THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD

As we have already mentioned, the merging of the Poor Law Board in the newly established Local Government Board came about for reasons unconnected with the Poor Law, and it coincided with no definite change in Poor Law Policy. But, as already indicated, the placing of the Central Authority on a permanent basis coincided with a gradual improvement in the quality of the inspectorial staff, who, in the ensuing decades, remind us more of the masterful assistant commissioners of the 1834-47 period. On the other hand, the development of the office from a mere specialised authority, concerned only with a single function, into what became practically a Ministry of the Interior, charged with the supervision of all the local government of the country (with the partial exception of police and schools), necessitated both an increase and a development of the permanent secretariat. To this secretariat, with its graded hierarchy and multiplicity of departments, boards of guardians and the administration of the Poor Law tended inevitably to take their place among municipal corporations, local boards of health, highway authorities, and the administration of other statutory powers. There is even a third element to take into account. The revival of public interest in Poor Law problems, beginning about 1867[488] in the Metropolis and some of the large towns, and spreading later to the whole country, had its effect in the House of Commons, especially after the extension of the franchise in London and the boroughs (1867), and in the counties (1884). We see this manifesting itself in Poor Law policy in various minor statutes, and, above all, in sporadic circulars and other declarations of policy by the Parliamentary President of the Local Government Board.

Thus the student who seeks to discover what was the policy of the Central Authority between 1871 and 1907 finds two distinct influences at work on Boards of Guardians, each of which carries with it the weight of the Central Authority, but one of them is seen to be predominant between 1871 and 1885, whilst the other predominates after 1885.

The able, zealous, and somewhat doctrinaire inspectorate, especially between 1871 and 1885, stands always on the "principles of 1834" in their strictest interpretation—constantly using language, indeed, which went beyond any proposals of the 1834 Report, or any policy embodied in the documents of the Central Authority of 1834-47. On the other hand, the president (and Parliament with his concurrence) sporadically brought in (especially after 1885) a note that some might term a sentimental, others an enlightened humanitarianism, with regard to particular sections—the unemployed, the decayed members of friendly societies, the "deserving aged poor" generally. This humanitarianism was certainly in direct contradiction of the "principles of 1834." How far it may be said to have embodied, perhaps unconsciously, other principles will subsequently appear.

The cleavage in policy between the inspectorate and the president did not at first manifest itself. For the first decade or so, the successive presidents and the inspectorate seem to be at one in a policy of "strict administration"—a policy as to which we cannot discover whether it was due to the influence of such presidents as Mr. Goschen and Mr. Stansfeld upon such inspectors as Mr. Corbett, Mr. Doyle, Mr. Wodehouse, and Mr. Longley, or vice versa. We may perhaps ascribe to the caution of the secretariat the confining of this policy to the general terms of circulars and minutes, thus avoiding alike the necessary precision of orders and statutes and any explicit extension of the "principles of 1834" to classes other than the able-bodied.

From 1871 to about 1885 the outstanding feature of the policy of the Central Authority was the steady pressure exercised through the inspectors with the object of reducing outdoor relief. This arose out of the inquiries set on foot by Mr. Goschen, which had revealed, not only the granting of a large amount of outdoor relief to able-bodied men and women and their families, but also great differences in practice between one union and another. As we have shown, neither Mr. Goschen nor the Central Authority under any other president had, down to 1871, so far as the aged and infirm and cases of sickness were concerned, ever indicated or advocated, in any official document that we have been able to find, any alternative policy to that of outdoor relief. The Circular on Outdoor Relief[489] now issued to the inspectors and widely published, which set the tone for the ensuing decade, did not explicitly declare any new policy with regard to these classes, which then made up at least three-fourths of the total outdoor relief cases. Moreover its illustrative examples and its specific recommendations related entirely to the able-bodied. Indeed, except for an important new departure in the treatment of able-bodied widows with children, the recommendations to be pressed on Boards of Guardians amounted to no more than the substitution of the practice of the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order for either that of the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order or that of the Labour Test Order, where one or other of these latter was in force. The differences between these orders, as we have shown, relate only to the able-bodied. Thus, an acute clerk of a board of guardians would have been warranted in saying that, so far as concerned the aged and infirm and the sick, the Circular of 1871 announced no new policy.

But the Circular appeared to the casual reader to be against outdoor relief as such to any class of paupers. The expression "Outdoor Relief" was nowhere defined or limited. Particular unions were compared one with another as to the amount and proportion of their total outdoor relief to all cases, those having a large amount being held to blame, without a consideration of whether their outdoor relief was to the able-bodied or to the aged and infirm and the sick; and even without any consideration of the relative proportion of persons over sixty, or the relative prevalence of ill-health in their several populations.[490]

Moreover, some of the other recommendations of the Circular implied, though they did not express, a suggestion that the "offer of the House" might be used as a means of preventing the aged and the sick from coming on the rates at all. Quite a new stress was laid on getting contributions from relatives, and on the most vigilant inquiry into circumstances, recommendations which certainly applied to the aged and infirm and to the sick, and which seemed to carry with them the hint that, if confronted with the workhouse, even the aged and the sick would be maintained by their relations.

Whether or not the Central Authority can be held in these years to have deliberately adopted the new policy of the offer of the workhouse for the aged and infirm and for the sick, as well as for the able-bodied, it was this policy which, from 1871 onwards, was increasingly pressed on boards of guardians by the abler and more energetic of the inspectors. We cannot find any official document in which any inspector explicitly committed himself to the statement that the time had come when outdoor relief should, as a matter of principle, be refused to the aged and infirm, or to the sick, as had long been the official advice with regard to the able-bodied.[491] But it was in these years that these inspectors took to circulating among their boards of guardians the comparative tables showing their relative position in order of merit according to the smallness of their out-relief—always without making any distinction between the out-relief to the aged and the sick on the one hand, and that to the able-bodied on the other. In their published reports on their districts we see the inspectors taking the same tone and using the same unguarded phrases implying the inherent badness of outdoor relief (without any limitation to the able-bodied), that marked the Circular of 1871. The minutes of the boards of guardians of this period occasionally preserve a record of, or contain a reference to the inspector's letters or personal advice to the same effect.[492]

It was a feature of this period that the inspectors were in close personal contact with the president. Mr. Stansfeld inaugurated a system of occasional dinners at which he met all the inspectors and discussed with them their difficulties. They had also periodical conferences in London for a week at a time, at which they formulated a common policy. In these years began, too, the Poor Law conferences, where the inspectors (and occasionally also the president) came in contact with the new school of unofficial Poor Law experts, who were in favour of the "logical development" of the "principles of 1834." It was, in fact, "now argued" that, just as under the Act of 1834, the "offer of the workhouse" had "obliged the able-bodied to assume responsibility for the able-bodied period of life ... an application of the same principle to the other responsibilities of life would produce equally advantageous results."[493] The presidents of the first decade of the Local Government Board seem, indeed, sometimes to have accepted the view that all relief ought, strictly speaking, to be given in the workhouse. Mr. Longley's Report on outdoor relief in the Metropolis was sent officially to the boards of guardians and commended as laying down "sound lines of policy."[494] Mr. Dodson, in 1881, declared as president that "the whole object and system of the Poor Law as established in this country is that it should be strictly administered, with the aim simply to testing and relieving absolute destitution; and no effectual means have yet been devised of so testing the destitution except by offering the house. And just in proportion as the Poor Law is strictly administered, and in proportion as entrance into the house is insisted upon as a condition of relief, so, on the whole, is the Poor Law better administered—better administered, I do not hesitate to say, not only in the interest of the poor themselves, but in the interest of the ratepayers at large. Now, you must remember, in the case of outdoor relief it is impossible absolutely to test the cases. They cannot be closely watched, and you cannot tell when a man is receiving outdoor relief that he is not having aid from other sources, or that he is not to some extent earning something for himself, and might possibly, if left to his own resources, earn more. Well, then, it is a system which in that way acts as a check upon personal exertions and upon providence, and I need not say that anything which acts as a check upon exertion and providence cannot but result in an increase of pauperism and the demoralisation of the labouring classes, and must end in an increased charge to the ratepayers."[495]

A notable step towards stricter administration in these years was the adoption in 1875 by the Manchester Board of Guardians of by-laws for its own guidance, putting additional restrictions on the grant of outdoor relief.[496] These by-laws were made much of by the inspectors, and carried from board to board. Their object was to discourage as much as possible the grant of outdoor relief as such. Yet it is noteworthy that they apply primarily to the able-bodied (male and female), and that they do not mention at all the case of the aged, and that they allude to the sick only by way of restricting the duration of each order of outdoor relief to two weeks. But here again we detect the hint that the "offer of the house" might be used, in the case of the aged, as a means of extracting contributions from relatives whether or not such contributions were legally due.

In 1877 we see a great effort made to get the new departure embodied in a general order. The Central Poor Law Conference, professing to sum up all the experience and knowledge both of the inspectors and of the new school of unofficial Poor Law experts, asked the Central Authority to issue new orders restricting outdoor relief generally. Even here it is noteworthy that no explicit suggestion was made that the aged and the sick ought not to be granted outdoor relief. What was asked for was practically the "Manchester Rules," with the addition of the suggestion that all relief should be given on loan. Here, however, the Central Authority made a stand. It refused to make any new order, specifically declining to extend the Prohibitory Order to the whole country, to make all relief recoverable as if granted on loan, to enable all medical relief to be made on loan, to impose a fixed limit for the grant of outdoor relief in cases of sickness, or to prohibit outdoor relief to widows in the first six months of their widowhood.[497]

Thus, the policy of 1871-85 resulted, not in any alteration of the classic orders of 1844, 1847, and 1852, or in any explicit reversal of the policy hitherto pursued with regard to the aged and the sick, but only in a general "tightening up" of the administration of relief by boards of guardians all over the country. We shall see this general "tightening up" more in detail in the examination of the treatment of various classes. That examination will also reveal the effect of the reaction against this tightening up, which set in about 1885—a reaction which showed itself in the relaxation, usually at the instance or with the encouragement of Parliament and successive presidents, of the conditions of relief to specific classes.

A.—The Able-bodied

National Uniformity

In the absence of new Statutes, and of alterations in the General Orders relating to the relief by boards of guardians of the able-bodied, there was, of course, between 1871 and 1907, no step towards national uniformity. The country continued to be divided up geographically into three regions, according to whether or not the Central Authority had permitted the grant of outdoor relief to able-bodied men, subject to a labour test; and to whether or not it had permitted outdoor relief to able-bodied women without children. And unlike the period 1847-1871, that of 1871-1907 did not witness any important alteration in the geographical extension of these three regions, though the relative populations altered very considerably. The general policy of the Central Authority, in issuing the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order to rural districts, with or without the Labour Test Order when required, and in issuing to the large towns the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, was continued throughout the whole period.[498]

(ii.) The Workhouse Test

What happened for the first five-and-twenty years of the Local Government Board was, as we have indicated, a general tightening up in the administration of all three regions. The Central Authority intimated that it would not easily give the approval that was necessary for any departure from the orders. "In unions where the Prohibitory Order is in force," said the circular to the inspectors of 2nd December 1871, "the workhouse test should be strictly applied.... The Board will not be prepared to sanction any cases which are not reported within the time limited by the order, and in which the reports do not contain a detailed statement of the paupers to which they refer, showing the number of their respective families with the ages and number of children employed, amount of wages of the several members of the family at work, cause of destitution, period during which they have been without employment, amount of relief, if any, given previously to the transmission of the report, and what extent of accommodation for all classes exists in the workhouse at the time."[499]

As times became bad, the Central Authority received "applications ... for a relaxation of the provisions of the General Out-relief Prohibitory Order, and for the substitution of an outdoor labour test for the more effective test of destitution afforded by the offer of relief in the workhouse." Instead of yielding to these requests, as had formerly happened, the Central Authority now replied, "that the Supplemental Outdoor Labour Test Order is not intended to supersede, but to be subsidiary to the General Out-relief Prohibitory Order, and should not be brought into operation so long as there is sufficient room in the workhouse available for able-bodied paupers."[500] "A strict adherence to the workhouse test," said the Central Authority, "on such occasions when temporary relief is demanded solely from the state of the weather, is essentially beneficial to the labouring classes, and conducive to their real interest. A certainty of obtaining outdoor relief in his own home, whenever he may demand it, extinguishes in the mind of the labourer all motive for husbanding his earnings, and induces him to rely exclusively upon the rates, instead of upon his own savings, for any momentary relief which he may require from the sudden cessation of his usual employment. The unfailing application of the workhouse test, on the other hand, makes him at once aware that the only form in which he can receive relief is as an ordinary inmate of the workhouse, and the strongest inducement to support himself and his family is thus held out to him, an inducement altogether wanting when the guardians, upon his application, readily grant him outdoor relief."[501]

But, as already mentioned, the Central Authority, though pressed to do so, did not consent to make the Out-relief Prohibitory Order co-extensive with the country. "The Order," it replied, "is now in force in all the rural unions ... and in many urban unions also, and the Board continue to apply its provisions from time to time to other unions as often as the circumstances enable them to do so, but it has never been attempted to apply the provisions of the Order to the Metropolis, or those centres of manufacturing industry where large numbers of persons are periodically thrown out of employment by sudden and extensive depressions of trade."[502] In such places, as it was explained, it would certainly be found necessary to abrogate the Order at those periods, and this would weaken its force generally.

