the worse for drink. The master of the workhouse 
 reports that twenty-nine of the latter inmates continually 
 take their discharge and return to the workhouse 
 inebriated." 
 
 2. "Taking the same data as in the case of Bath Work- 
 house ; there were in the body of this workhouse 258 
 men and 158 women, total 416. Of this number, there 
 were 175 men and twenty women in the workhouse as 
 the direct result of intemperance. The master also stated 
 that of the 416 inmates in the body of the workhouse, 
 205 of these could not be allowed out for a day's leave 
 without fear of their returning the worse for drink." 
 
 Unfortunately it is not only those who indulge 
 in excessive drinking themselves who suffer from 
 their intemperance. A case is quoted as showing 
 the far-reaching effects of this habit : 
 
 u Widow, four children. Eldest boy, thirty-one, now 
 in the union infirmary, an imbecile. Daughter, weak, 
 bad eyes for years, and been sent to the Ophthalmia 
 Hospital and partly recovered and now in service. Son 
 living at home, carter, but drinks. Son aged ten at 
 school. Father, dead some years, was a notorious drinker, 
 constantly before the magistrates and fined. Was an 
 invalid the last seven years, and he, or his wife and 
 family, on out-relief list for sixteen or seventeen years. 
 I estimate this one case has cost from ^250 to ^300, 
 and is, in my opinion, due to the drinking habits of the 
 father, though to anyone not knowing the history it would 
 not be so classed. I believe this is typical of many."
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 29 
 
 Striking evidence to the same effect is to be 
 found in the unanimity with which the Diocesan 
 Conferences have reported to us that drink is one 
 of the chief causes, often that it is the chief cause, 
 of poverty. The Report quotes as typical the 
 summary of replies from 445 parishes in the 
 diocese of Peterborough : 
 
 "The chief moral cause of poverty in town and 
 country alike is said to be excessive drinking want of 
 thrift, and bad management often, early and improvident 
 marriages or gambling sometimes, accompanying it j in 
 fact, in many parishes the reply on this point is practically 
 that what little poverty exists is almost solely due to the 
 drinking habits of the few whose families suffer in conse- 
 quence. Even when there is little actual drunkenness, 
 the proportion of weekly wages regularly taken to the 
 public house is said to keep many families always poor." 
 
 It is clear that here again the main remedy must 
 come from other agencies than that of Public 
 Assistance, and must take effect in the greater self- 
 control of the people themselves. But the 
 administrators of Public Assistance can contribute 
 towards this end by refusing to condone habits of 
 intemperance, and in certain cases by the com- 
 pulsory detention of inebriates (see Ch. 9). 
 
 Another cause which contributes largely to 
 pauperism is sickness, and there is one class of
 
 30 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 disease which is closely akin to intemperance in 
 its degrading and far-reaching effects. Medical 
 witnesses have given evidence to show how large 
 is the amount of pauperism directly and indirectly 
 due to this cause : 
 
 V. 156 During the past twenty-five years the number of 
 inmates treated in the Leeds Union Infirmary for early 
 venereal disease has been fairly constant, 120 to 140 cases 
 annually, and an average of sixteen to twenty at any one 
 time under treatment . . . and having been patched up 
 they do not stay, but discharge themselves long before 
 they have had sufficient treatment. Such people are a 
 public danger before admission and continue to be so 
 after discharge." 
 
 It is clear that in the interests of the community 
 it is even more imperative than in the case of 
 inebriates that the Public Assistance Authority 
 should have power to detain such people until 
 they are less dangerous to the public. 
 
 Another witness states : 
 
 " These (venereal diseases) exist to a larger extent and 
 in worse form than is usually supposed ; they constitute 
 one of the greatest evils of the age. ... I am convinced 
 the greater majority of children born in the poorest 
 districts (slums) are tainted with syphilis ; and that this 
 taint added to the conditions of environment ... is 
 largely responsible for the awful mortality amongst 
 children in these districts. Even if these children sur-
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 31 
 
 vive they become an expense to the community. They 
 are mostly feeble in body and mind, possess no inhibitory 
 power and readily give way to the vices by which they 
 are surrounded. It is difficult to call them immoral 
 because they do not know what morality is. It is from 
 this class that paupers and criminals are made, and that 
 prisons, asylums and workhouses are filled." 
 
 Another disease which contributes largely to 
 pauperism, and which is greatly aggravated by the 
 conditions of life amongst the very poor, is con- 
 sumption. One witness who had examined 4,000 
 cases of consumption in the wards of a Poor Law 
 infirmary came to the conclusion that neaTTyUo 
 per cent, were paupers because they were consump- 
 tives. He adds : 
 
 "There are at present in England and Wales over V. 196 
 200,000 men afflicted with tubercle, the majority of 
 whom will ultimately have to resort to the workhouse, 
 unless released by death. The sad part of it is that highly 
 respectable people in all ranks of society are dragged 
 down to destitution by this fell disease, finally becoming 
 chargeable with their families to the Poor Law." 
 
 It is only recently that it has been generally * 
 recognised to what a large extent the transmission 
 of this disease can be guarded against by simple 
 precautions, and it is certain that it can be greatly 
 reduced if the Public Assistance Authority make j
 
 32 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 Iit a condition of their assistance that those pre- 
 cautions shall be taken. 
 
 Speaking generally, any form of illness which is 
 severe and prolonged tends to exhaust the resources 
 of the family, especially when it is the wage-earner 
 who suffers. But how far provision might be 
 made, and is made, against illness without having 
 recourse to the rates will be considered in 
 Chapter 8. 
 
 Indirectly, as giving rise to illness, bad housing 
 conditions and bad sanitation are amongst trie 
 causes which conduce to pauperism. But houses 
 are often insanitary more from the habits of the 
 people living in them than from any structural 
 defect, and it is not easy to assign the chief weigTit 
 of the responsibility. The investigators appointed 
 to report to us on the Relation of Industrial and 
 Sanitary Conditions to Pauperism sum up on this 
 point : 
 
 IV. 10,537 " Housing conditions produce or aggravate certain 
 illnesses. From persons sick with such illnesses many 
 applications are received for relief. Again, housing con- 
 ditions produce or aggravate certain demoralised types of 
 character, as it is demoralised persons of such a kind who 
 form a large proportion of paupers. Beyond this it is 
 difficult to go in the matter of direct proof. . . . 
 f At the same time our conviction as to the importance of 
 ( housing remains unaltered."
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 33 
 
 It is perhaps not generally known how much IV - IO 538 
 flagrant evil, leading directly to pauperism, is 
 encouraged by the existence of unregulated or I 
 insufficiently regulated common lodging houses 
 and furnished rooms. The latter are a " con- ' 
 spicuous evil " not only in London but in many 
 provincial towns ; they are habitually overcrowded, 
 and are used for immoral purposes : 
 
 " The relieving officer for this district gave us a great 
 deal of information about these furnished rooms, and from 
 him we learnt that they are nearly always in a filthy state. 
 They are occupied by one tenant after another without 
 any cleansing, and the bedding is found in a shocking 
 condition. The rent paid by the landlord is about 17*. 
 a week, and he received from 28*. to 35 s. a week from 
 the occupiers of the rooms. 
 
 " It is probably correct to say that the lowest class of 
 the community resort to these sub-let houses lower 
 and more degraded than the habitues of our common 
 lodging houses. In addition to the obvious liability to 
 insanitary conditions, these houses offer convenient resid- 
 ences for those persons of the working-class who are 
 aosolutely careless and reckless as regards their rights of 
 citizenship. Their only possessions are the clothes they 
 wear ; not even the towels, cups or saucers, kettles or 
 saucepans in the house belong to them. Men and women 
 live together, only to separate on the slightest excuse ; 
 indeed, in the majority of cases these .houses harbour the 
 profligate and most reckless class of our cities." 
 
 A relieving officer states that from one lodging 
 
 D
 
 34 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 house containing 200 to 300 beds he has received 
 forty applications in a day. 
 
 Perhaps nowhere more easily than in the effects 
 of lodging houses and shelters upon their inmates 
 can one read the lesson that to make life too 
 easy is as fatal a policy for human beings as to 
 make it too difficult. It is by offering the possi- 
 bility of a life at a very low standard, and so 
 encouraging the lowest form of casual labour, that 
 IV. io, 539 these institutions contribute to pauperism. "They 
 encourage and foster a life cut off from all natural 
 relations, calling for the least possible amount of 
 self-control and energy, and leading almost in- 
 evitably to the workhouse." 
 
 (Amongst industrial causes of pauperism casual 
 _ ^^ L - f ___[_ 
 
 labour stands foremost. Long hours of work, 
 
 iv. io, 549 if regular, are far less harmful. "The great [ 
 example of an occupation where long hours are 
 worked is that of railway employes, and they are 
 pre-eminently not pauperised." Low earnings in I 
 certain occupations contribute a certain amount of 
 pauperism. But from every quarter where much I 
 casual labour is employed the same story is told 
 of its evil effects. Our investigators lay special 
 stress upon it : 
 
 IV. io, 540 " In an analysis of application and Report books the 
 cases of pauperism among men which are the combined
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 35 
 
 effect of casual work and drink are so numerous as to \ 
 outweigh and obliterate altogether those caused by the 
 most dangerous of occupations unless the class of case to 
 which they belong is carefully isolated and analysed. 
 The same fact is revealed in the abundant testimony of 
 relieving officers and others." 
 
 It must not be concluded that all who have resort 
 to casual labour are degraded by it into pauperism, 
 nor that the many casual labourers who become 
 paupers owe their downfall to the nature of the 
 work. One witness " believes that the casual 
 trades do not more demoralise the people than 
 that demoralised people go to the casual trades." 
 Nevertheless, there is little doubt that to regu- 
 larise the casual trades would go far to diminish 
 pauperism of the worst type : " Take away casual 
 labour and drink and you can shut up three- 
 quarters of the workhouses." 
 
 In Chapter 5 on the able-bodied, we refer again 
 to this question of casual labour, and also to the very 
 serious question of the extent to which the ranks I 
 of casual labour are recruited by boys from the ; 
 elementary schools. The Commission was strongly 
 impressed by the evidence showing how " boys iv. 10, 545 
 leaving the elementary schools were drafted into 
 work which lasted only a few years and then flung 
 them out, unskilled and untrained, into the casual 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 labour market." It is in this connection that we 
 must probably seek the reason why our enormous 
 expenditure upon elementary education has had so 
 little effect in checking pauperism. 
 
 11.139. " ^ n t ^ ie vear J ^7 T > the expenditure upon 
 elementary education was slightly in excess of 
 two millions, of which some 550,000 was met 
 by school fees. In 1905-6, the latest year for 
 which the particulars are available, the expenditure 
 had risen to about twenty millions, whilst approxi- 
 mately another three millions were expended upon 
 various forms of higher education. A generation 
 has elapsed since elementary education became 
 universal, and the benefits to be derived from the 
 system should now be accruing to the nation. 
 Persons now above fifty years of age have not, it 
 is true, participated in the advantages conferred 
 in 1870, but of persons below that age we have 
 
 (shown that there is no diminution in the number 
 coming upon the Poor Laws." 
 
 Another cause of pauperism which cannot be 
 ; omitted is the prevalence of a great amount of 
 harmful charity. When wisely administered, 
 charity should be, and sometimes is, of the greatest 
 value in rendering timely assistance which may 
 prevent the recipients from falling into permanent 
 dependence. Unfortunately it too often has
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 37 
 
 the opposite effect. Much evidence as to this 
 may be found in the Reports from the Diocesan 
 Committees, of which the following is typical : 
 
 "Another cause is the irresponsible giving of alms. IV. 10, 551 
 It comes under both the economic and moral heads. 
 The Ripon Diocesan Committee submits that this prac- 
 tice is a lazy way of avoiding responsibility, which puts a 
 premium on professional begging and canting hypocrisy, 
 to the detriment of the honestly unfortunate worker, and 
 very rapidly causes widespread deterioration of character. 
 The committee urges that every means religious, moral, 
 and legal be used to stop this harmful Social evil, and 
 that corporate responsibility for the cure of poverty be 
 put forward strenuously as infinitely more beneficial than 
 the temporary relief of individual distress by means of 
 such a baneful habit. ... A certain class of people both 
 in the rural and urban parishes, look upon the alms from 
 charity endowments as their right and count on such 
 bequests in calculating their possible income ; and it is 
 more than probable that this form of charity unless very 
 rigidly and carefully administered becomes enervating to 
 the healthy self-reliance of many people." 
 
 Our investigators note the same mischievous 
 
 effects : 
 
 A similar demoralising effect was assigned to lax and 
 undiscriminating charity. Extreme instances were nar- 
 rated. Thus a lady after hearing a sermon on the 
 conditions of life among the poor, drove down, we were 
 informed, in a carriage to a very poor street in the neigh- 
 bourhood and there distributed promiscuously a dozen
 
 38 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 half-bottles of champagne and a dozen half-pound bunches 
 of grapes. It was, however, from the multitude of less 
 absurd acts that the great harm resulted in those unions 
 where prosperous and poor districts were in juxtaposition. 
 
 A West End Union furnishes similar cases in point. 
 One working family earned 30*. per week by steady 
 work, and the wife said to our informant: 
 
 "Can you expect us to go on doing this when last 
 week the couple next door, doing no work but begging, 
 brought home 2 in gold in one single day, together 
 with a quantity of food ? " 
 
 The Commissioners consider at some length 
 in their Report the very controversial question 
 \ as to how far the administration of the Poor 
 i Law is itself a cause of pauperism. 
 
 . 10, 557 " Technically, of course, if there were no 
 Poor Law there would be no legal paupers ; and 
 there are those who take the superficial view that 
 by abolishing the Poor Law and assigning its 
 functions to other agencies, we could abolish 
 pauperism. But we wish here to raise the 
 question in a deeper sense, and to ask how far 
 it is true that actual poverty and dependence may 
 be increased or decreased by the way in which the 
 Poor Law is administered." 
 
 It was impossible in face of the evidence before 
 them to avoid the conclusion that much ^f the 
 existing pauperism is due to the way in which the
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 39 
 
 Poor Law has been administered. It has had in 
 some places the same effect which we have just 
 attributed to badly administered charities ; it has 
 tempted people away from their natural resources ; 
 " it has destroyed the qualities of independence 
 and mutual helpfulness, and substituted the desire 
 to make out a good case for the relieving officer." 
 The Commission do not, of course, maintain that 
 this is always and necessarily the case : 
 
 "There are, of course, many to whom these iv. 10, 559 
 considerations do not apply. There are some who 
 are physically or morally incapable of independence 
 under any administration ; and there are many 
 who are not to be tempted from it by anything 
 less than sheer necessity. But there are also very - 
 many who simply follow the line of least resist- 
 ance, who are quite capable of earning their living, 
 and will do so in the absence of any temptation to 
 the contrary, but who are easily drawn into 
 loafing and thriftlessness by the prospect of relief. 
 It is to these people on the borderland that an 
 unwise policy of relief on easy terms is fatal ; they 
 quickly lose the habits of energy and foresight, and 
 become in the true sense of the word pauperised." 
 
 These effects of unwise administration are best 
 illustrated from the history of particular unions. 
 Under the present system of triennial elections it
 
 40 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 not unfrequently happens that a new Board of 
 Guardians, being without any experience to guide 
 them, will greatly increase the pauperism in their 
 district until they have learned wisdom. The 
 following instance was mentioned by a Guardian : 
 
 " . . . . one ward in the Leeds Union doubled its 
 outdoor relief during the first year after the present 
 board came in. There was some exceptional distress, but 
 not anything in proportion to the increase of outdoor 
 relief. The same ward has gradually been diminishing 
 its out-relief for the last two years, although worked by 
 the same guardians and they themselves have acknow- 
 ledged that the policy of the first year was unwise." 
 
 Another case in point is that of Bermondsey : 
 7.10,565 "There was there a steady rise in the number 
 of paupers from 4,274 in 1891, to 5,552 in 1896, 
 and 6,416 in 1901, while during the same period 
 the outdoor relief increased from 11,200 to 
 23,000. In 1902 the Board appointed a super- 
 intendent relieving officer, since when: 
 
 " There has been a gradual decrease in outdoor relief, 
 due principally to the diligent inquiries made by relieving 
 officers into the applications for relief, the aid of the case- 
 paper system, and the more efficient administration." 
 
 Sometimes the harm is done, not by inexperience, 
 but as the result of a deliberate policy. This has 
 been the case in Poplar, where between 1895 and 
 1905 the number of paupers was increased from
 
 ii STATISTICS AND CAUSES 41 
 
 5,000 to 1 1, 600. It is significant of the attitude 
 \ of the Guardians that task work was abolished in the 
 workhouse, and out relief given to able-bodied 
 jmen without any labour test. In 1906 the 
 number of indoor paupers had increased 36 per 
 cent., that of outdoor paupers had increased 249 
 per cent., and the Poplar rate of pauperism stood L.G.B, 
 at 68 per 1,000, as against 28 per 1,000 for all 
 London. 
 
 These figures as to indoor and outdoor paupers 
 I illustrate the fact that to give outdoor relief 
 ; lavishly does not diminish, but rather increases, 
 the number of those who finally enter the work- 
 house. The converse is also true, that to restrict 
 outdoor relief and administer carefully does not 
 result in driving people into the workhouse, but 
 tends rather to diminish the number of those who 
 have recourse to it. This is illustrated by the 
 following table showing the progress of Poor iv. 10, 567 
 Law administration in the Brad field Union : 
 
 
 
 1871. 
 
 1881. 
 
 1891. 
 
 1901. 
 
 1906. 
 
 Indoor . . 
 
 259 
 
 151 
 
 I2O 
 
 107 
 
 123 
 
 Outdoor . 
 
 999 
 
 2O2 
 
 2 9 
 
 18 
 
 9i 
 
 Total . . 1,258 353 149 125 214 
 
 " It is especially to be noted in the above table 
 that so long as the number of out-paupers were
 
 42 THE POOR LAW REPORT en. n 
 
 diminishing, the number of indoor paupers 
 diminished also ; /'.., the poor were not driven into 
 the house. In 1900, Mr. Chaplin's Circular 
 appeared ; in April, 1901, the Bradfield guardians 
 resolved to give out-relief on the lines indicated in 
 the circular, the number of outdoor paupers rose, 
 and simultaneously the number of indoor -paupers 
 rose also." 
 
 Many other causes of pauperism have been 
 
 brought to the attention of the Commission. 
 
 IV. 10, 553 Amongst those which are important, though less 
 
 widespread than those already dealt with, they 
 
 note : 
 
 1. The failure of unsound Friendly Societies or I 
 dividing clubs. 
 
 2. Insufficiency of housing accommodation, . 
 especially in rural districts. 
 
 3. The payment of pensions at long intervals. j 
 
 4. Domestic ignorance and incapacity on the 
 part of women. 
 
 17.10,556 Of course there have not been wanting witnesses 
 who have regarded the question from a political 
 point of view, and have assigned the existence of 
 pauperism to such causes as Capitalism, Free 
 Trade, and the system of Land Tenure. The 
 Commission felt it to be beyond their reference 
 either to endorse or to controvert such suggestions.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE AGED 
 
 THE most permanent, as well as the largest, 
 section of the pauper population, consists natur- 
 ally of the aged and those permanently incapaci- 
 tated for work. For these there is seldom any 
 prospect of regaining their independence if they ' 
 have once become dependent upon Poor Law 
 relief. By degrees a certain number of the old 
 will be transferred to the list of pensioners, but 
 this is only transference from one form of public 
 assistance to another ; and old age pensions will 
 not affect those who are permanently invalided at 
 an earlier age. The only method by which this 
 class can be helped to retain independence is by a 
 scheme of invalidity insurance which would cover 
 all inability to work, whether due to sickness or 
 old age, up to the pension age. For this purpose 
 we should need to know the number, not so much 
 of the " aged " as of those incapacitated from work.
 
 44 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 The ordinary official returns do not distinguish 
 between the " aged " and other adults ; but the 
 census of paupers taken on March 31, 1906, 
 shows that the jiumber of paupers over sixty on 
 that day was 379,902, nearly half the total 
 number of paupers (46-5 per cent.). The number 
 
 IV - 7. 359 is large, but it forms a small proportion of the 
 whole population over 60 ; only 14-8 out of 
 every hundred. It is impossible to say in detail 
 of the other 85^2 per cent, how they are main- 
 tained. Many are still able-bodied and working, 
 with occasional help, it may be, from Poor Law 
 and other sources ; many, no doubt, subsist on 
 their own savings ; a considerable number have 
 pensions or allowances from various sources ; 
 the majority are probably maintained by their 
 children. But whatever the alternative may be, 
 it is clear that, taking the country as a whole, 
 it is not the normal or inevitable fate of the aged 
 to be forced to apply for Poor Law relief. Still 
 less is it true, as so often asserted, that the 
 working-man will probably end his days in the 
 
 IV. 7 347 \vorkhouse. Of the 15 per cent, over 60 who 
 receive relief, less than one-third are in Poor Law 
 institutions ; and of those who are, many are not 
 in the workhouse, but in the infirmary. 
 
 In what manner, we may now ask, are those
 
 in THE AGED 45 
 
 who do receive relief dealt with under the present 
 administration ? Here there is no comprehensive 
 answer to be given. In the words of the Report : 
 "It is impossible to generalise about it (i.e. the iv. 7, 356 
 condition of the aged), owing to the great want of 
 uniformity in administration. In some places it is 
 thoroughly satisfactory, and the administration 
 both wise and kindly ; in others it is unsatis- 
 factory, and the administration either careless or 
 stupid. Even in the same Union, owing to the 
 application of a fixed scale, one pauper may be in 
 a condition of want approaching to destitution, 
 while another would be in comfortable circum- 
 stances without any relief at all." 
 
 This want of uniformity manifests itself in 
 many ways. In the first place it may depend 
 largely upon peculiarities of local administration 
 whether or not the relief given will be by way of 
 maintenance in an institution, or by way of an 
 allowance in the home of the recipient. In some 
 Unions it is almost entirely the former, in others 
 almost entirely the latter. On March 31, 1906, 
 the number of paupers over 60 years of age who 
 received indoor relief was 114,964, while the 
 number of those who received outdoor relief was 
 264,938 ; but comparison with previous returns 
 shows that the number who receive indoor relief
 
 46 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 is increasing rapidly. This is more especially true 
 of the towns, and the difference is not always 
 wholly due to the policy of the guardians ; where, 
 e.g., house accommodation is scarce and rents high, 
 the old people may be forced to take refuge in the 
 workhouse for lack of suitable house-room outside. 
 Generally speaking, however, it may be said that 
 in some Unions, according to the habit of the 
 Guardians, an allowance will be given almost for 
 the asking, while in others careful enquiry will be 
 made into the circumstances of the applicant, and 
 if it is thought wiser help will be offered in 
 the form of maintenance in an institution. 
 \ The distribution of old-age pauperism itself 
 depends partly upon this question of the policy 
 \(or habit) of the Guardians. Naturally there 
 tends to be more paupers in a place where relief is 
 granted easily and as a matter of course, than in a 
 place where the applicant is expected to prove his 
 need. But other conditions have also to be taken 
 into consideration. The fact that the greatest 
 ', proportion of old age pauperism is to be found in 
 rural districts is largely due to the fact that the 
 1 greatest proportion of old people is to be found in 
 irural districts. The young have moved away to 
 seek work in the towns, and have neglected to 
 provide for the parents they have left behind.
 
 ill THE AGED 47 
 
 Statistics show that in London the old people over iv. 7, 348 
 60 form 66*9 per 1,000 of the population ; in 
 other Unions which are wholly or mainly urban 
 they form 67^3 per 1,000 ; while in Unions 
 which are wholly or mainly rural they form no 
 less than 102 per 1,000. 
 
 In the towns, again, there is more likely to be 
 charitable provision for the old people in the shape 
 of doles or almshouses, or private help from church 
 and chapel and benevolent individuals. But in 
 the country " the parish " tends to be the most 
 obvious source to which they can turn for help, 
 and so much is this the case that in many places 
 the parish allowance is looked upon as a right, 
 to be claimed and granted as a matter of course, 
 as an " old-age pension," and often irrespective 
 of any real need. "... in rural districts in all iv. 7, 332 
 parts of the country outdoor relief is practically 
 regarded as an old-age pension. There is no 
 reluctance in applying for relief, and it is not 
 confined to destitute cases, but given to all comers 
 of a certain age." One witness said : 
 
 "In this Union no old people are offered the work- 
 house so long as they can take care of themselves or 
 other people take care of them. When they do go into 
 the house they are almost always infirmary cases our 
 out-relief too, is practically a pension list. It seems all
 
 48 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 nonsense to me about the difficulty of old-age pensions 
 our people have had it for years and it is just wonderful 
 what a little people can live upon and reach a fine old age. 
 There is no fear of any of the poor wanting the neces- 
 saries of life in the country places." 
 
 Another told us : 
 
 " You will find in the agricultural districts that every 
 old servant of everybody in the neighbourhood is practi- 
 cally on outdoor relief at anything from is. 6d. to is. 6d. 
 Of course they ought to be pensioned as old servants, not 
 as paupers. You cannot get at the motive ; you never 
 know why the outdoor relief is given. You see a most 
 improper case come up, and you suggest that there is 
 something wrong in the family, either there is drink or 
 immorality, or something or another, and it is very 
 undesirable that outdoor relief should be given j never- 
 theless it is given." 
 
 And another speaking of a different part of the 
 country said : 
 
 " Outdoor relief has become a habit of the country in 
 the rural districts, and if you could only get the adminis- 
 trators and the recipients out of that habit, you would do 
 a very great deal to restore proper administration. I have 
 heard cases where the Chairman will say : l Oh, what 
 have you come here for ? ' and the man will say : 'I 
 have come for my allowance.' It is a matter of course." 
 
 Thus it comes about that whether an old person 
 will receive relief from the Poor Law, and if he
 
 in THE AGED 49 
 
 does whether it will be maintenance in an institu- 
 tion or an allowance in his own home, depends at 
 present very largely upon whether he lives in the 
 town or in the country, and upon what town or 
 what part of the country he lives in. That is to 
 say, it depends upon considerations which are largely 
 irrelevant to the question of his needs. 
 
 A similar lack of uniformity appears when we 
 examine into the circumstances of those actually 
 in receipt of relief. If we consider first those to 
 whom the relief given takes the form of main- 
 tenance in an institution we find that in most 
 places their position has been greatly modified and 
 improved since the movement in favour of old- 
 age pensions. Indeed, the principal effect of that 
 movement, dating from about 1890, and until the 
 Pension Act of 1908, was to press forward the 
 differential treatment of the old people in the 1 
 workhouses. Not only have the local authorities 
 been constantly urged to treat the aged with 
 greater leniency than the able-bodied ; they have 
 also been at considerable pains in some places to 
 classify them according to their character, in the! 
 hope that only congenial spirits might share a I 
 common life. The classification is often accom- 
 panied by special privileges for the higher classes, 
 such as cake for tea, a carpet in the sitting-room, 
 

 
 50 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 greater freedom of egress, etc. In Sheffield they 
 7, 337 have a classification in as many as four classes, 
 based on a combination of length of residence 
 and character. It is very doubtful whether such 
 elaborate classification as this can be carried out 
 without favouritism or injustice. It is no doubt 
 very desirable to separate those who are noisy and 
 objectionable in language and habits from the 
 more respectable and quiet ; and it is a useful aid 
 to discipline to be able to degrade a refractory 
 inmate to a lower class ; but it is probable that 
 too great weight has been attached to " classifica- 
 tion " of the old on moral grounds. Certainly the 
 happiness of the old people appears to depend far 
 more upon the nature of the administration the 
 kindliness of the master and matron, or the interest 
 taken in them by the Guardians, than upon any 
 scheme of classification, however elaborate. 
 
 Another important factor in the happiness of 
 the inmates is that the institution they inhabit 
 should be small and home-like. It is not in the 
 large and expensive institutions that the old 
 people are most at home and comfortable. An 
 old couch on which the more frail may take an 
 occasional rest during the day has far more real 
 luxury than glittering electric lights and lengths of 
 shining corridors ; and a bright fire in a small
 
 in THE AGED 51 
 
 room, even if it does get too hot at times, is more 
 homely than a spacious saloon scientifically heated 
 with hot water apparatus. And more important 
 than all is the skill of master or matron in 
 finding congenial occupation for the inmates. 
 Here the interests of economy and humanity 
 are really identical. There are innumerable little 
 tasks which the old people can do and are all the 
 happier for doing, but which tend to be taken out 
 of their hands in the large and expensive institu- 
 tions. It is for these reasons that the Commission iv. 7, 354 
 have recommended that in future the institutions 
 for old people shall be separate from those of 
 other classes, and shall be small and simple. 
 
 In some places where these conditions were not 
 observed, we found that the old people, without 
 being subject to any actual unkindness or harsh- 
 ness, were nevertheless leading most dreary and 
 even miserable lives. The following instances 
 from the records of our visits to different places 
 illustrate both good and bad : 
 
 (i) "I saw the women's day wards in the workhouse. IV. 7, 326 
 They are old, but bright and fairly comfortable. I was 
 struck by the pleasant relations between the inmates and 
 the matron, an exceptionally pleasant woman. I also saw 
 four cottages built for married couples. There is no 
 demand for these, one is occupied, one is empty, and the 
 others converted into the female tramp wards." 
 
 E 2
 
 52 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 (2) "The Homes for the Aged and Deserving Poor 
 were erected to comply with the urgent recommendations 
 of Mr. Chaplin's Circular. They may be described as 
 adequately supported almshouses, under disciplinary con- 
 ditions, such as obtain and are enforced among the 
 passengers of a mail steamer. The swing gate of the 
 institution is always open. The inmates go out when 
 they please, but we understood that they seldom go 
 beyond the garden : they prefer that their friends should 
 come and see them and, we were told, not a few look in 
 for a l cup of tea.' ' 
 
 (3). " The building includes a number of cottage homes 
 for aged couples. They were quite simple in character, 
 but bright, and the inmates seemed very happy. The 
 meals are served to them in their own rooms, and they 
 make their own tea." 
 
 (4) " A street of four cottages with gardens has been 
 bought for ji,2OO, and converted by inmates' labour into 
 cottage homes for four married couples, and thirty-two 
 old men of good character ; the cost thus being ^30 a 
 head. The inmates of these homes seemed very happy, 
 and we understood were free from all the more irksome 
 regulations of workhouse life." 
 
 (5 ) " The inmates, over 900 in number, were con- 
 gregated in large rooms, without any attempt to employ 
 their time or cheer their lives. There was a marked 
 absence of any human interest, and though the super- 
 intendent and matron impressed us favourably, it was 
 impossible to avoid feeling that the lives of the inmates 
 were not merely wanting in colour, but were aimless and 
 listless. On more than one occasion there have been 
 offers from outside to brighten the Sunday service, but
 
 in THE AGED 53 
 
 they have been refused by the Guardians owing to religious 
 difficulties. It could not be better described than as a 
 * human warehouse.' The dormitories, which in some 
 cases accommodated as many as sixty inmates, were so 
 full of beds as to make it impossible to provide chairs, or 
 to walk, except sideways, between them." 
 
 (6) "The . . . 'Home' which we visited in the after- 
 noon seemed to us defective in every particular. It is 
 rented by the . . . Union and used as an overflow house 
 for the aged inmates from . . . The rooms were low, 
 ill-lighted, and hopelessly overcrowded. The men were, 
 in many cases, lounging in the bedrooms, there being no 
 chairs except in the dining-hall, and there was a total 
 absence of books or newspapers as far as we saw and 
 it is impossible to conceive a more dismal and hopeless 
 asylum for age. The administration consists of but two 
 officers for 268 inmates. The officer in charge, however, 
 stated that they had no difficulty in enforcing such dis- 
 cipline as was necessary. The only outdoor space avail- 
 able for the inmates was an asphalted roof-yard, some 
 35 feet by 25 feet, up so many flights of stairs that a 
 large proportion of the inmates were unable to mount 
 to it." 
 
 There is another reason of no small weight for 
 advocating greater simplicity in the provision 
 made for the aged. While the large institutions 
 do not really afford a happy life for the old, there 
 is no doubt that they exercise a considerable power 
 of attraction. The mere size of the buildings and 
 grounds makes them in many places the most con-
 
 54 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 spicuous edifices in the neighbourhood. The 
 expensiveness of the equipment, the number of the 
 officials, the cost of maintenance get talked about, 
 and serve as an advertisement of the Poor Law to 
 those who are not unwilling to transfer their moral 
 or legal responsibilities to the ratepayers. 
 
 Nor is it an unimportant matter that the small 
 homes can be provided at a very much less cost 
 than is incurred in many of the large institutions. 
 IV. 7, 354 At Kingston-upon-Hull cottage homes were pro- 
 vided at a cost of 30 a head, and at Woolwich a 
 home for forty-two aged women has been provided 
 at a cost of 51 IQS. lid. per bed; while at 
 Hammersmith a new workhouse has cost 286 
 a bed. It would be the height of administrative 
 perversity to continue a policy which combines 
 the maximum of cost to the ratepayer with the 
 minimum of benefit to the old people. 
 
 To sum up : Everywhere there is the desire 
 now to deal gently with the old people in the 
 workhouses ; but the success with which they are 
 handled varies greatly in different places, according 
 to the wisdom of Guardians and officials. It 
 requires not only good-will, but special capacities 
 to keep a number of old men and women happy 
 and contented, especially when a large proportion 
 of them have been forced to take refuge in the
 
 in THE AGED 55 
 
 workhouse owing to defects of character or temper 
 which have made them unwelcome in the homes 
 of their children. Experience has shown that 
 small institutions under kindly management are 
 the most successful ; and it is obvious that it will 
 be much easier to select the right kind of person 
 to supervise them when he (or preferably she) can 
 be chosen for that task alone, and not for the 
 management of a large general institution contain- 
 ing all classes. If these recommendations are 
 carried out it will be comparatively easy to ensure 
 a uniformly wise and humane treatment of the 
 aged throughout the country. 
 
 One source of prejudice against the Poor Law I 
 is the quite mistaken belief that old couples who 
 go into the workhouse are separated. Notwith- I 
 standing constant explanations of the law this 
 belief is so widely spread, and so encouraged by 
 opponents of everything connected with the Poor 
 Law, that it is worth while repeating again, that 
 an old man and wife over sixty have a right to 
 live together in the workhouse, and that the 
 Guardians are bound to provide married people's 
 quarters for the old people who desire them. , 
 That they are so seldom desired is difficult of 
 explanation except on the ground that the type 
 of people who end their days in the workhouse
 
 56 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 are those who have wearied each other with faults 
 of temper and character. 
 
 ! V. 7, 347 But the old people over sixty who are relieved 
 in institutions form less than one-third of the 
 whole number of those over sixty in receipt of 
 relief, 69-7 per cent, being relieved in their own 
 homes on March 3ist, 1906. Amongst those we 
 found even greater divergency of treatment than \ 
 in the institutions. When in an institution the ' 
 old people are at least sure of sufficient food and 
 clothing. For those relieved in their own homes 
 this is unfortunately not the case. It is true that 
 very frequently old people are receiving allowances 
 who are in no real need of them ; but frequently 
 also they are receiving allowances which are quite 
 inadequate to their needs. This anomaly arises 
 from the fact that in most Unions the Guardians 
 make their allowances according to a fixed scale 
 which they have laid down for themselves, and to 
 which they adhere without taking into account 
 what other resources the recipient may have. As 
 we have seen, in many country districts an allow- 
 ance from the parish is regarded as an old-age | 
 pension of fixed amount to be claimed by almost ' 
 anyone who chooses. When the amount is varied t 
 it is generally on quite other grounds than the! 
 ascertained needs of the recipient ; sex, or length '
 
 in THE AGED 57 
 
 of residence in a neighbourhood, or greater age, or 
 character, may all be found as pretexts for giving 
 sixpence more or less. In some cases we have 
 found that an allowance already quite inadequate 
 has been reduced by half because the recipient 
 drank or was suspected of drink : 
 
 "A man and wife, aged 78 and 61 respectively, in IV. 7, 335 
 receipt of relief, 5*. a week. Both drink, and the woman 
 had recently been found dead drunk. It was suggested 
 that the best method of dealing with this case was that 
 they should come into the house ; but this was considered 
 too costly, and ultimately the merits of the case were 
 held to be met by reducing the relief to 2$. bd. No 
 other sources of income were known." 
 