(iii.) The Labour Test

Where the relief of able-bodied men outside the workhouse was not prohibited, we see the Central Authority in these years not only rigidly maintaining the rule as to a labour test (whether under the Out-relief Regulation Order or under a Labour Test Order supplementary to the Out-relief Prohibitory Order); but also seeking to make the administration more strict. This rule, it was explained in 1879, "is one the value of which has been experienced at various times, and in various parts of the country, as a test of the actual destitution of the applicant; and to the observance of which, in times of serious pressure, such as the present, the Board attach very great importance. The Board are not prepared to suspend the operation of the articles in question generally; but if while applying its provisions, the guardians should be of opinion that, in certain special cases which might arise, it would be proper that the strict application of these provisions should not be enforced, the Board, on receiving a particular report of the circumstances under Article 10 of the Order, would be prepared to give their favourable consideration to the cases."[503] Even in such a severe crisis of unemployment as that of 1879-81, when the number of men thrown out of work was probably greater than at any date from 1841 down to the present day, the Central Authority held to its view of what the labour test should be. "For this object," it was explained, "the operations of breaking stone and picking oakum (when performed under proper superintendence) are in many respects very appropriate, and, having regard to the objection to employing paupers on work of a productive character, which may interfere with the ordinary callings or employment of any portion of the independent population of the district, the Board are unable to suggest any other kind of work than those named."[504] Nor was even breaking stone or picking oakum to be paid for as wages, or regarded as employment. "With regard to the proposal of the [Warrington] guardians to pay 2s. 6d. for each ton of stones broken," the Central Authority stated "that the task is intended merely for a test of destitution, and that the relief granted to each pauper should not be proportioned to the quantity of stone broken by him, but to the necessities of his case."[505] The inspectors were instructed to press the guardians everywhere not to grant even admission to "the stoneyard" as a matter of course; "orders to able-bodied men for relief in the labour yard should only be given from week to week"; and the homes of the men so relieved should be visited by the relieving officer at least once a fortnight.[506] Moreover, even this relief was intended to be only temporary; and the conditions were sometimes made more onerous after the first few weeks. "In the Poplar Union, at the expiration of the first month, the applicant is required to come to the stoneyard an hour earlier and to leave an hour later than before, and to break an additional bushel of stones."[507] Gradually we see it being assumed, even as regards unions under the Out-relief Regulation Order, that it is merely "when the workhouse accommodation is insufficient,"[508] or "so long as they have not adequate workhouse accommodation,"[509] that relief should be given with a labour test. Right down to February 1886, the Central Authority declared that it "would not feel justified in relaxing" the regulations which prohibited relief to able-bodied men, however temporary and undeserved might be their want of employment, "without any such test of destitution as is provided by admission to a properly managed workhouse, or the performance of an adequate task of work." To cope with the distress caused by unemployment, the Holborn Guardians on 9th February 1886 were, in fact, expressly told to hire a stoneyard.[510]

(iv.) The Modified Workhouse Test Order

In one union there was an attempt, to which the Central Authority in 1887 gave its approval by Special Order, to substitute for the labour test provisions of the Out-relief Regulation Order, a special application of the "Workhouse Test."[511] This Order, limited in duration to twelve months, permitted outdoor relief to be given to the wife and family of an able-bodied man, without a labour test, on condition that the man himself entered the workhouse. This device was intended to get over the three principal obstacles to the universal adoption of the "Workhouse Test" for the able-bodied, viz. the lack of sufficient accommodation in workhouses; the objection to "breaking up the home"; and the undesirability of bringing the wives, and especially the children, under workhouse influences. This Order, which was not renewed on its expiry, and not issued to any other union for nearly twenty years, was, as we have said, asked for as a means of making the administration of relief more stringent than it was under the Out-relief Regulation Order. Combined with the establishment of a special "Test Workhouse," which we shall presently describe, it might come near to being a penal alternative. But it is, as we shall see afterwards, important rather as a precedent capable also of application in an entirely humanitarian way.

(v.) The Test Workhouse

It must be noted that, whilst the inspectorate was in these years doing its utmost to insist on "the offer of the house" to all able-bodied persons, it was also encouraging boards of guardians to make the workhouse for such persons an exclusively disciplinary institution. This had, as we have mentioned, been suggested by Mr. Corbett in 1868. The pressure on the accommodation of the Metropolitan workhouses, and the mixing together of so many different classes of inmates, made it impossible, Mr. Corbett had pointed out, "to apply the workhouse as a test of destitution to single able-bodied men."[512] "In urging upon boards of guardians in the Metropolis," repeated his successor, Mr. Longley, "as I have lately had occasion to do almost daily, the application of the workhouse test, I have not infrequently been met by the startling admission that the workhouse is attractive to paupers; that there are many persons in the workhouse who could maintain themselves out of doors; and, in short, that the workhouse furnishes no test of destitution. All arguments in support of the workhouse test which assume the existence of a 'well-regulated workhouse' (to use the language of the Poor Law Commissioners of Inquiry, 1833) must fail at once when addressed to guardians whose workhouse offers attractions to the indolent. And I have reason to think that the aversion to the proper and free use of the workhouse which distinguishes many Metropolitan boards of guardians, is in some measure due to the failure of the workhouses, as at present administered, to satisfy the essential conditions of their establishment."[513]

Mr. Longley was told to prepare an elaborate report on indoor relief in the Metropolis, and in this he expressed his emphatic opinion that "the deterrent discipline ... fails at present to be duly enforced in London workhouses almost without exception.... The general tone of their administration is that of the almshouse rather than of the workhouse system."[514] He traced this inconvenient laxity to the very nature of the general workhouse for all classes, which the Central Authority had substituted for the series of specialised institutions recommended in the Report of 1834. "The presence in a workhouse," he said, "of the sick, or of any class in whose favour the ordinary discipline must be relaxed, and who receive special indulgences, has an almost inevitable tendency to impair the general discipline of the establishment."[515] The very improvement in the workhouses, which, under the Central Authority's own pressure, was taking place in these years, had, in fact, brought to light the inherent drawback of the general workhouse. Hence the able-bodied, like the children and the sick, were now to be accommodated by themselves. Thus we find, from 1871 onwards, the idea of the "Test Workhouse," an institution set apart exclusively for the able-bodied, where they could be subjected (to use Mr. Longley's words) to "such a system of labour, discipline, and restraint as shall be sufficient to outweigh," in the estimation of the inmates, "the advantages" which they enjoy. Mr. Longley declared that the main object of the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867 had been, not exclusively, or even principally, the better accommodation of the sick, but the introduction of classification by institutions, with the double object of, on the one hand, an improved treatment of the sick, and, on the other, "the establishment of a stricter and more deterrent discipline in workhouses."[516] Circumstances, he said, had delayed the accomplishment of the latter purpose, but it was now time for the Central Authority to "urge upon guardians the establishment in workhouses of a more distinctly deterrent system of discipline and diet than has hitherto been secured," involving "a reconsideration of the conditions of pauper labour and service in workhouses."[517]

Under the influence of the inspectorate, we see half the unions in London gradually agreeing to take advantage of the powers given by the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867, and to make use, for their able-bodied paupers, of the workhouse of the Poplar Union, which now sent its sick to the new "sick asylum," its children to the district school, and its aged and infirm to the workhouse of another union.[518] This establishment of a test workhouse for the able-bodied received at first the warm commendation of the Central Authority.[519] The Poplar workhouse, with its rigid discipline, its absolutely limited diet and its severe task of monotonous toil (oakum-picking and stone-pounding), measured not by time but by a prescribed quantity, became a terror. For the next seven years, we see the guardians offering, sometimes to "troublesome" paupers, sometimes to all able-bodied applicants, male or female—not outdoor relief upon a labour test—but "an order for Poplar." "Notwithstanding the considerable number of unions which have availed themselves of this privilege, the number ... who have accepted the relief, or having accepted it, have remained in the workhouse, has been so small that, although the workhouse will contain 768 persons, there were in it at the close of last year only 166 inmates."[520] In 1878, however, the Metropolitan police magistrates seem to have expressed disapproval of the penal character which the institution had assumed. A woman brought up for refusing to do her task of oakum-picking at Poplar was discharged, with the observation that such work was not a fit task to set to women in receipt of Poor Law relief. On these sentiments becoming known, as the Poplar Guardians informed the Central Authority, "the master of the workhouse has a very considerable amount of trouble in getting any work done now by the inmates." The Central Authority, in reply, sympathised with the difficulty, but could, after six weeks' deliberation, do nothing but express the hope that the Poplar Guardians would be able to convert the magistrates to their views.[521]

The difficulty seems to have continued, for, in 1881, the Central Authority issued an Order permitting the Poplar Guardians to use their workhouse for other than the able-bodied, thus bringing the experiment to an end.[522]

It is to be noted that, in spite of the Poplar experience, the policy of a special "Test House," devoted exclusively to the able-bodied, continued to be pressed on guardians by the Inspectorate. The Birmingham Guardians established such a "test house," in 1880, but it seems to have been opened to other classes in 1887.[523] In the latter year, notwithstanding this renewed abandonment, we see Mr. Henley pressing the same policy on the Manchester Guardians, leading them to visit Birmingham to inspect the test house there.[524] In the Metropolis, the inspectorate got the Kensington workhouse made use of in 1882, in substitution for that of Poplar, though only for males; and able-bodied applicants were, for thirteen years, referred thither. This arrangement came to an end in 1905, greatly to the regret of the inspectorate. This Kensington test house, it was said, "for many years did useful work as a place where really able-bodied men were received from all parts of London, and kept hard at work under strict surveillance. As the Kensington Guardians now need the workhouse for their own purposes this arrangement has of necessity ceased.... The number of really able-bodied men in the London workhouses at one time is never very large, but it is large enough to make it extremely desirable that there should be at least one workhouse exclusively for such a class, to which, and to which only, they might be admitted."[525] As an adjunct of the policy of the deterrent workhouse for the able-bodied, we have to note the coming-in of compulsory detection. This, of course, had been entirely absent from "the principles of 1834," according to which every inmate of the workhouse was to be free to quit it, with no more notice than was required for the convenience of the establishment. "Much evil," said a Circular of 1871, "has arisen, and ... the discipline of the workhouse has been seriously impaired by the frequent exercise of the power which the inmates have hitherto possessed of discharging themselves from the workhouse at short and uncertain notice, claiming re-admission as might best suit their inclination and convenience." This was remedied by a statute in 1871 which gave the guardians a power to detain, with which we shall deal in our section on the workhouse.[526]

(vi.) The Provision of Employment

In the midst of all the efforts of the inspectorate to secure stricter administration, made apparently with the ungrudging support of the Central Authority, there came, in February 1886, an altogether incongruous intervention by the new President (Mr. Chamberlain), who had then been only a few weeks in office. On 19th February 1886, he addressed a public letter to the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works, saying that "there is considerable distress amongst workpeople of a class above that of the persons who usually apply for poor law relief"; and urging the Board "to expedite as far as practicable the commencement of any public works which they may be contemplating, so that additional employment may be afforded."[527] Four weeks later this policy was embodied in a circular to all boards of guardians, which may be said to have begun, for good or for evil, a new era as regards the treatment of such of the able-bodied as were classed as "the unemployed." Whilst nominally upholding the workhouse test and, when that is impossible, the labour test,[528] for the relief of the able-bodied pauper, the circular lays it down emphatically that an altogether different provision must be made for the unemployed wage-earner. The President was "convinced that in the ranks of those who do not ordinarily seek poor law relief there is evidence of much and increasing privation," among persons "usually in regular employment." It was, in his view, "not desirable that the working classes should be familiarised with Poor Law Relief;" and the guardians were recommended "to endeavour to arrange" with the local municipal authorities for the execution of such public works as the laying out, paving and cleansing of streets, sewerage and water works, the laying-out of recreation grounds and new cemeteries, and "spade husbandry on sewage farms." The men to be selected from among the special class referred to were to be engaged by the municipal authorities upon the recommendation of the guardians. They were to be paid wages, though at somewhat below the ordinary rates; every encouragement being given to the municipal authorities to raise loans for the purpose. The men would thus not be paupers, nor in receipt of anything from the Poor Rate, the intervention of the guardians being confined to inciting the local municipal authorities to undertake the work, and to recommending the candidates for employment.[529]