 In comparatively few Unions is it the practice to 
 ascertain all the circumstances of the case, to deter- 
 mine in view of them whether it was desirable to 
 give relief in the home or in an institution, and if 
 the former to make an allowance which should 
 ensure a decent maintenance. 
 
 As illustrating the great difference of practice IV. 7, 336 
 on different Boards the Reports quote the follow- 
 ing instances noted during our visits : 
 
 (i) "It is a rule to give 2s. 6d. to an aged person, 
 sometimes 6d. less, but rarely ever more than 2s. bd. 
 One case was that of a widow, 67 years of age, living 
 alone ; the rent was 2s. 6d. ; they granted only 2s. ; 
 there was no other known income."
 
 58 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP 
 
 (2) "Old couples would be given js. &/., 8x. or 10*., 
 and single old people 4*. to $s. where little or no rent 
 was being paid, and other help was available." 
 
 (3) "Aged couple, three sons at home, earning 
 25*. &/., 27*., 22j. lid. respectively; total 3 151. 'jd. 
 for five persons. Relief was continued." 
 
 (4) " Couple, aged respectively 66 and 38, with two 
 young children, 12 and 8. Son Edmund, not at home, 
 earning 24*. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Son Llewellyn, 19, at home, earning - 34 9 
 Son B., 1 6, at home, earning - - 8 6 
 Daughter, M. G., at home, earning -70 
 
 Total - ... 50 3 
 
 Relief, js. 6d. ; rent, I2J. 6J. per month." 
 
 Other instances are given in the chapter on 
 Outdoor Relief of inadequacy of relief, and of 
 the very general custom, both of officers and, 1 
 Guardians, of neglecting their duty of making 
 enquiries, and of assuming that the old people - 
 iv. 6, 260 will get along somehow. The Report comments 
 strongly upon the ill effects of " this wide-spread 
 system of trying to compensate for inadequacy of 
 knowledge by inadequacy of relief. Two points, 
 however, seem quite obvious ; first, that when the 
 applicants are quite honest in their statementsl 
 they must often suffer great privation ; and! 
 secondly, that when they are dishonest relief must j
 
 in THE AGED 59 
 
 often be given quite unnecessarily. The cases 
 which touch the happy mean, where the resources 
 which the Guardians assume are just those which 
 the applicants conceal, must be comparatively very 
 few." 
 
 There are certain cases in almost every Union, for- 
 tunately not very many, which are peculiarly diffi- 
 cult for even the wisest and most humane adminis- 
 trators to deal with. " Wherever we have gone iv. 6, 270 
 we have heard of the one or two cases, generally \ 
 of old people, who are living in a terrible state of 
 neglect, and to whom the Guardians are forced 
 to give out-relief, because they are powerless to 
 remove them to an institution against their will. 
 Very often they are senile, and incapable of taking 
 a resolution on their own behalf. Their homes 
 and persons become indescribably loathsome, so 
 much so that there are cases in which even district 
 nurses and undertakers have refused their services; 
 and they are a source of constant danger to them- 
 selves and to their neighbours." A skilful 
 relieving officer may sometimes succeed in persuad- 
 ing these unfortunate people to allow themselves 
 to be removed ; but failing that it ought to be , 
 within the powers of the Relieving Authority, 
 under due precautions, to order their removal. '
 
 60 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 To give those powers may cause an outcry on the 
 part of so-called humanitarians ; especially those 
 who have never seen the horrors of such a case. 
 But there can be no doubt that the true humanity 
 lies in bringing a kindly compulsion to bear ; and 
 the objections to such a course are no greater than 
 those which can be brought against the compulsory 
 removal of infectious cases. And, as with infec- 
 tious cases, when once the removal has been 
 effected it almost invariably ceases to be felt as 
 a hardship. 
 
 There are less urgent cases in which many 
 difficulties might be met by better supervision of 
 7, 339 the old people, and even the worst cases might be 
 diminished in number if they were properly looked 
 after from the first. At present, when once an 
 applicant has been placed on the relief list he may 
 happen not to be visited again for many months. If 
 he is unable to come for his relief himself it is often 
 taken to him by another pauper, and he is not even 
 seen by anyone in authority. Thus he may con- 
 tinue to get more and more decrepit and helpless, 
 and his home more neglected and squalid, without 
 it being known or reported to the authorities. 
 This would be avoided if from the first he were 
 periodically visited, and his condition reported. 
 It would then be possible very often to arrange for
 
 in THE AGED 61 
 
 him to be looked after by a neighbour or possibly 
 a nurse, and to avert the extreme neglect which 
 necessitates compulsory removal. 
 
 In some few places the experiment has been tried 
 with great success of appointing a woman to 
 supervise the cases of the aged, and sometimes 
 also of widows with children. The Commission iv. 7, 340 
 recommend both that this plan should be generally 
 adopted, and also that the services of voluntary 
 workers should be enlisted to ensure that every old 
 person in need of assistance should be in constant 
 touch with a friendly visitor. 
 
 It is necessary before leaving the subject of the 
 old people to refer to one really painful develop- 
 ment of the present day which has been brought 
 to the notice of the Commission. Witnesses from 
 all parts of the country spoke of the growing 
 reluctance of relatives to assist one another, and vin, 3, 83 
 more especially of children to maintain and nurse 
 [their parents. The following extracts illustrate 
 the point : 
 
 " My general observation is that as far as I can 
 remember in many cases I might almost say in most 
 cases the children of the people that come to me would, 
 if they possibly could get out of it, avoid contributing 
 anything towards the support ot their parents." 
 
 (London.)
 
 62 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 " Often at the relief committees you find sons in 
 receipt of good wages endeavouring to evade contributing 
 towards the support of an aged father and mother, or 
 either, and in the case of lunatics the relatives will resort 
 to any subterfuge to avoid paying a fair sum towards the 
 support of a relative for whom they are liable." 
 
 (Midlands.) 
 
 " I have noticed that there is a growing disinclination 
 on the part of sons and daugthers to help in contributing 
 to the maintenance of their parents. ... I think York- 
 shire is almost the worst place there is in that respect ; 
 they are growing exceedingly lax in that way." 
 
 (Yorkshire.) 
 
 " With regard to the poorer classes there is not the 
 same disposition to assist one another that there was years 
 ago, and the younger generation have not the inclination 
 to support their aged relatives, or take the same interest 
 in them as formerly. It is a difficult matter to get them 
 to contribute towards the maintenance of their relatives, 
 even in the case of parents. Rarely do they visit relatives 
 in the workhouses, and when information has been sent 
 to them of the serious illness of a near relative in the 
 workhouse, very often no notice is taken of it, or 
 possibly a letter is sent saying that they are not able to 
 visit them." 
 
 (Eastern Counties.) 
 
 It is difficult not to connect this decrease in the 
 sense of filial affection and responsibility with the 
 general feeling that if the children fail, the State
 
 in THE AGED 63 
 
 is bound to step in. The Commission believe iv. 7, 358 
 " that if the position is clearly defined .and a 
 consistent policy laid down, both as to pensions 
 and Poor Law relief, the natural feeling between 
 parents and children will again assert itself.'*
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CHILDREN 
 
 IN reporting as to the condition of the children 
 who are maintained under the Poor Law, the Com- 
 mission have found it necessary to speak in very 
 different terms as to those who are maintained 
 entirely by the Guardians, and those 'who receive 
 relief while remaining under the care of their 
 parents. For the second class the Guardians seem 
 never to have felt any great responsibility ; 
 technically the relief is given to the parent, it is 
 very seldom that any care is taken to ensure that 
 the children are adequately cared for, and it is 
 certain that in a very great number of cases they 
 are ill-nourished or neglected, or both. 
 
 With the first class of children, on the other 
 hand, those for whom they have assumed full 
 responsibility, the Guardians have achieved a really 
 remarkable success. For the most part these 
 children are brought up in schools and homes of
 
 CH. iv THE CHILDREN 65 
 
 various types ; others are " boarded out " ; others 
 less fortunate are still in the workhouse. 
 
 The whole number of children in receipt of 
 Poor Law relief on January ist, 1908, was n. 103 
 234,792, and of these only 62,426 were being 
 maintained in institutions. Out of this number 
 16,221 were in workhouses. Of the condition I 
 of these last the Commission report on the whole! 
 unfavourably. In some workhouses they are much \ 
 better cared for than in others, but almost 
 universally their surroundings are dreary, and very 
 unfit for children. ' u Where most of the children iv. 8, 392 
 have been removed to schools it would seem that 
 the Guardians are apt to take less interest in the few 
 that remain. In many unions, indeed, the children 
 are treated with the utmost kindness and care, and 
 in all unions the majority now go out to the 
 public elementary schools, only 565 being still 
 taught in workhouse schools at the commencement 
 of the year 1907. Elsewhere we have ourselves 
 found children in surroundings so dreary that it 
 seems strange that Guardians who have families 
 of their own could acquiesce in them." 
 
 The following instances seen by the Commis- 
 sioners illustrate this point : 
 
 (i) "The nursery was bad, very messy, and the 
 children looked miserable j some of the infants were 
 
 r
 
 66 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 being nursed by old women, some lay in cradles with 
 wet bedding, and were provided with ' comforters.' . . . 
 The infirm and children over three are in the same 
 building, apart from the main body of the house. The 
 children are under the care of a woman who has been 
 there twenty-seven years and has two helpers. She is a 
 fairly capable, roughish sort of woman, hardly fit for 
 such a responsible position. She was reluctant to show 
 anything, and I had to push my way in everywhere. 
 The three-year-old children were in a bare and desolate 
 room, sitting about on the floor and on wooden benches, 
 and in dismal workhouse dress. The older ones had all 
 gone out to school except a cripple, and a dreary little 
 girl who sat in a cold room with bare legs and her feet in 
 a pail of water as a * cure ' for broken chilblains. The 
 washing arrangements are unsatisfactory ; the children 
 have no tooth-brushes, and very few hair-brushes. They 
 do not wear workhouse dress to go to school, but I saw 
 some coming in from school in the rain who were not 
 properly dressed for a wet day. Altogether there is 
 great need for reform in the treatment of the children." 
 
 (2) "The children (thirty-nine girls and twenty-three 
 boys) are housed in the workhouse under the care of a 
 male and a female industrial trainer, but they are not 
 kept separate from the adult inmates. Indeed the 
 children's wards left on our minds a marked impression 
 of confusion and defective administration. In appearance 
 the children were dirty, untidy, ill-kept, and almost 
 neglected. Their clothes might be described with very 
 little exaggeration as ragged, and when the inspector told 
 a group of children to take off their right boots large 
 holes were displayed in six stockings out of thirteen.
 
 iv THE CHILDREN 67 
 
 The eyes of some of the children seemed suspiciously 
 1 weak,' and in two or three cases to be suffering from 
 some serious inflammation." 
 
 There have no doubt been difficulties in re- 
 moving all the children from the workhouses ; 
 some are in the sick wards, others are the children 
 of that difficult class known as <* ins-and-outs," 
 who come into the workhouse with their families 
 for a few days or weeks at constantly recurring 
 periods. The attempts to relieve these unfor- 
 tunate children of their dirt and ignorance are 
 frustrated anew every time the parents take their 
 discharge for a bout of drinking, while their 
 presence amongst the other children acts as a 
 constant drag upon their progress. The powers 
 of the Guardians to remove these children entirely 
 from the vicious influence of their parents need to 
 be much more freely exercised, but this can only 
 be done concurrently with much sterner treatment 
 of the parents themselves. 
 
 But when all allowances have been made it still 
 remains true that many children remain in the 
 workhouses under unsatisfactory conditions, in 
 consequence of the Guardians' failure to take 
 sufficient interest in their welfare. It is a defect 
 of local administration, for the central authority 
 has been constant in its pressure in the direction 
 
 F 2
 
 08 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 of removing children from workhouse surround- 
 ings. 
 
 IX. 83 The Commission's recommendations on this 
 point are explicit : 
 
 " We are strongly of opinion that effective 
 steps should be taken to secure that the mainten- 
 ance of children in the workhouse be no longer 
 recognised as a legitimate way of dealing with 
 tfcem. We put this in the forefront of our 
 recommendations." 
 
 And with regard to the children of vicious 
 parents : 
 
 ix. 89 " We think that the power to adopt children 
 of vicious parents should be more frequently 
 exercised and accompanied by a stricter dealing 
 with the parent, and that the Public Assist- 
 ance Authorities should in future retain super- 
 vision of adopted children up to the age of 
 twenty-one." 
 
 For the most part this policy of removing 
 children from the workhouse has been followed 
 with success, and the difficulty has become one of 
 restraining Boards of Guardians from launching 
 out into unnecessary and wasteful expenditure. 
 This is especially the case with what are known 
 as " grouped cottage homes.'* When the system 
 was first introduced it was intended that these
 
 iv THE CHILDREN 69 
 
 homes should really be cottages, so that the 
 children's life in them should approximate as far 
 as possible to those of the children of the inde- 
 pendent working man. How far this intention 
 has been lost sight of is shown in the fact that 
 some of these institutions have cost as much as 
 ^289 per child to build, whilst others have cost as 
 little as ^42 I2J. Nor have we found that the less 
 costly and pretentious institutions are in any way 
 less efficient as regards the welfare of the children 
 brought up in them. Indeed, it has been fairly 
 argued by an experienced witness that the life in 
 some of the most progressive, or perhaps, we iv. 8 375 
 should rather say, fashionable schools, is not 
 really a suitable preparation for the children, and 
 is likely to make their after life seem harder 
 than it need. 
 
 " It must be rather difficult for a girl who has spent 
 her leisure time at school in playing hockey, croquet and 
 organised games, who has been taken on half-holidays to 
 places of interest, and has had free access to a library and 
 recreation rooms, to settle down to an ordinary servant's 
 work. A child in its own home has between school 
 hours to help in various ways and learns early the necessity 
 of real work, and has experience of the cost of clothing 
 and food." 
 
 It is sometimes argued that the greater capital 
 expenditure in erecting these places is compensated
 
 70 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP 
 
 for by a diminished annual expenditure through 
 the introduction of labour-saving apparatus, &c. 
 As a matter of fact the annual cost seems tc 
 increase almost in proportion to the magnificence 
 of the building. In the Bermondsey cottage 
 homes the cost per child per week, including all 
 charges, comes to zos. id. ; and there are others 
 where it is not much lower. 
 
 The large institutions known as District or 
 Associated Schools have never been very popular, 
 and have recently fallen into disfavour owing to 
 an adverse report from a Committee appointed to 
 consider the subject in 1894. There is reason to 
 think that this Committee's Report was unduly 
 severe, but it led to some of the London schools 
 iv. 8, 367 being broken up at a cost of 700,000, and the 
 number of children maintained in this type of 
 school has fallen from 7,358 in 1895 to 3>59 J * n 
 1907. Nevertheless some of our most experienced 
 witnesses think that these large schools are best 
 adapted for the type of children to be educated : 
 
 IV. 8, 368 " The children who come under the care of the 
 Poor Law have, as a rule, been neglected and subjected 
 to bad example in such moral faults as dishonesty, in- 
 temperance, idleness, lying and the like, and the reshaping 
 of their characters needs expert handling. This, as it 
 seems to me, can best be secured from experienced teachers 
 and attendants in the Associated 'Schools.
 
 iv THE CHILDREN 71 
 
 " The bedrooms of Cottage Homes are liable to be 
 sources of moral contamination. Too much importance 
 cannot be attached to the grave danger incurred by placing 
 a few children alone in a bedroom. There cannot be 
 proper supervision, and it is not within the power of the 
 most watchful * Mother ' so to classify her children as to 
 guard against mischief. Many of the children in the 
 Poor Law schools come from the lowest surroundings, 
 where they have passed through experiences and witnessed 
 scenes the description of which must be demoralising to 
 the children who have been more carefully guarded. In 
 the large dormitories of the Associated Schools such un- 
 desirable conversation is less likely. There are attendants 
 about, and there is the feeling that out of so many one 
 might tell." 
 
 The third type of institution is that known as 
 the " Scattered Home." The object of these is to 
 avoid massing the children together in large 
 numbers, and houses are taken in different parts 
 of the town in which groups of children pre- 
 ferably not more than eight or nine are placed 
 with a foster mother. They go to school in the 
 public elementary schools and are brought up as 
 far as possible in a natural home life. The success 
 of the system depends upon the skill with which 
 the foster mother is selected, and upon adequacy 
 of supervision. Its chief advantages are its 
 approximation to a normal life for the children, 
 and absence of the large capital expenditure which
 
 72 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 characterises and tends to stereotype the two 
 former methods. 
 
 The Commission, after seeing all types of 
 institutions, and examining into the condition of 
 their children, came to the conclusion that much 
 more depends upon the nature of the administra- 
 tion than upon the particular system adopted. 
 They also received strong evidence to the same 
 effect. One witness who has had a wide experi- 
 ence of girls coming from each type of institution 
 says : 
 
 IV. 8, 370 "There is no doubt that there are advantages peculiar 
 to every way in which the Poor Law children can be 
 maintained boarding-out, 'barrack' schools, cottage 
 homes, scattered homes all have their various merits. 
 The success or failure of any system must depend entirely i 
 on the people by whom it is administered.'* 
 
 The Association of Superintendents of Poor 
 Law Schools maintain the same : 
 
 " With reference to the question of the different 
 systems of arranging for the care of the Poor Law child, I 
 it is not a question of system, but of administration. The t 
 infallible test of assessing the value of any arrangement is 
 the examination of those living under the arrangement. 
 It is impossible for a badly ordered barrack, block or 
 cottage to produce alert, cheerful, upstanding and respon- 
 sive boys and girls." 
 
 Finally, in a Report on the educational work in
 
 iv THE CHILDREN 73 
 
 Poor Law schools issued in July, 1908, by the 
 Board of Education, it is said : 
 
 " Whatever opinions we may have been disposed to 
 form on the vexed question of cottage homes v. barrack iv. 8, 372 
 schools as rival methods of boarding children, we are not 
 able to detect in the schools of either class any general 
 characteristic which can be held to be distinctive of the 
 particular system adopted. Our principal conclusion on 
 this point is that the success of the school depends almost 
 entirely on the character of the supervision and the 
 personnel of the staff." 
 
 There has been a strong public opinion formed 
 of late years in favour of the system of " boarding 
 out " the children who came under the care of 
 the Guardians. It is a system which prevails to a 
 much larger extent in Scotland than in England, 
 although it has been authorised in the latter - 
 country since 1870. The Commission say with 
 regard to it th^t " many difficulties in dealing with 
 children are avoided where Guardians are able and iv. 8, 378 
 willing to adopt the system of * boarding out/ 
 In this case the expense is comparatively small 
 and involves no capital outlay; when the system 
 
 . r , . . i ' j 
 
 is well-managed a real home life is secured for the 
 children, and they enter into industrial life upon 
 the same terms as the children of the independent 
 working class. On the other hand, it is more 
 difficult to be certain that they meet with kindly
 
 74 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 l treatment ; and they share in none of the special 
 advantages enjoyed in Poor Law schools." 
 
 In England there are really two systems under 
 which children are boarded out. The one which 
 is most known and talked about is that under 
 which committees of ladies are formed in country 
 \ districts, who undertake to find suitable homes in 
 
 their neighbourhood and to supervise the children 
 sent to them. The children come from other 
 unions, and are paid for by the Guardians sending 
 them at the rate of 4^. to 5^. a week. The_cqm- 
 mittees and homes are further supervised and 
 inspected by lady inspectors under the Local 
 Government Board. Great precautions are thus 
 taken to secure that the children are properly 
 looked after, and there is no doubt that in the 
 majority of cases the system acts well. Never- 
 
 , theless, the number of children boarded out under 
 
 this system is small, and tends rather to diminish 
 
 IV. 8, 38^ than to increase; on January ist, 1908, it was 
 
 ' only J T 876. The reason appears to lie partly in 
 
 j the limited number of children who can be dealt 
 with in this way. It is not considered well to send 
 them below the age of two nor above the age of 
 ten ; and foster-parents object to children with 
 parents living who may make rival claims upon 
 them. Partly, again, there appears to be a serious
 
 iv THE CHILDREN 75 
 
 difficult^j.n finding suitable homes, and in forming 
 committees of ladies willing to undertake the 
 necessary supervision. 
 
 Under the other system of boarding-out the 
 children are placed with families within their own 
 unions, and subject to supervision only by the 
 Guardians and their officers. Though many more 
 children are dealt with in this way 6,689 ^ 
 does not appear to be nearly so satisfactory in its 
 results, owing probably to the little interest taken 
 in the children by the Guardians. The Investigator 
 appointed by the Commission to inquire into the 
 condition of the children under the Poor Law 
 reports unfavourably upon this branch of the 
 work : 
 
 " It is clear from the accounts of these six unions that iv. 8, 381 
 effective supervision of boarded-out children and their 
 homes is not obtained under the ordinary Poor Law 
 administration. This fact becomes still clearer on 
 contrasting the conditions found in these unions with 
 those prevailing amongst the groups of children boarded 
 out under boarding-out committees without their unions. 
 Supervision of. homes and children by guardians and 
 relieving officers was never found to be satisfactory." 
 
 A much more favourable report was received 
 upon the first system of boarding-out : 
 
 " Taken as a whole the supervision of the boarding-out IV. 8, 384 
 committees visited in the course of this inquiry was
 
 76 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 wonderfully good and contrasted very favourably wixh 
 supervision by Guardians and relieving officers." 
 
 " Boarding-out, when properly supervised and with an 
 active and wise boarding-out committee is, I believe, the 
 ideal system both for boys and girls, but especially for 
 girls. Suitable homes, however, are not easy to find." 
 
 The medical investigator reported to the same 
 effect : 
 
 "I am strongly of opinion that, as far as possible, the 
 rearing of pauper children should be done in the country, 
 ! not in the town ; and the holding of that opinion is 
 1 partly why I prefer boarding-out to scattered homes." 
 
 iv. 8, 398 The Commission note qne_graye defect common 
 to nearly all Boards of Guardians in their dealings 
 with children, and that is the absence of any 
 systematic records as to what becomes of the 
 children after they leave their care. They know 
 that the children do not come back to them, and 
 this, no doubt, is strong evidence that they are 
 maintaining themselves in independence. But 
 this is not sufficient. The few cases where such 
 records are kept show extraordinarily good results, 
 and it would be satisfactory to be able to prove 
 that such results are general. The Commission 
 recommend, not only that records should be 
 systematically kept, but also that there should 
 be regular supervision of the children for three
 
 iv THE CHILDREN 77 
 
 or four years after leaving. " It is not sufficient 
 to send a child of fourteen to a situation which 
 may prove unsuitable, and leave it there to look 
 after itself. Children of this age are greatly 
 handicapped by having lost their natural guar- 
 dians, and may suffer from the loss even more 
 severely at this critical age than earlier in life." 
 The Commission think that this is work which 
 might well be done by volunteer workers : 
 
 "The evidence which we have heard convinces iv. 8, 399 
 us that voluntary agencies may be relied on to co- 
 operate in this work. We think that such agen- 
 cies should be recognised by the Public Assistance 
 Authority and should report to it, and such reports 
 should be entered on a record. We have been struck 
 by the comparatively small attention given to the 
 after-care of boys, and we should welcome develop- 
 ment on the lines of those societies which deal 
 with girls." 
 
 By far the greater number of children who are 
 dependent, or partially dependent, upon the Poor 
 Law are those who live at home with one or both 
 parents ; for the most part they are the children 
 of widows. It is with regard to those children 
 that the Guardians have failed most signally in 
 their work. The question is no doubt made 
 dirrTcuTr~l)y the fact that the primary respon-
 
 78 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 sibility lies with the parent ; but by the mere 
 giving of relief the Guardians have recognised that 
 they also have a responsibility, and it is a respon- 
 sibility which cannot be discharged by the grant 
 of an inadequate dole. If they intervene at all, 
 they should intervene in such a way as to ensure 
 that the children have a fair chance of being 
 properly brought up. At present few Guardians 
 seem to take any interest in the out-relief children, 
 to know what conditions they are living under, or 
 what is likely to become of them as they grow up. 
 I The Commission report that nowhere have they 
 found want of uniformity and inadequacy of relief 
 more marked than in the allowances granted for 
 iv. 8, 408 the maintenance of children. In illustration of 
 this they quote the following instances which they 
 noted whilst attending Relief Committees in 
 different parts of the country : 
 
 (i) "Altogether seventeen cases were heard and the 
 applicants seen. The majority ot these cases were 
 widows with children, the relief being on an unusually 
 adequate scale. Thus a widow with three children 
 dependent and earning 14*. a week and some food, was 
 given js. a week relief, bringing her total weekly income 
 up to 22s. and food. In another case a widow with four 
 dependent children and one boy earning 151. a week, 
 with a total income to the family of 255., received "js. a 
 week, bringing their total income up to 32*. a week for
 
 iv THE CHILDREN 79 
 
 six persons. The rents mentioned were high, varying 
 from 45. to 6*. There was no fixed scale of relief, but it 
 seemed to average out very uniformly at 51. bd. a head, 
 including the mother and children." 
 
 (2) " The following cases illustrate the methods of the 
 guardians, e.g.^ a man and his wife, aged twenty-four and 
 twenty-two with two small children ; man broke his 
 collar-bone, had been under treatment as out-patient in 
 the general infirmary. Amount of relief which had 
 been given during the previous month, 3*. and one loaf. 
 The woman was looking after her husband and was 
 earning nothing, and the rent was 2s. 6d. Thus leaving 
 a family of four persons 6d. a week and a loaf to live 
 upon." 
 
 (3) c< Woman aged 33, with three children, aged 
 respectively 7, 5, 2. Husband sent to Canada by public 
 subscription six months ago. Earning 3*. Relief 2s. bd. 
 per week." 
 
 (4) "Woman with five children, aged respectively 
 1 1, 9, 5, 2, . Husband in prison (twenty-one days) for 
 non-payment of rates. He had only been out of prison 
 five weeks, having served twelve months for felony. 
 Family relieved during that time with 4*. per week." 
 
 (5) " We were told that there was no scale of relief, but 
 we found that in practice a widow was supposed to keep 
 herself and one child, and would receive is. 6d. a week 
 relief for every child in addition to one." 
 
 (6) " The scale as regards widows is 45. for the mother, 
 2s. each for two children, and is. for the rest." 
 
 The case of one Union is noted as especially 
 significant of the irresponsible attitude of the
 
 80 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 Guardians towards out-relief children. The rate 
 of allowance in that Union for a widow is nothing 
 for herself and the first child, and is. 6d. and a 
 loaf for each subsequent child. The same Board 
 of Guardians is maintaining children in cottage 
 homes at a cost of ijs. 6d. a week per child, 
 exclusive of education, for which a special grant is 
 IV. 8, 499 made to the public elementary school. " Making 
 every allowance for the fact that some of the 
 mothers might be able to earn, or might be assisted 
 by relations, we think that the discrepancy should 
 have suggested to the Guardians that the amount 
 per child was both too low in the one case and too 
 high in the other." 
 
 The great mistake here, as elsewhere, lies in the 
 
 I application of a fixed scale without consideration of 
 
 1 the .circumstances. There is no doubt that with the 
 
 assistance of friends and relatives many widows do, 
 
 and still more might, bring up their children without 
 
 any Poor Law relief ; but if relief is given at all it 
 
 should be adapted to the needs of the family. 
 
 Even worse than the inadequacy of the relief is 
 the fact that it is often given to maintain children 
 with drunken or immoral parents, or in thoroughly 
 insanitary surroundings. The Commission was 
 much impressed by the necessity of greater dis- 
 crimination and supervision :
 
 iv THE CHILDREN 81 
 
 *' We think that the closer supervision which is iv. 8, 413 
 I required in the case of the aged is even more 
 \ imperatively needed in the case of the children, 
 and we quote from Dr. Williams's Report in 
 support of our suggestions for improvement : 
 
 "Where little supervision is exercised to see that out- 
 relief is wisely used, large numbers of the children are 
 brought up in homes fronting on to filthy streets or 
 courts, and spend most of their time out of school 
 playing amongst garbage. In Liverpool 45 per cent, of 
 the families were living on roads which were in a bad 
 and dirty condition, while in the same proportion of cases 
 the sanitary condition of the house itself was bad. In 
 Bradford, where an effort is made to see that out-relief is 
 expended wisely, 19 per cent, of the cases only are living 
 on dirty streets or courts, while in only 14 per cent, the 
 sanitary condition of the house is bad." 
 
 " We think that where out-relief is given care 
 should be taken to ensure that the total income 
 from whatever source is sufficient to afford proper 
 food, clothing, and housing conditions for the 
 whole family : 
 
 " The lowest income possessed by any family investi- 
 gated is 2.s.j and belonged to a family of three persons in 
 Liverpool, but incomes of 3*. for four persons, 4*. for 
 three persons, 5*. for five persons are found in the tables. 
 It does not need much consideration to see that not only 
 are these incomes insufficient, they are impossible. The 
 families possessing them do not live on them j they beg 
 
 G
 
 82 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 or borrow ; they pawn their furniture and clothes ; they 
 do not pay rent, but move from place to place as landlords 
 push them out. Such a life can be continued for a long 
 time, and it is not necessary to emphasise the fact of how 
 hopelessly demoralising it must be for children, and how 
 small must be the chance children brought up in this 
 fashion have of becoming decent and self-respecting 
 citizens. Their schooling is often irregular owing to the 
 frequent moves, and no regularity or order enters into 
 their lives. ... In the large urban unions we have 
 particulars of many families whose income may be con- 
 sidered an impossible one. In Liverpool I saw a house into 
 which out-relief was going, the whole household plenish- 
 ing of which was a broken kettle, and another in which a 
 heap of rags and an orange box represented the whole." 
 
 " We think also that it should be the duty of 
 the Public Assistance Authority to ascertain that 
 the children are being properly nourished. 
 
 "A large number of the children are fed almost 
 entirely on bread and tea. Very few, if any, children of 
 families in receipt of out-relief get sufficient fresh milk, 
 most get none at all. How many go absolutely short of 
 food it is difficult to say, but the evidence given by the 
 condition of nutrition and intelligence of the children 
 examined leads one to the conclusion that large numbers 
 are underfed as regards the essential food elements, though 
 they may possibly have sufficient bulk." 
 
 " We think that unless satisfactory conditions in 
 the home can be assured, the children should be 
 maintained in a Poor Law institution or an
 
 iv THE CHILDREN 83 
 
 industrial school ; more especially we think that 
 no children should be maintained by out-relief in 
 immoral surroundings : 
 
 " I saw in one instance out-relief children habitually 
 sent out to pilfer in a small way, others to beg, some 
 whose mothers were drunkards or living immoral lives. . . . 
 These definitely bad mothers were but a small minority 
 of the mothers whom we visited, but there were many of 
 a negatively bad type, people without a standard, whining, 
 colourless people, often with poor health. If out-relief 
 is to be given at all, especially where children are con- 
 cerned, those who give it must take the responsibility for 
 its right use, and to do this there must be close super- 
 vision of the homes. The negatively bad mothers 
 spoken of above might in a very large proportion of cases 
 be guided and stimulated by kindly and wise super- 
 vision." 
 
 " Great stress has been laid by our medical in- 
 vestigator on the need for more medical super- f 
 vision of all children under the Poor Law^_both. 
 indoor In^LjQuJtdQQr, and this opinion we endorse. 
 
 " We think that in the case of children of 
 widows, care should be taken that they get a fair 
 start on leaving school : 
 
 " No board of guardians, so far as my investigations 
 go, takes any interest whatever about the placing and 
 starting in life of boys who have had out-relief, nor does 
 it try to help them to any technical training. In some 
 unions the women guardians help to place the girls in 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 domestic service, and the board generally tries to persuade 
 mothers to send their girls to service. For a boy, out- 
 relief stops at fourteen, and he turns to the first job at 
 which he can earn. Most likely this job will be one 
 that leads to nothing. It may be street selling of some 
 kind, it may be an errand or van boy's job. When it is 
 over he finds, or tries to find, another, probably also 
 leading to nothing, and so he drifts on." 
 
 The difficult question of how far a widow 
 should be expected to earn a living for her chil- 
 dren as well as look after them is treated very 
 differently by different Boards. Some make it 
 a condition of giving any relief that the mother 
 should earn as much as possible, others give 
 enough to enable her to devote herself entirely to 
 the children. In Glasgow, e.g., a "special roll" 
 has been made of widows who have full mainten- 
 ance allowed them ; but the experiment has not 
 been very successful, and in a considerable propor- 
 tion of the cases the women have lapsed into 
 immoral habits. It is clear that here, as else- 
 where, no general rule can be laid down ; " we 
 iv. 8, 419 think that the circumstances in each case should 
 be carefully considered and watched, and that the 
 mothers should not be expected to earn unless 
 satisfactory arrangements can be made for the 
 children." 
 
 The suggestion is further made that in cases
 
 iv THE CHILDREN 85 
 
 where the mother continues to work provision iv. 8, 420 
 might be made for the children to attend a day 
 boarding school, managed on the same lines as the 
 day industrial schools. An experiment has already 
 been tried in this direction in Liverpool and Glas- \ 
 gow. "When the children are too young to go to 
 school we think that the mothers should not go 
 out to work, as it is impossible to provide a sufficient 
 substitute." 
 
 The changes which the Commission recommend 
 in dealing with these children would really revolu- 
 tionise this department of work. It would certainly 
 involve for the time being a large increase of 
 expenditure, but it is an increase which would 
 more than repay itself if it resulted in the children ; 
 becoming efficient men and women. " To a very iv. 8, 422 
 large extent the money now spent in small doles 
 of out-relief is wasted by reason of its inadequacy ; 
 and it will be good economy to spend more in 
 doing effective work." It cannot be doubted that 
 under the present system many of the children are 
 growing up anaemic, diseased, undisciplined and 
 unskilled, and likely, therefore, to add to the 
 pauperism of the country in the future. 
 
 But far more important than the increase in 
 expenditure involved will be the increase in care 
 and supervision. If, as the Commission anticipate,
 
 86 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 this care and supervision is largely undertaken by 
 voluntary agencies, that will probably result in 
 a decrease in the number of cases requiring public 
 assistance ; it will often happen that the help and 
 advice of a voluntary agency is more appropriate 
 and effective. When this form of help is not 
 forthcoming it may prove necessary to appoint 
 extra officials, " and these in many cases should 
 be women capable of instructing and advising 
 mothers." This, again, would involve increased 
 IV. 8, 421 expenditure. But the Commission think " that to 
 a large extent increased expenditure in this depart- 
 ment should be met by a reduction of the ex- 
 travagant expenditure at present incurred in many 
 Poor Law Schools and Homes." 
 
 It has already been said (Ch. i) that the Com- 
 mission do not agree with the view that necessitous 
 
 children should be transferred to the care of the 
 Education Authority. The prime need of these 
 children is maintenance, while the function of 
 the Education Authority is education. So far 
 as their general education is concerned the children 
 already receive it either directly from, or under 
 the supervision of, the Education Authority. But 
 they need much more than this. Many of them, 
 especially those who are in institutions, are 
 seriously handicapped by their antecedents, and
 
 iv THE CHILDREN 87 
 
 need special discipline, attention, and training. That 
 the elementary school-teachers do not succeed so 
 well in this direction, even with their normal 
 children, is evidenced by the Board of Education 
 itself in a recent Report : " Teachers of public 
 elementary schools which are attended by Poor 
 Law children testify to their superior habits of 
 cleanliness and obedience." 
 
 One argument adduced in favour of transferring 
 the children to the Education Authority consists 
 in a good deal of vague talk about removing the 
 " stigma of pauperism." The Commission rightly IV. 8, 437 
 protest against the way in which critics of the 
 Poor Law apply this term without any considera- 
 tion of its justice. In respect to the children 
 especially, it has long ceased to have any ap- 
 plication except for purposes of rhetoric. 
 
 A considerable number of children (nearly iv. 8, 431 
 8,000) are sent by Boards of Guardians to 
 specialised charitable institutions which are in- 
 tended to meet the needs of special classes of 
 children, such as training homes and training ships, 
 homes for the crippled and feeble-minded, etc. 
 These homes are inspected and certified by the 
 Local Government Board, and form a valuable 
 means of co-operation between public and private 
 assistance. There are also, in addition to these
 
 88 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 special homes, very large charities for dealing with \ 
 iv. 8, 432 fjpor children in general. " These institutions deal ' 
 to a large extent with the same class of children as 
 the Poor Law ; but their work is not always 
 safeguarded in the same way, and there is no 
 attempt at co-operation, or at dividing the field of 
 work. The children in these institutions are prac- 
 tically without outside control, and the^ question 
 arises whether all institutions dealing with children 
 should not be subject to the same supervision, 
 and be required to co-operate with the public 
 authority." It would no doubt give rise to some 
 objection at first to ask that a private orphanage 
 should submit to inspection, but when it is con- 
 sidered how helpless the children in these 
 institutions are, and how cut off from external 
 supervision, it is probable that public opinion 
 would support the change. 
 
 iv. 8, 440 Finally the Commission recommend that the 
 policy and terms of the Education (Provision of 
 Meals) Act, 1906, should be reconsidered in its 
 relation to relief generally, and that if relief for 
 necessitous children is required, and is not and 
 cannot be met from voluntary sources, it should 
 become part of the duty of the Public Assistance 
 Committees to provide such assistance as may be 
 necessary by way of meals or otherwise.
 
 iv THE CHILDREN 89 
 
 This recommendation is made on the ground 
 that when a child comes to school ill-nourished, 
 there is need for careful and sympathetic enquiry 
 at its home as to the causes of the difficulty. 
 The Education Authority has no machinery for 
 making this enquiry, nor for dealing with the 
 distress which may exist there. The relief of a 
 child should be in the hands of an authority 
 capable of assisting the family as a whole, that 
 is, the authority which is responsible for public 
 assistance.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE ABLE-BODIED 
 
 IN the Report this subject is dealt with under two 
 headings The Abie-Bodied under the Poor Law 
 and Distress due to unemployment. Both in 
 practice and theory, however, the two subjects are 
 so closely connected that it will be convenient here 
 to deal with them in one chapter. It might be 
 thought, indeed, that no able-bodied man would 
 be in economic distress and needing relief except 
 in consequence of want of employment ; but 
 this is far from being so. In one form or another 
 it is true that the employment question enters into 
 all these cases, but it is complicated with many 
 other questions which have to be taken into con- 
 sideration and which make remedies very difficult 
 of application. Unemployment is of as many 
 kinds and due to as many causes as employment 
 itself, and there is no one panacea which can be
 
 CH. v THE ABLE-BODIED 91 
 
 applied to remedy all kinds. Every kind of work 
 may bring with it sooner or later its correlative 
 unemployment, in the sense that some of those 
 who have chosen it as their work may find their 
 services temporarily or permanently not in demand. 
 This may be due to the inferiority of the service 
 offered, or it may be due to some defect in the 
 character of the man who offers it, or it may be 
 due to the fact that more of the particular kind of 
 service is being offered than the community has 
 any use for. But whatever the cause, the only 
 complete remedy is for the man to offer something 
 which is wanted, and then he will cease to be 
 unemployed. 
 
 Short of this complete remedy many expedients 
 have been tried, and many more suggested, to 
 meet the difficulties and distress which arise out of 
 want of employment. Generally they have con- 
 sisted in the attempt, under very varied condi- 
 tions, to devise work which can be done without 
 any particular qualifications. For the most part 
 they have failed, sometimes because the men did 
 not really want the work, more often because the 
 work did not really want the men. The demand 
 on one side or the other was not a real one, and 
 could not be maintained. 
 
 Nevertheless, it may be worth while it is often
 
 92 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 held to be worth while to institute a temporary 
 expedient which cannot be maintained, if it serves 
 to make the way easier to a relation between the 
 workman and his employment which can be main- 
 tained. And that is a very fair test to apply. 
 Is the man more fit for useful work, more capable 
 of service wanted by the community, than he was 
 before his period of exercise (for work which is 
 not wanted, which is only instituted for the sake 
 of the man who does it, is, after all, only exercise), 
 or is he less fit ? 
 
 In answering this question we have to consider, 
 not only the man's physical health, but also his 
 skill, industry and willingness to adapt himself to 
 the conditions of the labour market. 
 
 The administration of the Poor Law has, since 
 1834, proceeded on the assumption that the most 
 important factor in the situation is the man's will 
 to work and to adapt himself and his services to 
 the demands of the community. It has been 
 held, and rightly, that if that will is impaired or 
 weakened, the situation becomes hopeless, and 
 hence has arisen what is popularly known as the 
 " deterrent " system of relief. When the Com- 
 missioners of 1832 made their survey of pauperism, 
 they found that the most striking feature of the 
 situation was the unwillingness of the labourer to
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 93 
 
 work regularly for an employer whilst he could 
 i get permanent or intermittent maintenance from the 
 parish, and the object which they set before them- 
 selves was to make him once more eager to be 
 useful. " The workhouse test was based upon the iv. 9, 443 
 assumption that the first essential towards being 
 useful is the desire to be useful, and that this 
 desire was being extinguished by a policy of relief 
 which made life easier for the man whom it was 
 unprofitable to employ than for the man whose 
 services had a real market value. When placed 
 between the alternative of steady work for an 
 employer and a light job for the parish (or even \ 
 relief without any work), the labourer had chosen 
 the easier course. When placed between the altern- 
 ative of steady work for an employer and main- 
 tenance in a workhouse under strict discipline, 
 he again chose the easier course, and sought for 
 the work he had before avoided. The Commis- 
 sioners had no wish to drive the poor into the 
 workhouse ; had they done so their policy would 
 have been an utter failure. The object was to 
 prove to the country, and above all to the labourer 
 himself, that his labour still had a real value, and 
 that it rested primarily with him to make that 
 value appreciated." 
 
 The application of this principle, and its success
 
 94 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 or failure through three-quarters of a century, is 
 described in the Report. There is also an impor- 
 vi. i tant and interesting description of the changes 
 which have taken place in the conditions of indus- 
 try during the same period. Here no more can 
 be attempted than to summarise the position as 
 we find it at the present day. 
 
 In the first place unemployment has practi- 
 cally ceased to exist m tHe rural districts 
 and h;is concentrated itself in the towns. Hence 
 it is not the country unions, but those in'the cities, 
 more especially in the densely populated cities, 
 
 i which are feeling the pressure of able-bodied 
 
 , pauperism today. 
 
 The ordinary returns as to the numbers of able- 
 bodied in receipt of Poor Law relief are somewhat 
 
 \ misleading, as they include persons who are 
 ordinarily able-bodied but temporarily disabled. 
 IL 118 Omitting these we find that the number of able- 
 bodied men in health relieved in the workhouse 
 on 3 ist March, 1906, was 10,060, while the 
 number relieved in their homes was 8,103. The 
 great majority of these men were comparatively 
 young, between the ages of 25 and 55 ; and the 
 number, especially of those in the workhouse, has 
 increased rapidly of late years. 
 
 The total number is not of course great com-
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 95 
 
 pared with the whole mass of pauperism ; but the 
 fact that it is increasing, when taken in connection 
 with the present conditions of life in many work- 
 houses, suggests a serious evil. The Com- 
 missioners were convinced, both from the evidence 
 they received and from what they themselves saw, 
 that there is a class of persons to whom work-* 
 
 v ^__p^ BH ^ MMBHMBHHMMH ^HMMBiH^^ HH ^Qp HHaH M H BKHBHMWBIMlMaHIHiMM*MHVMiBMii^B J 
 
 house life has ceased to be deterrent, and that/ 
 many, even of those who shrink from it at first,' 
 rapidly deteriorate under its influence until they 
 come to prefer it to the more strenuous and 
 responsible life of the outside world. One 
 witness who has been in close contact with this 
 class for many years says : 
 
 " The pauper in the workhouse intends to be there ; IV. 9, 489 
 he is either going to be there or in some other institution 
 all the days of his life. My experience is that the 
 average have been in from ten to twelve years, and some 
 of them nineteen years, and they are young men now. 
 
 " The workhouse is no deterrent to any man. The 
 workhouse simply harbours them, and as long as the 
 workhouses exist, these men will exist. 
 
 " That is your experience, not only from Poplar, but 
 from elsewhere ? That is my experience of fourteen 
 years, not only in Poplar, but in the provinces, in large 
 provincial towns. 
 
 " Would you say from your experience that that is one 
 of the defects of the present system of Poor Law admin- 
 istration that the workhouse is not a deterrent ? It is
 
 96 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 not. I say my experience is that it does not matter 
 whether trade is good or bad, it is immaterial. When 
 trade was good, and there was the Boer War and the 
 Coronation, we had the same class of men in the Poplar 
 Workhouse ; it makes no difference whether trade was 
 good or bad, they were still there. It is simply a kind 
 of thing that grows and gets into the bones, and it will 
 take years to get it out j it wants a moral and mental 
 instructor. It is like taking a child by the hand and 
 teaching it to walk, to get those men to work properly 
 and be independent." 
 
 The Report points out that a considerable 
 number of these men have probably been in bad 
 health on their first admission, and having come 
 to like the life have stayed on after their restora- 
 tion to health. Under a proper system of 
 administration this should be impossible ; but 
 there is no doubt that in some of the enormous 
 workhouses of to-day an inmate once admitted is 
 practically lost sight of by the Guardians, and in 
 the absence of any regular call-over stays on as 
 long as he pleases. On the other hand he may 
 become what is known as an " in-and-out." 
 Another witness gives a graphic description of how 
 we manufacture this class by our present system : 
 
 IV. 9, 502 " This class of man is well known to the master of 
 every London workhouse as the able-bodied loafer. As a 
 rule, he is a strong, healthy fellow, knowing no trade, 
 evincing great dislike to work, and possessing all the
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 97 
 
 attributes of the soft-shelled crab, willing to live upon the 
 fruits of the labour of the worker, so long as he can avoid 
 the sharing of responsibility himself. 
 
 There is no doubt that the moment this class of man 
 becomes an inmate so surely does he deteriorate into a 
 worse character still. Unless rigorously dealt with and 
 made to work under strict supervision, he has a fairly 
 good time in the House and after a month or so he has 
 mastered every trick of the trade, and becomes a con- 
 firmed in and outer, taking his day's pleasure by merely 
 giving the necessary notice, returning the same evening 
 more contented than ever with his lot in the House. 
 Something for nothing is degrading the man, until all the 
 manhood has left him and there remains for the rate- 
 payers to keep an idle, dissolute remnant." 
 
 Another witness who had a long experience as iv. 5, 
 chaplain in a large city workhouse said : 
 
 " After an experience of some twelve years there is,'* 
 he says, " no doubt in my mind that life in the work- 
 house deteriorates mentally, morally, and physically the 
 habitual inmates. Indeed, the life of these people is better 
 described as more or less a miserable existence than a life. 
 It must be admitted that the mental capacity of the average 
 person who drifts into the workhouse is of a low order, 
 but, nevertheless, I have seen in countless instances a 
 gradual deterioration of intellect owing to the lack of 
 almost all incentive to use the brain. The inmate finds 
 at very least the necessities of life, and in many places far 
 more than the necessities of life, provided for him with 
 scarcely any thought or effort on his part, and in the 
 majority of cases the sole ideas that fill the mind are to 
 
 H
 
 98 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 get as much to eat and as much sleep, and as large an 
 amount of immunity from even the lightest task as 
 possible. A large number of cases have come under my 
 notice of young persons of both sexes who oil their first 
 admission to the workhouse have felt their position and 
 surroundings most keenly, and yet in a very short space 
 of time have found the life so congenial and free from 
 responsibility and need of exertion that they made no 
 effort to leave it, and after their discharge return to it as 
 soon as possible. I have also seen many young people 
 admitted who were at first bright and willing to perform 
 their light duties, but who, under the influence of their 
 associates, soon grow lazy and unwilling to do anything, 
 though physically well able to work. Then follow short 
 sentences for refusing to perform their tasks, and soon 
 they become incorrigible rogues and vagabonds, and the 
 result is the habitual criminal. Again, the ill-effect of 
 the increasing tendency to make the life easier and to 
 increase the dietary and general comfort of the inmate is 
 shown in the increasing number of admissions of those 
 who, earning wages for a portion of the year outside, 
 place their money in safe keeping and enter the work- 
 house regularly for periods of rest at the ratepayers' 
 expense. I have come across many such cases, such 
 people easily learn to complain of mysterious weaknesses, 
 aches and pains which are hard to disprove, the supposed 
 possession of which entitles them to the best of fare arid 
 medical comforts which the institution has to offer." In 
 conclusion, "the rapidly growing opinion amongst the 
 poorer classes seems to be expressed by the remark of a 
 man to me last week. * So long as I can get sixteen 
 ounces of pie for my dinner and my two children kept
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 99 
 
 for life, and they don't ask me to do any more than polish 
 the stair bannisters, I'm not going to work.' " 
 
 Other witnesses speak of the bad effect of the 
 life upon women, notwithstanding the fact that it 
 is easier to find employment for them than for the 
 men : 
 
 " The commonest faults of able-bodied workhouse IV. 5, 193 
 women, as a body, are laziness and dishonesty. I have 
 never yet seen a workhouse woman hurry. Every move- 
 ment is taken in a leisurely way. Our best workers do 
 not do in a day more than half of what a good charwoman 
 outside would do. This is one of the difficulties in getting 
 young women taken out of the workhouse to stop in the 
 situations found for them. They cannot understand why 
 the mistress objects to their dawdling through their work, 
 as they have always been used to do inside. ... I fear 
 that nearly all our able-bodied women steal when they 
 get the chance. . . . The views which workhouse habitues 
 express from time to time are interesting as showing their 
 point of view. One woman said to the portress in my 
 hearing : * I lives here ; you are only a paid person.' 
 Another said to a policeman : c You're a beggar come 
 over from Ireland to live out of the rates, that's what you 
 are.' Another said to a gentleman holding an important 
 post : * You're only a servant ; I want to see your masters.' 
 A man told a group of our nurses : " If it wasn't for the 
 likes of us, the like of you wouldn't be here.' ... It is 
 difficult to believe, but it is an actual fact, that respect- 
 able young married women, who enter our c class ' and 
 maternity wards, not infrequently declare themselves un- 
 
 H 2
 
 100 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 married, so that their husbands shall not run any risk of 
 being asked to pay on their account." 
 
 It would seem from evidence such as this that 
 the workhouse of to-day is a complete failure as 
 regards a certain class of able-bodied. The reason 
 is to be found partly in the size of many of these 
 institutions, partly in the mixed character of the 
 population inhabiting them. It is no unfrequent 
 occurrence to find town workhouses containing 
 a thousand or more inmates of all types. In such 
 cases there are few masters who can do more than 
 preserve a certain amount of discipline, and even 
 that fails sometimes. " The able-bodied are not 
 IV. 5, 187 occupied, and spend their days in sullen idleness, 
 and the old people suffer from the general 
 atmosphere of repression and gloom." On the 
 other hand, more especially in London, the diffi- 
 culty is increased by every attempt to lessen the 
 hardships of workhouse life for the infirm : 
 
 IV. 9, 489 " Particularly if it is an overcrowded workhouse, it is 
 impossible to prevent the able-bodied class sharing in the 
 comfort, and I may say luxuries, of the older ones, you 
 cannot prevent that class rinding the conditions of life in 
 a mixed workhouse, such as, as a matter of fact, they 
 are not entitled to, and which they ought not to 
 share in." 
 
 Another witness, speaking of the Marylebone 
 Workhouse, says :
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 101 
 
 " I do not think the present condition of things in the 
 workhouse is satisfactory. The master tells me that 
 associating in large numbers in the able-bodied blocks 
 becomes an attraction ; and it appears to me that some 
 method of breaking up such associations, accompanied by 
 systematic training under healthy conditions, would be 
 advantageous. . . . The master feels very strongly that 
 what the men require is to be given continuous work, 
 which they are able to do, and to be separated the one 
 from the other. He regards the workhouse as a kind of 
 club-house, in which they put up with a certain amount 
 of inconvenience, but have very pleasant evenings." 
 
 It seems clear that persons of this class should ) 
 from the first be dealt with in institutions by 
 themselves, and under conditions quite different 
 from those accorded to the infirm. It is probable 
 that the majority, if properly handled from the 
 beginning, might recover their desire and capacity 
 for independence. For those who have become 
 hardened in their mode of life nothing can be 
 done under the present system. Some unions 
 have established what is known as a test workhouse 
 or able-bodied workhouse, to which none but the 
 able-bodied are sent, and where an effort is made 
 to exact work under strict discipline. But they 
 are not very successful, owing chiefly to the fact 
 that the Guardians' power of detaining the men is 
 limited to a week at the outside, so that they can
 
 102 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 go and come as they please. The Inspector for 
 Yorkshire says : 
 
 IV. 9, 503 <c The able-bodied inmates of modern workhouses are, 
 as a rule, very few. It is only in large centres of popula- 
 tion where they appear in considerable numbers. The 
 Sheffield Union is, perhaps, troubled more with this class 
 than any other union in my district. I recently obtained 
 from the master of this workhouse a Return showing all 
 the admissions and discharges at the test house of the 
 workhouse for the year 1903. The total number of 
 admissions was 5,066, and the total number of discharges 
 5,072. The master states that this class gives infinite 
 trouble. They have no fear of prison ; in fact, many of 
 them prefer it, and state that the work is not so hard and 
 the food better. Many of them have got good trades, 
 such as fitters, plumbers, puddlers, ironworkers, etc., and 
 could earn from ^3 to ^4 a week if they chose. They 
 prefer to go into the workhouse, where, however, they 
 only work under compulsion, and give all the trouble 
 they can to the officers. The master furnished me with 
 a list of fifty-six men, ranging from the age of seventeen 
 to fifty-two years, who are either now or have been 
 frequently inmates of the workhouse test house, and have 
 been sent to prison on various occasions." 
 
 It is to be feared that for many of this class 
 there is little chance of conversion to an indepen- 
 dent life ; but if there were the power to send them 
 to a " detention colony," where they would be 
 kept for a period of years at steady work, removed 
 from the temptation of drink, they would at least
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 103 
 
 be less troublesome and costly than they now are, 
 and there would be less temptation to others to 
 fall into the same habit of life. 
 
 The normal rule is that able-bodied men shall 
 not be given relief in their own homes ; but pro- 
 vision is made in the Local Government Board 
 orders whereby it can be done under certain con- 
 ditions. " Under the Regulation Order, or under iv. 9, 457 
 the Prohibition Order where the Guardians have 
 an Outdoor Labour Test Order attached, the 
 Guardians may give outdoor relief to able-bodied 
 men under what is known as the stoneyard 
 system, that is to say, the men are given a certain 
 number of days' work in the stoneyard, in lieu of 
 being taken into the workhouse." 
 
 Where a labour yard is well managed, this may 
 be a most useful method of assisting able-bodied 
 men, and less likely to be harmful to them than 
 their maintenance in a workhouse under such con- 
 ditions as we have described. But great difficulties 
 arise when the conditions of work in a labour 
 yard are made less strenuous or less continuous 
 than the conditions of work outside. Experience 
 shows that many men will work for two or three 
 days who will not work for a full week, if by 
 so doing they can get just sufficient relief to keep 
 them in idleness for the other days. Hence it
 
 104 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 comes that in most labour yards there collects 
 a more or less permanent residuum of men who 
 never seek work elsewhere, and whose work in 
 the labour yard is not worth what they are paid 
 for it. In times of distress, when really respectable 
 workmen may be driven to seek work in the 
 labour yard, they are forced into association with 
 these permanent habitues, and often dragged down 
 to their level. A. number of striking instances 
 where this has happened are quoted in the Report, 
 of which the following is typical : 
 
 IV. 9, 460 " Before the commencement of the frost, which really 
 put an absolute stop to all riverside labour for nearly two 
 months, they had already opened a stone-yard, and the 
 consequence was that when the real distress came they 
 had on their hands a certain number of undisciplined 
 men in an overcrowded yard, and then on the top of 
 those, they had those who were driven to relief by the 
 severity of the weather. They got a number of persons 
 whom they practically could not control." ..." It was 
 stated before the Select Committee on Distress that, 
 including supervision, rents, plant, and materials, the 
 guardians spent altogether ^17,000, bringing the cost of 
 the stone broken to "j a ton, whereas 5*. or less per ton 
 is the usual cost. It was further stated in evidence before 
 the Committee that the experiment was a great failure, 
 owing, among other things, to the class of men employed; 
 some would have honestly tried to do as much as they 
 could, but were deterred by others."
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 105 
 
 One of the difficulties of giving employment in 
 either labour yards or workhouses is the little 
 choice of work to which the men can be set. 
 Wood-chopping and stone-breaking are the two 
 occupations to which the authorities most often 
 have recourse, and neither is satisfactory : 
 
 " In the matter of the Firewood Trade there seems IV. 9, 464 
 little doubt that the competition of charitable societies 
 and Poor Law Guardians is ruining the independent 
 employer." 
 
 A member of the Leicester Board of Guardians 
 stated in his evidence that : 
 
 " We have opened a wood-yard away from the IV. 9, 477 
 workhouse, where we have sent from 60 to 120 men, 
 being the lame and others physically unfit to work on the 
 land, to saw, chop, and bundle firewood, at which work ? 
 we have incurred a great loss, year by year, and have 
 practically shut up all the private firewood dealers in the 
 borough." 
 
 Lists have been furnished to the Commission of 
 wood-choppers who have been driven to the work- 
 house because their industry has been under-sold by 
 charitable agencies and by Boards of Guardians, 
 and the paradox has been perfected when these 
 men have been occupied in chopping wood to be 
 sold again at a loss, and so to throw more men 
 out of independent employment.
 
 106 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 The fate of the firewood industry is a concrete 
 example of the dangers which attach to all kinds 
 of relief work. The result has been so marked 
 in this case because the industry in question is a 
 comparatively small one, and the competition sup- 
 ported by charity and the rates has been on a very 
 large scale and very persistent. 
 
 But, it will be said, these men must be helped, 
 and it is only common sense to insist upon some 
 task of work being done in return for relief given. 
 That is true, but under a better system work 
 might be given which would be much more helpful 
 to the men, and of which the bad effect on 
 independent industry might be reduced to a 
 minimum. Some of the Continental labour 
 colonies, for instance, are almost self-contained, 
 in the sense that they provide for nearly all their 
 own wants, and consume nearly all their own 
 produce. If the able-bodied men receiving relief 
 were in the same way engaged in providing for 
 themselves and for the institutions belonging to 
 the Poor Law, there would be a much greater 
 \ variety of occupations available and comparatively 
 little injury to any one trade. 
 
 A step in the right direction has been taken by 
 some Boards of Guardians who have tried the 
 experiment of starting a farm and setting their
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 107 
 
 men to work upon it. " In so far as it is success- 
 ful, this plan has the merit of teaching the men 
 something of work upon the land ; but it has 
 been found in practice that supervision is difficult, 
 and that the men prefer it to taking up work under y 
 the ordinary conditions of the labour market." It 
 is from Leicester again that we hear : 
 
 "We have also 48 acres of heavy land a mile out IV. 9,474 
 of the town, where we have employed the able-bodied 
 men in digging, planting, manuring, and attending to 
 vegetables, tomatoes, etc. Here we have also incurred a 
 very considerable loss." 
 
 Attempts to draft off some of these men to 
 outside employment failed ; the men either would j 
 not take or would not keep the work which was 
 found for them. 
 
 A much more systematic effort will have to be 
 made than any yet attempted if good results are 
 to be attained. What seems to be indicated by f 
 past failures is a system of country workhouses for 
 this class of able-bodied, on a large enough scale 
 to afford variety of occupation for all types of men 
 and all seasons of the year, and under conditions 
 6T work and discipline which shall make them less 
 attractive than an independent life. 
 
 Before leaving the question oT the able-bodied 
 as under the Poor Law, it is necessary to mention
 
 108 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 one form of relief which has become more pre- 
 valent of late years. Under the orders of the 
 Local Government Board it is always open to the 
 relieving officer to give relief immediately and 
 unconditionally in cases of " sudden and urgent 
 necessity." There is also an article in the Out 
 Relief Regulation Order which permits the Guar- 
 *L- ' dians under special circumstances in any case to 
 depart from the regulations, and report to the 
 Local Government Board that they have done 
 so. Both these provisions are intended to apply 
 only in exceptional cases of emergency, but they 
 have been utilised by certain Boards of Guardians 
 to enable them to evade the intention of the law, 
 v. 9. 479 and tojgive relief without a labour test. " In this 
 way a large number of able-bodied men have, 
 during the last few winters, received relief in 
 certain unions without doing any work in return, 
 or submitting to any test. A return handed in 
 by Mr. Lockwood shows that in the half-year 
 ending Lady Day, 1906, the number of men so 
 relieved in Camberwell was 781, relieved 2,847 
 times ; in Bermondsey the number of men was 
 344 ; while in Poplar, the numbers varied from 
 172 to 534 per week. Very often the relief is 
 repeated week after week until it becomes practi- 
 cally continuous."
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 109 
 
 The Poplar Guardians initiated this policy in 
 1904 : 
 
 " As might have been expected, as soon as the decision 
 of the Guardians to grant out-door relief to able-bodied 
 men was known, the relieving officers were flooded by 
 applications, and the weekly value of relief in kind rose 
 in a few weeks from ^88 at the beginning of the 
 Christmas quarter to over ^300." 
 
 The effect of relief given in this way without 
 any attempt to test the willingness of the men 
 to work cannot fail to be mischievous, and to tempt 
 them more and more to cease to rely on their 
 own exertions. It is true that in specially selected 
 cases of men thrown out of work by unexpected 
 misfortune, the wisest as well as the kindest form 
 of help may be to give an allowance whilst they 
 seek new work. But it is a form of help which 
 is most wisely given privately, out of charitable 
 funds. When given wholesale from public funds 
 there is no form of relief which may so quickly 
 demoralise a neighbourhood. 
 
 Under the Poor Law as at present administered 
 we find no effective working system for dealing 
 with able-bodied persons, whether good, bad, or 
 indifferent. In some places the management is 
 much better than in others, but in most places the 
 law is applied unintelligently, whilst in some it is
 
 110 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 evaded still more unintelligently. What is needed 
 is, on the one hand, a system which shall be wider 
 and more elastic in its application ; on the other 
 hand, greater intelligence and honesty of purpose 
 in administering the system. 
 
 During the last twenty years the prevailing 
 tendency has been to attempt to deal with the 
 able-bodied in some way outside the Poor Law. 
 For much longer than that, indeed, the charitable 
 public has always been ready to respond to the 
 claims of any period of " exceptional distress " ; 
 but it was in 1886 that the problem of the " un- 
 employed " as such began to take shape in the 
 public mind. In that year remedies were at- 
 tempted in two directions, which have been tried 
 and failed, and tried again, as the evil recurred 
 and persisted and finally threatened to become 
 permanent. The first method was that of starting a 
 large public fund to be distributed amongst the un- 
 vi. 3, 364 employed. In London in 1886, "nearly ^8 0,000 was 
 rapidly subscribed, and almost as rapidly distributed, 
 without, in most cases, any adequate precautions 
 being taken to ensure a proper administration ; as 
 a consequence much of the money was wasted and 
 had a most demoralising effect." The distribution 
 of money was discredited in the eyes of responsible
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 111 
 
 authorities, and subsequent Mansion House Funds 
 were devoted to the attempt to benefit small 
 numbers of persons permanently, mainly by way 
 of relief works. But the raising and distribution 
 of funds still continue largely both in London 
 and the provinces, very largely through the 
 medium of newspapers, and frequently to the 
 injury of the neighbourhood chosen for their 
 distribution. 
 
 The other direction in which a remedy was 
 sought was that of municipal relief works. Mr. 
 Chamberlain issued a circular from the Local 
 Government Board in 1886, recommending that 
 in times of exceptional distress the Guardians 
 should confer with the local authorities, and the 
 latter should put in hand work for the benefit of vi. 3, 384 
 the unemployed. " In all cases . . . the men 
 employed should be engaged on the recommenda- 
 tion of the Guardians as persons whom ... it 
 is undesirable to send to the workhouse, or to 
 treat as subjects for parish relief, . . . the wages 
 \ paid should be something less than the wages 
 ordinarily paid for similar work." This circular, 
 which was repeated in 1892 by Mr. Fowler, has 
 been largely acted upon all over the country, but 
 the conditions which were intended to safeguard 
 
 - __ ^ O 
 
 the practice have been almost universally dis-
 
 112 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 regarded. A large amount of desultory work has 
 been given to the " unemployed " at a great cost, 
 and it has gradually become clear that the class it 
 was intended to assist are not really benefiting, 
 while a new form of casual labour is being created. 
 It has come to pass with this work, as with that 
 offered in the labour yard, that it has largely been 
 I appropriated by loafers and ne'er-do-wells. The 
 municipal authorities, in the attempt to make the 
 work go as far as possible, have nearly always 
 adopted the plan of taking the men on in relays of 
 a few days each : 
 
 VI. 3, 396 " Loafers and tramps are not unwilling to do a couple 
 of days' work even hard work ; and many who will 
 work for weeks together three days in each week, would 
 be weeded out if they were compelled to work every 
 day. This 'being so, schemes which merely provide a 
 few days' work for a large number of men in successive 
 relays are of all others the most likely to be abused. 
 They offer work in the form which exactly suits those 
 who are unwilling to submit to continuous exertion, 
 while doing very little for those really in distress. The 
 plan of employing men in two shifts three days a week 
 each is recommended on the ground that it gives them 
 a chance to look out for work during the rest of the 
 week, but against this very real advantage must be set the 
 encouragement offered to loafers by an arrangement 
 which fells in with their habits." 
 
 The effect of this upon really respectable men
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 113 
 
 is sometimes to deter them from applying for the 
 work, sometimes to drag them down to the level 
 of the loafer. " Here and there, as in Birming- vi. 3, 397 
 ham, we have been told that the better class of 
 workman has been assisted by the municipality, 
 but elsewhere, and especially in London, the 
 evidence is conclusive that the relief works were 
 frequented by the under-employed casual, the 
 ' professional unemployed,' and the loafer. At 
 Newcastle, for instance, as early as 1895 the city 
 engineer reported : 
 
 " Decent men willing and wishful for work . . . are 
 even intimidated and prevented from doing their best by 
 those with whom they must work. Several cases came 
 to our knowledge last year where men were threatened 
 for doing more than the 'professional' unemployed 
 thought was sufficient." 
 
 To those who have watched the progress of this 
 form of relief, especially in London, it seems pro- 
 bable that the numbers of those who find them- 
 selves distressed every winter have been largely 
 increased by the offer of relief-work as an alterna- 
 tive to the provision which many of them might 
 have made for a slack season : 
 
 " The natural result was that before long * a day from 
 the vestry ' came to be looked upon as a matter of right 
 and its refusal as an injustice. Crowds gathered round 
 
 I
 
 114 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 the vestry every winter waiting for work and gradually 
 losing their hold upon the open labour market At a 
 meeting of the vestry in 1895 a young man complained 
 that c he had been up every day for ten weeks, but had 
 not been taken on once,' and he was one of many. 
 Almost every man capable of work who applied to the 
 Charity Organisation Society or the guardians had had 
 one or more days from the vestry, and a generation has 
 grown up which has learned to look up it as a right." 
 
 A similar criticism is also made by the Bishop 
 of Stepney, who says : 
 
 " This is a plan which obviously rather creates a class 
 of unemployed. ... In several boroughs there is, or 
 until recently was, a real danger of a class of permanently 
 unemployed expecting winter by winter to subsist on 
 doles of municipal work." 
 
 !lt is perhaps inevitable that work done under 
 these conditions should prove much more costly 
 than when done under ordinary conditions by 
 workmen who know that they will not be em- 
 ployed unless they work well. Many instances of 
 this were brought to the notice of the Com- 
 mission : 
 
 7L 3, 401 "Some forty or fifty select outdoor labourers from the 
 register of the unemployed at Blackburn were put on to 
 sewer excavation. It is said that the few permanent men 
 who were put with them, and the better of the unemployed 
 themselves, got demoralised on relief works. The Borough 
 Surveyor says that he would not again mix men, and he
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 115 
 
 estimated that where an ordinary man would do 55. worth 
 of work, an c unemployed' would only do is. worth." 
 
 " From St. Pancras we were informed that the cost 
 of painting the arc lamp columns by the unemployed 
 amounted to about 8s. bd. as against 65. by contract in 
 the open market. * It certainly was not so well done, in 
 spite of rigid supervision.' " 
 
 " In Stepney the borough engineer worked out the cost 
 carefully a year or two back and there was an increase of 
 33 per cent, over ordinary labour." 
 
 " At Gateshead the Church Army Captain thought the 
 Distress Register men worse than his ordinary clients. 
 The estimated value of thir wood-chopping work was 
 ^35 os. iid. y for which they were paid ^99 8/. bd. 
 Various other work was given at Gateshead, excavating, 
 painting and stone-breaking, at a total cost in wages of 
 ^654 4^., of which the estimated value was ^447 5*. 2<" 
 
 "At Liverpool work which cost ^2,000 was only 
 estimated as worth ,350 to ^400. (Returns of the 
 Local Government Board.)" 
 
 "At York about 9^ acres at Naburn Asylum were 
 dug over by the unemployed. They were paid ^498 161., 
 but the value of the work, as estimated after consultation 
 with various farmers, was ,57." 
 
 Another serious drawback to this form of relief 
 is that work has been forestalled which would 
 otherwise have been done by regular workmen, who 
 in their turn have suffered from want of work : 
 
 " Carrying out . . . ordinary work at an earlier yj 3) 
 period than is necessary is directly calculated to have the 
 
 I 2
 
 116 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 effect of causing at a future date a reduction in the 
 number of men regularly employed. . . . This means 
 that the better class of workmen . . . become unem- 
 ployed for the sole reason that the work . . . has been 
 done at an earlier period by the unemployed at a much 
 greater cost and with far less efficiency." 
 
 As a method of helping respectable workmen, 
 municipal relief works have proved to be a com- 
 plete failure. Here and there they may have 
 assisted a few to tide over a bad time ; but they 
 have done this at the cost of depriving other 
 respectable workmen of employment which would 
 have been theirs. They have made it evident that 
 in most large towns there are large numbers of 
 men who prefer casual work to steady employ- 
 ment, and who will not do more than they can 
 help even at casual work. So far as their 
 experience helps us to define the problem of the 
 unemployed, they have no doubt contributed 
 towards its solution ; but they have made that 
 solution more difficult by encouraging the belief 
 that regular employment is unnecessary, since 
 every winter will bring its doles of casual work. 
 
 The evils arising out of relief works of this type 
 were so obvious, and the hope of their ever serving 
 as a remedy to unemployment so small, that 
 strenuous attempts were made to introduce a
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 117 
 
 better system. Mr. Gerald Balfour informed us 
 that : 
 
 "The situation was quite accurately summed up in a VI. 3, 451 
 Report issued by the Charity Organisation Society in 
 1904., in which it was said : * There are at present two 
 public relief agencies in the field the Poor Law 
 Guardians under the Local Government Board, and the 
 Borough Council, who have a free hand.' That was the 
 situation which the Government had to deal with, and 
 the question was, what was the best way to deal with it." 
 
 Mr. Long also told us that his aim was to 
 " regularise " and " secure more beneficial results " 
 from the then existing system of municipai relief 
 works, the evils of which were admitted. In * 
 1905 the Unemployed Workmen Act was passed, 
 establishing Distress Committees in large towns, '. 
 upon which was placed the duty of assisting 
 the unemployed. The intention of the Act, as I 
 stated in evidence by Mr. Gerald Balfour, was to vi. 3, 429 
 afford assistance to the steady respectable work- ( 
 man : 
 
 " We distinctly proposed to deal with the Mile of the 
 unemployed. The unemployed for whom the Bill was 
 intended were respectable workmen settled in a locality, 
 hitherto accustomed to regular work, but temporarily out 
 of employment through circumstances beyond their 
 control, capable workmen with hope to return to regular 
 work after tiding over a period of temporary distress."
 
 118 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 The methods of assistance indicated in the Act 
 are three : 
 
 1. Emigration and migration. 
 
 2. The provision or arranging for the provision 
 of temporary work. 
 
 3. Labour Bureaux. 
 
 The act "aimed at combining members of munici- 
 
 vi. 3, 426 pal, Poor Law and charitable bodies into a new and 
 
 special local authority, whose normal duty was to 
 
 ^^^^_ ti-B ^ ^ * "" ' 
 
 watch, so to speak, for the approach of unemploy- 
 ment in their district, and whose abnormal duty was 
 to provide help for the better class of unemployed 
 workmen under conditions which, it was hoped, 
 would avoid some of the evils which had arisen 
 through the unregulated provision of work by 
 the municipalities and charitable agencies." 
 