The policy thus laid down by Mr. Chamberlain, of finding municipal work for the unemployed, was, it will be seen, a revival of the expedient adopted in the Lancashire Cotton Famine. But Mr. Chamberlain omitted to safeguard his proposal in the way in which the works started out of the Government loans to the Lancashire municipal authorities in 1863-6 had been (in practice, though not explicitly in terms) safeguarded. It was not explained—perhaps it was not realised—that the conditions of success in the Lancashire experiment had been: (i.) that no pretence should be made of taking on the unemployed as such, and, in particular, that the casual labourer class, whether temporarily unemployed or not, should be definitely excluded; and (ii.) that the direct advantage to unemployed workmen should be limited to the taking on, to do the unskilled labourer's work, of a restricted proportion of selected applicants, not of the labouring but of the skilled artisan class. These necessary conditions were not expounded by the Central Authority either in 1886 or in subsequent years. Successive presidents repeated Mr. Chamberlain's suggestions, with no more limitations than he had laid down. Mr. Ritchie, for instance, in the following year, told a deputation of Boards of Guardians that, although they could not legally give employment, as distinguished from poor relief, they "might assist the local authorities, if the latter undertook public works, by sending to them persons applying for relief, who would no doubt prefer to be relieved by temporary employment rather than by becoming a burden on the rates."[530] In 1891 (a year of "good trade," by the way) Mr. Ritchie sent a circular to the Metropolitan vestries and district boards, urging them to provide employment by street cleaning, etc., "in concert with the Boards of Guardians," who were to be "afforded the opportunity of recommending for employment persons who from their previous circumstances and condition it is most desirable should not be placed under the necessity of receiving relief at the cost of the rates."[531] Similar letters were sent to the Boards of Guardians. In November 1892, Mr. Fowler, afterwards Lord Wolverhampton, reproduced Mr. Chamberlain's Circular of 1886, and recommended municipal works, "in order that the pauperisation of those persons whose difficulties are occasioned only by exceptional circumstances arising from temporary scarcity of employment ... may as far as practicable be avoided."[532] In 1893 again, under Mr. Shaw Lefevre's presidency, similar circulars were sent out.[533] In 1895, Mr. Shaw Lefevre, afterwards Lord Eversley, again issued circulars using the very phrases of that of 1886, which were addressed, first to all the boards of guardians, and then to all the rural and urban district councils, asking the former about the distress, and urging the latter to undertake works, in conference with the boards of guardians, in order to afford employment to artisans and others, reduced to want through the prolonged frost.[534] The House of Commons, two days later, appointed a Committee to consider what could be done, at the request of which circulars were sent to all municipalities and district councils asking what had been done.[535] Called upon to justify itself by the Committee presided over by Mr., afterwards Sir Henry, Campbell-Bannerman, the Central Authority explained what had been done, both in the way of Presidential Circulars about unemployment, and in the way of Poor Law relief to the able-bodied. It did not in this emergency suggest or issue any new General Orders, but it sanctioned "departures from the rules as regards outdoor relief in particular cases."[536] Moreover, there was, as Sir Hugh Owen explained, "no indisposition on the part of the Local Government Board to comply with an application from a board of guardians for the issue of the Outdoor Labour Test Order when the circumstances have appeared to be such as to require it."[537] Meanwhile the public controversy that was taking place, the reports of the proceedings of the Committee, and above all the circulars demanding information from all the local authorities in the Kingdom, enormously stimulated the idea that the unemployed had got to be specially dealt with in such a way as to "prevent the stigma of pauperism, and the consequent loss of citizenship."[538] The Committee, after making elaborate inquiries, practically endorsed the policy of Mr. Chamberlain's Circular of 1886, of bringing municipal work to the aid of the unemployed, and carried it even further. They definitely recommended the adoption, as a constant feature of municipal work, though only in respect of the annually recurring slackness of employment in the winter months, of the policy of using the public orders in such a way as to regularise the aggregate volume of employment. As regards the Metropolis, it was recommended that individual boards of guardians might contribute, with the sanction of the Local Government Board, out of the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund, half the cost of the works undertaken by the vestries or district boards at their instance.[539] Moreover, as it had been discovered that the Acts of 1819 and 1830 had not been repealed, which authorised the local Poor Law authorities to purchase or hire not exceeding 50 acres of land on which to set the poor to work at reasonable wages—statutes which the Central Authority had persistently ignored as obsolete, and had refused to make the rules under which alone they could be made operative—the Committee recommended: "That the Local Government Board should consider the application of such powers, and make rules for the use of boards of guardians in relation thereto."[540]

Finally we come, with regard to the relief of the section of the able-bodied who may be deemed to be "the unemployed," to Mr. Long's scheme, embodied in the Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905, under which distress committees of the local municipal councils, formed partly of members nominated by the boards of guardians, are empowered to make special provision for those of the able-bodied who are "unemployed," without their becoming paupers, in the way of: (i.) emigration; (ii.) internal migration; (iii.) temporary employment; (iv.) farm colonies; or (v.) labour exchanges; at the expense, so far as emigration, migration, labour exchanges, and the cost of the whole machinery are concerned, of the local municipal rates, and, so far as the actual relief or wages is concerned, of voluntary subscriptions or subventions from the National Exchequer.[541]

(vii.) The Farm Colony

Meanwhile various boards of guardians had obtained the sanction of the Central Authority for another method of dealing with that section of the able-bodied who are termed "the unemployed." Upon the pressing and repeated advice of the Central Authority itself, the Poplar Board (which did not at first respond to the suggestion[542]) had in later years cordially co-operated with the local municipal authority in making employment for the unemployed. The increase in the number of able-bodied applicants had continued. The workhouse was full, and indeed overcrowded. In October 1893 Mr. Lansbury had tried in vain to induce his fellow guardians to apply for the (Whitechapel) Modified Workhouse Test Order, permitting the admission to the workhouse of the men alone, whilst the families received outdoor relief. Two months later the Central Authority was asked to sanction the expenditure of £500 chargeable to the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund, to provide work for able-bodied applicants on three days a week. The Central Authority felt unable to sanction so vague a proposal, and practically invited a more definite scheme. Presently the idea of a farm colony, on which to employ able-bodied men, whilst their families remained on outdoor relief in London, received the approval of a conference of Metropolitan guardians. The Central Authority stated that, whilst it could not sanction any combination of areas with this object, it would consider any proposal by a board of guardians for the purpose. When, however, the Poplar Board of Guardians made such a proposal, the Central Authority declined to contemplate any action under the statutes of 1819 and 1830 already referred to, and persisted in regarding the proposed farm colony as merely a branch workhouse, deprecating it on account of the expense and distance.[543] Finally, by the generosity of Mr. Joseph Fels in placing land gratuitously at the disposal of the Poplar Board, the project in 1904 got under way, and the Central Authority (after suggesting, as an alternative, the use of the test workhouse at Kensington, which, as above mentioned, was on the point of coming to an end) sanctioned the extensive farm colony at Laindon under the pretence that it was a temporary workhouse, to which all the regulations of the General Consolidated Order of 1847, and all the elaborately prescribed dietaries of the Dietaries and Accounts Order of 1900, were nominally to apply.[544] At first the view of the Central Authority seems to have been that the men were not receiving indoor relief, but were, under the Out-relief Regulation Order of 1852, performing a task of work in a temporary workhouse, and were thus, we assume, receiving outdoor relief in respect of their wives and families in return for such a labour test.

In February 1905, however, the so-called (Whitechapel) Modified Workhouse Test Order was issued to Poplar, under which the men alone could be admitted to the workhouse, and become indoor paupers, their wives and families receiving outdoor relief.[545]

Meanwhile the farm colony experiment was being tried in another form. The Central Authority gave its sanction, in March 1904, to the Poplar Board of Guardians sending some of their able-bodied male paupers to the Hadleigh farm colony of the Salvation Army, at a payment at the rate of £28:12s. per annum for each man, in addition to the outdoor relief granted to his wife and family.[546] In the following year it gave its sanction to a similar proposal by the Bradford Board of Guardians.[547] We do not know in what other instances the Central Authority tried this particular form of the farm colony experiment. The Lingfield farm colony of the Church Army was also being made use of by some boards of guardians, presumably with the sanction of the Central Authority.[548] We do not understand why these interesting farm colony experiments undertaken by Poplar, Bradford, and other boards of guardians, with the special sanction of the Central Authority, find no mention, either in its annual reports for 1904-5 or 1905-6, or in the reports for those years of the inspectors for the districts.

B.—Vagrants

The adoption, between 1886 and 1907, of a policy of discriminating between some able-bodied applicants and others, according to their character and circumstances, with a view (whether by Poor Law farm colony or by the relief works and labour exchanges of the distress committees) to the rehabilitation of the man really seeking work, makes all the more remarkable the retention, during the whole period, of a contrary policy with regard to wayfarers or vagrants. We find the Central Authority, from 1871 onwards, consistently maintaining for this class a policy of indiscriminate relief on demand, under deterrent conditions, distinctly "less eligible" than the poorest accommodation of the independent labourer, free from any trace of wish for, or attempt at, reform or cure, and intended to be uniform throughout the kingdom. There was, for instance, after 1871, no reversion to the policy so frequently adumbrated between 1847 and 1871, of discriminating between the professional tramp and the bona fide workman in search of employment, reserving the deterrent casual ward for the one, and granting a night's lodging without conditions to the other. On the contrary, the basis of the new policy of 1871 was the universal establishment of the deterrent casual ward for all wayfarers, and the exclusion from the workhouse of even the worthiest among them. This uniformity was to be secured by the Pauper Inmates Discharge and Regulation Act, 1871,[549] which provided that a casual pauper should not be entitled to discharge himself before 11 a.m. on the day following his admission, or, if found a second time in one casual ward within a month, not till 9 a.m. on the third day, nor in any case until he had performed a prescribed task. The Act also made for uniformity by requiring the guardians to provide such casual wards as the Central Authority thought necessary, and by subjecting the admission, diet, and task to its Orders. From this time forth, therefore, the Central Authority assumes complete responsibility for the treatment of vagrants. Its Circular of 1871 begins by condemning the work of its predecessors. "The result of the system hitherto adopted in the relief of this class of paupers cannot be regarded as successful, for while there has been no uniformity of treatment as to diet and work there has been neglect in many unions to provide proper and sufficient wards."[550] The Central Authority enunciated once more the need for national uniformity, pointing out that stringent regulations in one union caused vagrants to vary their route and resort to another place, and expressed an intention of requiring that suitable accommodation should be provided at every workhouse. But no uniformity was actually prescribed. The examples of Bath and Corwen unions were quoted for the guidance of others. At Bath vagrants had to apply for relief at the police station, whence able-bodied men were sent to the workhouse, where they were relieved, and required to perform a three hours' task of stone-breaking, while women, children, and old and infirm men were relieved at a refuge without any task. The Central Authority mentioned this system with apparent approval, and remarked that it had diminished the vagrancy of Bath by over 58 per cent. At Corwen a proposal was approved to place the vagrant wards in the yard of the police station, and appoint a police officer as assistant relieving officer.[551] But the stream of vagrants, after a merely temporary abatement, continued to grow. In 1882 the Central Authority got another statute, and issued another order, increasing the period of detention and otherwise making the conditions more deterrent[552]—still without laying down any policy of discrimination between wayfarers of one sort and wayfarers of another. A few more years' experience showed that the detention really operated against the virtuous wayfarer, who found himself discharged too late to get the work for which he had tramped. The remedy of the Central Authority was to issue circulars suggesting that the guardians should give orders that casual paupers who had done their task on the preceding day should be allowed to leave early in the morning.[553] Some boards of guardians acted on this, others did not—thus destroying the national uniformity at which the Central Authority had aimed. Finally, in 1892, in tardy response to a recommendation of the House of Lords Committee of 1888, a Circular and an Order were issued, "with the view of facilitating the search for work by casual paupers who are desirous of obtaining employment," which gave to every inmate of the casual ward, who had performed his task to the best of his ability, an absolute right to claim his discharge at 5.30 A.M. in summer, or 6 A.M. in winter, on the second day after admission, on his merely representing "that he is desirous of seeking work."[554] Whether from this or other causes, the stream of vagrants continued to grow, with the usual fluctuations. In 1904 the numbers passed all previous records, and so unsatisfactory had proved the policy of 1871-1904 that a Departmental Committee was appointed to find a new one.[555]

C.—Women

It was in this period of 1871-1907 that the Central Authority began to lay down a policy with regard to women as women; significantly enough, as part of the restrictive policy brought in by the inspectorate. Women continued to be practically ignored in the statutes and orders, so that their legal position remained virtually unchanged.[556] But without any change in the orders, or in the division of the whole country into geographical regions under which, as we have shown, women had different claims to relief, the Central Authority sought by circulars, minutes, decisions, and the persistent pressure of the inspectorate, to discourage the grant of outdoor relief to particular classes of women. Thus outdoor relief to able-bodied single women without illegitimate children continued to be permissible, without any labour test or other conditions, in all the unions under the Out-relief Regulation Order; and the area under this Order continued to grow in population, until it amounted, by 1907, to three-fourths of the whole. But by Circular of 2nd December 1871, the Central Authority advised that outdoor relief should not be given in any case whatsoever of this class.[557] Such outdoor relief was specifically prohibited in the rules adopted by the Manchester Board of Guardians in 1875, which were frequently commended to the notice of other Boards of Guardians, who, under inspectorial pressure, voluntarily put themselves under similar rules.[558] In the same way, without alteration of the Orders, it was urged that deserted wives should not be given outdoor relief, at any rate during the first twelve months after the desertion.[559] It was officially declared to be "inexpedient to allow outdoor relief to the wives and children of persons who are in gaol"—not merely of convicted prisoners under sentence, but also of those not under sentence, nearly all of whom are still unconvicted, and, therefore, legally presumed to be innocent—and this in spite of the admitted fact that "the law has provided that regulations prescribed with regard to widows shall apply to the wives in these cases," so that the Central Authority had no power to make a prohibitory order.[560] So, too, the "wives of men in the first class Army Reserve," to whom relief could not be actually prohibited without trouble with the War Office, were declared not to need constant relief, as "an able-bodied woman with the Government allowance and such assistance as her husband ought to provide from his pay and allowances should have no difficulty in finding, if not immediately, at least within a reasonable period after her husband's departure, sufficient employment to enable her to maintain adequately herself and her children." But outdoor relief might be given for a short period, and, it was suggested, on loan.[561] Even to widows, who, it was now recognised, accounted for a third of the whole pauper population,[562] outdoor relief was—apparently for the first time in the whole history of the Central Authority from 1834, so far as we can find—now officially discouraged. It was strongly recommended that it should not be given at all to "any able-bodied widow with one child only." Even where there were "more than one child, it may be desirable to take one or more of the children into the workhouse in preference to giving outdoor relief."[563] It is characteristic that this policy was not based on any consideration of what was the appropriate treatment for the child, but was regarded only as a "test," by which it was intended to exclude every widow who could possibly maintain herself and family without poor relief. Six years later we have it observed, as a capital drawback to this policy, not that the children might suffer by being taken into the workhouse, but that "since the passing of the Elementary Education Acts this offer as a test of destitution has not the same effect as previously, inasmuch as the children being required to attend school, the mothers cannot have the benefit of any earnings which otherwise the children might obtain."[564] And though the Central Authority refused, in 1877, to make illegal the grant of outdoor relief to "widows within six months of their widowhood"—declaring, indeed, that "a widow, with or without children, could not, on the death of her husband, in all cases be required to go into the workhouse"—it was not obscurely hinted that "it may be that the period of six months now allowed is too long," and that "the guardians should exercise their discretion in dealing with each case according to its merits."[565] The example of the Bradfield Union, where "the widow's month" had, since about 1873, been substituted for "the widow's six months," was always being commended to boards of guardians by the inspectorate. Moreover, in the Metropolis, at Manchester, at Birmingham, and various other places, it was strongly recommended in these years that outdoor relief to able-bodied independent women should be given only with a labour test; which might be (as at Manchester) "the enforced silence and order of the needle-room," where the women, at any rate, learnt to knit, and sew, and darn a stocking, or, as at Birmingham and Poplar, what Mr. Corbett called "the comparative licence and desultory work of the ordinary oakum room."[566] The task of oakum picking was eventually preferred by the Central Authority, and, down to the last decade of the century, it was this that was recommended to boards of guardians. The effect of this long-continued and persistent pressure for the first twenty years of the Local Government Board, without any alteration in the legal status of women by order or statute, is seen in the statistics of outdoor relief. The able-bodied women getting outdoor relief on 1st January 1871, numbered 116,407.[567] On 1st January 1892, they had been brought down to 53,571, the reduction having been principally in: (a) wives of able-bodied men; (b) single women without children; and (c) wives of men in gaol, in the Army, Navy, etc., or otherwise absent. But the number of widows on outdoor relief had also been reduced from 53,502 in 1873 to 36,627 on 1st January 1892.[568]

After 1885, though some of the inspectors continued to recommend, with regard to women, the strict policy of 1871,[569] the Local Government Board itself, so far as we can discover, reverted to silence on the point, and gave no advice.

D.—Children

(i.) On Outdoor Relief

There seems to have been, so far as regards children, no explicit change in policy in 1871. To take first the 336,870 children under sixteen who were on outdoor relief on 1st January 1871[570]—almost exactly one-third of the aggregate pauperism—we see continued the same ignoring of their general condition. We do not find that the inspectors ever investigated what was happening to these children or that the Central Authority ever made any official inquiry, still less issued any order, on the subject. The general policy of restricting outdoor relief, which we have sufficiently described, had incidentally the effect, in the course of twenty years, of reducing the number of children on outdoor relief by nearly one-half.[571]

On one point, indeed, that of education, as we have seen, Parliament had explicitly over-ridden the implied contention that the Poor Law Authorities had no responsibility for the welfare of the children on outdoor relief. The policy of Denison's Act of 1855, which had been comparatively little acted upon, was extended in 1873 so as to make it compulsory on boards of guardians to see that such children between five and thirteen were regularly at school.[572] The guardians were even required to pay the school fees for children—even illegitimate children—who were not paupers, if they needed this, and the parents did not thereby become paupers.[573] We see the Central Authority communicating these decisions of the Legislature without comment, and the boards of guardians carrying them out as they chose;[574] sometimes even taking it upon themselves to petition the Education Department to relax the requirement of schooling after twelve, as being hard on the parent, useless to the child, and leading to "much necessary work being left undone," especially "the eradication of pernicious weeds."[575]

We may see further imposition of responsibility on the boards of guardians for the well-being of the children of the poor, in the series of Acts for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Already in 1868 boards of guardians had been expressly directed by statute to institute proceedings against parents who neglected their children.[576] In 1888 the Central Authority reminded the guardians of the power they had thus had for twenty years, without often making use of it.[577] In 1889 Parliament enacted that any person having the custody of a child under sixteen who "wilfully ill-treats, neglects, abandons, or exposes such child, or causes or procures such child to be ill-treated, neglected, abandoned, or exposed, in a manner likely to cause such child unnecessary suffering or injury to its health, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour," and that the guardians might, "out of the funds under their control, pay the reasonable costs and expenses of any proceedings" which they direct to be taken. They were not definitely required to take such proceedings, but Parliament laid the duty upon them to do so. The Act of 1894 made the provisions more explicit, and defined injury to health so as to include "injury to or loss of sight, or hearing, or limb, or organ of the body, and any mental derangement."[578]

These statutes were applicable, among others, to the 170,000 children on outdoor relief, many of whom were plainly underfed, housed in insanitary conditions, half-clothed, and generally treated in a manner "likely to cause injury" to their health; but we do not find that the boards of guardians realised the great increase of power and responsibility thus entrusted to them. The Central Authority, which observed mildly that Parliament evidently meant the guardians to institute proceedings, did not point out to them the applicability of the new statutes to the children on outdoor relief; and the boards of guardians, so far as we can ascertain, seldom or never acted on them. In 1904, accordingly, the power to pay the expenses of prosecution was transferred to county and borough authorities, so that the guardians ceased to be responsible for taking proceedings; but the workhouse remains a "place of safety" to which a constable or other person authorised by a Justice may take a child, the guardians are required to provide for the reception of any child so brought to the workhouse, and the master is bound to admit such child if there is sufficient accommodation.[579]

After 1890 we find the responsibility of the Poor Law authorities for all the outdoor paupers beginning to be recognised by the inspectorate. "The absolute responsibility of the guardians for the material well-being of every one who is in receipt of outdoor relief,"[580] said Mr. Davy in 1893, had been officially recognised by the District Nurses Order, to which we shall recur. "If any relief at all is given to an applicant," Mr. Davy laid it down, "it is the plain duty of the guardians to take precautions to insure that ... the pauper is sufficiently fed, clothed, and lodged."[581] This was notoriously not the case in many unions, the children especially being in an evil plight. "In many unions," said Mr. Baldwyn Fleming, in 1891, "the relieving officer and the inspector of nuisances could show guardians cases ... where large families are living in cottages too small for them, and the accommodation is in almost every respect unsatisfactory, where the children have little but rags to cover them by day or night, where school attendance is avoided to the utmost, where the feeding only just escapes starvation, where the physical and moral education of the children are equally impracticable, where infant life is one constant struggle with misery and privation."[582] The demoralising association of the outdoor pauper children with the pay-station was specially denounced by another inspector. "What," he said, "is the sense, I would ask—I do ask in board rooms—of all this trouble and outlay to put the children into cottage homes or scattered homes, to keep them, in fact, altogether away from the workhouse, if while doing all this the very same authority permit the precisely similar children of the outdoor poor to haunt the pay-stations, to hang about workhouse gates, or to sit mixed up in waiting-rooms with adult paupers.... The children, early in life, often at times when they ought to be at school, have their eyes opened to the facility with which by exaggerating your impecunious condition, 2s. 6d. or 3s. a week can be got without the labour of earning it.... The master of one of the board schools had written ... to complain that three children systematically were kept from school on a particular day of the week for the purpose of drawing relief due to their parents."[583]

We cannot find, however, any order, minute, or circular explicitly taking official cognisance of the condition of these children (except in respect of the statutory requirement of school attendance); nor do the boards of guardians seem to have taken any trouble to inquire into their condition. In 1901 the Central Authority had reported to it, at its special request (in connection with the adequacy of the amount granted, especially for the aged), the amounts usually given in outdoor relief. In the majority of unions it must then have appeared that the amount allowed for the support of each child on outdoor relief was either the 1s. and one loaf per week, which had had the sanction of Mr. Corbett in 1869,[584] or frequently 1s. 6d. per week. The Bradford Board of Guardians, however, if no other, reported that it allowed to deserving widows with dependent children 4s. for the first child, 3s. for the second, and 2s. for each additional child (besides 5s. for the mother herself).[585] We do not find that any official view has been expressed as to this diversity.

At the very end of the period we find Parliament suddenly insisting on the responsibility of the boards of guardians for the condition, not only of the children on outdoor relief, but of all children in so far as sufficiency of food is concerned. By the Act of 1906 special provision is made for children at school who are in need of food. This Act, embodied in a General Order, was communicated to boards of guardians in a circular which explains the exact degree of responsibility which, in the opinion of the Central Authority, Parliament has thereby imposed on them. A parent is bound to supply his children with necessary food, and if he is unable to do so should apply to the guardians for help. When a father, being able to supply food, neglects to do so, or being unable neglects to apply to the guardians, so that the child is underfed, a "special application" on behalf of the child may be made to the guardians or relieving officer "by the managers, or by a teacher duly empowered by the managers, of a public elementary school, or by an officer duly empowered by the local education authority." If the food is urgently needed it is to be supplied at once, as a loan to the father, and he is to be informed as soon as possible that it has been so given. When there is no such urgency, the father is to be informed that food will be supplied before it is given, that he may have the opportunity of providing it himself; and the guardians are to inquire whether the need is due to habitual neglect; if it is so, the relief shall (and in any case it may) be given on loan.

Whenever relief under this order is given on loan, the guardians are obliged to take proceedings for its recovery, unless the Local Government Board specially approves of their not doing so, which approval would only be obtainable in very special circumstances, e.g. if it were obviously impossible to recover the amount. It is held to be particularly important that these proceedings should always be taken, as they are the only means of safeguarding against abuse, for the rule that, as a condition of relief, the able-bodied father must enter the workhouse or be set to work by the guardians is specially abrogated in cases under this order, as being inapplicable to them. The order does not apply to any child who is blind or deaf and dumb, nor in the case of any relative except the father, nor if the child is not resident with the father. Relief is not to be ordered on a "special application" for a longer period than one month. "Where a special application is renewed within a short time, say six months, after the expiration of the period for which the relief has been given, and further relief has to be allowed, or where within this period special application is made and relief is given in respect of some other member of the same family, and the cause of the application is the habitual neglect of the father to provide food, the Board think that the guardians should consider whether the case is one in which proceedings could be taken against the father, either under the Vagrancy Act 1824, or the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act 1904."