 Unfortunately, the Distress Committees have 
 been swamped by the casual labourer and loafer, 
 just as the municipal authorities and the labour 
 yards were swamped before them. In a very few 
 places where there was real emergency, such as 
 Woolwich after the Arsenal discharges, the major- 
 ity of the applicants were of the higher class, 
 whom it was possible to help through temporary 
 vi. 3, 432 distress. " But these cases are the exceptions, 
 and, as a rule, it seems clear that the bulk 
 of those seeking benefit from the Unemployed
 
 y THE ABLE-BODIED 119 
 
 Workmen's Act have been irregular labourers more 
 or less in a chronic state of destitution." 
 
 The result has been as before, that the assistance 
 intended to save the regular workman from falling 
 into the casual labour class, has been mainly 
 diverted to subsidising that very class of casual 
 labour. 
 
 Moreover, the Distress Committees, have not 
 succeeded to any great extent in remedying or 
 superseding the bad system of relief works car- 
 ried on by the municipal authorities. The same 
 evils of doles of work instead of regular employ- 
 ment, of extravagant cost, and of forestalling work 
 which should be done by regular workmen, are to 
 be found going on notwithstanding the Distress 
 Committees, or even with their connivance, as 
 before the Act which was intended to remedy 
 them. Indeed, they have been rather encouraged f 
 than otherwise by the fact that, since the Act was 
 passed, grants have been made from Imperial 
 funds which have relieved the local authorities 
 from some part of the cost. 
 
 But though the Distress Committees have 
 failed to meet the problem in so far as they have 
 fallen back upon the expedient of relief works, 
 some of them have done work in other directions 
 which has been much more hopeful. In London
 
 120 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 especially, a large number of families have been 
 emigrated, with the best results ; and some useful 
 work has also been done in migrating families 
 to places where there was employment for them. 
 
 In a few instances the experiment has been tried 
 of sending the men to a u Jabojar Colony " in the 
 country, while the family was maintained at home. 
 'This method of dealing with unemployment has 
 the great advantage that the men are kept steadily 
 at work under healthy conditions, and nearly 
 
 : : always show great improvement in health during 
 their stay. Difficulties have arisen, especially when 
 the men have not been well selected, and have 
 proved refractory. But the chief difficulty has 
 VI. 3, 447 been that too often the men, belonging as they 
 mostly do to the casual labour class, have relapsed, 
 into their old conditions upon leaving the colony, 
 and have returned to the town only to rejoin the 
 
 ranks of the unemployed. Some few have been 
 emigrated, still fewer have taken up work in the 
 country ; but the total effect in diminishing the 
 number of unemployed has been negligible. Never- 
 theless, the experience of the labour colonies has 
 been valuable ; they have shown that the towns- 
 man can be put to work upon the land with good 
 results, and under conditions far preferable to 
 those of the workhouse from every point of view.
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 121 
 
 The third method of assistance prescribed under 
 the Act was the establishment of labour bureaux ; 
 and here again some valuable experience has been 
 obtained. It has been found that if they are to vi. 4, 500 
 succeed they must be dissociated from any relief 
 agency ; otherwise, the best type of workers will 
 not register at them, and employers who are not 
 actuated by philanthropic motives, or seeking to 
 get cheap labour, will not apply to them for 
 workers. 
 
 In the second place it has been found, as might VI. 4, 502 
 have been foreseen, that an isolated labour bureau 
 can do comparatively little to assist the mobility 
 of labour. When work is slack in a district, the 
 register will be full of applications for work, but 
 no employers will be seeking workers. A great 
 step forward has been made in London by linking 
 up the labour bureaux in each district, so that the 
 demand on each side may be known in every part, 
 and the work and the workman brought together 
 as soon as possible. The next step, which will be 
 greatly more effective, is to have a system of 
 linked labour bureaux over the whole country. 
 
 Another lesson which has been learned is the vi. 4, 512 
 importance of interesting the workmen's own 
 institutions in the movement. If the trade unions 
 suspect that the labour bureau is to be an instru-
 
 122 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 ment for supplying cheap labour, or for breaking 
 down a strike, their hostility will make it largely 
 useless. It will be essential to associate represen- 
 tatives of trade unions with the management, and 
 to avoid any action which can be regarded as 
 interference with trade disputes. 
 
 Finally it has been learned that if a Labour 
 Bureau is to succeed, it is not sufficient to put a 
 clerk to sit in an office and take down names. It 
 is necessary to employ men of organising ability, 
 who will study the wants of the district and make 
 themselves trusted by employers and men 
 alike. 
 
 VI. 4, 523 Given these conditions the Commission believe 
 that the establishment of Labour Exchanges might 
 be effective in preventing a considerable amount of 
 unemployment, that they would enable the workers 
 to ascertain quickly and easily what work was 
 available, and would so diminish the weary search 
 for work, and that when fully established they 
 would afford most useful information as to the 
 condition of the labour market in different parts 
 of the country. Finally they consider that the 
 fact of a man having registered at the Labour 
 Exchange and being willing to take work when 
 offered would be -prima facie evidence that he did 
 not belong to the casual or loafing class. Hence
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 123 
 
 their first proposals for dealing with the unem- 
 ployed are as follows: 
 
 " We recommend, then, that there should be vi. 4, 528 
 established under the Board of Trade a general 
 system of Labour Exchanges throughout the United 
 Kingdom ; that these exchanges should be man- 
 aged by officers of the Board of Trade, with the 
 help of an advisory Committee of employers, 
 workmen, and members of Local Authorities ; that 
 there be no compulsion to make use of these 
 institutions, but that it should be the object of the 
 Board of Trade and the advisory Committee by 
 propaganda and otherwise to popularise them in 
 every way. The exchanges should be granted 
 free postal and telephone facilities by the State, 
 and arrangements should be made whereby they 
 might grant passes entitling workmen travelling to 
 a situation at specially cheap fares from the 
 railway companies. In suitable cases, the cost 
 of such passes might be defrayed by the Labour 
 Exchange and afterwards recovered from the 
 workman." 
 
 But it is not for a moment supposed that Labour 
 Exchanges will by themselves solve the problem 
 of unemployment. They will help the genuine 
 worker who has useful qualities to offer to find a 
 market for his skill, character, and capacity. They
 
 124 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 can do nothing for the man who has nothing to 
 offer, neither skill nor character nor capacity. 
 They can do little again for the man who 
 has lost his power for sustained work, beyond 
 finding him an occasional job. And finally they 
 can do nothing directly for the man for whose 
 qualities there is no market in this country, until 
 the system becomes an Imperial one, linking the 
 Colonies and the Mother Country into one labour 
 market accessible to all. 
 
 The number of those who will not be directly 
 helped by Labour Exchanges has become very 
 large. At present we have no means of ascer- 
 taining, or even of estimating, how many people 
 are suffering from unemployment at any given 
 moment. Some of the Trade Unions issue returns 
 showing the amount of unemployment amongst 
 their members, but those apply to a very small 
 proportion of the total number of workers. All 
 we know is that many thousands now apply every 
 winter to the Distress Committees and register at 
 the Labour Bureaux, and that a large proportion 
 of these are unskilled and casual labourers, who 
 live from hand to mouth, and seldom if ever have 
 regular work. It is in connection with this class 
 that the most difficult " problems of poverty " 
 arise; the "sweated industries" are recruited from
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 125 
 
 its women, and too often the men become parasites 
 upon their wives and children. Whether or not 
 the class is increasing there are no data to show ; 
 but we have abundant evidence to show that it is 
 being continuously recruited from various sources. 
 
 Apart from special local causes, there is a vi. 4, 535 
 consensus of opinion that the intermittent labour 
 market is recruited from the following classes : 
 
 (1) Those who like intermittent employment, 
 or follow it because their forefathers did. 
 
 (2) The failures and breakages from higher 
 and more regular employ. 
 
 (3) The agricultural labourer attracted by the 
 high wage per hour. 
 
 It is probably inevitable that so long as there is 
 a demand for casual labour it will continue to be 
 recruited from these sources. But there is one other 
 source the existence of which is of the greatest 
 social import, and which might and should be 
 stopped almost entirely. One of the most dis- 
 turbing facts which has been brought to the notice 
 of the Commission is the extent to which boys, 
 on leaving school, drift into work which offers 
 fairly good wages for three or four years, and then 
 throws them out unskilled at an age when it is 
 too late to learn a trade. 
 
 A great many boys when they leave school vi. 4, 537
 
 126 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 drift into occupations which are not very strict in 
 their regulations, and are very casual relatively 
 well paid, indeed, but not likely to lead to per- 
 manent work. Many parents do not look suffi- 
 ciently far forward to take into account what will 
 happen to their children when they are between 
 the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. They look 
 at the occupation mainly from the point of view 
 of the wage immediately obtainable. A great 
 number of them start as errand boys with grocers 
 and small trades-people, or as street-traders, news- 
 paper boys, and van boys, or as telegraph boys, 
 numbers of whom are thrown out by the Post 
 Office every year at the age of sixteen. 
 
 There are also many industries which employ 
 large numbers for the three or four years between 
 boyhood and manhood which should be a prepara- 
 tion for a workman's life, and then turn them 
 adrift with no future before them : 
 
 vi. 4, 541 " The results of this large employment of boys 
 in occupations which leave no opportunity of pro- 
 motion to employment as men are disastrous. 
 The boy, thrown out at sixteen, seventeen, 
 eighteen, or twenty years of age, drifts naturally, 
 as the witnesses testify, into the low-skilled labour 
 market, or the army of unemployables. There is, 
 the Bishop of Stepney says, a continual influx of
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 127 
 
 unskilled boys ready to do casual work at almost 
 any wage, boys often demoralised and physically 
 enfeebled by their two or three years in the streets, 
 or on vans, and so forth." 
 
 The Commission make several definite sugges- 
 tions, the adoption of which should go far to 
 remedy this evil. They recommend, in the first vi. 4, 546 
 place, that in connection with every school and the 
 local Labour Exchange there should be a com- 
 mittee or agency prepared to advise the boys 
 leaving school and their parents on the subject of 
 their future work. In the second place they 
 endorse the suggestions of their special investi- 
 gator on this subject : 
 
 (1) That boys should be kept at school until 
 the age of fifteen instead of fourteen ; 
 
 (2) That exemption below this age should be 
 granted only for boys leaving to learn a skilled 
 trade ; and 
 
 (3) That there should be school supervision 
 till sixteen and replacement in school of boys not 
 properly employed. 
 
 Further suggestions are that there should be im- 
 proved facilities for technical education after school 
 age, and more prolonged and thorough physical 
 drill. Finally the Commission ** refer to one XL 1*8 
 criticism that has been made with almost absolute
 
 128 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 unanimity. There seems to be outside the circle 
 of the teaching profession a very strong general 
 feeling that the education of our children in the 
 elementary schools is not of the kind which is 
 helpful to them in after life. . . . We would 
 suggest to the Board of Education the advisability 
 of meeting these criticisms by a thorough recon- 
 sideration of the time table and curriculum in our 
 elementary schools, as well as of the aims and 
 ideals of elementary education." 
 
 If these suggestions were carried out there is no 
 doubt that the number of those dependent upon 
 casual jobs for a living would be gradually 
 diminished, and there would be more jobs for 
 those who remain. Another way of attacking the 
 evil, and the most efficacious so far as it can be 
 done, is for employers to work as far as possible 
 with a regular staff, and to abandon the practice of 
 relying upon casual labourers to do their work. 
 
 This reform is most needed, and would be most 
 striking in its results, in the case of dock 
 labourers. For the most part, work at the docks 
 is carried on almost entirely by casual labourers, 
 VI. i, 262 who are taken on "by the day, half-day, quarter- 
 day, hour, or job." The rate of pay is often high, 
 and attracts many who do not realise how un- 
 certain and irregular the work is. Hence there
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 129 
 
 are always many more men waiting for work than 
 there is any demand for. 
 
 " The surplus of labour is very great, although vi. i, 291 
 it is impossible to estimate it, owing to the 
 numbers who come intermittently to the docks 
 in the hope of getting an odd job. Mr. A. L. 
 Rathbone puts it at some 4,000 ; Mr. Sexton at 
 not less than 10,000. At any rate there is always 
 an excess, and the average employment is not more 
 than three days a week. Thus the amount of 
 work which, if well organised, might keep a 
 smaller number of men fully employed at high 
 wages over the whole week, is spread over a great 
 many thousands more ; hardly any one gets a full 
 week's work ; and casual labour becomes a per- 
 nicious and a favourite habit." 
 
 That dock labour can be largely decasualised vi. i, 277 
 has been proved by one notable instance, that of ! 
 the London and India Docks Company. In their ] 
 docks 72 per cent, of the labour employed con- 
 sists of men on regular weekly wages. Unfor- 
 tunately there is generally little desire either 
 amongst employers or employed to change the 
 existing state of things ; the employers find it 
 convenient, without realising the evil which is 
 being wrought, and the men have got used to the 
 uncertainty of the life, and dread the immediate
 
 130 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 consequences of a change. There is no doubt 
 that the immediate consequences would be to 
 deprive of all work some of those who now get a 
 little, and a considerable effort would need to be 
 made before the surplus was itself re-absorbed into 
 permanent industry. But the ultimate benefit 
 would be incalculable, comparable only with the 
 stamping out of some demoralising epidemic. It 
 has been well said that if we could do away with 
 drink and casual labour we might close half our 
 workhouses. 
 
 But it is not only at the docks that casual labour 
 is rife. The habit of taking men on for a few 
 weeks or days, or even hours, is increasingly pre- 
 
 VI. 4, 561 valent in many branches of industry. The Com- 
 mission think that it should be the recognised 
 policy at least of Government Departments and 
 Local Authorities to employ as far as possible a 
 regular staff, and diminish their use of inter- 
 mittent labour. With regard to private em- 
 ployers, two ingenious methods of bringing them 
 into line have been suggested. The first is an 
 
 VI. 4, 564 " employment termination due," a small sum in ( 
 the nature of a stamp duty to be paid by masters 
 and men at the termination of each engagement. 
 This, it is thought, would discourage short en- 
 gagements, and also provide a fund which might
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 131 
 
 be used as a basis for "unemployment in- 
 surance." 
 
 The second method is to compel all employers 
 to engage their casual labour through the Labour 
 Exchange, which would so arrange the work as to 
 
 rmf^^ 
 
 give full time employment to as many men as 
 possible. The Commission doubt the wisdom or vi. 4, 565 
 practicability of such a proposal. If casual em- 
 ployment could be obtained only through a 
 Government office, the tendency would be to 
 shift on to the office the responsibility of pro- 
 viding casual work for all who applied. 
 
 It isjmprobable that in any system of industry 
 unemployment could ever be reduced to a negli- 
 gible'quantity ; but that the evils attending it can 
 be to a large extent met, has been shown by the 
 action of those Trade Unions which grant un- 
 employed benefit to their members. " There are, vi. 4, 572 
 roughly, 1,500,000 Trade Unionists entitled to 
 unemployed benefit. But if we consider that 
 there are in England and Wales some 8,000,000 
 adult males between the ages of twenty and sixty, 
 it is clear that the Trade Unionist insurance 
 scheme only covers a very limited portion of the 
 ground. Moreover, it is chiefly the highly-skilled 
 and therefore most highly-paid workmen who 
 are thus insured, for in most cases the Trade 
 
 K 2
 
 132 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 Unions of unskilled workmen give no unem- 
 ployed benefit." 
 
 The problem is, how to extend the system 
 of insurance against unemployment to all classes 
 of workmen, including those who, just because 
 their wages are low, have most need of some such 
 help to enable them to get through periods when 
 work is slack. In England little or nothing 
 has been attempted outside the Trade Unions, 
 but abroad a good many experiments have been 
 made, and an account of these is given in the 
 Report and its appendices. 
 
 The system which most recommended itself 
 to the Commission is that under which the State 
 or municipalities add a fixed amount to the benefit 
 actually paid to an unemployed workman by 
 a Trade Union or similar organisation. It is 
 thought that in this way a great stimulus might 
 be given to those Trade Unions which do not yet 
 provide unemployed benefit, that large numbers 
 of men might be induced to join either Trade 
 Unions or Friendly Societies for the purpose 
 of benefiting from such assistance, and even that 
 new trade societies might be called into existence 
 for the purpose of providing for their members 
 insurance on favourable terms. The Commission 
 formulate their conclusions on this subject as follows :
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 133 
 
 " First, that the establishment and promotion of vi. 4, 604 
 unemployment insurance, especially amongst un- ; 
 skilled and unorganised labour, is of paramount 
 importance in averting the distress arising from 
 unemployment. 
 
 " Second, that the attainment of this object is 
 of such national importance as to justify, under 
 specified conditions, contributions from public 
 funds towards its furtherance. 
 
 " 'Third, that this form of insurance can best 
 be promoted by utilising the agency of existing . 
 trade organisations or of 4 organisations of a 
 similar character which may be brought into 
 existence." 
 
 They further recommend that as the question 
 is urgent " a small Commission or Departmental 
 Committee of experts and representatives of 
 existing trade benefit organisations be at once 
 appointed with an instruction to frame as 
 quickly as possible a scheme or schemes for 
 consideration." 
 
 Meanwhile, what can be done to mitigate the 
 distress which actually exists, which is indeed 
 chronic in our large towns, and becomes acute 
 every winter ? 
 
 The first essential step is to bring some sort of 
 order into what is at present an administrative
 
 134 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 chaos. What we find now is a multiplicity of 
 agencies attempting to deal with a class which is 
 sometimes called able-bodied, sometimes unem- 
 ployed, regardless of the fact that this " class " is 
 not really a class at all, but a heterogeneous mass 
 of men with few characteristics common to all of 
 them. They are very far from being all of them 
 able-bodied ; they are not even all unemployed, in 
 the sense that employment is a thing which they 
 want but cannot get. The honest, the criminal, 
 the unfortunate, the strong, the weak, the indus- 
 trious, the incorrigible loafer, the indifferent, all 
 in the prevailing confusion are shifting about from 
 one agency to another ; with the result that each 
 agency in turn tends to become the prey of the 
 most worthless and the most hopeless, while the 
 better men stand aloof. A similar confusion pre- 
 vails amongst the agencies themselves. We find 
 the Poor Law, with its indoor relTef, outdoor 
 relief, workhouses, casual wards and farm colonies ; 
 the Distress Committees, with various forms of 
 employment relief, allowances, migration and 
 emigration, and labour bureaux ; the Salvation 
 [and Church Armies, with colonies, labour yards, 
 shelters and emigration ; the emigration societies, 
 and various institutions run by voluntary charity. 
 In addition, every winter sees large charitable
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 135 
 
 funds raised and dispensed in certain districts, 
 generally without any regard to the work of other 
 agencies. Amongst all these there is an almost 
 complete lack of co-operation, in the sense that all 
 are dealing indiscriminately with the same people. 
 It is quite a mistake to suppose that the Poor Law 
 is dealing with one set, charity with another, 
 Distress Committees with another, and so on. 
 | The men drift aimlessly backwards and forwards 
 j from one to another ; half the winter they may be 
 working under a Distress Committee, the other 
 half in a labour yard ; one winter they may spend 
 in a labour colony, the next in a workhouse. No 
 one takes hold of a man and deals with him 
 persistently year in and year out until he is 
 restored to independence ; and only special investi- 
 gations (and those only to a limited extent) can 
 track the unhappy victims through the long game 
 of philanthropic battledore and shuttlecock. 
 
 The Commission holds that the first essential vi. 4, 609 
 step towards reform is that there should be one 
 authority, and one only, responsible for the public 
 relief of distress due to unemployment ; and that 
 this authority should be the one which is respon- 
 sible for the relief of distress due to other causes. 
 It is comparatively seldom that distress is due to 
 one cause alone ; want of work is complicated by
 
 136 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 want of health, or of character, or of capacity ; 
 and the authority which deals with it should be 
 able to bring into play the whole range of agencies 
 devised to remedy what is wrong, instead of being 
 confined to the single panacea of providing 
 " work." It will then be the duty of the one 
 authority empowered to give public assistance to 
 bring into co-operation as far as possible all volun- 
 tary agencies, and so to bring some order into the 
 present chaos. Further, it will be the duty of this 
 Public Assistance Authority to determine how far 
 existing methods and institutions are adequate, and 
 to supplement them when necessary by new methods 
 and institutions. 
 
 What the nature of these methods and institu- 
 tions should be follows from the definition of the 
 VI. 4, 608 functions of the Public Assistance Authority in 
 relation to the " unemployed " : 
 
 " i . To assist with a view to their ultimate self- 
 support and independence those who are able to 
 work, and who can show that they have taken 
 active measures to obtain work, but without 
 success, and cannot in consequence support them- 
 selves or their families. 
 
 " 2. To assist, under curative and reformatory 
 conditions calculated to restore self-respect : 
 
 " (a) Those who, though willing to work, cannot
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 137 
 
 offer a return in work adequate to the wage 
 demanded or received, and are in consequence 
 without employment and unable to support them- 
 selves or their families. 
 
 " (<$) Those who, though able to work, cannot 
 show that they have taken active measures to 
 obtain work, and are in consequence unable to 
 support themselves or their families." 
 
 It has been made quite clear by past experience 
 that these objects are not to be attained either by 
 casual jobs at " relief works," or by relegating a 
 man to the workhouse as at present managed. 
 But the Commission contemplate that the Public 
 Assistance Authorities in the various counties would 
 either singly or in combination, or through the 
 medium of charitable bodies, provide institutions 
 which would be really adapted to meet the needs 
 of the various types of " unemployed." These 
 institutions should clearly be in the country, or at 
 any rate on the outskirts of the towns, with land 
 attached or available. Some would be of the 
 nature of labour colonies, or farm colonies, where 
 test work and training could be given ; others 
 would be country workhouses where under dis- 
 cipline and healthy conditions the " unemployable " 
 might regain strength and character. And in the f 
 background, for the wilfully lazy and refractory
 
 138 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 & , would be the Detention Colony, to which cases 
 would be committed for periods varying from six 
 
 VL 4, 629 months to three years. The Commission do not 
 propose that this last institution should be under 
 the management of the Public Assistance Authority. 
 It would be penal in its nature, and as such should 
 be under the Home Office. But its existence 
 would be essential to the success of the other 
 institutions. It has been proved over and over 
 again that no helpful work can be done by any 
 institution which is liable to be swamped by men 
 who are persistently lazy and refractory, and can 
 go and come as they please. The knowledge that 
 there was the possibility of being committed to a 
 Detention Colony would keep many men steadily 
 at their work in the Labour Colony ; while those 
 actually committed would be prevented from 
 wasting the opportunities they would not use. 
 
 Thus the methods which would in future be 
 available for the assistance of the able-bodied by 
 the Public Assistance Authority would be : 
 
 VI. 4, 630 " (i) Home Assistance on condition of daily 
 work in an Industrial or Agricultural Institution 
 or Colony or otherwise as the Public Assistance 
 Authority may decide within regulations laid down 
 by the Local Government Board. By Home 
 Assistance we mean assistance at the home whether
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 139 
 
 I in money or kind, and given without requiring the 
 I recipient to live entirely in an institution. The 
 
 conditions under which Home Assistance should 
 
 be granted would be as follows : 
 
 " (a) That the requisite assistance is not 
 forthcoming from any other source. 
 
 " (b) That the assistance be given on 
 condition of daily work. 
 
 " (c] That the assistance should be only 
 given to an applicant with a decent home and 
 a good industrial record. 
 
 " (^) That the order for assistance should 
 be for a strictly limited period and subject to 
 1 revision. 
 
 " (?) That the applicant should be regis- 
 tered at the Labour Exchange, and that the 
 ^ relief should cease as soon as suitable occupa- 
 tion has been offered through the Labour 
 Exchange. 
 
 " (2) Partial Home Assistance, i.e., Home 
 Assistance for the family of an applicant, the 
 applicant himself being maintained in an institution 
 and given work. 
 
 " (3) Institutional Assistance, /'.?., continuous 
 maintenance m an Industrial or Agricultural 
 Institution or Colony without detention, except in
 
 140 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP 
 
 so far as the applicant binds himself by a written 
 agreement to stay for a definite period. 
 
 " (4) Continuous maintenance under com- 
 pulsory detention in a colony established and 
 managed under the Home Office." 
 
 In advocating the establishment or utilisation of 
 Labour Colonies and country workhouses, the 
 Commission have been guided by the experience 
 of similar institutions either in this country or 
 abroad. That experience does not lead them to 
 expect that a large proportion of those who have 
 fallen into the ranks of " unemployables " will be 
 restored to independence ; but it seems clear that 
 they can be much more effectively dealt with in 
 this way than when relegated to an urban work- 
 house, or left to lead a life of loafing and begging. 
 They can at least be brought to maintain them- 
 selves in part, and are meanwhile withdrawn from 
 injuring the rest of the community. 
 
 The most effective remedy for unemployment 
 consists in the migration or emigration of the 
 persons who cannot find work where they are. 
 There is always a risk lest assistance to the unem- 
 ployed should tend to perpetuate or increase the 
 congestion of surplus labour in a locality, and this 
 risk is avoided when the help takes the form of
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 141 
 
 migrating them to a place where there is a demand 
 for their labour. It is hoped that the Labour 
 Exchanges will in time do much to increase the 
 mobility of labour within the country ; but there 
 is immediate need for vigorous measures to be 
 taken to relieve the pressure in certain urban 
 districts. The Commission think " that the new vi. 4, 662 
 authority when constituted should turn their atten- 
 tion primarily to the dispersal of labour from those 
 districts. The distress there is chronic and tends 
 every winter to become acute ; and any attempt 
 to deal with it on the spot only perpetuates the 
 evil. Every effort must be made by migration 
 
 \ and emigration to break up the congested mass of 
 labour, and to allow the ordinary conditions of 
 industry to resume their course. It may be found 
 that special grants are necessary to carry out this 
 policy, and if so we think that there should be no 
 hesitation in making them." 
 
 Boards of Guardians already have the power to 
 emigrate families, but exercise it rarely. The 
 Distress Committees have done a certain amount 
 
 ; of emigration with success so far as it goes, but 
 they have not been able to meet the demand. In 
 West Ham the unemployed are said to be " willing 
 and most anxious to emigrate. They would go in
 
 142 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 IV. 9, 674 SW arms if they had the money." And the secretary 
 to the West Ham Distress Committee says of 
 emigration that it is : 
 
 VI. 4, 659 "The most beneficial form of assistance rendered 
 under the Act, both in the relief to the locality as well 
 as to the emigrants. The objection raised to such form 
 of assistance under the Act on the ground that it is 
 robbing the country of some of its best workers is greatly 
 discounted in the fact of the small percentage of fhe best 
 workers that register under the Act, and the small 
 number of these who seek emigration aid. Of over 250 
 married and single applicants assisted out by the West 
 Ham Distress Committee four only were of Class I." (i.e., 
 skilled and regular artisans), " and sixty of Class II." (/'.*., 
 irregular artisans and regular labourers). 
 
 It is believed that when the Public Assistance 
 Authority is well established its powers will prove 
 to be sufficiently elastic to deal with any crisis of 
 unemployment ; but, inasmuch as it will take time 
 to bring into play all the new forces with which it 
 is proposed to combat the evils of unemployment, 
 the Commission think that it may be well to be 
 prepared for an emergency occurring in the 
 interval. They suggest that in such a case the 
 Local Authorities should be enabled to carry on 
 special works which would relieve the labour 
 market, when it had been proved to the satisfaction
 
 v THE ABLE-BODIED 143 
 
 I of the Local Government Board that there was 
 really exceptional and protracted distress. 
 
 " The special works should be carried out on vi. 4, 703 
 ordinary commercial lines, by contract, and the 
 fitness or unfitness of workmen for the work shall 
 be the main consideration in engaging or dismissing 
 them and in determining the conditions of their 
 employment. All workmen so employed shall, as 
 far as practicable, be taken from the register of the 
 local Labour Exchange." 
 
 It is obvious that the danger to be guarded 
 against in giving effect to this recommendation is 
 that such works should tend to degenerate into 
 ordinary relief works of the type which the 
 Commission have condemned. 
 
 It has not been considered necessary to deal 
 separately with unemployment amongst women. 
 There is no difference in principle between the 
 methods which should be used to assist unem- 
 ployed women and those which apply in the 
 case of men. When necessary, special institu- VI - 4, 635 
 tions would be established for women.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PUBLIC ASSISTANCE AUTHORITY 
 
 WHAT is this Public Assistance Authority tc 
 which it is proposed to assign in future the assist- 
 ance of the able-bodied. Does it simply mean 
 that these are to be " relegated to the Poor Law "; 
 or is there really to be such a change in the 
 methods and spirit of the Poor Law as to consti- 
 tute a new departure ? 
 
 Before answering this question it is necessary 
 to refer again to our criticisms of the work at 
 present carried on by Boards of Guardians. We 
 repeat that much of it has been excellent, and has 
 been achieved at the cost of a devotion and self- 
 sacrifice on the part of many Guardians which has 
 received but scant recognition from the public 
 they have served. There is no doubt that con- 
 scientious and humane Guardians have suffered 
 
 unjustly from the odium which has attached itself 
 
 144
 
 CH. vi THE AUTHORITY 145 
 
 to others whose work has been of a very different 
 type. It is not suggested that any Guardians are 
 guilty of the wilful brutality of which they are 
 often accused ; the work is much too arduous to 
 be undertaken by persons who are not on the 
 whole well-disposed towards the poor ; but in 
 many places the Commissioners have found a care- 
 lessness, or roughness, or stupidity which goes far 
 to explain their failure. 
 
 The following descriptions of meetings of Guar- 
 dians are taken from notes made by members of 
 the Commission immediately after attending those 
 meetings. They represent Boards in all parts of 
 country, both urban and rural, and it will be seen 
 from them that the conduct of business is fre- 
 quently such as to make the proper administration 
 of relief impossible : 
 
 " We attended a meeting of the Board. . . . The IV. 2, 76 
 relieving officers and the chairman stated the cases so 
 confusedly and so incompletely that it was almost impos- 
 sible to form any opinion as to the methods on which 
 out-relief is distributed, but we gathered that each , 
 Guardian decided whether relief should be given to the 
 applicants from the parish which he represented. The 
 relieving officer was not consulted, nor was his statement 
 of facts considered." 
 
 " We attended a meeting of the Board. There was a 
 large number of Guardians present, and the proceedings
 
 146 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 were not very orderly ; the relieving officer, a talkative, 
 masterful man, practically decided most of the cases 'in 
 conjunction with the Guardians of the parish in question. 
 The clerk seemed to be a nonentity, and was seldom in 
 evidence. Most of the Guardians took part in the 
 proceedings, but as they all talked together it was difficult 
 to judge what passed. There was practically no enquiry 
 as to the resources of the applicants, and with the old 
 people the amount of relief was determined solely by 
 their age." 
 
 " We found a very large meeting of the Guardians . . . 
 the reason, as it appeared later, being that the election of 
 a chaplain was on the agenda paper. It is difficult to say 
 anything in praise of the method of conducting business, 
 the chairman was totally ignorant of the procedure of a 
 public meeting, the clerk self-assertive, ignorant and 
 copious. . . . The election over, the Guardians streamed 
 out of the Board room and the relief cases were taken. 
 For this purpose, the remnant of the Board divided into 
 two committees, one at either end of a small Board room, 
 result, such a babel that it was difficult to hear, and 
 impossible to estimate the merits of the applicants." 
 
 "We visited and attended two Relief Committees. 
 At the first there were five Guardians present, of whom 
 one was a lady. Relief was distributed without principle 
 or knowledge of the facts. The Guardians paid little or 
 no attention to the officer's report, indeed sometimes they 
 began to discuss the amount of relief before he had com- 
 pleted his statement of the facts. The chairman seemed 
 weak and incompetent, without backbone, afraid of the 
 members of the Independent Labour Party, of whom 
 two were present."
 
 vi THE AUTHORITY 147 
 
 " A large number of Guardians were present, and they 
 seemed to us noisy in their proceedings and rough in their 
 handling of the applicants." 
 
 " We were present at the Relief Committees. These 
 are four in number. It is not easy to convey any idea of 
 their inefficiency. Three of them were held in close 
 proximity the shouting of the relieving officers, the 
 banging of doors, made the scene a pandemonium. The 
 procedure was as follows : The committee sat on one 
 side of the counter, the relieving officer on the other 
 with a pile of money beside him. He took names in 
 order from the Application and Report book (which 
 seemed to be very fairly kept), summoned the applicant, 
 stated the facts of the case, allotted the relief, and handed 
 it to the applicant, at the same time giving a card to the 
 chairman of the committee for endorsement. By this 
 method thirteen cases were decided in one committee in 
 four minutes." 
 
 "The relieving officer did not make or read out any 
 general statement or explanation of the cases ; and amidst 
 the babel of what largely resembled a conversazione, it 
 was difficult for us (or indeed any of the Guardians saving 
 the chairman with the book in front of him) to obtain a 
 clear idea of the cases." 
 
 "We attended a meeting of the Board, at which 
 eleven members were present, one being a lady. There 
 had been another lady, but she was beaten at the last 
 election by a publican, who was said to have brought 
 twenty-five electors drunk to the poll. The out-relief 
 was practically administered by the chairman and the 
 relieving officer ; if the Guardian of the parish in which 
 
 L 2
 
 IV. 2, 73 
 
 148 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 the applicant resided happened to be present he took some 
 interest in the case, otherwise the Board were not con- 
 cerned with the relief. . . . The publican interest, we 
 were told, was largely represented on the Board, the 
 assistant clerk being in intimate and close alliance with 
 them. The Board, as a whole, seemed slack, uninterested 
 and unintelligent. ... In one case where the woman 
 was reported dirty and the man given to drink, one of 
 the Guardians mentioned having seen him at the public- 
 house that morning. Relief was, however, granted at 
 the instance of the Guardian of the parish, who was also 
 the publican whose house the man frequented." 
 
 How, it may be asked, is it possible that people 
 of this type, with so little notion of carrying on 
 the work in a proper manner, should come to 
 hold such important positions ? The answer is 
 that it is mainly the fault of the general public, 
 often the very people who are eager to criticise. 
 The Guardians, are elected on a democratic fran- 
 chise, but so little genuine interest is taken in 
 their work that a very small proportion of those 
 qualified to vote for them do so. In London at 
 the last Guardians' election only 28*1 per cent, of 
 the electorate recorded their votes, and very 
 similar conditions were reported from other parts 
 of the country. Of those who do vote, the larger 
 number are often persons likely to benefit them- 
 selves, or through their relations, and their votes
 
 vi THE AUTHORITY 149 
 
 | are guided by the promises of Guardians to give 
 1 relief on easy terms. Of one Board of Guardians 
 we were told : 
 
 " We are sent here to give outdoor relief to our rela- IV. 2, 81 
 tions, our fathers, and our mothers, and our sisters, and 
 our cousins, and our uncles, and our aunts, and if we did 
 not do it we should very soon be sent about our business." 
 
 It was impossible that the Commission should 
 not notice in visiting Boards of Guardians how 
 
 ! strongly the publican interest was represented in 
 some places : " We have been present at meetings IV. 2, 75 
 where the treatment of cases has obviously been 
 affected by the presence of members who were 
 house agents or owners of slum property ; on 
 other Boards the publican interest is strong (on one 
 Board no less than seven out of thirty-five members 
 are publicans), and publicans have been heard to 
 insist on out-relief being given to habitues of their 
 ' houses. More generally the evil is attributed to 
 ignorance and indifference, combined with the 
 fallacious hope of keeping the rates down by a 
 minimum dole of out-relief." 
 
 Recent prosecutions and convictions in London 
 have brought to light the fact that the work of iv. 2, 79 
 the Guardians gives great scope to dishonest men 
 for actual fraud, and " conspiracy to defraud the 
 ratepayers." A certain amount of the ex-
 
 150 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 travagant expenditure incurred by many Boards 
 of recent years is probably attributable to this 
 cause. 
 
 Under the present system Guardians are usually 
 elected every three years. The alternative system 
 Is for one-third to retire annually, but this is 
 seldom done, and the consequence is that at every 
 election there is the chance that the majority of 
 the new Board will be men and women new to the 
 work, with no experience, and only too likely to 
 reverse the policy of the old Board without suffi- 
 cient cause. From two different towns we get 
 the following evidence : 
 
 IV. 2, 74 (0 "I have now been a Guardian for twelve years, and 
 have been through four triennial elections. In my opinion, 
 each of the four Boards elected has been less good than 
 the last. The men on it are proposed and elected without, 
 as it seems to me, the slightest regard for the position and 
 work of a Guardian. They are chosen and elected (often 
 avowedly so) in order to try the strength of the political 
 party to which they belong, and to many of them one 
 cannot help thinking that the chief idea in being a 
 Guardian is that it brings some notoriety, and may be the 
 first step towards a seat in the City Council a sort of 
 practising ground for it. Every three years our whole 
 Board goes out, and only about one-third returns. The new 
 two-thirds come totally ignorant of everything to do with 
 Poor Law, not content to wait to learn, not even waiting 
 to understand what is going on in their particular Union.
 
 vi THE AUTHORITY 151 
 
 much less what has been the history of the Poor Law, 
 and of pauperism, for some years and centuries." 
 
 (2) " Many men simply become Guardians as a stepping- 
 stone to the Town Council ; they wish to gain confidence 
 in speaking, and use the Board room as a practising 
 ground. . . . They are often ignorant and indifferent, and 
 stand for other reasons than their knowledge of or interest 
 in the poor." 
 
 It has seemed clear to the Commission that the 
 method of popular election is not one which is 
 adapted to get the best administrators. There are 
 men and women ready to do excellent work, who 
 will not stand the ordeal of a popular election 
 under the present conditions. " The work is ; 
 tending more and more to fall into the hands lv. 2, 92 
 of persons who, caring more for their own 
 interests than for those of the community, direct 
 their administration more towards the attainment 
 of popularity than towards the solution of the real 
 problems of pauperism. ... At present there is 
 no doubt that the work of Boards of Guardians 
 has fallen into disrepute, and nothing short of 
 a determined effort will restore it to the esteem 
 which it deserves." 
 
 These are the grounds upon which the majority 
 of the Commission have come to the conclusion that 
 Boards of Guardians as at present constituted 
 should be abolished, and their duties transferred
 
 152 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 I to an authority which shall be more uniformly 
 disinterested and progressive in its administration. 
 This does not mean that the Commission would 
 not view with great regret the loss of very many 
 of the present Guardians, who are enlightened, 
 experienced and devoted to the interests of the 
 poor. But the change they suggest does not 
 necessarily involve such a loss. " We earnestly 
 IV. 2, 77 hope that if our recommendations take effect, 
 every effort will be made to secure the continued 
 services of such Guardians." 
 
 The particular form which the new authority 
 should take has been largely determined by another 
 defect in the present administration. The Com- 
 mission have been impressed by the fact that much 
 of the present failure is due to the want of proper 
 classification amongst the inmates of Poor Law 
 institutions, more especially of the workhouse. 
 There are, of course, in every workhouse, different 
 parts of the building assigned for the use of men, 
 , women, and children ; generally, also, the infirm 
 1 occupy different dormitories from the able-bodied, 
 sometimes, again, they have different sitting-rooms. 
 But much more than this is needed if any higher 
 standard of administration is aimed at than the mere 
 housing and feeding of the inmates. So long ago 
 as 1834 the Commissioners recommended in their
 
 vi THE AUTHORITY 153 
 
 Report that classification should be by workhouses, 
 not In workhouses ; i.e. that a different institution 
 under different management should be assigned to 
 each different class. The difficulties of the present 
 system are strongly felt by those who have to 
 administer it ; the Workhouse Masters and 
 Matrons' Association state in their evidence : 
 
 "With proper classification of, and in, workhouses, it IV. 4, 167 
 would be possible to treat each class of inmates on its 
 merits, in more detail, with the result that to the deserving 
 an almshouse system would present itself, while the treat- 
 ment of the undeserving would be deterrent. 
 
 " If you give us all classes to look after as we have at 
 present, you want expert knowledge on every point and 
 expert administration on every point, and it is impossible, 
 in the one house, with the one staff of officials, to get it. 
 That is one reason why we request so strongly classifica- 
 tion by workhouses as well as in workhouses." 
 
 The Local Government Board laid great stress 
 upon this point in their Report of 1873-4 ^> ut 
 pointed out that the reform could not be effected 
 except at an enormous cost, unless Boards of 
 Guardians would combine for the purpose. There 
 are not enough of each class of pauper, especially 
 when we come to such small classes as the epileptic j 
 or feeble-minded, to make it practicable to have a 
 separate institution in each union. But by com- ' 
 bining for the purpose different Boards could
 
 154 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 distribute their paupers amongst their several 
 institutions in whatever way seemed best. Thus 
 one workhouse might have been turned into an 
 almshouse for the aged ; another into a home for 
 the feeble-minded ; another into a workhouse for 
 the able-bodied only. 
 
 With this object in view facilities were offered 
 in the Poor Law Act of 1879 which enabled 
 Boards of Guardians to enter into combination 
 " for any purpose connected with the administration 
 
 i of the relief of the poor." But the Act is per- 
 
 i . *_ 
 
 missive only, and has been used to a very small 
 I extent. There is a curious jealous narrowness 
 about most Boards of Guardians which makes them 
 unwilling to co-operate, not only with charitable 
 persons and institutions, but even with each other. 
 One witness of wide experience said : 
 
 IV. 4, 164 " There is nothing on which the average Guardian is 
 more sensitive than any change in his area. He looks 
 upon it as his right, and he does not like to be mixed up 
 with the neighbours at all. It is quite impossible, except 
 by general legislation, to get over that prejudice." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " I think it is one of those things which, if it were 
 left to the Local Government Board, would not be done ; 
 I mean to say, even if we had a recommendation in favour 
 of it, I do not think we could do it."
 
 vi THE AUTHORITY 155 
 
 There are no doubt many unions, especially in 
 
 the country, where the need for reform in this 
 
 direction is not very obvious. When there are no 
 
 able-bodied paupers the workhouse, under good 
 
 management, tends to become a fairly comfortable 
 
 home for the aged and infirm, who have little 
 
 to complain of when the master and matron are 
 
 \ kindly people. But even in these workhouses will 
 
 1 generally be found a few children, a few feeble- 
 
 I minded women, and a few epileptics, none of 
 
 j whom are receiving the proper treatment. And 
 
 (that the general workhouse may degenerate into 
 something much worse than this is clear from the 
 following notes made by the Commissioners on 
 different workhouses seen by them : 
 
 (i) "On the day of our visit there were eighty-seven IV. 5, 190 
 inmates, fifty-one men, twenty-seven women, and nine 
 children. There was no attempt at classification. Thus, 
 young women, girls, infants, and old women were all 
 using the same dormitory. The master and Guardians 
 apparently considered that this was inevitable, but in one 
 case in which a sleeping-room had been allotted for six 
 old women, the next dormitory thereto was occupied by 
 old women, young women, and girls, and as we have 
 pointed out, it would have been easy to have allotted the 
 old women's room as a girls' dormitory. It seemed to us 
 scandalous that local apathy should be allowed to condemn 
 young girls to be put to sleep with women admitted by 
 the master to be frequently of bad character."
 
 156 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 (2) "We visited the workhouse, but being short of 
 time, we could only visit those sections of the building 
 which the master was least unwilling to show us. We 
 were accompanied by the acting chairman, who seemed 
 quite unfamiliar with the house. In the infirmary there 
 were ten beds for males, eight beds for females, and a 
 lying-in ward. The charge nurse was absent on holidays ; 
 there were no acute cases. The condition of the patients 
 was unsatisfactory, and although (as we were informed) 
 the doctor comes when sent for, the condition of the 
 patients was such as to suggest reasonable ground for 
 complaint. In the absence of the nurse, the patients 
 were in charge of the assistant matron, who is quite 
 ignorant of nursing. At night the patients, one of whom 
 has fits of a somewhat serious kind, help one another. 
 In the body of the house there were five imbeciles in 
 charge of inmates. The children, eleven in number, are 
 in the house ; they mix with the other inmates ; they go 
 out to school, the two or three whom we saw seemed 
 untidy and neglected. The Board is opposed to 
 
 boarding-out. Our visit to the H Union has 
 
 left an unpleasant, if not painful impression in our 
 memories." 
 
 (3) "The inmates were simply crowded together in 
 ill-ventilated wards. With such overcrowding, classifi- 
 cation is impossible. The beds in the infirm men's wards 
 were so close together that it was scarcely possible to get 
 between ; clothing and utensils were lying about every- 
 where ; nails were driven into the walls in many places, 
 evidently by inmates, and garments of various kinds hung 
 on them. Men were lying on the beds in their day 
 clothes ; others playing draughts around the fire in their
 
 vi THE AUTHORITY 157 
 
 shirt sleeves ; whilst others were permanently bed-ridden 
 in a state of senile decay. There was only one day 
 attendant for a pavilion with 190 inmates. The over- 
 crowding applies to all parts of the workhouse." 
 
 (4) " Most of the people looked even more dejected 
 than usual ; hardly one seemed to have enough spirit to 
 speak when spoken to." 
 
 (5) " There is little or nothing to be said in praise of 
 this house. Every place seemed dirty, and the fullest use 
 was not made of what resources there were. The 
 sanitary arrangements were disgraceful, the laundry was 
 in a state of chaos, and the accommodation in the tramp 
 wards was primitive. The inmates were sitting round 
 fires in small rooms with low ceilings, and seemed morose 
 and indifferent to their surroundings. The children 
 looked far from happy. They were huddled together in 
 a small room with no attempt at brightness." 
 
 (6} " The whole of the workhouse reflects great 
 discredit on the Board of Guardians ; it is overcrowded 
 and ill-managed, and the staff is inadequate. Indeed, 
 the detailed administration seemed so incompetent as to 
 be almost cruel." 
 
 The present state of affairs is clearly one which 
 must be remedied, and the remedy cannot be 
 delayed any longer. " Ever since 1834 the need iv. 4, 165 
 for classification has been felt, and has become 
 increasingly urgent as the possibilities of specialised 
 treatment for various kinds of distress have been 
 realised." Full facilities have been offered the 
 Guardians to effect the necessary reforms by means
 
 / I ' 
 
 158 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 of combination, but they have opposed a stubborn 
 resistance to all pressure. It seems necessary, 
 therefore, to take the matter out of their hands 
 altogether. This jthe Commission proposes to do 
 by enlarging the area for Poor Law administration 
 from the union to the county, 1 so that all the' 
 
 I institutions within the county will be at the^ 
 
 I disposal of one authority. That authority will 
 then be able to carry out a complete scheme of 
 classification, utilising the present workhouses 
 where possible, and supplying additional institu- 
 tions where necessary. 
 
 The only real objection which has been raised to 
 this policy is that it might involve hardship to the [ 
 persons who were removed to a distance from their > 
 IX. 7 friends. The Commission thinks that the risks of 
 this are minimised by the great facilities of com- 
 munication which now exist, and that they are far 
 outweighed by the increased benefit to be derived 
 from the change. Moreover, they point out that 
 if their recommendation to house the old people 
 in small homes is carried out, these will naturally 
 be situated in the localities where they are needed. 
 
 It is this County Authority which it is proposed 
 to call the Public Assistance Authority of the 
 future. To it will be assigned the responsibility 
 
 I 1 The term "County" is used here and subsequently to include 
 " County Borough."
 
 vi THE AUTHORITY 159 
 
 for the proper administration of all public relief 
 within the county ; the responsibility which is now 
 divided amongst many Boards of Guardians. It 
 will still work under the general control and super- 
 vision of the Local Government Board ; but in 
 matters of detail it will have more freedom than is 
 now left to the Guardians. 
 
 Thus the first step in the reforms proposed by 
 the Commission is the enlargement of the area of 
 administration. Concurrently with this goes the 
 enlargement of the area of finance. That is to say, 
 the poor rate would in future be a county rate 
 instead of a union rate. This would have the 
 effect of equalising .the burden of pauperism 
 throughout the county. At present that burden 
 is very unequally distributed ; in some unions the 
 rate levied for Poor Law purposes is as low as id. 
 in the , whilst in others it is as high as is. $d. 
 And the inequality is intensified by the fact that 
 it is often the poorest districts which have to pay 
 the highest rates. It is true that to a large extent 
 Poor Law expenditure is determined by the 
 wisdom or extravagance of local administration, j 
 and the Commission have not lost sight of the 
 theory that local responsibility tends to economy. 
 But they have found that in practice the results ,- 
 have not been what might have been expected. It 
 is true that in country unions, where the farmers
 
 160 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 who pay the rates preponderate on the Board, 
 there is an economy which amounts to parsimony 
 in many directions ; but in the towns some of the 
 most reckless extravagance and lavish expenditure 
 have been in the poorest districts. For whatever 
 reason, the ratepayer has certainly failed to 
 exercise his influence on the side of economy. 
 Hence it is considered that to make the charge 
 uniform over the county will not only add to the 
 uniformity and efficiency of administration, but 
 will also be a check to local extravagance. 
 
 The next important point is the constitution of 
 the new authority. By some of the Commission 
 it was thought that the enlargement of the area 
 would suffice to avert most of the evils of popular 
 \ elections, and that the new authority should be 
 specially elected. This proposal was rejected, 
 chiefly on the ground that it would be inadvisable 
 to have two independent and co-ordinate authori- 
 ties within the same area ; so it is recommended 
 IX. 22 by the majority that the Public Assistance 
 Authority should be a Statutory Committee of 
 the County Council, appointed by the County 
 Council partly from its own members, partly from 
 outside, and after appointment acting independ- 
 ently. In order to secure continuity of adminis- 
 tration it is further recommended that the members
 
 vi THE AUTHORITY 161 
 
 of the Public Assistance Authority should retire 
 one-third annually, and be eligible for re-appoint- 
 ment. 
 
 Although the responsibility for the administra- 
 tion of public assistance throughout the county is 
 to rest with this county authority, it is not pro- 
 posed that it shall itself undertake the detailed 
 work of dealing with individual cases. One of its 
 most important functions will be the appointment 
 of local committees, to be known as Public Assist- 
 ance Committees, which will to a large extent 
 take the place of the present Boards of Guardians. 
 Within the limits of the general policy laid down 
 by^ the county authority and the Local Govern- 
 ment Board it will be left to these committees 
 to receive all applications for assistance, to render 
 such assistance as they consider adequate to the 
 needs of the applicant, and to secure the proper 
 supervision of all persons in receipt of assistance. ( 
 They will also "inspect, supervise, and administer" 
 such of the Public Assistance Authority's institu- 
 tions as lie within their area, or any others which 
 may be assigned to them. Their further duties 
 are set out in detail in the Report, but the follow- ix. 25 
 ing may be noted here, (i.) It is made especially 
 incumbent upon the Public Assistance Committee / 
 to co-operate with other public and voluntary 
 
 M
 
 162 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 agencies. The present jealous and exclusive 
 attitude of Boards of Guardians has been such 
 a hindrance to progressive work in the past that 
 the Commission have felt it necessary that this 
 co-operation should be an explicit instruction for 
 the future. 
 
 (2.) It is further to be an explicit instruction to 
 
 \ the Committees to " decide upon the best method 
 
 | of assisting applicants with a view to removing the 
 caiise of distress" The intention of this is clear. 
 The administration in future is to make a 
 systematic and strenuous effort to get at the root 
 of the evil of pauperism ; to find out what in each 
 particular case has brought about distress, and 
 then in co-operation with other agencies to 
 endeavour to find the right remedy. This will 
 
 I mean the abandonment of the old inadequate system 
 of doles ; where allowances are made they will be 
 sufficient to remove distress altogether, and they 
 
 ' will never be used merely to enable the recipient 
 to drag on a miserable life under degrading 
 conditions (see Ch. 7). 
 
 Success in carrying out a better administration 
 
 ' will depend almost entirely upon getting the right 
 men and women to serve upon the committees. 
 The Commission believe that there is a better 
 chance of this if the members are appointed than if
 
 vi THE AUTHORITY 163 
 
 it is left to the chances of election ; but in order 
 to secure local interest and co-operation they pro- 
 vide that the members so appointed shall include a 
 certain proportion of persons nominated by the 
 urban and rural district councils, and where a 
 " Voluntary Aid Committee " has been established \ 
 in a district a certain proportion nominated by 
 that committee. "The persons so nominated 
 shall be experienced in the local administration of ix. 26 
 public assistance or other cognate work and shall 
 include a proportion of women, in our judgment 
 not ordinarily less than one-third. One-third 
 of the members shall retire each year, but shall be 
 eligible for re-election." It will be seen that 
 every facility is afforded here for enlisting anew 
 the services of those Guardians who have done 
 good work in the past, and whose experience will 
 be invaluable in the future. 
 
 For finance the Committees will draw upon the 
 Public Assistance Authority, to which, they will 
 submit half-yearly estimates of their expenditure. 
 Officers to assist them in carrying out their work 
 will also be assigned to them by the Public 
 Assistance Authority, and will be under their 
 supervision and control. It is suggested that in 
 the first instance the areas within which the Com- 
 mittees should work should be the present union 
 
 M 2
 
 164 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 areas, or (in county boroughs) the relief areas ; 
 but that these should be sub-divided, and adminis- 
 tered by sections of the Committee when their size 
 make it desirable. 
 
 We have spoken of a " Voluntary Aid Com- 
 mittee," and this, which is an integral part of the 
 organisation proposed by the Commission, must 
 now be explained. 
 
 There is an immense amount of charitable work 
 being done all over the country which is perhaps 
 more potent, both for good and for evil, than that 
 which is done officially under the Poor Law. The 
 work which is paid for out of public funds, compul- 
 sorily raised for a certain purpose, is and must 
 necessarily be carefully defined and guarded by 
 legal limitations. Thus what it gains in thorough- 
 ness and certainty it loses in elasticity and com- 
 prehensiveness. The voluntary worker is limited 
 only by his own capacity and power of sympathy. 
 He can risk his money on " forlorn hopes," he 
 can try experiments, best of all he can intervene 
 with timely help before his proteges have fallen 
 to the point where a claim can be made upon the 
 public funds. A corollary to this greater freedom 
 is the greater power for evil involved in the 
 absence of all outside control. There can be no 
 doubt, no one indeed can have failed to notice,
 
 vi THE AUTHORITY 165 
 
 that a large amount of idleness and drink 
 and incapacity is directly attributable to the ill- 
 advised charities of inexperienced almsgivers. 
 Chapter 7 of the Report contains a survey of 
 the conditions under which the administration of 
 charity, both endowed and private, takes place 
 at the present time ; it describes the want of 
 co-ordination and overlapping, and consequent 
 demoralisation of the recipients ; and suggests the 
 conditious under which these defects might be 
 remedied. 
 
 It is clear that to subject the charities to the , 
 same sort of control and limitation as must neces- 
 sarily govern the Public Assistance Authorities 
 would tend to deprive them of just those charac- 
 teristics which make them most valuable. But it 
 is thought that a great step forward might be 
 made by putting them in a position of greater 
 responsibility, in which they will be recognised by 
 the State as having undertaken a definite public 
 service. It is with this intention that the Com- ix. 109 
 mission have recommended that in every county 
 there shall be formed a Council of Voluntary Aid, 
 representative of the important voluntary agencies 
 of the county ; and correlative to each Public 
 Assistance Committee a Voluntary Aid Com- 
 mittee representing local voluntary agencies. These
 
 V.A 
 
 166 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 5 committees would include representatives, not only 
 
 : of chanties in the narrower sense, but also of 
 
 . Friendly Societies and similar institutions ; and as 
 
 an essential step towards co-operation there would 
 
 be mutual representation between the Public 
 
 Assistance and Voluntary Aid Committees. 
 
 These Voluntary Aid Committees would be 
 " a recognised link between public assistance and 
 charity." One of their most useful functions 
 would be to serve as a centre for the registration 
 of all the relief work done in the district, including 
 that of the Public Assistance Authority, and a 
 place where charitable workers could meet to 
 discuss their work and devise plans for assisting 
 the families in whom they were interested. There 
 would be a continuous give-and-take between 
 public assistance and voluntary aid, each under- 
 taking the work for which it was best suited, and 
 assisting the other where it was possible. Thus it 
 is hoped that under the new conditions the Public 
 Assistance Authority would be able to utilise the 
 services of voluntary workers in certain depart- 
 ments of their work where they would be of 
 the greatest service, as in the constant visiting and 
 supervision of the aged, or of widows with children. 
 The occasional visits of officials, however important 
 and necessary, can do little to help and strengthen
 
 vi THE AUTHORITY 167 
 
 such cases compared with what can be done by an I 
 experienced volunteer devoting herself to a small 
 number of families. In short, such a system of 
 co-operation would realise the best features of the 
 " Elberfeld system," and be in complete harmony 
 with the new development of Civic Guilds and 
 Friendly Visitors. 
 
 The work of the Voluntary Aid Council to be ' 
 established in each county would be of a somewhat j 
 different nature to that of the committees in its 
 area. " The executive work would be assigned to IX - *9 
 the Voluntary Aid Committees. The Voluntary 
 Aid Council would supervise their operations 
 generally, and would, as far as possible, main- 
 tain the same principles of help and relief through- 
 out county or county borough. It would collect \ 
 funds for distribution to Voluntary Aid Committees, ] 
 and it would allocate funds to poor districts. The ' 
 county is already the accepted area for many 
 benevolent and philanthropic purposes. The local 
 infirmary or hospital is frequently a county institu- 
 tion. There are county nursing associations, and 
 the county is the recognised centre in connection 
 with various military funds. We propose that the | 
 Voluntary Aid Council, acting for the county, ! 
 should promote any voluntary institutions or 
 societies for which the county as a whole has
 
 168 THE POOR LAW REPORT CH. vi 
 
 need. Its duties would thus be important and 
 distinctive." 
 
 It is proposed that these Councils should be 
 mainly representative of existing agencies, such 
 as~endowed and other charities, the Public Assist- 
 ance Authority, Friendly Societies, and trade asso- 
 ciations, clergy and ministers, &c. In order to give 
 the voluntary charities a standing, a scheme is 
 suggested whereby they should register themselves 
 on terms similar to those under which the Friendly 
 Societies are registered. Finally, it is proposed 
 that a statutory obligation should be imposed upon 
 the Lords Lieutenants, the Chairmen of County 
 Councils, the Lord Mayors and Mayors of County 
 Boroughs, to draw up and submit to the Charities 
 Commission schemes for the constitution of Volun- 
 tary Aid Councils within their areas. 
 
 For the sake of brevity the term County has 
 been used throughout this Chapter to include both 
 the County and the County Borough.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE USE AND ABUSE OF "OUTDOOR RELIEF*' 
 
 OF all the many controversies which have been 
 fought upon Poor Law questions the most persis- 
 tent and irreconcilable has been that upon the 
 respective merits of " indoor " and " outdoor " 
 relief. The two sides of the controversy are 
 supposed to be supported by two different schools 
 of administrators, following two different and 
 incompatible policies, though, as a matter of fact, 
 the number of unions in which relief is adminis- 
 tered consistently upon either the one policy or the 
 other is very few. 
 
 The opposition of most of the best and wisest 
 administrators to granting outdoor relief has its 
 justification in the abuses to which such relief 
 is liable. Students of Poor Law history know 
 what reason England has to dread any recurrence 
 of such a flagrant abuse of outdoor relief as was
 
 170 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 revealed by the Poor Law Report of 1834 ; and 
 it is probably because other countries have no such 
 history behind them that they generally accept 
 outdoor relief as the normal method of assist- 
 ances. But that the abuse of outdoor relief is 
 not a mere matter of history will be shown 
 directly from the Report of the present Commission. 
 It is also necessary to realise that indoor relief 
 has developed abuses of late years which were 
 never anticipated by its early advocates. 
 
 The method of relieving distress by means of 
 maintenance in an institution has, of course, been 
 practised for centuries. The policy of making 
 maintenance in an institution the normal system, 
 with exceptions in favour of certain classes, found 
 its most weighty advocates in the Commissioners of 
 1834, more especially with reference to the "able- 
 bodied." 
 
 iv. 5, 182 " In order to justify the policy of the Royal 
 Commissioners of 1834 in connection with this 
 class,, it is necessary to consider what they had 
 in mind in substituting for partial outdoor relief 
 the offer of total maintenance within a well- 
 managed workhouse, where employment should be 
 given under conditions less favourable than those 
 of the independent labourers. They were certainly 
 not influenced by any desire to " penalise poverty "
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 171 
 
 or to prevent people from applying for necessary 
 relief. On the contrary, they claimed that their 
 policy was based upon that adopted by the working 
 classes themselves as the only safe principle for the 
 government of their Friendly Societies. 
 
 " On this point, as on many others, the independent 
 labourers may be our best teachers. We have seen that 
 in the administration of the funds of their friendly 
 societies, they have long acted on the principle of 
 rendering the condition of a person receiving their relief / 
 less eligible than that of an independent labourer. We 
 have now to add, that they also adopt and enforce most 
 unrelentingly the principle that under no circumstances. 
 and with no exceptions, shall any member of their 
 societies receive relief while earning anything for 
 himself." 
 
 The significance of the distinction for our present 
 purpose lies in the fact that when the Guardians 
 grant relief in an institution, whether workhouse, 
 infirmary, or school, they make themselves entirely 
 responsible for the lives of the recipients. The 
 advantages of this complete control and supervision 
 are great. By means of it they can ensure that 
 the children are properly fed, clothed, and educated ; 
 that the patients in the infirmary are treated appro- 
 priately and made to carry out the doctor's 
 instructions ; and that the inmates lead a sober, 
 clean, and orderly life. Such control is far more
 
 172 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 I difficult when the people receive assistance in their 
 own homes, and as a matter of fact it is seldom, if 
 ever, attempted. The Guardians, with few excep- 
 tions, consider their responsibility fulfilled by the 
 grant of a small allowance ; and do not regard it 
 as incumbent upon them to ensure either that it 
 is adequate, or that it is properly expended, or 
 that the recipients are leading satisfactory lives. 
 
 This irresponsible attitude of the Guardians 
 towards outdoor relief is the more serious in that 
 j the number of persons receiving it is twice as great 
 as the number maintained in institutions. In 
 country districts, indeed, there are nearly four-and- 
 a-half outdoor paupers to every one indoor pauper ; 
 and though it is not generally in the country dis- 
 tricts that the worst forms of abuse are to be 
 found, there is room even there for very great 
 reforms. 
 
 The first defect we may note in the frequent 
 inadequacy of the relief given at the home. This 
 has already been dwelt upon in speaking of the 
 aged and the children. It is largely due to the 
 want of supervision and control, in the sense that 
 the Guardians have seldom any real knowledge 
 of the circumstances of the persons to whom 
 they grant allowances. They know every detail 
 as to the food, and clothing, and shelter of
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 173 
 
 the inmates of their institutions, and would feel 
 themselves guilty of cruelty and neglect if these 
 were insufficient ; but in the case of the outdoor 
 paupers their ignorance enables them to avoid all 
 sense of responsibility. It is true that in the forms 
 filled in by the relieving officer he is supposed to 
 state what the resources of the applicant are, but 
 frequently the entry under this heading is " un- 
 known," and it is quite the exception that it is 
 even supposed to be exhaustive. If the relieving 
 officer happens to know that some one is helping 
 he may enter it, but generally speaking he does 
 not go out of his way to make enquiries. The 
 following extracts from notes made by the Com- 
 missioners illustrate this point : 
 
 (i) "The practice of the Boards (six unions) with iv. 6, 255 
 respect to out-relief varies considerably. Most of them 
 seem to work from a fixed standard, which varies from 
 2.$. to 2s. 6d. per head for adults, and about 15. 6d. for 
 children. Cases are seldom discussed with reference to 
 their needs : l She will be content with that,' or ' That 
 is what the other old women are getting,' or * She is over 
 eighty, give her another sixpence,' were the sort of 
 considerations brought forward. Here and there the 
 relieving officer had ascertained the income, but that was 
 exceptional. Generally speaking, the relief given seemed 
 on the face of it quite inadequate ; but the assumption 
 that there were undisclosed resources was probably 
 justified in many cases."
 
 174 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 (2) " Relief was apparently granted on the assumption 
 that it was supplemented from other unascertained sources. 
 Unless this assumption was correct, the scale of relief 
 seemed inadequate." 
 
 (5) "A widow, living alone, received 3*. 6d. a week, 
 out of which is. was given to a girl for attending to her 
 room, as she was helpless. She said that coals and rent 
 cost her is. 4<^., leaving her is. 2d. a week on which to 
 live. She was trying to eat a dinner which she said was 
 not cooked, and she could not finish it." 
 
 (7 ) " Enquiries as to resources are, I should say, 
 practically not made at all. The first two cases I saw 
 were an old groom and an old gardener, who had worked 
 for good families, and were very comfortably housed. I 
 asked whether their employers allowed them anything, 
 and the relieving officer replied that he had never asked, 
 as he made a point of not asking about private charity. 
 Sons he may happen to see, but trusts to his general 
 knowledge to judge whether they do or should contribute. 
 I do not think there was a single case amongst those I 
 visited, or amongst those we heard called over at the 
 Board meeting, in which he really knew what the 
 children were doing for their parents ; with one exception, 
 the relief given was on the face of it glaringly inadequate, 
 but the homes were comfortable, and there were no signs 
 of extreme poverty." 
 
 The Guardians are wont to justify the smallness 
 of their allowance on two grounds : first, that the 
 recipients probably have " undisclosed resources " 
 of which they know nothing, and secondly, that
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 175 
 
 to give adequate relief to so many people would 
 be too costly. They fail to realise that in many 
 cases mey are giving to people who have no real 
 need of it ; and that proper knowledge would 
 enable them to give a sufficiency to those in real 
 need without increasing the burden on the rate- 
 payers. Said one witness : 
 
 " I consider there are numberless cases in the West IV. 6, 256 
 Derby Union who ought to be receiving considerably more 
 than they are receiving ; but it is very difficult to get 
 Guardians to understand that it is better to have 500 on 
 outdoor relief at js. 6d. than 1,500 at 2s. 6d. 
 
 But this irresponsibility of the Guardians 
 extends to matters which are even more serious 
 from the point of view of the community than 
 the superfluity or insufficiency of the relief given. 
 The Commissioners report that they have found 
 instances in which out-relief is being supplied to 
 subsidise dirt, disease, and immorality, and where 
 the strictest enforcement of an indoor policy 
 would have been more humane as well as more 
 wise. " Opinions may differ as to the degree of iv. 6, 261 
 strictness desirable in Poor Law administration ; 
 but no possible justification can be advanced for 
 the granting of out-relief in such a way as to 
 perpetuate pauperism and the conditions which 
 give rise to pauperism."
 
 176 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 The instances cited in the Report to illustrate 
 this point have been selected as coming from 
 different parts of the country, and some of them 
 are typical of many others in the same district. 
 One feature which is especially to be deprecated 
 is the way in which phthisis is being propagated 
 in many homes, by relieving the patient in the 
 midst of his family under conditions of over- 
 crowding and insanitation. Another even more 
 disastrous, is the permitting children to grow up 
 amongst immoral and drunken relations. The 
 following cases illustrate these points : 
 
 IV 6 262 ( J ) " Mrs. W., a widow with five children, receives 
 lOs. per week. She is a notorious drunkard, and has 
 lately been turned out of a house in a street where 
 drunkards abound, because her drunken habits disturbed 
 the whole street. When we called she refused to open 
 the door ; the relieving officer concluded she was drunk." 
 (2) "T., married, with three children, is partly 
 paralysed, and seems mentally deficient. His wife is 
 crippled by rheumatism. The Guardians allow 6s. per 
 week for man and wife, and 6s. for the children. The 
 tenement consists of two rooms . . . and there are 
 living in the house in addition to the foregoing, Mrs. T.'s 
 mother, one male lodger, about 40, and Mrs. T.'s sister 
 with an illegitimate child. In these two rooms it will be 
 observed there are five adults, three children and one 
 baby. I was told by the relieving officer that the 
 Guardians do not attach importance either to cleanliness,
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 177 
 
 sanitation, decency, or the ordinary standards of morality. 
 As a result of my own observation, I am prepared to 
 endorse the statement." 
 
 (3) " Case of phthisis. Man been ill three years (56 
 years of age), been getting out-relief for three years. Has 
 five children, youngest 8 months, another expected. 
 Wife, aged 41, getting I2s. 6d. from parish. The 
 children are made up as follows : A girl, 20, out of 
 work, living at home ; a son, 17, working as miner, 
 earning i6s. a week j and three young children. The 
 whole seven sleep in one filthy, dirty room with a gable 
 roof at the sides, about 3 feet high, running up to 8 feet 
 in the middle. The room was about 14 feet by 8 feet." 
 
 (4) " Case of phthisis. Man about 40, and wife same 
 age ; two children dependent ; $s. out-relief. Son, aged 
 19, earns 185. a week. Man, wife, son and two children 
 all in one room ; filthy is a mild word to use to describe 
 the condition of things here. . . . The boy is delicate 
 already, and will, without doubt, follow his father. 
 Never works a full week." 
 
 It is significant that many of the worst cases 
 found by the Commissioners were in places where 
 the Sanitary Authorities had grossly neglected 
 their duties, and were very largely responsible for 
 creating the pauperism which the Guardians were 
 making futile attempts to relieve. It is realising 
 this which makes it obvious how futile it would 
 be to entrust any part of the work of relieving 
 pauperism to the Sanitary Authorities.
 
 178 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 The following extracts from the Reports of 
 Commissions on their visits illustrate this point : 
 
 " i. I visited some thirty to forty out-relief cases. For 
 the most part they are living in homes which reflect most 
 serious discredit on the sanitary authority and on the great 
 companies which have attracted to the district a large 
 population. The overcrowding is of such a kind that 
 ordinary decency is impossible ; both sanitary accommo- 
 dation and water supply are most inadequate." 
 
 " 2. The first row of houses were built on the side of 
 a hill, as if the houses had been let into the earth. The 
 houses consist of three floors, with one room on each 
 floor, no back at all. Almost every house I went into 
 was of a similar character : no convenience for washing, 
 no sink, only a tap at the door, and flag-stones for floor. 
 I ought to explain that there are two entrances, one for 
 the ground floor, which would be called the back, and 
 one for the floor above it, which would be called the 
 front, though both entrances faced a road and opened 
 right on to it in each case, and as the road was unpaved it 
 was simply a quagmire of filth and dirt. I believe the 
 Medical Officer of Health has closed some of the bottom 
 rooms ; but after people have been ejected he was told 
 they return again, as they have nowhere to go. These 
 houses are allowed one w.c. for each two houses. This 
 was convenient for the downstairs people, but those who 
 lived above had three or four minutes' walk round, or 
 were obliged to go down a ladder and through the down- 
 stairs room. We counted in several instances that at 
 least twenty persons would have simply one of these 
 places at their disposal, the results being seen along the
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 179 
 
 pavements and in the corners, especially at the front or 
 top entrance streets. To make matters worse, the 
 Corporation, having nowhere else to dispose of the town 
 street and house refuse, is simply piling it up on an open 
 space surrounded by houses. A proposal has been made 
 for a dust and refuse destructor, but so far the authorities 
 appear to think it quite right to poison the inhabitants* 
 ... I cannot describe all I saw, but as a sample I saw 
 one row of twenty of these places in which were sixteen 
 cases of out-relief." 1 
 
 The impressions gained by the Commissioners 
 during their own visits were confirmed by a 
 subsequent investigation undertaken by the General 
 Inspectors of the Local Government Board. They 
 found that whilst it could be fairly said to be 
 exceptional that the recipients of out-relief were 
 living under such conditions as we have described, 
 nevertheless they were sufficiently prevalent to , 
 constitute a very serious evil. The following > 
 extracts, the one from the north of England, 
 the other from Wales, reveal an abuse which 
 ought not to be tolerated : 
 
 " i. This class (Class C.) contains those concerning IV. 6, 263 
 whom the present enquiry is made. Too frequently 
 they represent the most demoralised and diseased of the 
 population. They include some epileptics, imbeciles and 
 cripples of the lowest class. Their homes are nearly 
 
 1 This is not quoted in the Report. 
 
 N 2
 
 180 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 always to be found in the poorest quarters where popula- 
 tion is densest. Cleanliness and ventilation are not 
 considered of any account. The furniture is always of 
 the most dilapidated kind. The beds generally consist of 
 dirty palliasses or mattresses with very scanty covering. 
 The atmosphere is offensive, even fetid, and the clothing 
 of the individuals, old and young, is ragged and filthy. 
 Bankrupt in pocket and character, this class look to the 
 rates to support them, and are never backward in making 
 application. The children are neglected, furnish the 
 complaints of the National Society of Prevention of 
 Cruelty to Children inspectors, and fill the homes of the 
 Guardians. The men are drunkards, gamblers, workshy 
 corner boys, and often criminals. The women are too 
 often immoral, as well as unclean and neglectful. 
 Souteneurs may be included in this class. ... It is 
 impossible with the present powers to deal satisfactorily 
 with the various subsections of it which come before the 
 Guardians and the Sanitary Authorities. The Guardians 
 feel forced to give relief to bad cases because of the 
 children, or for fear of some allegation of want of con- 
 sideration to destitute ruffians or drunkards." 
 