Finally, the Board "trust that the boards of guardians, particularly those of populous unions in which cases of underfed children more frequently occur, will endeavour to co-operate with the local education authorities in dealing with really necessitous cases, whilst exercising due discrimination so as to avoid the pauperisation and consequent disfranchisement of parents who ought not to be brought under the Poor Law."[586]

The number of outdoor pauper children is now slightly more than in 1892, there being on 1st January 1906, 179,870 such, 96,804 being widows' children, 72,721 children with both parents or with fathers only, and 10,345 having no parents.[587]

Turning now to the much smaller number of children in Poor Law institutions, of whom there were on January 1st 1871, 55,832[588] (together with a very small number "boarded out"), we see a similar continuity of policy in the Central Authority, but in these cases it is continuity in the policy of a constant enlargement of responsibility, and of a steady improvement in the provision.[589]

(ii.) In Poor Law Schools

The main pre-occupation of the Central Authority since 1871, so far as children are concerned, has been the increase, progressive improvement, and novel development of the Poor Law school entirely removed from the workhouse.[590] The recommendations and incitements to boards of guardians to remove from the workhouse the healthy children of school age are incessant down to 1900.[591] Such children are ordinarily accommodated in Poor Law schools, either district schools, where these exist, or much more frequently "separated" or "workhouse schools," which may be of the old aggregated type, or "cottage homes" or "scattered homes." The dramatic change from the views of 1850 is the abandonment of the "district school." The aggregated type, held in such esteem previously to 1871, fell gradually into disfavour, and is now known as the "barrack school." Already in 1871 Mr. Corbett was criticising these schools as being far too large (as well as too indiscriminate in the kind of children admitted) to be really successful.[592] After repeated outbreaks of malignant ophthalmia, and continued experience of the mental draw-backs, especially of the large girls' schools, the Central Authority abandoned its policy, and presently came to decline to sanction proposals which would have the effect of "extending the large schools in the Metropolis and ... most readily [to] entertain any proposals for applying to other purposes any of these large buildings, subject to other provision of a suitable character being made for the children."[593] The barrack school system grew up out of the five Metropolitan school districts; these also therefore shared in the condemnation, and in 1899 two had been dissolved.[594]

A "separate school" belonging to a single union or separate parish would naturally be much smaller than a district school, but nothing is said as to the merits or demerits of an aggregated school of moderate size. The method which seems to have won the approval of the Central Authority is that of "cottage homes," or the "block system," under which children are grouped in bodies of not more than twenty-five or thirty in separate houses on a common ground of considerable acreage, and with suitable common buildings, such as baths, chapels, etc., under the supervision, not only of "house-mothers," but also of a superintendent of the whole. Since 1894 the Board have constantly approved the erection of schools on this plan; they always require that the cottage homes should be entirely separated from the workhouse. The outstanding feature of this system is the great expense.[595]

An alternative plan is that of "scattered homes," i.e. cottages taken here and there throughout the union, not adjacent to each other, wherein the children live under the care of matrons or foster parents, and whence they attend the public elementary schools. In some cases the results of this system have been good, but the Central Authority received reports of certain cases of bad management, which made it cautious in regard to other proposals in that direction. The adoption of the system in Camberwell was sanctioned on the conditions that the guardians could satisfy the Central Authority that they could get proper houses for the scattered homes, and also that they could be quite sure of having an adequate system of inspection.[596]

Notwithstanding the great expense of these highly elaborated boarding-schools for the indoor pauper boys and girls—an expense reaching between £100 and £200 capital, and between £30 and £50 annual maintenance, for each child—we see the Central Authority constantly pressing for their multiplication. The very idea of "less eligibility" has been forgotten by the inspectors. To quote one of them in 1902: "The number and nature of obstacles (to the removal of children from the workhouse) conjured up in the minds of many of the country guardians is," he says, "quite surprising. One idea, which proves a great stumbling-block, is that the children will be put in a position above their deserts, and above that of the children living in their own homes with their parents."[597]

On 1st January 1906, the total number of children in "district or separate schools" was no more than 12,393, whilst in "cottage and other homes" there were 14,590; and 11,368 were in other institutions (mostly certified industrial schools, conducted by philanthropic committees not for profit).[598]

(iii.) The Workhouse Children

Notwithstanding the desire of the Central Authority to remove the children from the workhouses, there remained on 1st January 1906 no fewer than 21,526 in these institutions.[599] The Central Authority has, for instance, never objected to the retention in workhouses of children of tender years, or of children of any age, in the interval before they can be sent to school. In 1889, indeed, it was especially forbidden to send children to separate schools under the age of three.[600] Though no alteration has been made in the General Consolidated Order of 1847, by which the internal economy of the workhouse is professedly governed, the Central Authority laid it down in 1895 that "in every workhouse in which there are several children too young to attend school, a separate nursery—dry, spacious, light, and well ventilated—should be provided, and should be suitably furnished."[601]

The children are always to be under the supervision of paid officers, a recommendation made in the days of the Poor Law Board, but still up to 1895 frequently urged—showing that at any rate till then it had not been effectively insisted on. Even in that year the Board had to write: "In no case should the care of young children be entrusted to inferior or weak-minded inmates"—a qualification which weakens the force of the prohibition of the use of paupers at all. "Unless young children are placed under responsible supervision they cannot be said to be 'properly taken care of'";[602] and again, more generally, "all children in workhouses should be under the charge of officers, either industrial trainers or caretakers, and should not be left to the charge of adult paupers."[603] The medical officer is responsible for the children's health, and with a view to the prevention of disease he is expected to inspect them, whether they are ill or not, "frequently and individually." In this connection may be mentioned a "Memorandum relative to Ophthalmia of New-born Children,"[604] in which the Board requested medical officers to give each nurse or midwife acting under their directions such written instructions as they might deem necessary in order to give effect to the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the subject. In 1882 the Central Authority refused to sanction any women's committee;[605] but by 1897 the guardians were urged to appoint women's committees for the supervision of the women and children in the workhouse.

It is interesting to trace the growth of opinion with regard to the provision for the children of means of enjoyment. For half a century after 1834 the Central Authority allowed no toys whatever for all its tens of thousands of indoor children of all ages. An auditor in 1883 disallowed sums spent on toys for sick children, and Mr. Hibbert was questioned in Parliament. He said "there have been similar disallowances previously, and the Local Government Board, while relieving the persons surcharged of their liability, have held that expenditure of this character should be defrayed by private liberality, rather than out of rates compulsorily levied." The disallowances had therefore hitherto been confirmed, the payments being thus decided to be actually illegal. "The subject," continued Mr. Hibbert, "had been considered in connection with the recent surcharge, and it is proposed to hold that the expenditure was within the legal powers of the guardians, and the auditor will be communicated with, with a view to a reversal of his decision."[606] It is not clear which of these conflicting decisions of the Central Authority was in accordance with law.

In 1891 the Board wrote: "The supply of illustrated books and periodicals of children is especially desirable. Admirable publications of this class can now be obtained at a very small cost, and where it appears to be necessary an expenditure by the guardians for this purpose should, in the Board's opinion, be urged upon them. The question of the provision of bats, balls, skipping-ropes, etc., for the children and toys for the infants, is also one which the Board are desirous should receive the attention of the inspectors on the occasion of their inspections of the workhouses."[607]

"Special care should be taken that a sufficient part of each day is set apart for recreation only, and that the children should be allowed to take exercise frequently outside the workhouse premises, and that they should be encouraged in healthy games of all sorts."[608] The guardians were allowed to take girls from the Forest Gate Schools to see the sights of London, provided the places visited were approved by the school inspector,[609] and also to pay a donation to the funds of a Band of Hope, when the Poor Law children were allowed to share in the work of the society.[610]

In recent years, we see the inspectorate urging that even children of tender years ought not to live in the workhouse. This is a new idea which has not yet received more formal endorsement. As children under three may not, by the Central Authority's own order of 10th February 1899, be sent to a separate Poor Law school, there is as yet no place for them but the workhouse. "Nothing has been said," observed Mr. Jenner Fust, in 1901, "about the nursery children, at present retained at the workhouse till three years old, or even more, though the case of these requires attention as much as that of the older ones. They are almost always largely under the care of inmates, and the conditions are seldom improved even when these inmates are their own mothers.... I cannot but think that nursery homes with trained nurses as foster-mothers should form part of the equipment of all cottage homes, or, if a separate receiving home be established, the nursery children might conveniently be placed there, the removal from the workhouse not being delayed beyond the period when a child is able to walk."[611]

With regard to the education of the older workhouse children the Central Authority has changed its policy. It does not actually forbid the guardians to arrange for a school within the workhouse, which was the policy of 1850. But the plan now favoured is to send them out to the public elementary schools, as is also done when they are placed in scattered homes. At first the Central Authority only sanctioned this course with reluctance, only when the number of such children was small, and with special recommendations as to the appointment of officers to supervise the children out of school hours and impart industrial training.[612] In the case of one union, they "urged the guardians to reconsider the question, with a view to the appointment either of a caretaker of the children or a porter, who could give that attention to the boys when in the workhouse which was of such importance to their future welfare."[613] Later, perhaps, when the principle of paid "caretakers" had become more fully accepted, the Central Authority gave the system much more hearty support, noted its prevalence with satisfaction, and considered it highly desirable that children in Poor Law establishments should thus be given opportunities of mixing with other children.

When there is a choice of elementary schools, each child should be sent to the one conducted according to its own religious creed, and it was also recommended that the children should be sent out to Sunday schools of their own denomination. This denomination is ordinarily that of the child's parents, but if the religion is not known, he is to be brought up in the Church of England:[614] if the father changes his creed, that of the child changes also.[615]

While in the workhouse the children are to receive instruction in industrial and manual work, but the Board strongly resisted proposals for sending them out to work in factories.[616]

Subject to these conditions, the 21,526 children living in the workhouse remain there to the knowledge and with the sanction of the Central Authority—at least, this is what the guardians contend, and, so far as we can discover, there is no order, circular, or minute to the contrary.[617]

Meanwhile the guardians are pressed to bestow on them an amount of salaried care and expensive attention that surprises the more old-fashioned among them, who have not yet quite abandoned the principle of "less eligibility." "One matter of some interest," says Mr. Baldwyn Fleming in 1902, "is the curious reluctance displayed by country guardians to have the children's teeth cared for." The argument used is, "The ratepayers do not take their children to the dentist, and why should we do so?" (in the case of the indoor Poor Law children.)[618]

(iv.) The Education of the Indoor Pauper Child

Down to 1897 the Central Authority had contemplated and recognised in its orders and circulars that the pauper children would spend only about half the school time in ordinary school subjects, the other half being devoted to what was euphemistically called "industrial training."[619] This meant, in practice, the employment of the children in domestic work, gardening, mending clothes or boots, and so on, the persons selected as "industrial trainers" not being required to have any pedagogic qualifications or power to teach, and being paid in fact only at workmen's rates. In 1897, the rapid abandonment of the half-time system outside the workhouse led to a great advance. By the Order of that year,[620] which governs all Poor Law schools, whether they are in workhouses or district or separate schools, the half-time system is greatly discouraged. Industrial training takes a subordinate place. The Order fixes the number of hours during which the children are to be under school instruction, and provides for a ten minutes' rest in every attendance of two hours or more, limits the number of hours which may be occupied in manual or industrial work, and provides for one whole holiday or two half-holidays in each week, in addition to allowing six weeks' holidays in the year if the guardians choose to grant it. One object of the Order was to secure that children should not be unduly pressed with manual or industrial work in addition to the school instruction. The religious teaching required by any Orders in force is to be given in addition to the school hours. In 1877 it had been ordered that any time which might be devoted to drill or industrial training, other than a reasonable time for needlework, in the case of girls, should not be included in the time prescribed for attendance.[621] The present Order, in more general terms, allows school instruction to include "any of the subjects for which grants may be made under the Code of Regulations of the Education Department, for the time being in force, except cookery, laundry work, dairy work, or cottage gardening." Of the time allowed for needlework, not more than one-third is to be spent in mending; the rest is to be occupied in plain needlework, knitting, and cutting out and making garments. When children attend school for half-time, it is preferred that they shall receive the school instruction in the morning, and the industrial training in the afternoon.[622] There is now no superior limit to the education that may be provided for a pauper child within the proper ages. As early as 1878 payment for the attendance of the workhouse girls at a school of cookery was held to be legal. Guardians are allowed to pay the fees for the instruction of the children at a technical institute when they see fit to do so,[623] quite irrespective of whether or not the children of the poorest independent labourer can get such advantages.

It may be noted that a Special Order of 30th April 1887 (not mentioned in the Annual Reports, or otherwise communicated to boards of guardians) enables the Forest Gate District School to allow a class of the elder girls to go out and buy their food, spending not more than 3s. 6d. a week each, and prepare it for their own consumption, so as to get some practical experience of ordinary life. By another Order of 5th August 1889, the children in this one school are allowed to buy their own outfits (up to £3 10s.). We do not find that the Central Authority has yet made these privileges general, nor extended them to any other indoor pauper children.[624]

On 1st April 1904, the responsibility for the inspection of the education of the Poor Law Schools, and of pauper children in certified schools, was transferred to the Board of Education thus reverting to the policy prior to 1863.[625]

(v.) Boarding-out

The boarding-out system was in 1871 still on its trial, having been authorised for scarcely a year, and the Central Authority was very guarded in expressing any opinion on its merits; it gradually won favour, but while mildly encouraging it the Central Authority would do nothing to force its growth. In 1900 it was referred to as one method of removing children from the workhouse,[626] but it was never thought likely to become a practical means for dealing with the mass of pauper children, as a substitute either for ordinary outdoor relief or for Poor Law schools.[627]

Boarding-out beyond the union had been first regulated by the Order of 25th November 1870. In 1877 it was found that boarding-out within the union was being largely practised, it being, as the Central Authority had itself held, legally only ordinary out-relief, requiring no sanction. This also was then regulated by a General Order.[628] Both these Orders were re-issued with slight modifications in 1889, the former to every union in the country, the latter to all but the most populous town unions. Again, in 1905, the Order for boarding-out beyond the union was slightly altered and re-issued.[629]

The operation of these Orders was limited to certain classes of children; in 1877 to those deserted by their parents, or whose parents were dead, undergoing penal servitude, suffering from mental disease, or out of England; by the Orders of 1889, children whose parents were permanently bedridden or disabled were added to the list; and in 1905 children adopted by the guardians were formally included, as such children could previously only be boarded out if they were also orphan or deserted according to the definition. The Central Authority refused its sanction to a proposal to board out the illegitimate children of able-bodied women in the workhouse.[630] It was twice decided that when out-relief is given to a child living with a person not legally liable for its support, such child must be considered as boarded out.[631] There is no age limit for boarding-out within the union, but a child may not be first boarded out beyond the union under two, nor when over ten, unless in the same home with a brother or sister under that age.

In view of this gradual adoption of the boarding-out system as a permanent form of the treatment of children under the Poor Law, it is instructive to compare the requirements which the Central Authority makes to ensure the proper maintenance of the boarded-out children with the policy just described in respect of the children on ordinary outdoor relief.

The various Orders all lay practically the same duties on the foster-parent. He is to sign an undertaking that: "He will bring up the child as one of his own children, and provide the child with proper food, lodging and washing, and endeavour to train the child in habits of truthfulness, obedience, personal cleanliness and industry, as well as in suitable domestic and outdoor work, so far as may be consistent with the law; that he will take care that the child shall attend duly at church or chapel according to the religious creed to which the child belongs, and shall attend school according to the provisions of the law for the time being; that he will provide for the proper repair and renewal of the child's clothing, and that in case of the child's illness he will forthwith report such illness to the guardians and to the boarding-out committee; and that he will at all times permit the child to be visited and the house to be inspected by any member of the boarding-out committee, and by any person specially appointed for that purpose by the guardians or by the Local Government Board. The undertaking shall also contain an engagement on the part of the foster-parent that he will, upon the demand of a person duly authorised in writing by the boarding-out committee, or by the guardians, give up possession of the child."[632] The 1905 undertaking is slightly different in terms, the chief variation being an omission of the reference to "domestic and outdoor work," because cases had occurred in which these words had been pleaded as an excuse for overtaxing the working capacity of the children.[633]

Foster-parents may never be persons in receipt of relief, or whose only means of support is the allowance made for the children. Children should not, except in special cases, be boarded with relations, nor in any home where the father is employed in night work; foster-parents employed in outdoor work are preferred to those occupied in sedentary labour.[634] They should also (both, in the case of married couples) be of the same religious creed as the child,[635] live within two miles from the school where the child is to attend, and within five miles—preferably three—from the house of some member of the committee. Attention is to be paid to decent accommodation in the homes, and to the separation of the sexes in the sleeping-rooms. Children over seven are not allowed to sleep in the same room with married couples. No child is to be boarded out in a house where sleeping accommodation is afforded to an adult lodger.[636]

The number of children to be placed in any one home was at first limited to two—or four, if all were brothers and sisters,—but it was soon found that further restrictions were necessary for the prevention of overcrowding. Accordingly, it is ruled that not more than one child may be placed in a home where a child is boarded by any other agency and none where there is more than one such child; no child is to be boarded in a home where, with him, there would be more than five children resident. The clothing provided for a boarded-out child is to be of a good, ordinary character, with no suggestion of a workhouse uniform. The highly expensive but most advantageous service of dentistry may be paid for by the guardians. The Central Authority strongly disapproved of a proposal made to it, under which a child was to be sent out to work, and earn wages, while the full allowance was still being paid by the guardians. "If a boarded-out child is eligible under the Education and Factory Acts for employment, the boarding-out committee should report the case to the guardians, who should obtain the consent of the Local Government Board to any proposal to relieve the child whilst in receipt of regular wages. A foster-parent should not be permitted to allow a child to go to work for wages unless the guardians, with the assent of the Board, have previously assented thereto."[637]

Prior to 1877 the Central Authority held that children boarded out within the union, being merely cases of outdoor relief, did not require these precautions. From 1877 onward similar precautions were required in their cases. Such children became thus differentiated from other children on outdoor relief, on whose behalf no such requirements are insisted on. For the boarded-out children a payment was approved of 4s. a week each (afterwards raised to 5s.), a sum to be contrasted with the 1s. or 1s. 6d. for each child which is the usual sum allowed for each child on ordinary outdoor relief.[638]

In equally marked contrast with its attitude with regard to the other children on outdoor relief, the Central Authority has been vigilant to secure for the boarded-out children systematic inspection. Mr. Chaplin said in Parliament: "I approve of, and warmly sympathise with boarding-out, subject to one condition, which is of surpassing importance, namely, that the inspection of the children boarded out shall be adequate and effective. I cannot conceive a position of greater misery and hardship than that of some poor unfortunate little child boarded out to some one who takes care of it, not for love of the child, but simply for the purpose of making a gain and a profit out of it.... So far as it is possible to promote that adequate inspection ... and wherever it is possible to board out on these conditions, the Board gives its assistance."[639]

The children boarded within the union are to visited by the medical officer quarterly, whether or not they are reported ill, and by the relieving officer—who pays the foster-parents at their residence,—ordinarily weekly, and may also be visited by the guardians or any other person appointed for the purpose by the guardians or the Local Government Board. If there is a boarding-out committee (which is permissive under the 1889 Boarding-out in Unions Order) a member thereof must visit every six weeks; the inspection by the medical officer may then be dispensed with, and the system becomes more nearly like that for boarding outside the union. Under the latter, the responsibility is thrown on the committee, and unless they fail the guardians are not allowed themselves to inspect. The Local Government Board also sends an inspector from time to time, with the object of discovering how the committees do their work, for it is on the efficiency of the committees that the whole system of boarding-out depends.[640]

When the children are thus thoroughly supervised by the committees, and the committees are kept up to their work by the general inspectors, the Board do not favour any further inspection by the guardians. "One of the main objects of the boarding-out system is that pauper children should become merged in the general population; but if a child boarded out is to be examined regularly by a medical man, supervised by a committee of the guardians, and inspected by a Government inspector, it would appear to imply that no confidence whatever is to be placed in the boarding-out committees under whom the children are placed, although for any success attending the boarding-out system it is on these committees that we must rely."[641] Besides, "where children are boarded out by guardians at a long distance from their own union or parish, it may often be inconvenient, except in the case of many children being placed in the same neighbourhood, for the guardians to arrange for the visitation of the children by their own officer as frequently as the Board deem indispensable, when inspection by members of the committee has ceased. It follows, therefore, that if the voluntary boarding-out committees should allow their vigilance or their interest to flag, the guardians will, in all probability, seldom have any alternative but to take back the children."[642]

The boarded-out children, thus elaborately inspected and expensively provided for, had, by 1st January 1906, slowly risen to 8,781;[643] but they were even then only one-seventh of those in institutions, and only one-twentieth of those on ordinary outdoor relief.

(vi.) Apprenticeship

We may note a tendency to enlarge the responsibilities, powers and duties of the guardians for successfully launching the children in the world—an enlargement which plainly loses sight altogether of the principle of "less eligibility." We see the Central Authority making elaborate suggestions for the care of children apprenticed or in service, and issuing an Order enabling the guardians to provide outfits when children were sent out, without previously asking for sanction, which had before been necessary under some of the Orders. When the Central Authority had been asked for such sanction it had taken the opportunity of objecting to a child being sent to service without money wages, or to an inn or public-house (unless in exceptional circumstances), or to any place where the conditions of service seemed unsatisfactory, and of requiring to be satisfied that the child was qualified for employment as required by the Education Acts. By allowing guardians to obtain outfits without obtaining express sanction the Central Authority relinquished this opportunity of control over the conditions of service. It therefore referred to these points in the Circular on the Order, and expressed its confidence that the guardians would see that all was satisfactory in these respects.[644] It did not approve of the Poor Law children being engaged as servants to officers of Poor Law establishments—situations which, like those in public-houses, etc., were left to be filled by the less carefully protected children of independent parents or those on outdoor relief—considering it desirable that the children should be severed from all connection with pauper surroundings as soon as possible after attaining an age at which they can secure employment.[645]

When children are first apprenticed they receive very low wages or more often none at all, and there is frequently a difficulty in providing for their maintenance. We have already referred to the doubt of the Central Authority as to how to treat the experiment of the Norwich Guardians on this point. Though these Guardians kept their homes this doubt apparently continued. The Keighley Guardians wished to use one of their cottage homes as a residence for working boys from the workhouse, but the Central Authority refused its assent, stating that it had no power to render such a course legal. Nevertheless it allowed a lad who received no wages, but was entirely engaged in learning his trade, to reside in the workhouse during the term of his apprenticeship,[646] and to children earning low wages insufficient to support them outdoor relief may be given. "In such cases the Board have required to be furnished with an assurance that the guardians had satisfied themselves that the amount allowed by them would, with the weekly wages paid by the master, be adequate to provide for the maintenance and clothing of the apprentice, either alone or in association with other boys. They also required a statement of the weekly wages ordinarily paid in the locality to apprentices in the particular trade, and to be informed (a) of the amount of weekly relief the guardians proposed to grant; (b) the period during which such relief should continue; and (c) whether, as the apprentice's wages increased, the relief would be correspondingly reduced."[647]

In 1904 the Central Authority was prepared to acquiesce, subject to the details of the scheme proving satisfactory, in a proposal to establish a home for boys over whom the guardians had acquired parental rights, the boys receiving board and lodging therein for so long in each case, as the wages were insufficient to enable them to obtain suitable accommodation elsewhere.[648]

The Central Authority had, in 1873, been doubtful how far a relieving officer should interfere if he found, when visiting a servant or apprentice, that the master or mistress, instead of paying the stipulated wages, gave clothing, which might be old, useless, or valued at an exorbitant rate. It merely told the guardians that he should make a special inquiry, and report if the practice appeared to be actually injurious to the personal condition of the child, so as to amount to "cruel or illegal treatment in any respect."[649]

Apprenticeship to the sea service[650] had, previously to 1894, been left outside the scope of the orders regulating other apprenticeships, being subject to special provisions under the Merchant Shipping Acts, and also regulated by the Board of Trade. That Board made some alterations in the form of indenture in 1895, and the Local Government Board issued a circular to guardians calling attention to the changes. The master was required to pay to the superintendent any balance of spending money, share of salvage and other perquisites due to an apprentice after his daily or weekly allowance had been paid, and the superintendent was to apply such sums for the boy's benefit in the expenses of holidays, payment of fines, or other ways. This provision was considered by the Local Government Board to be of great importance, as it would "enable the magistrates in many cases to punish a boy for breaches of discipline, without committing him to prison." The new form of indenture also required the master to allow each apprentice a reasonable holiday in every year.

The same circular referred to recommendations made by Mr. Davy and Mr. Berrington, in a Report on the Fishing Apprenticeship System, as to the desirability of continued supervision by the guardians after the boys were apprenticed, and of arranging for reports to be made to the guardians in cases of absconding or other grave offence on the part of the boys, and also as to the expediency of giving future apprentices some preliminary instruction in cooking.[651]

So far as we can make out from the published documents, the use of the power of apprenticeship is—in the view of the guardians and the Central Authority alike—practically limited to the children maintained in Poor Law institutions (indoor paupers), numbering 50,669 on 1st January 1906, together with those outdoor pauper children who are either "boarded out" (in the technical sense), numbering 8,781, or maintained in certified schools, etc., numbering 9,364, making an aggregate total of 68,814 children to whom the Central Authority's policy of apprenticeship is assumed to be applicable.[652] We do not find any suggestion that any similar policy is applicable to the other 166,258 children on outdoor relief,[653] about the starting in life of whom we can find no documents.