 (2) " There is no doubt whatever that a large number of 
 the outdoor paupers are living in an environment of filth 
 and immorality, and in many cases I fear they are 
 participants in, and abettors of, these foul, insanitary, and 
 degrading conditions. ... I found far too much in- 
 temperance and sometimes even drunkenness in cases to 
 which relief was being granted. . . . Closely allied to it, 
 and as a rule the fruits of it, were filth, both of person and 
 surroundings, and sadder even was the neglect and 
 resultant cruelty to children, who were ill-fed and ill-clad
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 181 
 
 . . . During the periodical visits of the relieving officer. 
 I consider that each room ina dwellingshould be thoroughly- 
 inspected, for frequently I found that though the living- 
 room might be fairly clean, the rest of the house was a 
 mass of filth, the bedding dirty, a heap of ill-smelling rags 
 for bed clothes, and the atmosphere vile and vicious. In 
 some instances even the living-room was a disgrace to 
 humanity." 
 
 It would be incomprehensible that respectable 
 hard-working people should have allowed them- 
 selves to be taxed in order to maintain such 
 people under such conditions if we had not seen 
 what a general ignorance and apathy prevail 
 amongst the electors, and what irresponsibility 
 amongst the Guardians. The Commissioners 
 endorse the following explanation offered by one 
 of the Inspectors : 
 
 " Potent factors towards producing such a state of things iv. 6, 267 
 as that suggested by the Commissioners are the views taken 
 by a not inconsiderable proportion of Guardians : first, that 
 the disposal of the relief granted by them is a matter for \ 
 which not they but the recipients are responsible ; and 
 secondly, that, however small the relief given to a person 
 with little or no other apparent means of subsistence, it is no 
 one's business to enquire further if the applicant is ! 
 satisfied. The first of these views. ... is almost an 
 incitement to a careless parent to waste on drink money 
 which should be devoted to the nourishment and clothing 
 of the children, while the second may mean a bargain
 
 182 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 between a parsimonious Board of Guardians and liberty 
 or licence-loving paupers, for the lowest terms on which 
 they will keep out of the workhouse." 
 
 The remedy with which the Commission propose 
 to meet this evil is, that in future no out-door relief 
 shall be given, except to persons leading respectable. 
 lives in decent houses. As an immediate step in 
 ,26 this direction, and having regard to the fact that 
 instances such as those described are generally to 
 be found in certain quite limited and well-defined 
 areas, often single streets, it is recommended that 
 the relief authorities should proscribe such areas 
 for the purpose of out-door relief. 
 
 There will, no doubt, be found persons to 
 protest against this as inhuman, to say that it 
 is to penalise poverty, since people are driven by 
 poverty to live in such places. But this view 
 really indicates ignorance of social conditions 
 amongst the poor. Except in a very few places 
 where there is a great scarcity of houses, it is not 
 the pressure of poverty which drives people to live 
 in these degraded areas ; it will nearly always be 
 found that the rents are higher, often considerably 
 higher, than in respectable streets. The real 
 attraction is the absence of restraint and the liberty 
 to overcrowd, and to lead irregular lives, which is 
 to be found under the slum landlord. But even if
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 183 
 
 this were not so, it would always be open to the 
 Relief Authority to remove a family from such 
 surroundings, and if necessary assist it on a more \ 
 liberal scale. In the cases of families with children 
 such a policy is indeed imperative, if they are 
 to be saved from carrying on the tradition of 
 pauperism to another generation. 
 
 To insist upon this restriction of out-relief to 
 persons leading orderly lives in decent homes is 
 only to make general a practice that has already 
 been tested by some Boards. One Inspector says 
 of his district : 
 
 " I gathered from nearly all the relieving officers that IV. 6,269 
 there were certain streets in their district of such a 
 reputation that an application for outdoor relief from a 
 resident therein could not meet with success." 
 
 It was a question very seriously weighed by the 
 Commission whether the simplest and most effec- 
 tive reform would not be to abolish all outdoor 
 relief, and to insist that anyone desiring to be 
 maintained at the cost of the community must 
 consent to live in an institution and under super- 
 vision. And if they had felt it to be impossible 
 to secure proper control and supervision otherwise^ 
 
 it is likely that such would have been their 
 
 j _ -. \ 
 
 recommendation.
 
 184 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 iv. 6, 292 " We have dwelt at length upon the question of 
 out-relief, believing it to be of the utmost import- 
 ance that the evils connected with the system 
 as now conducted should be fully exposed. If 
 these evils were inherent in any system of out- 
 door relief, and could not be got rid of unless 
 the system itself were abolished, we should feel 
 ourselves bound to recommend the cessation of all 
 outdoor relief after a certain date. But we think 
 that this course, though it might be preferable to 
 continuing the present system, would be attended 
 with considerable hardship, that it would give 
 rise to a feeling of harshness and injustice on 
 the part of those who could not be expected to 
 understand the reasons for the change, and, more- 
 \ over, that it would deprive the administrators 
 of a method of assistance which may be turned to 
 good account in skilful hands." 
 
 One good result which the Commission think 
 would follow from a system of " conditional out- 
 relief" would be the gradual raising of the standard ' 
 of cleanliness and decent living amongst the 
 
 IV. 6, 270 poor. " A policy such as this (i.e. of proscribing 
 bad areas) gradually but steadily pursued until it 
 was generally recognised, would, we are convinced, 
 do much to diminish the evils of dirt, overcrowd- 
 ing, and immorality, not only amongst the actual
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 185 
 
 recipients of relief, but also amongst their neigh- 
 bours. At present such evils are condoned by 
 the action of the Guardians, and the mere insistence 
 on a higher standard would be an influence for 
 good, both upon the people themselves, upon the 
 owners of slum properties, and upon the Sanitary 
 Authorities." While the slum landlord or his 
 agent can get his rents paid by the simple ex- 
 pedient of going upon the Board of Guardians 
 and granting out-relief to his tenants, there is 
 little inducement to him to set his house in 
 order. 
 
 But another point which had to be taken into 
 consideration by the Commissioners in determining 
 their attitude towards out-relief was the question 
 how far institution relief continued to be more 
 desirable, even from the point of view of the 
 community. We have seen that the workhouses 
 have ceased to a large extent to be deterrent ; that 
 to the lowest class they are actually attractive ; 
 and that the expenditure on them is increasing to 
 an alarming extent. Not many years ago it was 
 easy to refute the argument that out-relief was 
 cheaper than indoor-relief, by pointing out that for 
 every three people who would accept out-door, 
 only one would accept indoor, and that therefore 
 it paid better to offer only indoor. But to-day
 
 186 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 it is doubtful whether even in the proportion of 
 
 ^^^*im "' ' a ""' "' '^""^"^-fcM^pp*' 
 
 three to one it would not be cheaper to have 
 out-door relief. It was a curious experience in 
 visiting a large number of workhouses to find, as 
 one went from one place to another, that what one 
 had to look for was the most spacious and 
 prosperous looking institution in the place, set in 
 the best-kept grounds, surrounded with expensive 
 walls and handsome gates. Though this is not 
 yet the universal type, it is rapidly becoming so ; 
 and constitutes a new danger in itself. 
 
 For as we have seen the modern workhouse, even 
 when attractive, is not effective. It represents an 
 attempt to combine functions which are incom- 
 patible, and conduces only to the degeneration of 
 its inmates. "Indoor-relief" has bred a class of 
 lazy parasites, willing to submit to any conditions 
 so long as they are well fed and relieved from all 
 responsibilities. They are not even precluded 
 from injuring the outside community, inasmuch 
 as the law permits them to go in and out at their 
 pleasure, using the workhouse as a convenient 
 resort and a protection to their noxious lives 
 from the discipline of hunger and cold. 
 
 Even from the point of view of the old 
 people, the workhouse proves to have failed in 
 very many places, and shows the paradoxical
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 187 
 
 result of rapidly increasing cost with diminished 
 efficiency. Under the circumstances, and whilst 
 the workhouse is continued on its present lines, 
 it is impossible to recommend that it should 
 olay an increased part in the system of Public 
 Assistance. 
 
 Jut supposing the workhouse to be broken 
 up as the Commission desire, and to be replaced 
 by a series of specialised institutions adapted to the 
 requirements of different classes, would it riot 
 then have been possible to limit Public Assistance 
 to maintenance within one or another of these 
 institutions ? 
 
 There is no doubt that such a system would 
 be quite possible, and, if good administration 
 could be secured, might achieve remarkable 
 results. Whether the country could ever have been 
 brought to understand and accept it is another 
 matter, and it is noteworthy that none of the 
 witnesses before the Commission, though all 
 schools were fully represented, urged the adoption 
 of so stringent a policy. In any case the 
 Commission have preferred that no method of 
 relief should be excluded which might be capable, 
 under skilful administration, of yielding good 
 results. Our system of relief has suffered in the 
 past from its narrowness and rigidity ; the
 
 188 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 narrowness of the workhouse on the one hand, and 
 of the allowance to scale on the other. If any 
 \ new attempt to root out pauperism is to be 
 effective there must be a far greater elasticity and 
 adaptability in its methods. There must be a 
 determination to seek out the causes of distress 
 
 4b>>* B MMM >HI>aiMMMnwl _ >BMVMt 
 
 in each case, and a generous application of the 
 remedy whether that remedy be discipline, or 
 food, or medicine, or money. 
 
 Another difficulty which has always been con- 
 nected with out-relief lies in the fact that it is 
 
 * ! 
 
 frequently given to subsidise low wages. It is clear 
 that in so far as this enables an employer to pay his 
 workers a wage which is less than sufficient to main- 
 tain them, it is a direct encouragement to sweating. 
 But if the employer can say, " it matters nothing 
 to me whether you give these people relief or not ; 
 if they give up the work there are hundreds 
 of others ready to take it, on whatever terms I like 
 to offer," then the issue becomes less clear. If, as 
 \ would seem to be the case, the low wages are 
 \ inevitable, then surely it is essential that someone 
 j shall step in and make up the deficiency ? Or 
 is this simply condoning an evil, and must we seek 
 some other way out ? 
 
 It is almost entirely with regard to women's
 
 : 
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 189 
 
 work that the question arises to-day, but in this 
 connection it arises constantly. There is hardly a 
 Board of Guardians throughout the country which 
 is not giving doles of out-relief to supplement the 
 earnings of women. Generally these women are 
 widows with children, or old people over 60. 
 In the hope of getting more light upon the 
 question the Commission appointed investigators 
 to enquire into the effect of out-relief upon wages 
 and the conditions of employment. Their reports 
 are full of interesting material, but it is always 
 difficult in " social investigations " to isolate causes 
 so as to show a clear relation of cause and effect. 
 Still certain points stand out clearly. One is that 
 women's work, in the trades which are subsidised 
 by out-relief, is in the condition described above 
 
 that it matters nothing to the employer whether 
 they receive relief or not. Those who do receive iv. 6, 276 
 it form an exceedingly small proportion of the 
 workers in any trade, while there is always a 
 ' surplus of women waiting to be taken on. " In 
 London and many of the larger towns the supply 
 of unskilled women's labour is still far beyond 
 the demand for it." The low-class employer can 
 deal with his hands as he likes ; he can lower 
 their wages, fine them, dismiss them ; whatever he
 
 190 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 does he can be sure of having as many as he 
 wants as soon as he needs them : 
 
 " As a rule the large employer has not the least idea 
 what becomes of his discharged workers. All he knows 
 is that when he wants to take them on again they will be 
 on the steps in larger numbers than are required." 
 
 (The only remedy for this state of things is to 
 diminish the number of women willing to do 
 unskilled work on such terms. This out-relief, as 
 at present administered, certainly does not do. Its 
 effect upon the situation may be small, but it is 
 all in the wrong direction. Many women would 
 rather earn low wages and receive out-relief in 
 addition than earn enough to keep themselves at 
 better work. The feeling of getting " something 
 for nothing " is irresistible : 
 
 IV. 6, 280 " We are convinced, however, that some paupers con- 
 serve their energies so as to ensure the continuance of 
 relief. This was brought home to us by the statement of 
 a partner in Firm No. 15. His forewoman on offering 
 an outworker more work met with a refusal, as the worker 
 feared she might lose her out-relief if she earned more. 
 Such cases are significant, and there are probably more 
 than we have found." 
 
 One table of wages in the Investigators' Report 
 is interesting. It shows that the average earnings 
 of forty-three out-workers in receipt of relief
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 191 
 
 averaged 4.5. \od. per week, while the average 
 earnings of 131 workers in the same trades not in 
 receipt of relief were js. ^d. " But the paupers iv. 6, 277 
 I are not paid lower rates than the independent 
 \ workers ; they are merely enabled by the receipt 
 jof the relief to work less hard." Many of them, 
 no doubt, are compelled to work less hard, either 
 by bodily infirmity, or by the pressure of home 
 duties ; and if the rate at which they were paid 
 were such as to afford a proper maintenance to 
 whole time workers, tlje position would be less 
 objectionable. But js. ^\d. is not sufficient for a 
 proper maintenance in London, and nothing should 
 be done which makes it more possible for women 
 to work at such rates. For a public authority to 
 
 (supplement the earnings from these industries is 
 really like an official condonation of the " sweating " 
 system. 
 
 The right method of dealing with these cases is 
 onl)Tto be found by individualising the case ; by 
 ascertaining the needs and possibilities of each 
 family and taking steps to put it on a proper 
 footing. In some cases it might be wise and right, 
 under proper supervision, to give the mother full 
 maintenance for herself and children so long as 
 she was fully occupied in caring for them. In 
 others it might be wiser to arrange for the
 
 192 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 children's maintenance in day or boarding schools, 
 and thus to set the mother free to earn a good 
 wage. Underpaid industries might be proscribed 
 just as insanitary areas were proscribed, and, if 
 necessary, steps should be taken to train the 
 mother to skilled work. Account would have to 
 be taken of the woman's aptitudes ; and if she 
 proved hopelessly inefficient as a mother the 
 policy of schools would be best for her and the 
 children alike. 
 
 Deserted wives are in much the same position 
 as widows, but there is an added difficulty for the 
 administrator in the fact that there is frequently 
 collusion between the wives and the deserting 
 husbands. The desertion, in short, may be a mere 
 matter of arrangement between man and wife, 
 devised to obtain a maintenance for the family 
 at the expense of the ratepayers. Hence the 
 IV. 6, 286 recommendation of the Local Government Board 
 u That outdoor relief should not, except in special 
 cases, be granted to any woman deserted by her 
 husband during the first twelve months after 
 desertion." At present this recommendation is 
 very generally ignored; and collusion is practically 
 connived at by the Guardians. 
 
 Another class which has its wages subsidised 
 by outdoor relief is that of the old women :
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 193 
 
 " One of the most painful features of the present iv. 6, 287 
 system of inadequate relief is the vast army of 
 aged women, whom it keeps clinging to the 
 outskirts of industry at an age when they are 
 quite unfit for work of any kind. Mr. Jones and 
 Miss Williams report : 
 
 1 At Leicester in March, 1906, there were 2,008 
 women recipients in receipt ot out-relief, the total being 
 composed of 823 under sixty and 1,185 over sixty. . . . 
 Special notice should be taken of the cases of the old women 
 in receipt of out-relief who work at glove stitching. 
 Their earnings are exceedingly low, working out at 
 15. fyd. a week on the average j but it has to be pointed 
 out that the average age of the women is 67-7 years.' 
 
 " The amount of relief given is 3^. 6</., except in 
 the case of one veteran aged 88, who earns is. 6d., 
 and receives 4^. 6d. relief. We are not told how 
 long they work for their pittance ; and if the hours 
 were very few it might be argued that the stitching 
 was merely a pleasant occupation. But this is not 
 likely to be the case. Where infirmity is great, 
 long hours must be worked to earn even a few 
 pence. Amongst the illustrative cases from 
 London is that of a widow aged 79, who works 
 from 5 a.m. till 10 p.m. to earn 2s. nd. a week at 
 steel-covering ; she has 4^. from the parish and a 
 ioaf from the clergyman, and pays 2s. rent. From 
 
 o
 
 194 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 Glasgow we hear of women over sixty working 
 ten hours a day at shirt-finishing, and earning 
 is. iod. a week : younger women can earn more, 
 but the infirmity of the aged turns their work into 
 slavery. Some women over sixty may be quite 
 capable of earning a full living ; others are in- 
 capacitated even earlier. Here again, what is 
 needed is to replace a mechanical system of out- 
 relief which is superfluous for some, and cruelly 
 inadequate for others, by a discriminating treat- 
 ment of each case." 
 
 If all these women in receipt of relief the 
 widows, the deserted wives, and the old were 
 removed from the ranks of those who compete in 
 the " sweated " industries, some mitigation at least 
 of the evil would be ensured. " Old age pensions " 
 will ease the situation to some extent : the rest 
 must be done by the Public Assistance Committee 
 and the Voluntary Aid Committee, working in 
 close co-operation, and dealing much more carefully 
 and adequately with each case. 
 
 To ensure this more effective kind of work 
 there is required, in the first place, as we have 
 seen, a different conception of their duties and 
 responsibilities on the part of the administrators. 
 How we hope that this may be obtained has 
 been explained in Chap. 6. A system of Public
 
 |w 
 
 vn OUTDOOR RELIEF 195 
 
 Assistance must take the place of a system of 
 Poor Law Relief. But in addition to the great 
 change in the constitution of the authority, the 
 Commission recommend a number of changes in ! 
 what may be called the machinery of the work, 
 which they consider to be essential to proper 
 administration. 
 
 One point upon which they lay great stress 
 is the necessity of assigning smaller areas to the 
 officers engaged in supervising and distributing 
 the relief. The Local Government Board have iv. 3, 129 
 indicated between 250 and 300 as the maximum 
 number with which one relieving officer can deal, 
 and this seems a heavy burden of responsibility if 
 we remember that the officer has not only to guard 
 against fraud, but also to keep watch over the 
 welfare of families under his care. But this limit 
 is often far exceeded. One instance quoted is that 
 of Barnstaple in 1902 : 
 
 "For 1,479 outdoor paupers it has only three relieving iv. 3, 129 
 officers, much of whose time is taken up with other duties, 
 two of them being also inspectors of nuisances, while the 
 third is so much occupied with his functions as registrar 
 that he has frankly stated his inability properly to investi- 
 gate the circumstances of the paupers to whom he ad- 
 ministers relief; and of whom he has 700 on his books." 
 
 In this case pressure was brought to bear upon 
 
 O 2
 
 196 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 the Guardians to appoint another officer, with the 
 result that 
 
 " They saved the salary of the officer several times over, 
 and they were now in a position to judge whether their 
 people wanted relief or did not want relief, which was the 
 great thing." 
 
 The largest proportion of cases to relieving 
 officers which was reported was at Leicester, where 
 in 1 906 it was over 1 ,000 ; and at the time when 
 the Commissioners visited that town it was still 
 over 800. It is impossible that under such con- 
 ditions the people should be properly looked after. 
 
 IV. 3. 131 " We have ourselves noticed in going round with 
 relieving officers, sometimes that the people did not 
 recognise the officers, sometimes that the officers 
 did not know the addresses of the people they were 
 visiting." The Commission therefore recommend 
 that in addition to utilising the services of volun- 
 teer workers for supervising the cases in receipt of 
 I assistance, care should be taken that no officer 
 should be burdened with too large a number of 
 cases, and that the proportion of cases to officers 
 should be carefully and periodically revised. 
 
 IV. 3, 132 " Even more important than to have a sufficient 
 number of relieving officers is to have the right 
 type of man appointed." It seems to be a gener- 
 ally accepted axiom amongst Poor Law critics that
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 197 
 
 the relieving officer is a harsh, unsympathetic man 
 who habitually bullies the people who apply to 
 him for assistance. Here and there it may really 
 happen that a man of this type is appointed ; or 
 sometimes a man naturally kind-hearted may be 
 made irritable by overwork and the harassing of 
 unreasonable claims upon his time. But generally 
 speaking a sufficient answer to these accusations is 
 to accompany an officer on his rounds amongst the 
 people and watch not his demeanour to them, 
 which might be assumed for the occasion but 
 theirs to him. To see him welcomed, as he so 
 often is, as an old and valued friend, is proof of 
 the constant kindness with which he has fulfilled 
 his duties towards them. 
 
 Nevertheless, these officers differ greatly in 
 capacity and in aptitude for the particular work. 
 That this should be so seems almost inevitable ; 
 under the present system of appointment : 
 
 ' " As a matter of fact, men are appointed relieving officers IV. 3, 133 
 very often who know absolutely nothing about it. A 
 relieving officer, as a rule, has to learn his work after he 
 is appointed. It is very difficult to get at the motives 
 which move individuals to appoint other individuals to 
 certain Poor Law offices, but you will sometimes see a 
 man appointed as a relieving officer simply because he has 
 failed in everything else I will not say very often, but 
 not infrequently. He may have failed as a farmer ; he
 
 198 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 may have failed as a contractor ; he may have failed as a 
 road surveyor ; he may have failed in any sort of line of 
 business to which he has devoted himself, but if he be well 
 known and have a quantity of friends they will find some- 
 thing for him." 
 
 At present the only prescribed qualifications are 
 that the officer must be able to keep accounts, 
 must be resident within his district, and unless with 
 tKe~^onsent of the Guardians and of the Local 
 Government Board must not engage in any 
 other trade, profession, or service. But very much 
 more than this is needed, especially in the way of 
 I personal qualities : 
 
 *37 " For a relieving officer you want not only a man of 
 good personal character, but you want a man of great 
 sympathy and at the same time great firmness, you want 
 a man who can be very gentle and at the same time very 
 strong, you want a man who has the fullest sympathy 
 with distress and at the same time who is determined to 
 protect the ratepayers from fraud a man who will find out 
 imposition on the one hand and be very stern with it, and 
 who, on the other hand, will be most sympathetic with 
 real suffering." 
 
 " A relieving officer is practically on duty the whole 
 twenty-four hours through. He has frequently to act in 
 difficult cases on his own reponsibility ; his duties take him 
 into uncleanly houses and rough localities, he is on duty 
 always and liable to be called up at any hour of the day or 
 night."
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 199 
 
 Under the present system a relieving officer 
 generally approaches his work without any previous 
 experience, and as he cannot be dismissed without 
 the consent of the Local Government Board it 
 is difficult to get rid of an officer who proves to be 
 merely incompetent. The Commission recommend iv. 3, 139 
 that in future no officer shall be appointed for 
 1. 1 this work who has not previously served as an 
 assistant, and also obtained a certificate from an 
 - approved examining body. They further recom- 
 mend that to each Public Assistance Committee IX - 1 9 
 should be attached an officer who should to some 
 extent combine the functions of clerk and relieving 
 officer. His status would thus be higher than 
 that of the relieving officer, he would be called 
 the Superintendent of Public Assistance, and would 
 be responsible for the officers working under him, 
 who would in future be called Assistance Officers. 
 Amongst those officers women jihouldl^appointecl IV - 3. 142 
 to deal with certain classes. 
 
 Another improvement in machinery which the 
 Commission recommend as essential to good 
 work is the general introduction^ pf_ jhe c .ase- 
 paper system. Already it is used in some 
 unions with great success, but the practice should 
 be made compulsory. 
 
 " Under the ordinary system, no continuous iv. 6, 299
 
 200 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 record is kept of an applicant and his family ; 
 at every fresh application he is entered afresh 
 in the application and report book of the 
 relieving officer, and where this book is not 
 indexed it depends entirely upon the memory of 
 the relieving officer how much of his past history 
 is brought before the Guardians. When a new 
 relieving officer succeeds to the work, the cases 
 to him are all new, and unless he goes through 
 the application and report books of his predecessor 
 he has no means of tracing their previous 
 history. Under the case-paper system every 
 application is recorded on the same set of papers, 
 which thus constitute a running history of the 
 case ; every set of case-papers is indexed, and can 
 be turned up by anyone who is dealing with the 
 case ; into whatever institution the applicant may 
 be sent his history goes with him. The system 
 takes some trouble to start, but once initiated 
 it is generally acknowledged to be much more 
 effective and more simple than the old." 
 
 And when the machinery has been per- 
 fected, what is the improved use to which it 
 is to be put ? This should have become fairly 
 clear from what has already been said, but it may 
 be summed up by saying that the relief work of 
 the future should be constructive in its nature.
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 201 
 
 " It will be seen that what we are aiming at is, 
 instead of a system of allowances, granted 
 capriciously and irresponsibly to meet a constantly 
 increasing demand, to substitute a ' system of 
 careful and varied assistance, in which the iv. 6, 301 
 4 allowance ' will be only one of many forms 
 of help, and which will be directly designed to 
 raise the recipients, or where that is impossible 
 the children of the recipients, to a position of 
 independence." 
 
 It will make it easier to understand what is 
 meant by this constructive help if we give 
 illustrations, first of its absence and then of its 
 presence : 
 
 (i) "A further reference to this case-paper will show IV. 6, 29; 
 that even in this union, where the administration is unques- 
 tionably able, leakages occur. There were possibilities of 
 development in connection with this family which were 
 not taken. James, a lad of 14, was, when his parents first 
 applied to the board, allowed to remain untrained, and now 
 at the age of 24, is selling flowers in the streets instead of 
 being employed at a good trade. The relieving officer 
 (November 3rd, 1903) calls the attention of the Guardians 
 to the daughter, Margaret, a girl of 19 (a cripple), and 
 suggests that she be taught some occupation by which she 
 can earn her living, but nothing is done, and we now find 
 her sometimes in the workhouse and sometimes living 
 with her mother entirely untrained and incapable of 
 supporting herself. In all probability she will be a source
 
 202 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 of expense to the State as long as she lives, and her happi- 
 ness in life will be curtailed by her limitations. Yet when 
 she first became chargeable she was only a child of n." 
 
 (2) "A baker's assistant out of work three years; 
 about 50 ; does odd jobs. He and the woman who is now 
 his wife, and three or four illegitimate children, were many 
 years in the workhouse. They came out and married ; 
 there is another child, and they have intermittent relief in 
 kind only. A miserable home." 
 
 (3) "A bricklayer's labourer, out of work constantly 
 owing to quarrelsome temper. Wife was born and bred 
 in the workhouse, and would be quite content to return 
 there. Four little children, and a very bare home. 
 Relief in kind only, no food unless they had it. Wife 
 says she would gladly emigrate. Her sister and family 
 are doing very well in Canada, but c they did not emigrate, 
 they just went.' Relieving officer thinks the man's 
 character too unsatisfactory. This family seems con- 
 demned to hopeless pauperism, unless the Guardians adopt 
 some different policy, and the relieving officer says he has 
 several others like it." 
 
 The following instances of constructive work 
 are taken from the chapter in the Report, which 
 deals with Charity : 
 
 VII. 202 "A.B. was referred to the Charity Organisation 
 Society by the Church visitor. He was ill with 
 pneumonia. His club contributions were in arrears, so no 
 sick pay was available. Five quite young children made 
 it impossible for his wife to earn. Although for several 
 years the man's wages had been small and irregular owing
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 203 
 
 to bad health, it was evident that they had done their best 
 to keep the home comfortable and take good care of the 
 children. The Charity Organisation Society raised money 
 to pay up the man's club arrears, gave an allowance of 
 from i$s. to 2Os. a week until he was entitled to sick pay, 
 and sent him twice to a convalescent home by the sea. 
 (He had a relapse after his first visit, because he tried to 
 begin work too soon.) By the kindness of one of the 
 Society's visitors two of the children were sent for three 
 months into the country to enable Mrs. B. to give more 
 time to nursing her husband, and to lessen the household 
 expenses. After many months of careful treatment, in 
 which the district nurses took a large share, the man re- 
 covered, but was not strong enough to resume his former 
 work. An introduction was obtained for him to the 
 manager of one of the tram lines. He obtained work 
 exactly suited to him and was quite able to support his 
 family. 
 
 " I will take one which is a case we are dealing with VII. 203 
 at the present moment, which I think is a typical one, in 
 which I think charity can help. It is a case of a very 
 badly crippled girl, who was placed by the Guardians in a 
 special home for cripples. I went to see the girl there, 
 and I brought the case under the notice of the Charity 
 Organisation Society, and consequently one of our ladies 
 found a suitable dressmaker, and the girl was taken out of 
 the home. A brother, who was not legally liable, was 
 written to, and he helped to pay the cost. The 
 Guardians, instead of paying to the home, will be paying 
 for about two years a small amount, and at the end of 
 those two years that girl will be self-supporting. There 
 was a piece of work which was very largely not relief
 
 204 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 work, it was the arrangement and the management of 
 the thing, which I think will save the rates a very 
 considerable sum. This was one of the cases. 
 
 " The fourth was a case which was sent to us in the 
 middle of last month, a man who had gone into the 
 workhouse ; he was blind, and they asked me if I could 
 look into it and give some advice with regard to it. I 
 found he had been educated at the Blind Institution at 
 Hampstead, had behaved very badly indeed ; had stolen 
 and behaved disgracefully in many ways. That was a 
 case where I thought it best to leave the man for a time 
 in the workhouse. I thought it better to put him to 
 grinding corn for a time, and when he had learned what 
 steady work was one might see what could be done with 
 him, so as to put him back to his trade, which is Braille 
 printing. 
 
 " 16714. Has he learned the lesson ? That lesson is 
 in process of being learned. These are all quite recent 
 cases. I took the last five cases. As it happens, instead 
 of all being old-age cases, they are various cases, they are 
 not all of one type. The last case is a pension case ; an 
 old woman of eighty-one, who had been very largely 
 helped by her adopted daughter. The relieving officer, 
 when she applied to him, felt it would be rather a mistake 
 to bring an old lady like that up to get her relief from 
 the rates. He thought her adopted daughter had behaved 
 so splendidly to her that it would be better to arrange the 
 relief through charitable people. We found that someone 
 who knew her was willing to help, and we have raised 
 the balance. Those are five cases that have come to us 
 recently from the Guardians, and show the sort of 
 co-operation that goes on. It is very largely a co-opera-
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 205 
 
 tion of the relieving officers j all the relieving officers 
 come to our offices and know us, and if they think there 
 is a case which seems a suitable case for us, they pass 
 it on. 
 
 "The father of a large family was dying of phthisis VII. 145 
 when the case was first referred to the Trustees of the 
 Bermondsey United Charities. He was being carefully 
 nursed at home, and help was continued until he died. 
 In addition to this, a good deal of help was given directly 
 by the trustees. After his death, assistance still had to 
 be given until the Charity Organisation Society had 
 obtained the admission of three children to Church of 
 England Homes, the Children's League of Kindness 
 paying 2s. a week for each, and until the delicate eldest 
 son had been convalesced and had started work and a 
 girl had become old enough for employment. In 
 addition to this it was found necessary to obtain hospital 
 and convalescent treatment for the widow. The family 
 was self-supporting for some months, but the oldest son 
 developed rapid consumption, and help was again needed. 
 The total cost so far has been about ^30. 
 
 "In this case there was co-operation between the 
 Bermondsey United Charities, Children's League of 
 Kindness, Society for Relief of Distress and Courage's 
 Fund. The 'Sons of Thames' Lodge of Oddfellows 
 (M.U.) have also been helping." 
 
 These are all cases in which constructive work 
 is successfully carried out by means of co-operation 
 between various agencies. Even the semi-penal 
 treatment of the man sent to the workhouse is
 
 206 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 constructive, if it is to lead to giving the man 
 
 another chance of independence. But work such 
 
 \ as this can only be effectively done where there 
 
 1 is real co-operation between all the agencies 
 
 available, and how this co-operation may best be 
 
 brought about we have already indicated in 
 
 Chap. 6. The following note by one of our 
 
 investigators further illustrates the point, and 
 
 indicates also how large a part may be played by 
 
 the wise friend : 
 
 IV. 6, 297 " The method of dealing with cases should be much 
 more elastic. The workhouse test is not enough. (See 
 Case No. n.) There are many cases which cannot suit- 
 ably be met either by the grant of a workhouse order or 
 by out-relief. Some require curative treatment, some 
 merely sound advice. No case which has ever touched 
 Poor Law should be left to drift unaided. There is 
 evidently an urgent need for some organisation which 
 would deal with cases where the offices of a friend are 
 required. It should work in conjunction with the Poor 
 Law officials, who would hand over suitable cases to its 
 care. I have come across cases, e.g., Nos. 46, 48, where it 
 is likely that if a strong and wise friend could be found they 
 might be placed upon an independent economic footing. It 
 is so often not only financial aid that is needed but friend- 
 ship and advice. It is sometimes thought that the religious 
 and charitable agencies provide this, but in only one case 
 have I discovered any attempt on the part of such agencies 
 to build up the economic independence of the family.
 
 vii OUTDOOR RELIEF 207 
 
 The need for effective encouragement, of thrift in the 
 case of those who are engaged in seasonal trades was very 
 evident. Cases 35 and 36 illustrate this. The men 
 earned good money in the summer, but instead of saving 
 a proportion of it spent it all, and in winter they had 
 nothing to fall back upon. The mere providing of 
 facilities for saving is not enough. There should be 
 persons visiting the families who will encourage them 
 week by week during the summer to make provision for 
 the period of seasonal unemployment." l 
 
 Some indication of how much room there is 
 for this constructive work is given by the facts 
 brought out in the year's record of pauperism 
 already referred to : 
 
 "It shows that 274,607 persons, or 16*1 per cent, of iv. 6, 298 
 the total number, were relieved on more than one occa- 
 sion during the year. Clearly then, the previous period 
 of relief obtained by these people had failed to exercise 
 any curative influence, and they returned to independent 
 life, not more, but in all probability, much less, fitted for 
 maintaining their independence. The figures show that 
 there is much room for improvement and that capable 
 administrators can find ample scope for their talent." 
 
 1 Details of the cases referred to are contained in Miss Harlock's 
 Report, in the Appendices to the Report of the Commission.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MEDICAL RELIEF 
 
 THERE is one department of Public Assistance of 
 
 special importance and difficulty that of medical 
 
 relief. It is important, because, as we have seen, 
 
 1 a large proportion of pauperism is contributed by 
 
 I sickness, and it is desirable from every point of 
 
 view that sickness should be cured as soon as 
 
 , possible. It is difficult, because medical attendance 
 
 ; is one of the necessaries of life for which the 
 
 working classes have made provision to a very 
 
 large extent, and any scheme of medical relief 
 
 is bound to respect that provision and to 
 
 abstain from entering into competition with it. 
 
 Another important factor in the situation 
 consists in the multiplicity of charitable agencies 
 which exist to provide medical assistance both in 
 hospitals and to out-patients. The problem for 
 the administrator is to combine alf these agencies, 
 including the provident institutions, into
 
 CH. vin MEDICAL RELIEF 209 
 
 harmonious co-operation with the medical relief to 
 b given by the Public Assistance Authority. 
 To realise what this means it is necessary to 
 describe in more detail the present situation. 
 
 The present Poor Law in its work of medical 
 relief is merely one of the competing agencies. It 
 deals with much the same class of patient as the 
 voluntary hospitals, and deters many from sub- 
 scribing to provident institutions by offering the 
 same advantages free of cost. So far as we have 
 been able to ascertain, there is hardly any attempt 
 on the part of Boards of Guardians to co-operate 
 with voluntary agencies, while there is frequently 
 much jealousy and constant friction. The only 
 exceptions to this attitude are to be found in ( 
 occasional subscriptions to hospitals and district ! 
 nurses in return for their services. 
 
 Considered in itself, and out of relation to other 
 
 ^^^MIBMMtKMt 
 
 agencies, the medical service of the Poor Law is in 
 many respects thoroughly efficient and well- 
 organised. This is especially true of the Poor 
 
 *O ^^S"^*l *^^^^"^W*P*^WMWBi^^*i"W^^M^*"^^wi| I 
 
 Law Infirmaries, which in many places are 1 
 now separated from the workhouse, and under 
 independent management. They are well-equipped 
 hospitals with " all reasonable and proper ap- v. i, 22 
 pliances for the treatment of diseases of every 
 kind," and with "everything provided which 
 
 p
 
 210 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 might tend to promote a cure or alleviate 
 suffering." The cost of maintaining patients in 
 
 I these infirmaries has steadily increased of late 
 years, while the cost of building has risen to 
 as high as ^377 per bed in London. In some 
 
 ! cases, indeed, there is a profusion of expenditure 
 which does not contribute to efficiency, and should 
 have been avoided. The following is an instance 
 noted by Commissioners when visiting : 
 
 V. 2, 134 "The wards resemble those of a hospital, and are, in 
 every respect, as well equipped. . . . The steward's room 
 is more expensively furnished and decorated than the 
 writing rooms of a first class hotel or club. It has a 
 polished wood block floor, covered with a very fine 
 carpet and the fireplace is of marble and glazed tiles. . . . 
 Taking the entire annual cost, viz., ^28,000, and 
 dividing by the accommodation, the annual cost, including 
 debt charges, works out at ^85 a bed, i.e., 331. a week. 
 This figure would be increased if calculated upon the 
 average number of inmates. . . . Money has been, and 
 now is, poured out in an unwarrantable manner upon 
 its provision and upkeep, with no regard for those from 
 whom the money is compulsorily obtained. . . . Speak- 
 ing generally, we are of opinion that it is impossible to 
 justify the expenditure incurred in the provision of these 
 buildings." 
 
 A considerable part of the increased cost of 
 
 maintenance is attributable to the improvement in 
 
 V. i, 26 the nursing service. " Prior to 1867, the indoor
 
 vm MEDICAL RELIEF 211 
 
 poor were chiefly nursed by paupers who .... were 
 often illiterate, drunken, and altogether unsuited for 
 such work." Guardians are now prohibited from 
 employing any pauper to perform the duties of a 
 nurse ; and over 3,000 trained nurses are 
 employed in workhouses and workhouse in- 
 firmaries, in addition to 2,000 probationer 
 nurses. 
 
 Where separate infirmaries have not been pro- 
 vided, the sick are treated in special wards of the 
 workhouse which are set apart for the purpose. 
 For the most part these have shared in the general 
 improvement, though on a much simpler and less 
 expensive scale. But the wards are often ill-j 
 adapted and ill-fitted for the use to which they are 
 put, and the nursing arrangements inadequate. 
 It is said that it is difficult to get good nurses to V. 2, 145 
 put up with the monotony of the work in quiet 
 rural unions, while the small number of patients 
 makes it uneconomical to have more than one 
 nurse. The Commission therefore endorse the v. 2, 145 
 opinion of their medical investigator that some 
 " of these very small institutions are in constant 
 risk of inefficiency," and that " the only practical 
 remedy is the formation of larger administrative 
 areas," with institutions set apart for sick 
 inmates." 
 
 P 2
 
 212 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 One striking result of the improvement in the 
 infirmaries is the greater willingness of the poor 
 to resort to them when ill. In the towns, and more 
 especially where the infirmary is separated from the 
 workhouse, the fact that treatment in the infirmary 
 is Poor Law relief is rapidly losing all deterrent 
 effect. 
 
 V. i, 39 " District medical officers make more use of 
 < the infirmaries than formerly. They find less 
 difficulty in inducing patients to enter for treat- 
 ment which could not be properly given in the 
 home. The relatives of poor persons some- 
 times persuade them to go to the infirmary " as if 
 it were a private nursing home," by telling them 
 " how comfortable it is." Guardians and relieving 
 officers, Mr. Bagenal informs us, are always 
 impressing on the applicants for relief that the 
 infirmary is not like the workhouse. Indeed the 
 deterrence has disappeared so completely in some 
 districts, we are told, that poor persons are actually 
 attracted from the country to the towns in 
 order to obtain treatment in the infirmaries." 
 
 V. i, 40 But the growing popularity of the infirmaries r 
 is not confined to the poor. Much evidence has I 
 been given to show that they attract persons of 
 a higher social position than formerly ; the
 
 vni MEDICAL RELIEF 213 
 
 following are selected from many extracts given 
 in the Report : 
 
 " The evidence that a better class than formerly resort 
 to the Poor Law infirmaries is to be found in the appear- 
 ance of relatives and other visitors to patients ; the 
 number of cases where payments are recovered by 
 Guardians and of those where funerals are conducted and 
 paid for by friends or relatives." 
 
 " A large number of persons apply for admission to the 
 infirmary who would not otherwise do so, or who do not 
 need to do so. The standard of the union infirmary has 
 been so improved that, generally speaking, it equals, if it 
 does not surpass, that of the general hospitals, many 
 people preferring the infirmary to the hospital." 
 
 " In one district (Camberwell), a very large addition was 
 made in 1903, yet the whole building is again fully occu- 
 pied to some extent by a better class than had previously 
 received Poor Law relief. ... In Camberwell it is 
 alleged that the ordinary ' infirm ' cases have been largely 
 driven out of it, and drafted into a workhouse, in order to 
 make room for better off patients, and there seems a good 
 deal of foundation for the statement. . . . The infirmary 
 has attracted to itself many patients somewhat above the 
 average level of pauperism, so that its wards are kept 
 well filled, and many sick paupers of the ordinary class 
 have to be retained in or sent to the workhouse." 
 
 There are many persons, one might say the 
 whole of the lower middle class, who are fairly 
 well off, but cannot afford expensive treatment and 
 nursing in their own homes. It is perfectly natural
 
 214 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 that these should avail themselves of the accom- 
 modation provided out of the rates, since nothing 
 else is available, but it is not right that the very 
 poor should be deprived of it. The proper 
 remedy is indicated by the fact that many of these 
 people are willing and even anxious to pay 
 according to their means. 
 
 V. 41 " Many medical practitioners, too, avail themselves of 
 the presence of a Poor Law infirmary to recommend for 
 admission such of their patients as either by reason of their 
 limited means or the nature of their illness are unable to 
 receive proper treatment in their own home : in such 
 cases the Guardians making proportionate charges." 
 
 (J-^) " And they would admit the patient on the under- 
 standing that so much per week was to be paid for the 
 patient?" (,) Yes." 
 
 " Mill Road has now become a general hospital, and is 
 no longer a Poor Law hospital. You will understand that 
 when I tell you that we collect from relatives over 5,000 
 a year. You will see from that the class of people that 
 unfortunately come to us." 
 
 " The infirmary is practically a general hospital, and 
 caters for a class slightly better than the ordinary habitues 
 of a workhouse. A considerable sum is recovered each 
 year from relatives, as much as los. a week being paid in 
 some cases. One patient, a paralytic, was mentioned as 
 being the brother-in-law to one of the richest men in 
 
 B , who repaid the whole cost of treatment, etc., to 
 
 the guardians." 
 
 " The matron, a very capable person, showed us part
 
 viii MEDICAL RELIEF 215 
 
 of the infirmary. They are very full, and building con- 
 stantly new wards. Some paying patients are admitted, 
 paying anything up to los. 6d., which is the maximum 
 charge." 
 
 One of the most pressing needs of the day is a 
 system of paying hospitals, on the model possibly 
 of cottage hospitals, where medical men can 
 attend their own patients, and within the means of 
 persons of small income. This would leave \ 
 the gratuitous institutions, whether provided by ; 
 voluntary charity or by the Public Assistance 
 Authority, free for the use of the really poor. 
 
 In respect of the amount of accommodation 
 afforded to in-patients, the Poor Law infirmaries 
 have far outstripped the voluntary hospitals. " At 
 the present time the beds in the London Poor Law v. 81 
 infirmaries (18,000) are nearly twice as many as 
 those in the voluntary hospitals, and are almost 
 equal to the total beds provided by voluntary 
 hospitals in all England and Wales. Liverpool, 
 Manchester, Birmingham, and other large pro- 
 vincial towns have likewise more Poor Law 
 infirmary beds than hospital beds." It seems 
 unlikely that in the face of such competition from 
 rate-supported institutions the hospitals which . 
 depend upon voluntary contributions will continue 
 to flourish unless their work is in some way '
 
 216 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 differentiated from that of the infirmaries. So far 
 as the class of people dealt with is concerned, there 
 is no real distinction. We have seen how the 
 infirmaries are used by persons far removed from 
 the pauper class ; in the same way the hospitals 
 are largely used by persons who are of the 
 v. 85 pauper class " . . . . there is no doubt that the 
 voluntary hospitals supply gratuitous medical 
 assistance of the very highest quality both 
 indoor and by means of their out-patient depart- 
 ments to a very large number of persons of the 
 same social status as those who apply to the 
 Poor Law. For example, according to a census 
 of the 709 patients in the London Hospital on 
 November 28th, 1906, which the Hon. Sydney 
 Holland, Chairman of the Hospital, was good 
 enough to undertake at our request, it appears 
 that 27 per cent, of the patients might be con- 
 sidered to be * to all intents and purposes 
 paupers, i.e. no money coming in, no savings, no 
 club, and generally with wife and children to 
 support ' ; while another 1 3 per cent, were * on 
 the very verge of pauperism, if not already 
 paupers,' altogether 40 per cent. This figure, 
 which relates to in-patients, corresponds very 
 closely with the out-patient results obtained by 
 our special investigator Miss Roberts, who estimates
 
 vm MEDICAL RELIEF 217 
 
 that 38 per cent, of the out-patients attending 
 certain London hospitals enquired into by her 
 'may be said to be of the same class as 
 applicants for medical relief from the parish.' 7 
 
 It was suggested to the Commission that the v. 139 
 proper dividing line between the two sets of 
 institutions would be one determined by the 
 nature of the illness ; the voluntary hospitals 
 dealing with the more acute cases, and the 
 infirmaries taking the chronic cases. In many 
 ways this basis of co-operation is indicated as the 
 right one. Not only can the hospitals command [ 
 the services of the leading men in the profession, ' 
 but their greater freedom and elasticity as voluntary ; 
 charities marks them out as more suitable to deal 
 with acute illness, while the routine and discipline ; 
 of the rate-supported and inspected infirmary 
 ensures the careful nursing : of monotonous and 
 uninteresting chronic cases. 
 
 Already this division of work takes place to 
 some extent, but at present it is more a cause of 
 friction than a basis of co-operation. The hospitals 
 can always turn out any cases of which they tire, 
 while the infirmaries are bound to accept whatever 
 comes to them. 
 
 " An extraordinary antagonism seems to prevail V. 138 
 between the two agencies. Relieving officers are fretful
 
 218 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 of the constant claim on their time taken up by applica- 
 tions for removal from their local hospitals of the homeless 
 or people who do not belong to that particular union. It 
 was said that the wrong class of person is sometimes sent 
 from the hospital to the infirmary ; and that the hospital 
 encourages people to demand relief, sometimes giving 
 them open slips addressed to the relieving officer. The 
 hospitals, on the other hand, complain of the great 
 dilatoriness of the relieving officers in coming to the 
 rescue, and accepting the responsibility of distinctly 
 destitute patients. . . . Constant conflict seems to prevail 
 in all parts of London." 
 
 If the division of work were recognised and 
 agreed to on either hand, this friction would dis- 
 appear and make room for co-operation. But one 
 ' difficulty would remain from the point of view of 
 J the patient. In the hospitals treatment is generally 
 gratuitous, and no disability attaches to the receipt 
 of assistance in them. In the present Poor Law 
 infirmaries the patients, except in rare cases, lose the 
 franchise, and are liable, if they have means, to be 
 sued for recovery of the cost of treatment. There 
 seems no reason why a person suffering from 
 chronic illness should be placed at a disadvantage | 
 as compared with one suffering from acute illness, 
 V. 237 f and the Commissioners have accordingly recom- 
 mended that treatment in an infirmary shall no 
 longer disfranchise the recipient. The penalty of
 
 viii MEDICAL RELIEF 219 
 
 disfranchisement has long been removed from the 
 recipients of out-door medical relief, though this is 
 a need far more easily provided for than treatment 
 in an institution. With regard to the question of 
 payment or repayment, the only fair system would 
 appear to be that in all institutions alike there 
 should be payment according to means. 
 
 There is one other authority which sometimes 
 provides gratuitous hospital treatment, and that is 
 the sanitary authority. This authority has power 
 under Act of Parliament to provide general v. in 
 hospitals for the sick of their district, but with few 
 exceptions they have confined themselves to 
 providing hospitals for infectious diseases to which 
 patients can be compulsorily removed if they are 
 a source of danger to their neighbours. 
 
 In the sphere of out-door medical relief, there 
 is still greater need for co-operation amongst 
 competing agencies. Taking first the Poor Law, we 
 find that this kind of relief is given under less 
 stringent conditions than any other, owing to the 
 Act which was passed in 1885 to abolish the v. 76 
 disfranchisement of the recipients of medical relief 
 for all elections except that of a Board of 
 Guardians. In many places also the applicants 
 for medical relief receive it without appearing \ 
 before the Guardians, who frequently pass all the
 
 220 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 V. 173 " medical orders " en bloc without any enquiry 
 about the people. Indeed it is, perhaps, in regard 
 to outdoor medical relief that their attitude of 
 irresponsibility is most marked : 
 
 " Phthisis cases are maintained in crowded, unventilated 
 houses where there is unrestrained facility to convey the 
 disease to their own offspring. Diabetes cases live on the 
 rates, and eat what they please . . . outdoor medical 
 attendance is freely and unconditionally provided by the 
 Guardians for the drunken and the immoral." 
 
 Given under such conditions, or rather absence 
 of conditions, medical relief is liable to be of 
 the least possible service either to the recipient 
 or to the community. 
 
 In a good many unions, on the other hand, 
 an attempt is made to limit the applications for 
 medical relief by granting it on loan, but it is 
 seldom that any considerable part of the cost is 
 recovered. Many Boards, indeed, while declaring 
 it to be on loan, make no attempt to enforce 
 repayment. 
 
 Very conflicting evidence has been given as to 
 how far persons who need medical relief are 
 deterred from applying because of its connection 
 with the Poor Law. Some lay great stress upon 
 the reluctance of the sick to apply ; others say 
 that reluctance is a thing of the past. It is 
 probable that where it does exist it is due to a
 
 viii MEDICAL RELIEF 221 
 
 variety of causes ; amongst which the personality 
 of the medical officer must count for a good 
 deal. One fact which comes out strongly is 
 that poor people, as well as rich, like to be able to 
 choose their own doctor. Under the present 
 system they cannot do this. In every union 
 there are appointed a certain number of district 
 medical officers, each with his own district to 
 serve, and any person applying for medical 
 attendance must receive it from the medical 
 officer in whose district he lives. The Commission 
 record that they " are satisfied that the great v. 161 
 majority of medical officers efficiently and punctually 
 perform the duties entrusted to them, and that .... 
 many bestow on the poorer classes a considerable 
 amount of attention for which they receive no 
 recompense." Nevertheless, there is a good deal 
 of evidence to show that there is a certain amount 
 of distrust and dislike of the " parish doctor " as 
 such : 
 
 " I. The present plan of medically assisting the poor V. 161 
 under the Poor Law is not an efficient system. The 
 average Poor Law medical officer (outdoor) does not give 
 the satisfaction he ought to his patients. Consequently, 
 the private practitioner is often called upon to attend 
 parish patients. The remedy for this state of affairs 
 would be to appoint all practitioners in a district Poor 
 Law medical officers who would be willing to act.
 
 222 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 " 2. Another serious objection to the present system is 
 that a great many people object to paying a visit to the 
 parish doctor as a parish doctor, and often they will pay 
 bd. or is. (which they cannot afford) to another doctor, 
 rather than go to him. 
 
 " 3. They (the poor) are like the rest of us, probably, 
 they like to choose their own doctor. They take a fancy 
 to a particular man, and would like to have him ; there 
 ought to be no reason why they should not have him, 
 although they are poor. 
 
 "4. The great hardship on the poor is that their 
 doctor is chosen for them, and willy-nilly they must have 
 him, or in most cases they can have none. Something in 
 the plan of a provident dispensary would meet the case in 
 most districts." 
 
 Another difficulty under the present system 
 arises from the arrangement whereby medical relief 
 must be obtained by an order from the relieving 
 officer, instead of by direct application to the 
 medical officer. There is a provision whereby the 
 overseer can grant an order in case of emergency, 
 but this is not generally known. In country 
 districts this routine of applying first to the 
 relieving officer might lead to great delay and 
 serious consequences if it were generally observed 
 One witness illustrated this : 
 
 V. 178 " For instance, if the parish patient wants an order 
 quickly from me he really by law would have to go to
 
 viii MEDICAL RELIEF 223 
 
 Chatteris, that is, eight miles, and come back four miles. 
 He would have to go past my house four miles, and 
 come back to my house again, and then I should have to 
 go four miles. As a matter of fact that is not done. . . . 
 It would take a man walking three hours to deliver the 
 order to me according to this arrangement." 
 
 It was found by our medical investigator that in 
 rural districts it is a constant practice for doctors 
 to attend poor persons when applied to, without 
 waiting for the order from the relieving officer ; 
 but this is apt to lead to difficulty with the 
 Guardians, in which case the doctor will say that 
 he has regarded the applicant as a non-pauper 
 applicant. " In this way a considerable amount 
 of medical assistance to poor persons of the pauper 
 class estimated by Dr. McVail at 15 to 20 per 
 cent, of the Poor Law cases receiving medical 
 relief is administered by medical officers without 
 being recorded as medical relief." 
 
 These would seem to be the main defects in the 
 outdoor medical service, regarded out of relation 
 to other agencies ; and in formulating their new 
 scheme the Commission have been largely 
 influenced by them. In other respects the service 
 is well organised, and the people on the whole 
 well served. But here, as in the case of hospital 
 treatment, it is the people above the pauper class
 
 224 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 f who are apt to suffer most from want of medical 
 care. 
 
 V. 185 " One doctor who had given attention to the subject was 
 strongly of opinion that in his own area the class just 
 above the grade of pauperism was much worse off in 
 respect of medical attendance than the paupers themselves. 
 Poor people who were expected to pay for a doctor often 
 felt the financial burden too great and delayed sending for 
 him, or asked him to discontinue his visits before the 
 patient ought to have been out of his control." 
 
 In many places, however, this class is well 
 provided for, either by provident associations of 
 different types, or by charitable agencies. The 
 latter perhaps deal as much with persons of the 
 pauper class' as with those above it ; and it is the 
 provident associations which are most characteristic 
 of the persons of small means who desire to pre- 
 serve their independence. The best known, and 
 in some ways the most important, of them are the 
 friendly societies. 
 
 V. 96 " Perhaps the best measure of the progress made 
 towards independence during the last century is got 
 by comparing the membership of friendly societies 
 with the number of paupers. A Parliamentary 
 Return in 1803 states the number of societies in 
 England and Wales to be 9,672 with 704,350 
 members, while the numbers relieved by the poor
 
 viii MEDICAL RELIEF 225 
 
 rate in the same year was 1,039,716. A similar 
 Return in 1815 gives the membership of friendly 
 societies as 925,439, which exceeded the number of 
 paupers by 29,446 : 'On December 3ist, 1904, 
 the number of members in the ordinary friendly 
 societies and societies having branches, was 
 5,700,000 ' ; while the total number of paupers 
 of all classes on January ist, 1905, was 932,000 
 an excess of friendly society members over paupers 
 of nearly 5,000,000." 
 
 All-important as the friendly societies are in 
 preserving the independence of their members 
 during times of sickness, their direct object is the > 
 provision of a weekly allowance rather than of 
 medical attendance. The proportion of members 
 who insure in them for medical aid varies very 
 much in the different societies. " In the Foresters' 
 Society about 95 per cent, of the members are in- 
 sured for medical aid. In the Hearts of Oak 
 Benefit Society, on the other hand, the majority of 
 members do not insure." It may be noted that 
 the latter society pays relatively high benefits, and 
 it is likely that many members prefer to pay their 
 own doctor. Moreover, in many provincial towns 
 the members of the various societies have combined 
 to lease a house, provide their own drugs and ap- V. 95 
 point their own medical officer, who devotes his 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 whole time to the association. This plan has the 
 additional advantage that members' families are 
 allowed to join. These associations have a total 
 membership of 250,000. 
 
 Next in importance come the provident dis- 
 pensaries. These are at present very local in 
 their development, owing partly to the need of 
 some initiative to start them, partly also to the 
 rivalry of charitable agencies. When well worked 
 they seem excellently adapted to meet the needs of 
 the class they serve. The fees are very low, vary- 
 ing from id. to \\d. per week for an adult, while 
 children are admitted for about \d., and a reduction 
 is generally made if the whole family are mem- 
 bers. Special fees can be paid for the services of a 
 midwife ; and the members can select their doctor 
 from the staff of the dispensary. Membership is 
 generally limited to persons with an income below 
 a certain limit, which varies from 14^. to 50^. a 
 week. There are no statistics to show the total 
 membership of provident dispensaries, but the 
 following figures show their success in certain 
 towns : 
 
 V. 94 " In London there are forty-three provident 
 dispensaries issuing over 60,000 cards, represent- 
 ing about 116,650 individuals. In Leicester there 
 are two provident dispensaries with about 6o,oco
 
 vni MEDICAL RELIEF 227 
 
 members, or i in 4 of the population ; in Reading 
 there are 17,578 members, or I in 4 of the 
 population; in Northampton there are 18,000 
 members, or I in 5 of the population ; in Shrews- 
 bury there are 6,000 members, or about i in 5 of 
 the population ; and in Salisbury there are 9,190 
 members, or i in 2 of the population. Provident 
 dispensaries exist also in some of the smaller 
 towns, e.g. Market Drayton and Leominster ; 
 but in rural districts the * medical club ' is more 
 prevalent. These medical clubs may include 
 several medical men, in which case they differ 
 little from the provident dispensary, or they may 
 be organised by one doctor only. There are many 
 varieties, but in one form or another they are 
 almost universal and within the reach of almost 
 everyone. Of the rural district of Hardingstone 
 we are told : 
 
 " ' Medical clubs have become so common in the 
 district that it is only in exceptional cases that recourse is 
 had to the Poor Law.' 
 
 " And again : 
 
 " ' They are almost universal in Northamptonshire. 
 I do not know any village without a club.' 
 
 " In Suffolk, the county medical club has 9,000 
 members, though a rule limits membership to 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 persons whose earnings per family are under 2os. 
 a week. At Bosmere and Claydon a very great 
 many belong to medical clubs outside the county 
 club. In the neighbourhood of Bury St. Edmunds, 
 says Dr. Stork : 
 
 " * There is only one [doctor] that I can think of who 
 has not got a private medical club of his own.' 
 
 " In towns also medical clubs are very common, 
 and in certain districts, e.g. South Wales, the 
 * works' clubs' include almost the whole of the 
 male working population, while medical clubs 
 provide for the remainder. In seven towns 
 Coventry, Eastbourne, Hartlepool, Kidderminster, 
 Norwich, Southampton, and Taunton a * public 
 medical service ' has been organised amongst the 
 doctors for treating the poorer working class on a 
 provident basis." 
 
 The fact that provision of this kind for medical 
 assistance is found amongst the wage-earners of all 
 grades in some places, makes it the more remark- 
 able that in others it fails almost entirely. There 
 can be little doubt that this is due to the competi- 
 tion of other agencies. Of the ease with which 
 medical relief can be obtained through the Poor 
 Law we have already spoken. Its effect is illus- 
 trated by the following statement from a medical 
 officer :
 
 vm MEDICAL RELIEF 229 
 
 "There is absolutely no difference, except in individual V. 101 
 character, between the man who comes to me as a private 
 patient and who comes through the Poor Law. One 
 puts into a dispensary, or saves money and pays the 
 doctor, the other finds it leaves more for drink if he sends 
 to the relieving officer. They find it so easy to get 
 medical relief, why should they bother to provide in any 
 other way ? " 
 
 In some places the Guardians have realised this v. 97 
 effect of their work, and have endeavoured to 
 substitute provident institutions. " The Paddington 
 and St. Pancras Boards issue handbills encouraging 
 applicants to become members of provident dis- 
 pensaries, and these are given by the relieving 
 officers to applicants for medical relief. The 
 Reading Guardians paid the entrance fee of appli- 
 cants to the provident dispensary until the practice 
 was stopped by the Local Government Board. At 
 Brixworth the Guardians started a medical club 
 which superseded parish relief and developed into 
 clubs for each parish in the union. At Frimley a 
 medical club was started by a Guardian as an 
 alternative to Poor Law relief, and now practically 
 all the people except the members of friendly 
 societies belong to it. At Ipswich the district 
 medical officer has a medical club, and the 
 Guardians bring pressure to bear on applicants to 
 join it wherever possible. While from Risbridge
 
 230 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 comes the suggestion that medical officers should 
 be required to start clubs at such rates as the 
 Guardians may approve of as being within the 
 reach of the wage-earning power of the district." 
 
 V. 86 In London another powerful rival to the provi- 
 dent institutions is to be found in the out-patient 
 departments of the voluntary hospitals. The 
 number of patients treated in these in 1906 was 
 1,607,945 ; the corresponding figure for all other 
 voluntary hospitals in England and Wales was 
 884,478. The pressure on these departments is 
 enormous, and the people who resort to them vary 
 in class from the pauper to the well-to-do. One 
 great advantage which the patients have there is 
 the chance of a highly skilled opinion in difficult 
 cases, and the possibility in " interesting " cases of 
 being detained for treatment as in-patients. But 
 a serious disadvantage, which obtains in the great 
 majority of cases, is that they are not attended in 
 their own homes. This is a disadvantage to 
 doctor as well as to patient, inasmuch as he has no 
 personal knowledge of the home conditions, and is 
 unable to supervise the carrying out of his instruc- 
 
 V. 189 tions. It was strongly represented to the Com- 
 mission that the proper use of these out-patient 
 departments is for casualties, consultations, and 
 cases requiring expensive equipment for the treat-
 
 vm MEDICAL RELIEF 231 
 
 ment of special diseases and defects. If they 
 would consent to restrict their work in this way, 
 then cases would be referred to them by private 
 practitioners, or by the medical men attached to 
 provident institutions, when a special opinion was 
 required, and they would thus obtain the interest- 
 ing and difficult cases necessary for their work 
 without being swamped by a multitude of appli- 
 cants suffering from trifling or chronic ailments. 
 
 But in addition to the hospitals there are also in 
 certain towns free dispensaries doing a very 
 extensive work. Perhaps the largest of these is v. 102 
 the Newcastle Dispensary. It has seven whole- 
 time officers; it treats about 12,000 patients per 
 annum, and does the greater part of the outdoor 
 medical work for the poor of the city. Similar 
 institutions on a smaller scale are to be found in 
 other towns. The treatment given at these dis- 
 pensaries is said to be of a high order, and there is 
 no doubt that they are doing much useful work. 
 There is also no doubt that their usefulness would 
 be much enhanced if they were placed upon a 
 provident basis. As it is, they deal not only with 
 the very poor, but also with many who could v. i^o 
 well afford to pay ordinary fees to a doctor, and 
 by still more who are in a position to join a 
 provident dispensary.
 
 232 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 In Birmingham it is said : 
 
 "A person attending a Bible Class or P.S.A., on 
 payment of \d. or id. per month can obtain a subscriber's 
 ticket entitling him to six weeks' continuous medical 
 advice, attendance, and medicine, and also extras in the 
 shape of food, notwithstanding that the person may be in 
 full work, and the recipient of a wage up to ^6 per 
 week." 
 
 A witness from Newcastle stated : 
 
 " I get a big number of tickets to give away every 
 year ; if I gave them to everybody that applied, I should 
 be giving them to men with ^2 ids. and ^3 a week 
 wages who come and apply, not isolated cases, but 
 weekly." 
 
 V. 106 " Witnesses have told us that the free dispen- 
 saries are powerful and successful competitors of 
 the provident dispensaries and medical clubs, and 
 operate with hardship on the medical profession." 
 Many of the free dispensaries are old endowed in- 
 stitutions, but all of them are more or less dependent 
 upon charitable subscriptions. They could all of 
 them with very little difficulty be converted into 
 provident or partially provident dispensaries. 
 
 V. 107 "... Several witnesses have given instances of free 
 dispensaries having been transformed into provident 
 dispensaries. One of the largest provident dis- 
 pensaries in the country, the Leicester Provident
 
 viii MEDICAL RELIEF 233 
 
 Dispensary with 50,000 members, began as a free 
 dispensary, and in London two free dispensaries 
 have recently adopted provident principles. The 
 latter, being endowed dispensaries, were converted 
 under schemes of the Charity Commissioners, which 
 retained a portion of the income for the use of a 
 certain number of free patients. Such a change is 
 wholly beneficial." 
 
 Finally, a certain amount of work, very limited 
 in extent except in a few towns, is done by the 
 sanitary authorities in addition to providing 
 hospitals for infectious diseases. This work is for 
 the most part confined to services in connection ! 
 with infectious cases, such as disinfection, the 
 provision of certain drugs and appliances, and the i 
 diagnosis of doubtful cases. In Brighton special 
 work has been undertaken in connection with j 
 phthisis. But, speaking generally, the sanitary | 
 authorities deal with disease mainly from the point 
 of view of prevention. It is on the basis of the 
 few instances in which they have gone beyond their 
 normal work that the proposal has been made to 
 hand over to the sanitary authorities the whole 
 task of providing medical assistance to the 
 community. The proposal naturally meets with 
 the support of the few eminent men who have ex- 
 tended the sphere of work of their own sanitary
 
 234 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 authorities ; but a circular letter sent to medical 
 officers in charge of sanitary work throughout the 
 country, resulted in a considerable majority ex- 
 pressing an adverse opinion. There are, indeed, 
 two fatal objections to the scheme. The first is 
 that the number of places in which the sanitary 
 authority has shown itself both competent and 
 willing to perform even its present duties with any 
 real adequacy is comparatively small. In many 
 places it is more unprogressive than the majority 
 of Boards of Guardians, and its officers are often 
 powerless to carry out the most necessary sanitary 
 work owing to the dead weight of opposition which 
 they encounter. It would be the height of folly to 
 hand over to such an authority the additional task 
 of providing medical assistance merely because in 
 a few towns energetic men had done good work. 
 And it should be noted that some even of the best 
 of these men are opposed to putting further duties 
 on the sanitary authority, as tending to hinder 
 them in the prosecution of their present work. 
 
 The second great objection to the proposal is 
 that it ignores entirely the work of the great provi- 
 dent institutions we have described. Those who 
 support it find it convenient to disparage the work 
 of those institutions, as well as that of the private 
 practitioner, and in so doing show the weakness
 
 vm MEDICAL RELIEF 235 
 
 of their hand. The real forward movement must 
 be one which utilises all the forces in the com- 
 munity, and combines them into an efficient 
 organisation. 
 
 It is this principle of utilising existing forces, and 
 developing them to greater completion, which has 
 guided the Commission in their recommendations 
 concerning medical relief. They take as the basis [ 
 of their scheme the provident dispensary, or, what 
 is the same thing in a slightly different form, the 
 public medical service as organised in the towns ; 
 already referred to. The essence of both institu- 
 tions is the organisation of the medical services of 
 the district on a basis which shall bring them within 
 reach of the poorer inhabitants of the district while 
 affording an adequate remuneration to the medical 
 men concerned. Under their scheme the whole v - Recom- 
 
 111 i menda- 
 
 country would be mapped out into convenient tions. 
 medical districts or " dispensary areas." " The 
 nature of the ' dispensary ' to be established 
 in each area would vary with the nature of the 
 district. In large and sparsely-populated districts 
 a room in a cottage, with a locked cupboard for 
 drugs, might be sufficient. In a crowded area, a 
 complete building with waiting rooms, etc., and a 
 dispenser might be necessary ; while in medium 
 districts attendance at the doctor's own house
 
 236 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 might be preferred." In the latter case no special 
 building would be needed. The determining fac- 
 tor would be the distance to be travelled by the 
 patients. If, as might be expected, existing insti- 
 tutions fell in with the scheme, their buildings 
 would often be available. It would be open to any 
 local practitioner to be on the staff, and the 
 members of the dispensary would have their choice 
 of doctors. With a view to securing the co-opera- 
 tion of the medical profession, the British Medical 
 Association would be asked to frame "a general 
 scheme or scale of fees and wage limit, to be applied 
 by their local branches as local circumstances may 
 suggest." 
 
 What would be the relation of the Public 
 Assistance Authority to this organisation ? That 
 there should be some quite definite relation is 
 essential if it is not to continue the competition of 
 the present Poor Law system. 
 
 2 37 The Commission propose in the first place that 
 the primary responsibility for organising and 
 initiating medical assistance within each county 
 shall rest with the public Assistance Authority ; 
 and that its function in this department shall be : 
 
 (i.) To co-ordinate and, when necessary, supple- 
 ment the medical institutions of the county or 
 county borough, and to suggest methods of co-
 
 vm MEDICAL RELIEF 237 
 
 operation with the Sanitary Authorities and the 
 Authorities in charge of Voluntary Hospitals. 
 
 (ii.) To organise an outdoor and provident 
 medical service easily accessible in all parts of the | 
 county or county borough, the service to include 
 the provision of competent midwives. 
 
 (iii.) To develop an adequate nursing service 
 throughout the county or county borough, prefer- 
 ably in connection with voluntary nursing associa- 
 tions. 
 
 (iv.) To subscribe, when necessary, towards 
 these purposes. 
 
 (v.) To arrange for adequate supervision of, and 
 report on the efficiency and adequacy of the medi- \ 
 cal institutions and medical service through the 
 county or county borough. 
 
 It is recognised that in order to carry out the 
 work effectively it will be very necessary to have 
 the assistance and active co-operation of all the 
 agencies concerned. It is therefore proposed : 
 
 " That to assist the Public Assistance Authority 
 in carrying out the above functions they shall 
 appoint a committee from among their number, 
 to which shall be added representatives of the 
 Health Committee of the County Council or of 
 the County Borough Council, and of the local 
 branch or branches of the British Medical
 
 238 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 Association. This committee shall be called the 
 County or County Borough Medical Assistance 
 Committee, as the case may be, and shall have 
 power to co-opt representatives of local hospitals, 
 county or county borough nursing associations, 
 dispensaries, and registered friendly societies." 
 
 It is further proposed that a local committee 
 on similar lines shall be appointed by each local 
 Public Assistance Committee for the purposes of 
 the local administration of medical assistance. This 
 committee shall be termed the Local Medical 
 Assistance Committee. 
 
 The main responsibility for making co-operation 
 with the Provident Dispensaries effective will 
 rest with the local Public Assistance Committees 
 in their dealing with particular cases. With a 
 view to diminishing delay in the treatment 
 of sickness the Commission recommend that when 
 any applicant for medical assistance is not a 
 member of a provident society he shall apply 
 direct to the district medical officer and be 
 treated at once. The case will then be enquired 
 into by the Assistance Officer and reported to the 
 Public Assistance Committee, which will have 
 power to recover the full cost of the treatment 
 if they think that the applicant should have 
 belonged to the Provident Dispensary, or to remit
 
 vm MEDICAL RELIEF 239 
 
 payment on condition of his becoming a member. 
 In this way it is hoped that an application for 
 medical assistance might in future become the 
 introduction, not to pauperism, but to a Provident 
 Dispensary. 
 
 The Public Assistance Committee would further 
 be empowered to enrol all cases permanently in 
 receipt of public assistance (e.g. widows with 
 children, or old people) as members of a Provident 
 Dispensary by paying the necessary fees. These 
 persons would then enjoy the coveted privilege 
 of selecting their doctor, while the children would 
 be brought into close touch with the dispensary, 
 and might be expected to join it on an independent 
 footing as they grew up. 
 
 These are the main outlines of the scheme by v. 236 
 which it is hoped that " the medical community, 
 the Public Assistance and Sanitary Authorities, and 
 the people themselves, would combine to provide 
 an adequate and honourable system of co-operative 
 medical assistance at the minimum cost, and a 
 genuine attempt would be made to transform into 
 a living and helpful organisation the existing 
 medley of independent and often harmful agencies 
 for dealing with the sick poor." 
 