(vii.) Adoption

From 1871 to 1889 the powers and responsibilities of Poor Law authorities with regard to children whose parents claimed the control of them were, as against the parents, extremely limited. The Central Authority clung to the principle of parental authority. In 1887, Mr. Ritchie said: "No doubt there are some instances in which the interests of children are prejudiced by their parents claiming them from the guardians, but I should not be prepared to propose legislation which would enable a board of guardians to withhold a child from its parent when claimed by him."[654]

Two years later Parliament over-rode this contention of official irresponsibility, and passed the first of a series of Acts under which guardians might themselves assume parental responsibilities and unsuitable parents might be deprived of the custody of their children; and the guardians of the poor might become in loco parentis, even up to eighteen years of age. By the Act of 1889, "where a child is maintained by the guardians of any union and was deserted by its parent," or if the "parent is imprisoned under a sentence of penal servitude or imprisonment in respect of an offence committed against a child," "the guardians may at any time resolve that such child shall be under the control of the guardians until it reaches the age, if a boy, of sixteen, and, if a girl, of eighteen years"; such a resolution of the guardians is not irrevocable; they may rescind it, or, without rescinding it, "permit such child to be either permanently or temporarily under the control of such parent, or of any other relative or of any friend." If the parent is aggrieved by the resolution, he may appeal to a Court of Summary Jurisdiction, and the Court, if satisfied "that the child has not been maintained by the guardians, or was not deserted by such parent, or that it is for the benefit of the child that it should be either permanently or temporarily under the control of such parent, or that the resolution of the guardians should be determined, may make an Order accordingly, and any such Order shall be complied with by the guardians, and if the Order determines the resolution, the resolution shall be thereby determined." The "powers and rights" of a parent which the guardians may assume are subject to one limitation, in that no resolution can authorise them to have the child educated in any religious creed other than that in which the child would otherwise have been educated, i.e. that of its parents.[655]

The Central Authority duly commended the Act among other legislation of the session to the notice of the boards of guardians in an official circular.[656]

Such was the original form of this law; but the experiences of the Central Authority and the guardians as to its working led them to get passed successive measures developing its details in various respects. The Court's power of determining the resolution of the guardians was limited by the Act of 1890, which provides that: "where a parent has (a) abandoned or deserted his child; or (b) allowed his child to be brought up by another person at that person's expense, or by the guardians of a Poor Law union, for such a length of time and under such circumstances as to satisfy the Court that the parent was unmindful of his parental duties, the Court shall not make an order for the delivery of the child to the parent unless the parent has satisfied the Court that, having regard to the welfare of the child, he is a fit person to have the custody of the child." Under this law, therefore, not only the Poor Law guardians, but any other person who has brought up the child at his own expense may acquire the right of custody in the place of the parent. This Act is not to "affect the power of the Court to consult the wishes of the child ... or diminish the right which any child now possesses to the exercise of its own free choice." The Court was also given the power to make such order as it may think fit, "to secure that the child be brought up in the religion in which the parent has a legal right to require that the child should be brought up."[657]

The class of children to which the law applies was, at the instance of the Central Authority, considerably enlarged in 1899, and it is worth considering how extensive it now is. "Where a child is maintained by the guardians of a Poor Law union, and: (i.) the child has been deserted by its parent; or (ii.) the guardians are of opinion that by reason of mental deficiency, or of vicious habits, or mode of life, a parent of the child is unfit to have the control of it; or (iii.) a parent is unable to perform his or her parental duties by reason of being under sentence of penal servitude or of being detained under the Inebriates Act 1898; or (iv.) a parent of the child has been sentenced to imprisonment in respect of any offence against any of his or her children; or (v.) a parent of the child is permanently bedridden or disabled, and is the inmate of a workhouse, and consents to the resolution hereinafter mentioned; or (vi.) both the parents (or in the case of an illegitimate child, the mother of the child) are (or is) dead; the guardians may, at any time, resolve that until the child reaches the age of eighteen years, all the rights and powers of such parent as aforesaid, or, if both parents are dead, of the parents, in respect of the child shall, subject as in this Act mentioned, vest in the guardians." Penalties were also enacted against any person who shall knowingly assist or induce any child adopted by the guardians to leave their control. If any child maintained by the guardians is, with their consent, adopted by some other person, their responsibility for the child does not at once cease, for they are required, during three years after the date of the adoption, to cause the child to be visited at least twice a year, by some person appointed by them for the purpose; and they have the power, if they see fit, to revoke their consent to the adoption, and reassume custody of the child.[658]

Some boards of guardians—often on the suggestion of the inspectorate—promptly made use of their new powers. On 1st June 1902, the number of children already adopted up to that date was no fewer than 7724, of whom 1503 were then over fifteen.[659] It is to be noted that, though the powers are applicable to all pauper children, the Central Authority has not suggested their use except in respect of the children in Poor Law institutions (including, however, the "ins and outs"),[660] together with those technically "boarded out," or in certified schools; and we do not find that they have ever been made use of for any of the children maintained by the guardians on outdoor relief, however disastrous is their upbringing.

E.—The Sick

We broke off the description of the policy of the Central Authority with regard to the sick with the suggestive quotation from the Annual Report of the Poor Law Board in 1870, over Mr. Goschen's signature. "The economical and social advantages," said the last President of the Poor Law Board, "of free medicine to the poorer classes generally as distinguished from actual paupers, and perfect accessibility to medical advice at all times under thorough organisation, may be considered as so important in themselves as to render it necessary to weigh with the greatest care all the reasons which may be adduced in their favour."[661]

(i.) Domiciliary Treatment

So far as published documents go, we cannot find that any inquiry was made by the Local Government Board (at any rate on its Poor Law side) as to the advantage and feasibility of this suggestion of providing free medical assistance, under thorough organisation, to the poorer classes generally. There was no breach of continuity in the policy, begun in 1865, of transforming the provision for the sick paupers in the workhouse, into elaborately equipped, adequately staffed, and separately administered general hospitals, which were called Poor Law infirmaries. But in the general crusade against outdoor relief, initiated by the able and zealous inspectorate in 1871, there was no exception made for outdoor medical relief.[662] There was accordingly (just as we have shown to be the case in regard to widows and the aged) no limitation, corresponding to the express exceptions of the General Orders in favour of the sick, in the phrases condemnatory of outdoor relief generally, which are to be found in the Annual Reports and Circulars of these years. The inspectors, it is clear, made no distinction, in their persistent pressure against "outdoor relief," between medical and other relief, between hygienic advice and money doles. Mr. Longley, indeed, went so far as to condemn, expressly because it provided medical relief otherwise than in the workhouse, the whole system of Poor Law dispensaries which the Central Authority had itself just initiated and practically forced on the Metropolitan Boards of Guardians.[663] This report of Mr. Longley's was honoured by notice in the annual volume, and commended by the Local Government Board for "careful consideration."[664] There is, therefore, some warrant for the inference that the Local Government Board, under Mr. Stansfeld and Mr. Sclater-Booth, had not only put aside the suggestion of providing free medical attendance for the poorer classes generally, but also that it had now become the policy of the Central Authority—so far as we can discover, for the first time since 1834—to restrict, as far as possible, even such domiciliary medical attendance as was being given under the Poor Law to the sick poor.

It is, however, fair to say that this policy of restricting outdoor medical relief was not expressed in any alteration of the General Orders, nor, explicitly, in any published minute or circular of the Central Authority itself. In the 1871 Circular, discouraging outdoor relief generally, it is, for instance, merely suggested that all paupers receiving relief on account of temporary sickness—among whom there were at that date apparently some 119,000 sick persons[665]—should be visited at least fortnightly by the relieving officer.[666] The Central Authority clung to the general disqualification of paupers, even those in receipt of medical relief only, though the Parliamentary Secretary had to admit that: "No doubt the Legislature had made an exception in the cases of vaccination and of education, and it might be that the exception should be extended to infectious diseases."[667] But when it was pressed to impose a limit of one month to each grant of outdoor relief, the request was, on the cautious advice of the permanent advisers, definitely refused, lest hardship should be caused in cases of sickness; though it was said that the guardians themselves might put such a limit, "where such ... may properly be imposed."[668]

The Central Authority was willing to consider any proposal to amend the law, so as to allow of the compulsory removal to the workhouse of sick persons who had no proper lodging accommodation.[669] But even to a person who had refused to enter the workhouse, the guardians were not to deny outdoor medical relief if sick,[670] and in no case were the sick to be removed from their homes unless certified by the medical officer as physically able to endure the journey.[671] There was thus, even between 1871 and 1885, no explicit reversal, on grounds of Poor Law principle, of the old policy which, it will be remembered, had not been condemned by the 1834 Report of outdoor relief to the sick. If a "destitute young husband or wife were sick," Mr. Sclater-Booth, speaking as President of the Local Government Board, told the House of Commons in 1876, "they would not be taken into the workhouse, but would receive outdoor relief."[672] Two years later the Central Authority actually declared itself in favour of supplying to the sick poor who were under domiciliary treatment, not only medical attendance and maintenance, but also skilled professional nursing. There was, it said in reply to influential medical pressure, "nothing to prevent the guardians supplying such assistance," and the Central Authority was even "desirous of encouraging this arrangement as much as possible," though the insufficient supply of qualified nurses was likely to "render impracticable for some time to come any general application of the system of paid nurses in the treatment of the poor at their own homes."[673]

(ii.) Institutional Treatment

Meanwhile, however, the substitution of indoor for outdoor relief in the case of the sick[674] was being supported on grounds, not of Poor Law principle, but of medical efficiency. The transformation of the workhouses into what the Poor Law inspectors themselves began to call "State hospitals" made more striking than ever the contrast between the light, clean, and airy newly-built infirmary ward, with trained nurses, a resident doctor, complete equipment, and a scientifically determined dietary, on the one hand; and the insanitary and overcrowded hovel or slum tenement, on the other, in which the sick pauper had no other food than was provided by the pittance of outdoor relief, no further nursing than his family could supply, and no better medical attendance than the grudgingly accorded order on the district medical officer could command. Quite irrespective of "Poor Law principles," the case for institutional rather than domiciliary treatment of nearly every sick case became, to the medical experts who now advised the Central Authority, simply overwhelming. "The treatment which in sickness the poor receive in workhouses constitutes," said the Central Authority in 1878, "one of the most valuable forms of medical relief. With a considerable portion of the population, indeed, it is the only mode in which, when overtaken by sickness, their medical needs can be adequately met."[675] This policy led not only to an incessant pressure on boards of guardians to provide the "State hospitals" which had, from 1865 onwards, been expected from the guardians of all populous unions,[676] but also to a positive encouragement of sick persons, whether or not actually destitute in the technical sense of the term, to take advantage of them. We see this first with regard to infectious diseases. The hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, maintained out of the Poor Rate exclusively for paupers, and technically only workhouses like any others, soon came to be used, free of charge, by smallpox and fever patients who were not paupers.[677] It became the official policy, well understood by the Central Authority, to get removed to these Poor Law institutions every patient, whether destitute or not, who could not be adequately isolated at home.[678] Already in 1875 the Central Authority expressly authorised the medical superintendent to admit without an order any smallpox or fever patient presenting himself, if refusal to admit might involve danger,[679] and in 1887 it expressly permitted even non-urgent cases to be admitted on the certificate of any medical practitioner.[680] Nevertheless, in 1877 the Central Authority was still taking the line that "the hospitals ... of ... the Metropolitan Asylums Board are essentially intended to meet the requirements of the destitute class, and that the admission ... of persons not in need of poor relief is altogether exceptional."[681] Two years later, however, by a statute promoted by the Central Authority itself, the Metropolitan Asylums Board were expressly empowered to receive non-pauper patients, though only under contracts with the local public health authorities, by which they were to be paid for.[682] We cannot discover which vestries and district boards, if any, entered into such contracts. Not until 1883, when these fever and smallpox hospitals had been a dozen years in use by non-paupers, was the position temporarily legalised by the Diseases Prevention Act of 1883[683]—a measure also carried by the Central Authority itself—which, whilst leaving these hospitals as Poor Law institutions, administered by a Poor Law authority, and kept up out of the poor rate, declared that admission, treatment, and maintenance therein should—whether the patients were or were not otherwise paupers—not be deemed parochial relief, or carry with it any disqualification whatever.[684] Since that day we have the remarkable spectacle of the Poor Law Authorities, Central and Local, annually congratulating themselves on the fact that, year after year, they were managing to attract into these expensive Poor Law institutions, for gratuitous maintenance and treatment, a larger and larger percentage of the total number of cases notified.[685]A similar enlargement of the sphere of the Poor Law institution has, of late years, been going on in other than infectious cases. "The poorer classes generally," to use Mr. Goschen's words, "as distinguished from actual paupers," came more and more to appreciate the practical distinction between the workhouse and the Poor Law infirmary; and, especially in the Metropolis and the large towns, the latter became more and more freely used as a general hospital.[686] This tendency was facilitated in London by the operation of the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund established by the Central Authority itself, which, from 1870 onward, bore the bulk of the cost of maintenance of the Poor Law infirmaries, as of the hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board.[687] The Central Authority saw with approval the increasing attractiveness of these institutions, not only in London but throughout the country. In an official memorandum communicated to all boards of guardians in 1892, it observed that: "The sick poor can usually be better tended and nursed by skilled nurses in well-equipped sick wards than in their own homes; and the regularity, neatness, and order of the wards tend to diminish the repugnance to entering the workhouse, which is often evinced by the sick poor of the better class when reduced to want by failing health."[688] It did not refuse to permit them to be made use of by paying patients, where—as is usually the case in rural districts—no "non-pauper institution" was available. "If," writes the Central Authority in 1902, there is "a sick person who is in receipt of an allowance from a benefit club or similar society," and who "is unable to obtain in a non-pauper institution such treatment as the illness from which he suffers requires," the Central Authority will "offer no objection to his admission to the workhouse infirmary."[689]

To those boards of guardians who clung to the policy of "deterring" the sick poor from obtaining medical relief—which, as we have shown, Mr. Gathorne Hardy had, on behalf of the Central Authority, in 1867 expressly repudiated[690]—all this official encouragement to enter Poor Law institutions seemed revolutionary. The fact that the sick poor came more and more to draw a distinction between the workhouse on the one hand, and the Poor Law infirmary or isolation hospital on the other, appeared seriously objectionable. When it was noticed that the Central Authority officially styled the separate institution for the sick "an asylum for the sick poor,"[691] or "the hospital," or simply the "infirmary,"[692] the Manchester guardians revolted, and definitely instructed their medical and relieving officers "to avoid using the word 'hospital' or 'infirmary,' and simply to use the word 'workhouse.'"[693] Other boards, we believe, insisted—although "the infirmary" was an entirely distinct institution—that it should be entered only through the workhouse itself. Against this lingering objection on grounds of Poor Law policy to get the sick cured in the most efficient way, we see the inspectorate in the later years more and more explicitly protesting. "I wish it were possible," said Mr. Preston-Thomas in 1899, "to get rid of the name of workhouse (which, by the way, has become singularly inappropriate), for I believe that it is to the associations of the name rather than to the institution itself that prejudice attaches. The disinclination of the independent poor to enter the hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, which was considerable at first, has now practically vanished, and I do not see why there should not be the same change of feeling with regard to Poor Law infirmaries in the country."[694]