 Further details of the scheme are given in the 
 Report. The general recommendations of the
 
 240 THE POOR LAW REPORT CH.VIII 
 
 Commission under which the scheme was framed 
 are as follows : 
 
 1. That medical assistance should be re-organised 
 on a provident basis. 
 
 2. That in certain cases power of compulsory 
 removal to and detention in an institution should 
 be given to the authorities under proper safe- 
 guards. 
 
 3. That there should be systematic co-operation 
 between the Public Assistance Authorities, the 
 Sanitary Authorities, and the voluntary medical 
 institutions, based on a clearer definition of their 
 respective functions. 
 
 4. That no disfranchisement should be attached 
 to any form of medical assistance. 
 
 5. That the arrangements for indoor and 
 outdoor medical assistance should be periodically 
 inspected by medical inspectors on behalf of the 
 Local Government Board.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 DETENTION. UNMARRIED MOTHERS. INSUR- 
 ANCE. DISFRANCHISEMENT 
 
 ONE fact which has become increasingly clear in 
 the course of our examination of the present 
 system is the inadequacy of its powers with respect 
 to certain classes. If the administrators of to-day 
 are encouraging disease and idleness and immorality 
 it is largely because, while they are bound to give 
 temporary relief to the idle and profligate and 
 diseased, they are unable to detain them until, by 
 continuous treatment, the disease may be cured or 
 the bad habit eradicated. There are others, again, 
 for whom powers of detention are needed as a 
 protection to their helplessness, such as the feeble- 
 minded, the children of vicious parents, and the 
 friendless and decrepit old people. 
 
 With regard to the children it has already been 
 indicated in Chapter 4 where the chief need lies. 
 
 R
 
 242 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 " Under existing Acts the Guardians already have 
 the power to take over the rights of the parents of 
 children until the age of eighteen, when they are 
 of opinion that by reason of mental deficiency or 
 of vicious habits or mode of life, a parent of a 
 child is unfit to have control of it." These Acts 
 have hitherto not been applied in the case of 
 children of " ins-and-outs," vagrants, &c. ; and 
 the Commission recommend that in future they 
 should be applied to them, and in general to 
 IX. 151 children " of parents whose mode of life is so 
 harmful to the children that, in the interests both 
 of the children and of the State whose future citizens 
 they will be, the children should be separated from 
 parental control." They also recommend that the 
 control should be continued till the age of twenty- 
 one. The chief objection which is likely to be 
 brought forward to this recommendation is the 
 serious one that, if carried out, it will relieve the 
 worst parents of their responsibilities and leave 
 them free to pursue their evil courses unburdened. 
 It is clear that this objection can only be met by 
 also giving effect to the recommendations of the 
 Commission with regard to the parents of such 
 children. 
 
 With regard to the aged also we have indicated 
 where the need lies in Chapter 3. Cases are
 
 ix DETENTION 243 
 
 known of old people so decrepit that they have 
 fallen into the fire ; of others who cannot feed or 
 clean themselves properly, and such cases " should 
 clearly be dealt with either in almshouses or, if ix. 151 
 necessary, in infirmaries, where their wants and 
 ailments could be properly attended to." But an 
 order enabling such cases to be removed to an 
 institution could only be granted under very care- 
 fully guarded conditions, which the Commission 
 define as follows : 
 
 1. A medical certificate that continuous care ix. 151 
 and treatment are essential in the interests of the 
 health or safety of the person concerned. 
 
 2. A certificate that neither such person, nor his 
 or her friends or relatives, are able and willing to 
 provide the continuous care and treatment. 
 
 Closely analogous to the decrepit aged are 
 the cases of persons suffering from serious or 
 malignant disease which could not properly be 
 treated in their own homes. The conditions under 
 which such persons should become liable for 
 continuous treatment in an institution would be 
 those specified for the aged. 
 
 Another class which requires continuous super- 
 vision and control as a protection to their 
 helplessness consists of the persons known as 
 feeble-minded. The needs of this class were 
 
 R 2
 
 244 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 investigated and reported upon by the Royal 
 Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble- 
 Minded, which recommended that they should in 
 future be cared for by a new authority fully armed 
 with powers of detention and control. With their 
 recommendations the Commission concur. 
 
 There are certain cases of infectious or contagious 
 diseases which cannot at present be removed or 
 detained, although they are a source of danger to 
 those with whom they come in contact. We have 
 already noted in previous chapters what havoc is 
 wrought by phthisis, especially amongst the poor. 
 It does not seem practicable with an illness of such 
 long duration to isolate all cases ; moreover, in its 
 earlier stages the risk of infection can be diminished 
 to a large extent by simple precautions. In an 
 advanced stage it becomes more dangerous, and the 
 Commission recommend that there should be 
 power to order continuous treatment " in advanced 
 cases where a medical certificate is produced 
 certifying that the patient is likely to affect others, 
 or where the home conditions of the patient are 
 such as to lead, with practical certainty, to the 
 spread of the disease." 
 
 In the case of children suffering from 
 ophthalmia, or from infectious complaints of such 
 a character as to be a source of danger to the
 
 ix DETENTION 245 
 
 children of the school they frequent, similar power 
 should be given, " an order for continuous treat- 
 ment should be obtainable upon the production of 
 a medical certificate to the effect that the diseased 
 child is either in a state dangerous to others, or else 
 is likely to communicate the disease to others, and 
 that such danger or likelihood is not being obviated 
 by the treatment provided by the parents, guardians, 
 relatives or friends." 
 
 Those affected by venereal diseases come under 
 a different category. " In the vast majority of cases ix. 151 
 they have contracted this ailment by their own 
 misconduct. We have received evidence to the 
 effect that these diseases work terrible havoc with 
 the physique and stamina of the community, and 
 that much of the infant mortality and bad health 
 of children is due to their after consequences. If 
 the object be the arrest and stamping out of these 
 poisonous ailments, caution must be exercised in 
 not prescribing treatment so drastic as to lead to 
 their concealment. We are, however, clearly of 
 opinion that whenever a medical certificate is pro- 
 duced stating that an individual is in such a 
 condition as to be a danger to the community 
 amongst whom he or she may be living, an Order J 
 for Detention or Continuous Treatment should j 
 be obtainable."
 
 246 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 Another class for whom it is highly desirable to 
 I have powers of detention are a certain section of 
 the unmarried mothers who at present frequent 
 the workhouses. One of the greatest failures of 
 our present administration is the failure to 
 differentiate sufficiently between the different 
 classes of women who come under this head. 
 They are broadly three : the young mothers who 
 have lapsed for the first time, the feeble minded 
 women who are not responsible for their lives, and 
 the more depraved women who habitually make a 
 convenience of the workhouse for the purpose of 
 being confined with illegitimate children, who in 
 their turn become a permanent charge upon the 
 rates. The Commissioners' recommendations with 
 regard to the first of these follow later ; they 
 believe that many might be rescued from further 
 harm who are lost under the present system. The 
 feeble minded mothers will in future be under 
 supervision and control, and thus a great source of 
 misery and pauperism will be at once and 
 effectively stopped. There remain the more 
 depraved women, and with regard to them the 
 Commission think " that women of this class 
 should be liable to an Order by Justices for a 
 period of Continuous Treatment, and that after
 
 ix DETENTION 247 
 
 recovery from confinement they should be sent 
 to some suitable institution for a fixed period 
 and placed under reformatory influence. 
 
 " We commend this course in the interest of the 
 woman herself. Unfortunate women, when they 
 have fallen thus low, have often no means of 
 subsistence except through a resumption of their 
 vicious mode of life. The treatment we suggest 
 may afford them some chance of regaining a 
 respectable existence." 
 
 There is finally the class of persons referred to 
 in dealing with the able-bodied in Chapter 5, 
 whose character and conduct make it essential 
 that they should be dealt with in a " Detention 
 Colony " under conditions more suitable to the 
 administration of the Home Office than to that of 
 the Public Assistance Authority. The Com- 
 mission recommend that those persons should be 
 committed to a " Detention Colony " for any 
 period between six months and three years who 
 have been guilty of wilful and persistent repetition 
 within a given period of any of the following 
 offences : 
 
 " ( I ) \Yilful re f usa l or neglect of persons to main- 
 tain themselves or their families (although such 
 persons are wholly or in part able to do so), the
 
 248 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 result of such refusal or neglect being that the 
 persons or their families have become chargeable 
 to the Public Assistance Authority. 
 
 " (2) Wilful refusal on the part of a person 
 receiving assistance to perform the work or to 
 observe the regulations duly prescribed in regard 
 to such assistance. 
 
 " (3) Wilful refusal to comply with the con- 
 ditions, laid down by the Public Assistance 
 Authority, upon which assistance can be obtained, 
 with the result that a person's family thereby 
 becomes chargeable. 
 
 " (4) Giving way to gambling, drink, or 
 idleness, with the result that a person or his or her 
 family thereby becomes chargeable. 
 
 " The results of this provision will be, we hope, 
 that the loafer, the * in-and-out,' the person who 
 neglects his family, or who makes them chargeable 
 owing to habits of gambling, drink, or idleness, 
 etc., etc., will be submitted to a course of severe 
 discipline and training, which, even if it does not 
 restore the man to a comparative state of industrial 
 efficiency, will at the least for a certain period prevent 
 him from further demoralisation, and will to some 
 extent deter both himself and others from indulging 
 in the vice or habit responsible for his downfall." 
 
 This completes the list of cases in which the
 
 ix DETENTION 249 
 
 Commission think that there should be powers 
 of Detention or Continuous Treatment. It is 
 not proposed to leave it to the Public Assistance 
 Authority to exercise these powers without further 
 authorisation, but that an order should only be 
 obtainable after an application on behalf of the 
 Public Assistance Authority before Justices of 
 the Peace and upon such Justices being satisfied 
 that the conditions specified as rendering persons 
 liable to continuous treatment have been fulfilled. 
 Upon the granting of the powers here asked for 
 depends very largely our success or failure in 
 stemming the stream of pauperism in the future. 
 Unless we can cut off some of the sources from 
 which that stream is being fed the attempt to do 
 more constructive work, whether by Public Assist- 
 ance or by Voluntary Charity, will continue to be 
 swamped by " hopeless cases " ; men and women 
 ruined by bad habits or diseased from infancy, 
 who propagate their own misery and hand on still 
 another generation of " hopeless cases " to the 
 future. A great evil justifies strong measures to 
 remedy it, and those strong measures the Com- 
 mission now ask the Government to authorise.
 
 250 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 viii. 4 In the section of the Report dealing with 
 Bastardy the Commission make definite recom- 
 mendations with regards to the future treatment of 
 young unmarried women who apply for mainten- 
 ance during their first confinement. Hitherto 
 these cases have been dealt with in the workhouse 
 or workhouse infirmary under conditions which 
 have too often led to a life of permanent degrada- 
 tion. A witness of great experience states : 
 
 VIII. " The experience I have gained impresses upon me the 
 4 *54 duty of representing to the Royal Commission that, for 
 social reasons, I am of opinion that provision should be 
 made for securing separate treatment for the large class 
 which consists of young unmarried women who come 
 into the maternity wards for the first time. A great deal 
 has been said in favour of the classification of the aged 
 poor, and the withdrawal of children from workhouses and 
 infirmaries, but nowhere is classification more needed than 
 in the maternity wards. The unavoidable and close inter- 
 course between the young girl, who often enters upon 
 motherhood comparatively innocent, and the older woman 
 who is lost to all sense of shame and who returns again 
 and again to the maternity ward for the birth of her illegi- 
 timate children, constitutes a great danger. Too often the 
 older woman invites the friendless girl to share her home 
 on leaving and so leads her on to further ruin. A young 
 girl comes from the country to seek her fortune as a 
 servant in London, she is led astray, and, not daring to 
 return to her friends, she applies in her lonely despair to
 
 ix UNMARRIED MOTHERS 251 
 
 the workhouse maternity ward. Now while I feel sure 
 that the matron and the nurses make every endeavour to 
 shield and to help such a patient (and as a class they are 
 easily distinguishable) it is impossible to avoid contact and 
 conversation with the older women." 
 
 In many places much excellent work is done by 
 ladies who endeavour to help these girls to make a 
 fresh start when they leave the workhouse. But 
 those of the witnesses who were experienced in this 
 work were generally agreed that it cannot be made 
 really effective under present conditions : 
 
 " The result has been most encouraging, but the com- VIII. 
 mittee have felt that for some long time their work has 4> I ^ 
 been very sadly handicapped for the want of a home to 
 which these young girls might be sent, instead of mixing for 
 long periods of time as many often have to do with the 
 degraded and vicious women who haunt our workhouses 
 all over the country. We believe that the list of these 
 women, which now appears to be so large, would be 
 wonderfully decreased in the future if we could only 
 rescue all our young unmarried mothers and help them to 
 regain their footing. The moral atmosphere of a work- 
 house is such that no young girl should be introduced into 
 it if we have any hope or wish to reclaim her." 
 
 The same witness says : 
 
 "We would urge that a sufficient number of homes VIII. 
 should be started by charitable agencies all over the 4> l62
 
 252 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 country to which Guardians should subscribe, and after due 
 consideration send suitable cases and maintain them in 
 the home for the requisite period." 
 
 vin. The Commission are " strongly of opinion that 
 these recommendations should be carried out in so 
 far that all first cases should be dealt with in insti- 
 tutions apart from the workhouse. Where suitable 
 
 I. 
 voluntary homes are available, it would be well 
 
 that these should be utilised ; and the authorities 
 should directly endeavour to promote their estab- 
 \ lishment as certified voluntary homes to which 
 patients may be admitted direct on the order of 
 the Public Assistance Committee, subject to their 
 making such payments as may be agreed for the 
 
 1 maintenance and care of the individual case. Fail- 
 ing these, the Poor Law Authorities should insti- 
 tute homes of their own." With a view to 
 securing the services of charitable workers to watch 
 over the girls on their first return to the world, 
 vni. tne Commission further recommend " that there 
 l67 l should be a Women's Committee connected with 
 every Public Assistance Committee, consisting of 
 members of that Committee and of other volun- 
 tary helpers, to advise in regard to all maternity 
 cases ; and that members of the Women's Com- 
 mittee, or others suitable for the work, shall keep 
 in communication with the mothers leaving the
 
 ix UNMARRIED MOTHERS 253 
 
 homes, for the purpose of befriending them and 
 their children." 
 
 One other important recommendation the 
 Commission make in the interest of this class. 
 Under the Bastardy law the father of an illegiti- 
 mate child is liable to contribute an amount not 
 exceeding 55. a week towards the maintenance of 
 the child ; and the practice is for the order to make 
 these contributions payable direct to the mother. 
 It is strongly urged by experienced rescue workers 
 that this practice is productive of much evil : 
 
 (1) "The great aim of all rescue workers is to sever all VIII. 
 connection between the putative father and the mother 4 ' I4 
 of an illegitimate child. For very obvious reasons the 
 
 man should never be allowed to pay directly to the 
 woman. At present no one but the mother is legally 
 authorised to receive it. By threats or persuasions the 
 man when paying directly has every opportunity to 
 induce the woman either to return to him or relinquish 
 her claim upon him." 
 
 (2) "If, on the application of a solicitor acting on behalf 
 of some rescue association or of the mother herself, an 
 affiliation order is granted, payment is required to be 
 made direct by the father of the child to the mother. 
 But the great aim of the rescuer is to break off all 
 connection between the father and the mother. A weekly 
 payment on a magistrate's order involves constant meet- 
 ings which not only prevent the mother settling down 
 in a respectable way of life, but most undesirable
 
 254 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 results almost inevitably ensue. Either she has to hang 
 about on pay day at the shop where he works (and 
 it very soon becomes well known why she is there), or 
 she has to haunt his home or the place where he lodges ; 
 with the result that her shame is blazoned abroad and she 
 becomes at least the centre of a degraded notoriety. If, 
 as is often the case, the father regains his hold upon her, 
 he works upon her affections, and not infrequently drags 
 her down again, with the result that the Boards of 
 Guardians are apt to regard her as an altogether depraved 
 woman, when the blame, as a matter of justice, should be 
 laid on other shoulders." 
 
 vni. i The Commission recommend accordingly that 
 41 14 bastardy orders should invariably be made 
 payable through the agency of some person 
 other than the mother of the illegitimate child. 
 
 It remains to notice two points on which the 
 Commission have made recommendations which 
 will need justification in the eyes of those who 
 rightly dread an injudicious extension of the sphere 
 of public relief. 
 
 The first point is that of the introduction of 
 schemes of insurance to meet the distress arising 
 out of invalidity on the one hand, and un- 
 employment on the other. With regard to 
 invalidity it is clear that this is a very much 
 wider problem than that of old age, and that it 
 would be only partially met by any old age
 
 ix INSURANCE 255 
 
 pension scheme, however extensive. It does not 
 indeed seem that old age is the right criterion to 
 take in framing a general plan of assistance. Many 
 a man of sixty or sixty-five is fully able to earn 
 his living, while others are incapacitated by 
 illness or accident at a very early age. A great 
 work is already done by the Friendly Societies in 
 meeting the needs of temporary sickness, some few 
 make superannuation allowances. But they have 
 not found the way as yet to meet permanent 
 disability on a comprehensive scale. Moreover, 
 there are indications that the Friendly Societies 
 have reached their limits on their present basis, 
 and that they have become practically stationary. 
 The best means of promoting invalidity insurance 
 would seem to be to induce and enable the 
 Friendly Societies so to extend their work as to 
 cover permanent disability on the one hand, and 
 on the other to attract the multitude of workers 
 who still stand outside their organisation, largely 
 on the ground of their low earnings. Without 
 definitely recommending any scheme in particular, 
 the Commission call attention to one which has 
 been successful in Belgium. Under it a State 
 subsidy is paid to Friendly Societies in proportion 
 to the number of members contributing to the 
 insurance fund against old age and invalidity, and
 
 256 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 the contribution of each member is met by a 
 further subsidy. The growth in Friendly Societies, 
 and in the number of those insuring under this 
 scheme, has been very remarkable, and has been 
 due partly to vigorous propagandist work on the 
 part of the State. One of the most promising 
 features, by which it is hoped to reach the poorest 
 class of all, is that the movement is taking hold 
 in the elementary schools, where satieties are 
 formed by the teachers, who collect the smallest 
 subscriptions from the children, and are paid a 
 small premium in proportion to the sums *paid 
 in. 
 
 The benefit to be derived from such a scheme 
 of insurance, if it became at all general, would be 
 far greater than could be attained by any exten- 
 sion of old age pensions, and its cost would 
 be relatively small. The Commission have 
 attempted no estimate of what the charge to the 
 State might be, but the following paragraph is 
 instructive : 
 VIII. i, " We have consulted three eminent actuaries as 
 
 '4 
 
 to the weekly premiums for which a man aged 
 twenty-one in good health and employed in a 
 healthy occupation could insure the receipt of 
 los. 6d. a week during the first twenty-six weeks 
 of illness, and yj. 6d. a week during the remainder
 
 ix INSURANCE 257 
 
 of illness up to age sixty-five. Mr. T. G. 
 Ackland, F.I. A., taking a 3 per cent, basis, places 
 the amount at 3-9^. ; Mr. George King, F.I.A., 
 assuming 2^- per cent, as the rate of interest, esti- 
 mates the amount at 3*74^., and Mr. F. G. P. 
 Neison, F.I.A., at y6id. These sums are little 
 in excess of the average weekly fee payable per 
 child at school up to 1891, and remitted by the 
 Act of that year." 
 
 If the payments began when the child entered 
 school they would, of course, be much lower. 
 
 The Commission's recommendations as to a 
 system of insurance against unemployment have 
 already been quoted in Chapter 5. Here, again, 
 they think the matter of such importance, and the 
 benefit to be derived so great, as to justify a con- 
 tribution on the part of the State. It can hardly 
 be doubted that if the practice of insuring became 
 at all general amongst the working-class it would 
 result in a great saving to the nation, both in 
 money and in the well-being of the workers. At 
 present the expenditure due to this cause, if we 
 include that of private charity as well as that of 
 the Distress Committees and the Poor Law, is 
 enormous ; and the accompanying demoralisation 
 of the recipients is even more to be deplored. Nor 
 can we leave out of consideration the sufferings of 
 
 s
 
 258 THE POOR LAW REPORT CHAP. 
 
 those who do not apply for assistance. There are 
 many who do not and cannot belong to trade 
 unions at present, who might be drawn into a trade 
 organisation for the purpose of insurance if the 
 payments were brought within their reach ; and 
 when a comprehensive system was in working 
 order it would be a fair proof of a man's desire for 
 independence if he had availed himself of it. If 
 after the lapse of a sufficient time it became clear 
 that any large number still continued to apply for 
 public assistance in periods of unemployment, it 
 might become necessary to make insurance com- 
 pulsory. But there is no doubt that a voluntary 
 system is more in accordance with the development 
 of provident institutions in England, and would be 
 more easily adapted to meet the needs of the 
 workers in various branches of industry. 
 
 The second point which calls for justification 
 is the Commission's recommendation that dis- 
 franchisement should not follow upon public 
 assistance, except in the case of those who receive 
 other than medical relief for more than three 
 months in the year. 
 
 In the case of medical relief it seems clearly 
 illogical that a man should be disfranchised for 
 receiving treatment in a hospital or infirmary 
 which he could not possibly provide for himself,
 
 ix DISFRANCHISEMENT 259 
 
 while no such penalty attaches to receiving medical 
 attendance, which a very small amount of foresight 
 would have enabled him to provide. The alterna- 
 tive lies between repealing the Medical Relief Dis- 
 qualification Removal Act and extending its provi- 
 sions to indoor medical treatment. One consideration t 
 which tells in favour of the latter course is, that it 
 will facilitate the much-to-be-desired co-operation 
 and division of work between the voluntary 
 hospitals and those belonging to the Public 
 Assistance Authority. 
 
 In drawing a distinction between those who are 
 driven to seek public assistance by temporary mis- 
 fortune and those who habitually rely upon it, the 
 Commission have made a new departure. They 
 greatly desire that in future all distress, including 
 that due to unemployment, should be dealt with 
 by one authority only, and that as far as possible 
 no reasonable ground should be left for introduc- 
 ing or continuing competing authorities. If this 
 end can be attained it will greatly outweigh any 
 risk which might be involved in the concession 
 contained in their recommendation. 
 
 S 2
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 CONTENTS OF THE REPORT OF THE 
 ROYAL COMMISSION ON POOR LAWS, 
 1909. 
 
 PART I. : Pp. i to n. 
 
 Description of Procedure of Commission, and of 
 the Sources from which Evidence has been Obtained. 
 
 PART II. : Pp. 13 to 52. 
 
 A Statistical Survey of Poor Law Problems. 
 (a] The Number of Paupers at Different Times, of 
 Different Ages, in Different Classes, of Different 
 Occupations, and in Receipt of Various Kinds of 
 Relief ; () The Cost of Relief, of Officials and of 
 Institutions, and the Growth of Expenditure ; 
 (c) The Distribution of Pauperism ; (d) The Extent 
 and Cost of Pauperism in Relation to Education, 
 Wages, Cost of Living, Thrift, Public Health, the 
 Death Rate, and Illegitimacy.
 
 262 APPENDIX I 
 
 PART III. : Pp. 53 to 80. 
 
 History of the Poor Laws down to 1834. The 
 Poor Law before and after 1601 : Legislation in the 
 Eighteenth Century : Poor Law Commission of 
 1832, and Analysis of their Report : The Principles 
 of the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834. 
 
 PART IV. : Pp. 81 to 232. 
 
 Historical Development and Present Condition of 
 the Various Branches of the Poor Law. Chap. I. 
 Introduction and Central Authority. Chap. II. 
 The Local Authorities. Chap. III. Officers of the 
 Local Authority. Chap. IV. Areas of Administra- 
 tion. Chap. V. Indoor Relief. Chap. VI. Out- 
 door Relief. Chap. VII. Aged. Chap. VIII. 
 Children. Chap. IX. Able-bodied. Chap. X. 
 The Causes of Pauperism. 
 
 PART V. : Pp. 233 to 302. 
 
 Medical Relief. Chap. I. Historical Outline of 
 the Development of the System of Medical Assist- 
 ance to the Poor. Chap. II. Review of the 
 System of Medical Relief to the Poor. Chap. III. 
 General Conclusions and Proposals. 
 
 PART VI. : Pp. 303 to 445. 
 
 Distress Due to Unemployment Chap. I. 
 Social and Industrial Development since 1834. 
 Chap. II. The New Problems. Chap. III. 
 Criticism of Existing Methods of Relief. Chap. 
 IV. Proposals.
 
 APPENDIX I 263 
 
 PART VII. : Pp. 447 to 526. 
 
 Charities and the Relief of Distress. Including a 
 survey of endowed and other charities, their 
 administration through the Charity Commissioners, 
 Boards of Trustees and other agencies, the extent 
 and causes of poverty, the effects of charity upon 
 poverty, the suggestions and criticisms of the 
 investigators, the system of poor relief in Germany, 
 co-operation between Poor Law and charity, and 
 proposals for future organisation and co-operation. 
 
 PART VIII. : Pp. 527 to 594. 
 
 Miscellaneous. Chap. I. Insurance. Chap. II. 
 Settlement and Removal. Chap. III. Recovery of 
 Cost of Relief. Chap. IV. Bastardy. Chap. V. 
 Vagrancy. Chap. VI. Stock-taking and Work- 
 house Accounts. Chap. VII. Public Assistance 
 and Inebriety. Chap. VIII. Compounding for 
 Rates. Chap. IX. The Statistics of the Future. 
 
 PART IX. : Pp. 595 to 670. 
 
 Review of Existing Conditions and Proposed 
 changes.
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 LIST OF APPENDIX VOLUMES TO THE 
 REPORTS OF THE POOR LAW COM- 
 MISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES, 
 SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. I. ENGLISH OFFICIAL EVIDENCE. 
 
 Minutes of Evidence mainly of the Officers of 
 the Local Government Board for England and 
 Wales, ist to 34th Days : 8th January to 22nd 
 May, 1906 : Questions I to 14,880. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. I. A. ENGLISH OFFICIAL EVIDENCE. 
 
 Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence included 
 in Vol. I., being mainly the evidence of the Officers 
 of the Local Government Board for England and 
 Wales. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. I. B. INDEX. 
 
 Index to Appendix Vols. I. and I. A. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. II. LONDON EVIDENCE. 
 
 Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) mainly 
 of London witnesses. 35th to 48th Days: 28th 
 May to 23rd July, 1906 : Questions 14,881 to 
 
 2 4>739-
 
 APPENDIX II 265 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. II. A. INDEX. 
 
 Index to Appendix Vol. II. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. III. ASSOCIATIONS AND CRITICS. 
 
 Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) mainly 
 of critics of the Poor Law and of witnesses repre- 
 senting Poor Law and Charitable Associations. 49th 
 to yist Days: ist October to ijth December, 
 1906 : Questions 24,740 to 35,450. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. III. A. INDEX. 
 
 Index to Appendix Vol. III. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. IV. URBAN CENTRES. LIVERPOOL, 
 MANCHESTER, WEST YORKS, AND MIDLANDS. 
 Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) contain- 
 ing the oral and written evidence of the British 
 Medical Association and of witnesses from the 
 following provincial urban centres Liverpool and 
 Manchester districts, West Yorkshire, Midland 
 Towns. 72nd to 8gth Days : I4th January to 
 26th March, 1907 : Questions 35,451 to 48,347. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. IV. A. INDEX. 
 
 Index to Appendix Vol. IV. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. V. URBAN CENTRES. SOUTH WALES 
 
 AND NORTH EASTERN COUNTIES. 
 Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) contain- 
 ing the oral and written evidence of witnesses from 
 urban centres in the following districts : South 
 Wales and North Eastern Counties, goth to 94th 
 Days : I5th April to 30th April, 1907 : Questions 
 48,348 to 53> 6 7-
 
 266 APPENDIX II 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. V. A. INDEX. 
 
 Index to Appendix Vol. V. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. VI. SCOTLAND. 
 
 Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) relating 
 to Scotland. 95th to iioth Days, and I39th and 
 I49th Days : 6th May to 2ist June, 1907, and i3th 
 January and 2nd March, 1908 : Questions 53,068 to 
 67,565 J 88,667 to 89,046 ; 94,629 to 95,323. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. VI. A. INDEX. 
 
 Index to Appendix Vol. VI. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. VII. RURAL CENTRES. FRIENDLY 
 SOCIETIES, ETC. 
 
 Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) contain- 
 ing the oral and written evidence of witnesses from 
 various rural centres in the South Western, Western, 
 and Eastern Counties, from the Parish of Poplar 
 Borough and from the National Conference of 
 Friendly Societies. mth to I22nd Days: gth 
 July to 7th October, 1907 : Questions 67,566 to 
 77,734- 
 APPENDIX VOL. VII. A. INDEX. 
 
 Index to Appendix Vol. VII. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. VIII. UNEMPLOYMENT. 
 
 Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) contain- 
 ing the oral and written evidence of witnesses relating 
 chiefly to the subject of " Unemployment." I23rd 
 to 1 38th Days: I4th October to loth December, 
 1907 : Questions 77,735 to 88,666.
 
 APPENDIX II 267 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. VIII. A. INDEX. 
 
 Index to Appendix Vol. VIII. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. IX. UNEMPLOYMENT. 
 
 Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) contain- 
 ing the oral and written evidence of further witnesses 
 relating to the subject of Unemployment, etc. I40th 
 to 1 48th Days : i5Oth to if6th Days, and 15 8th 
 Day: I4th January, 1908, to nth May, 1908. 
 Questions 89,048 to 94,628 j 95,324 to 99,350 ; 
 100,020 to 100,590. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. IX. A. INDEX. 
 
 Index to Appendix Vol. IX, 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. X. IRELAND. 
 
 Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) relating 
 to Ireland. I57th and I59th Days : 25th April and 
 I2th May, 1908 : Questions 99,351 to 100,019 ; 
 100,591 to 100,928. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. X. A. INDEX. 
 
 Index to Appendix Vol. X. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XI. MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Miscellaneous Papers. Communications from 
 Boards of Guardians and Others, etc., etc. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XII. COMMISSIONERS' MEMORANDA. 
 
 Reports, Memoranda, and Tables prepared by 
 certain of the Commissioners.
 
 268 APPENDIX II 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XIII. DIOCESAN REPORTS. 
 
 Diocesan Reports on the Methods of administering 
 Charitable Assistance and the extent and intensity of 
 Poverty in England and Wales. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XIV. INVESTIGATORS' REPORTS. 
 MEDICAL RELIEF. 
 
 Report on the Methods and Results of the present 
 system of administering Indoor and Outdoor Poor 
 Law Medical Relief in certain Unions in England 
 and Wales, by Dr. McVail. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XV. INVESTIGATORS' REPORTS. 
 CHARITY. 
 
 Report on the Administrative Relation of Charity 
 and the Poor Law, and the extent and the actual 
 and potential utility of Endowed and Voluntary 
 Charities in England and Scotland, by Mr. A. C. 
 Kay and Mr. H. V. Toynbee. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XVI. INVESTIGATORS' REPORTS. 
 INDUSTRIAL AND SANITARY CONDITIONS. 
 
 Reports on the Relation of Industrial and Sanitary 
 Conditions to Pauperism, by Mr. Steel Maitland and 
 Miss R. E. Squire. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XVII. INVESTIGATORS' REPORTS. 
 OUT-RELIEF AND WAGES. 
 
 Reports on the effect of Outdoor Relief on 
 Wages, and the Conditions of Employment, by Mr. 
 Thomas Jones and Miss Williams.
 
 APPENDIX II 269 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XVIII. INVESTIGATORS' REPORTS. 
 CHILDREN : ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 Report on the condition of the Children who are 
 in receipt of the various forms of Poor Law Relief in 
 certain Unions in London and in the Provinces, by 
 Dr. Ethel Williams and Miss Longman and Miss 
 Phillips. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XIX. INVESTIGATORS' REPORTS. UN- 
 EMPLOYMENT : ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 Report on the Effects of Employment or Assis- 
 tance given to the Unemployed since 1886 as a 
 means of relieving Distress outside the Poor Law in 
 London, and generally throughout England and 
 Wales, by Mr. Cyril Jackson and the Rev. J. C. 
 Pringle. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XIX. A. INVESTIGATORS' REPORTS. 
 UNEMPLOYMENT : SCOTLAND. 
 
 Report on the Effects of Employment or Assis- 
 tance given to the Unemployed since 1886 as a 
 means of relieving Distress outside the Poor Law in 
 Scotland, by the Rev. J. C. Pringle. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XIX. B. INVESTIGATORS' REPORTS. 
 UNEMPLOYMENT : IRELAND. 
 
 Report on the Effects of Employment or Assis- 
 tance given to the Unemployed since 1886 as a 
 means of relieving Distress outside the Poor Law in 
 Ireland, by Mr. Cyril Jackson.
 
 270 APPENDIX II 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XX. INVESTIGATORS' REPORTS. BOY 
 
 LABOUR. 
 
 Report on Boy Labour in London and certain 
 other Typical Towns, by Mr. Cyril Jackson, with 
 a Memorandum from the General Post Office on the 
 Conditions of Employment of Telegraph Messengers. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXI. INVESTIGATORS' REPORTS. 
 
 REFUSAL OF OUT-RELIEF. 
 
 Reports on the Effect of the Refusal of Out-relief 
 on the Applicants for such Relief, by Miss G. Harlock. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXII. INVESTIGATORS' REPORTS. 
 
 OVERLAPPING OF MEDICAL RELIEF IN LONDON. 
 
 Report on the Overlapping of the Work of the 
 
 Voluntary General Hospitals with that of Poor Law 
 
 Medical Relief in certain districts of London by 
 
 Miss N. B. Roberts. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXIII. INVESTIGATORS' REPORTS. 
 
 CHILDREN : SCOTLAND. 
 
 Report on the Condition of the Children who are 
 in receipt of the various forms of Poor Law Relief in 
 certain parishes in Scotland, by Dr. C. T. Parsons 
 and Miss Longman and Miss Phillips. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXIV. INVESTIGATORS' REPORTS. 
 ABLE-BODIED AND " ORDINARY " PAUPERS IN 
 ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 
 
 Report on a Comparison of the Physical Condition 
 of " Ordinary " Paupers in certain Scottish Poor- 
 houses with that of the Able-bodied Paupers in certain 
 English Workhouses and Labour Yards, by Dr. 
 C. T. Parsons.
 
 APPENDIX II 271 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXV. STATISTICAL. 
 
 Statistical Memoranda and Tables relating to 
 England and Wales, prepared by the Staff of the 
 Commission and by Government Departments, and 
 Others, and Actuarial Reports. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXVI. CHARITIES. 
 
 Documents relating more especially to the Ad- 
 ministration of Charities. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXVII. REPLIES OF DISTRESS COM- 
 MITTEES. 
 
 Replies by Distress Committees in England and 
 Wales to Questions circulated on the subject of the 
 Unemployed Workmen Act, 1905. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXVIII. VISITS. 
 
 Reports of Visits to Poor Law and Charitable 
 Institutions and to Meetings of Local Authorities 
 in the United Kingdom. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXIX. REPORT BY GENERAL ASSEM- 
 BLY OF CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 Report on the Methods of Administering Chari- 
 table Assistance and the extent and intensity of 
 Poverty in Scotland, prepared by the Committee on 
 Church Interests appointed by the General Assembly 
 of the Church of Scotland. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXX. SCOTLAND. 
 
 Documents relating specially to Scotland. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXXI. IRELAND. 
 
 Statistical Memoranda and Tables relating to 
 Ireland, etc.
 
 272 APPENDIX II 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXXII. FOREIGN LABOUR COLONIES 
 COMMITTEE. 
 
 Report on Visits paid by the Foreign Labour 
 Colonies Committee of the Commission to certain 
 Institutions in Holland, Belgium, Germany, and 
 Switzerland. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXXIII. FOREIGN POOR RELIEF 
 SYSTEMS. 
 
 Foreign and Colonial Systems of Poor Relief, with 
 a Memorandum on the Relief of Famines in India. 
 
 APPENDIX VOL. XXXIV. LIST OF WITNESSES. 
 
 Alphabetical Lists of Oral and Non-oral Wit- 
 nesses. 
 
 THE END 
 
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