In the same spirit we see the Central Authority in these three decades persistently pressing Boards of Guardians to build new workhouse infirmaries.[695] The report becomes current in the Poor Law world that Local Government Board officers, in interviews, went so far as to say that a certain board of guardians was morally guilty of manslaughter in refusing to embark on extensive new building operations. The official architect's criticisms on the Poor Law infirmary plans submitted to him are all on the lines of making these into up-to-date general hospitals. The proposals sanctioned by the Central Authority go up to a capital outlay of £350 per bed. The Central Authority even sanctions special hospitals established by the guardians at the expense of the poor rate, for particular classes of patients, such as the "West Derby, Liverpool and Toxteth Park Hospital, ... for the reception of persons suffering from tuberculosis," many of whom are so little destitute that they pay the cost of their treatment and maintenance;[696] or, as at Croydon, Kingston, and Richmond, "for the reception of epileptic and feeble-minded persons," who cannot be certified as of unsound mind.[697] Persons in receipt of medical relief only are no longer disqualified as paupers from being registered as Parliamentary and Municipal electors, and it has even been held that admission to a Poor Law hospital, sick asylum, or infirmary because of ill-health, and for the purpose of being medically treated, amounts to medical relief only, even though it incidentally involves also maintenance at the expense of the poor rate.[698] By 1903 we have the Central Authority laying it down in general terms, "that it is the guardians' duty to provide for their sick poor, and no sanction ... is necessary to sending such cases to institutions for curative treatment ... and ... paying reasonable expenses involved in so doing."[699] The Central Authority seems, indeed, to exhaust official ingenuity in securing the best possible treatment and also the comfort of the patients in the sick wards.[700] Any reasonable fee may be paid for calling in consultants whenever the medical officer thinks it "necessary or desirable," without any special sanction being requisite.[701] We need not recite the constant struggle to get more nurses and better. As early as 1879 a president could (perhaps with some ministerial optimism) declare that: "in the new infirmaries I have succeeded in abolishing pauper help almost entirely."[702]

The guardians are reminded that the epileptics are especially to be incessantly accompanied by trained nurses, lest they should be suffocated in their fits.[703] The sick men in the workhouse may be allowed tobacco and snuff, the sick women tea, in addition to that prescribed in the dietary table.[704] The doctor is expressly reminded that it is his duty to "order such food as he may consider requisite." [705] When a complaint was made that beer was supplied in a Norfolk workhouse, the Central Authority refused to interfere with a "beer allowance" to sick paupers, given and renewed from week to week by direction of the medical officer.[706] The guardians are even reminded of the importance of providing illustrated books and newspapers for the sick.[707]

Meanwhile the standard of equipment, of resident medical attendance, and especially of trained nursing[708] required by the Central Authority in the Poor Law institutions is constantly rising, in correspondence with the progress of hospital science. We see all this reflected in the advice and criticisms pressed by the inspectorate on the boards of guardians. "The workhouses of a past and bygone age," says Mr. Hervey in 1903, "are no longer refuges for able-bodied, but are becoming every day more of the nature of State hospitals for the aged, sick, and infirm. As such, they should be furnished with the very best nursing procurable."[709]

(iii.) The Municipal Medical Service

It may be that it is on the Public Health side, which was in 1871 added to the Poor Law work of the Central Authority, that we may trace the influence of the suggestion that was under discussion at the Poor Law Board under Mr. Goschen's presidency, just prior to its merging in the Local Government Board. The idea of "free medicine to the poorer classes generally, as distinguished from actual paupers, and perfect accessibility to medical advice at all times under thorough organisation"—which the new permanent secretary, Sir John Lambert, may have brought back from his official visit to Ireland—finds a certain expression in the Public Health Act of 1872, re-enacted with additions in 1875, which created "one local authority for all public health purposes in every place, so that no area should be without such an authority, or have more than one." In the rural districts the board of guardians became this authority. As such they came under a series of responsibilities based upon ideas diametrically opposed to those of the Poor Law. Instead of confining their action to actual applicants for help, they had to search out cases of nuisance or dangerous disease. Instead of restricting their administration to those who were willing and anxious for it, they were charged with compelling to be done all that was required. Instead of being limited in purview to a small class specially stigmatised as paupers, the guardians had to consider the whole population as needing their attention without distinction of class or subjection to stigma. They were expressly authorised, not merely to repress nuisances, but to provide hospitals "for the use of the inhabitants," without any limitation to infectious or any other diseases.[710] They were even empowered, with the consent of the Central Authority, to "provide or contract with any person to provide a temporary supply of medicine and medical assistance for the poorer inhabitants of their district."[711] The Central Authority eagerly pressed on the local authorities the policy of the new Act.[712] We see the Poor Law inspectors—who were "in possession of the views of the (Local Government) Board on the subject"—explaining to boards of guardians in unions having rural districts their new duties; the future work of their new Public Health staff of medical officer of health and sanitary inspectors; and their responsibility for maintaining and improving the health, not of paupers only, but of the whole community.[713] We are not here concerned with the progress of public health administration, in which the boards of guardians cannot be said to have been apt or willing disciples. It is not to the boards of guardians, in 1907 still the sanitary authorities in non-urban districts, that we owe the elaborate medical organisation of an up-to-date Public Health Department, with its peripatetic health visitors and diagnosing doctors, its milk depots and campaign against infantile mortality, its gratuitous supply of anti-toxins and diarrhoea medicine, its gratuitous hospitals and sanatoria no longer confined to smallpox and fever. We need only notice here the gradual appreciation, by the Central Authority and the Poor Law inspectors, of the intimate connection between shortcomings in the public health service and an excess of pauperism. Even from the narrowest standpoint of Poor Law principles, the causal connection between disease and pauperism could no longer be ignored. "The effect of bad house accommodation on the health of the poor," writes Mr. Bagenal in 1902, "has often been demonstrated by experts in public health. Not only are serious illnesses more frequent, but damp and draughty dwellings lower vitality to such an extent that the bodily vigour and activity, as well as the spirits, are affected, and the system becomes unable to withstand actual disease. Families are often pauperised on account of sickness produced by living in unhealthy conditions. Labourers also often become permanently disabled, and fall upon the rates, owing to premature old age brought on by insanitary houses. To prevent sickness and to prolong the working term of a labourer's life must be a gain to the ratepayers, as well as to all classes of the community."[714] To take only one specific instance, in the Redruth Union the reason for a high average of pauperism in 1906 was found in the large amount of destitution produced by "miner's phthisis," and the great number of widows and orphans which it caused, "the total number of persons pauperised owing to this special cause being ... 333," besides other cases of infirmity of the miners themselves. "A substantial proportion of the excessive pauperism in the Redruth Union is thus accounted for."[715]

F.—Persons of Unsound Mind

It does not seem necessary to trace the slight changes in the law relating to pauper lunatics, or in the orders and circulars of the Central Authority. There appears to have been no alteration in the relation of the Central Authority to the Lunacy Commissioners, practically no steps being taken to initiate policy except upon the suggestion of the latter, whose standard of accommodation and treatment continues steadily to rise for pauper as for non-pauper lunatics.

The only point of interest is the continuance, virtually unchanged, of the three methods of treatment, viz. maintenance in the workhouse, treatment in a lunatic asylum, or grant of outdoor relief.

The number of persons of unsound mind in the workhouse continued practically undiminished, without any steps being taken to prevent their retention among the aged, the sick, and the children, who came more and more to make up the workhouse population.[716] There were, in fact, three classes of cases in which a lunatic might be detained in a workhouse. Firstly, there is the old provision, under which "the visitors of any asylum may, with the consent of the Local Government Board and the Commissioners, and subject to such regulations as they respectively prescribe, make arrangements with the guardians of any union for the reception into the workhouse of any chronic lunatics, not being dangerous, who are in the asylum, and have been selected and certified by the manager of the asylum as proper to be removed to the workhouse."[717] Secondly, "where a pauper lunatic is discharged from an institution for lunatics, and the medical officer of the institution is of opinion that the lunatic has not recovered, and is a proper person to be kept in a workhouse as a lunatic, the medical officer shall certify such opinion, and the lunatic may thereupon be received and detained against his will in a workhouse without further order, if the medical officer of the workhouse certifies in writing that the accommodation in the workhouse is sufficient."[718] Thirdly, if it is necessary for the welfare of a lunatic, or for the public safety, that he should immediately be placed under care and control, pending regular proceedings for his removal, he may be taken to a workhouse (if there is proper accommodation therein) by a constable, relieving officer, or overseer, and may be detained there for three days, during which time the proceedings are to be taken; and in any case in which a summary reception order has been or might be made, he may be further detained on a justice's order till he can be removed, provided that the period does not exceed fourteen days.[719] Moreover, any other lunatic might be "allowed to remain in a workhouse as a lunatic" if "the medical officer of the workhouse certifies in writing: (a) that such a person is a lunatic, with the grounds for the opinion; and (b) that he is a proper person to be allowed to remain in a workhouse as a lunatic; and (c) that the accommodation in the workhouse is sufficient for his proper care and treatment, separate from the inmates of the workhouse not lunatics, unless the medical officer certifies that the lunatic's condition is such that it is not necessary for the convenience of the lunatic or of the other inmates that he should be kept separate." Such a certificate signed by the medical officer is sufficient authority for detaining the lunatic in a workhouse for fourteen days, but no longer, unless within that time a justice signs an order for his detention. Failing such a certificate, or, after fourteen days, such an order, or if at any time the lunatic ceases to be "a proper person to be allowed to remain in a workhouse," he becomes "a proper person to be sent to an asylum," and proceedings are to be taken accordingly.[720]

Meanwhile the Central Authority continued to permit the grant of outdoor relief in cases of lunacy; and about 5000 were always so maintained.

Regulations for the boarding-out of pauper lunatics first appear in the Act of 1889. "Where application is made to the committee of visitors of an asylum by any relative or friend of a pauper lunatic confined therein that he may be delivered over to the custody of such relative or friend, the committee may, upon being satisfied that the application has been approved by the guardians of the union to which the lunatic is chargeable, and, in case the proposed residence is outside the limits of the said union, then also by a justice having jurisdiction in the place where the relative or friend resides, and that the lunatic will be properly taken care of, order the lunatic to be delivered over accordingly." The authority liable for such a lunatic's maintenance is to pay an allowance for his support to the person who undertakes his care; the medical officer of the district is to visit him and report to the visiting committee every quarter, and two visitors may at any time order the lunatic to be removed to the asylum.[721] Any two Commissioners have also the right to visit any pauper lunatic or alleged lunatic not in an institution for lunatics or in a workhouse, and call in a medical practitioner; if the latter signs a certificate, and they think fit, the Lord Chancellor may direct that the lunatic be received into an institution.[722]

For the paupers of unsound mind in the Metropolis there was even a fourth alternative, namely, the "district asylums" of the Metropolitan Asylum Board. On the opening of the Darenth Asylum, the Central Authority quoted, without disapproval, the following remarks of the Lunacy Commissioners: "The withdrawal, for proper care, of helpless children of this kind [idiots] from the households of many of the industrious and deserving poor is a frequent means of warding off pauperism in the parents."[723] We do not find, however, any more explicit statement on this point. What the Central Authority continued to press on the Boards of Guardians was, not so much the importance of relieving the struggling poor from the burden of their insane or idiotic dependants, nor yet the freeing of the workhouses from the presence of persons of unsound mind; but rather of appropriate discrimination. "It is of great importance not merely to exclude from the [district] asylums those who, by reason of violence or irritability, are proper subjects for the county asylum, but also those who, from old age or disease, are unfit for the journey to the asylum, or who, from the slight degree to which their mind is affected, might more properly remain in the workhouse."[724] "The removal of helpless, bedridden persons, whose mental weakness is, in many cases, the result of old age, to asylums situated a considerable distance from the Metropolis, is calculated, on the one hand, to be injurious to the persons thus removed, and, on the other, to occupy the district asylums with a different class of persons from that for which they were constructed."[725] Imbecile children are to be kept in the workhouse till they are five years old, and may then be sent to the asylum at Darenth.[726] Outside the Metropolis there is no specialised Poor Law provision for idiots, who, if not received into the county asylum, must either be placed in non-Poor-Law institutions at considerable expense, or detained in the workhouse. In 1885 the Central Authority even suggested that harmless and aged lunatics had, on grounds of economy, better be retained in the workhouse, rather than removed to an asylum.[727] We hear incidentally of a Special Order in 1900 under which certain chronic lunatics were actually transferred from the Suffolk County Asylum to the workhouse of the Mildenhall Union.[728] As late as 1905 we find the Central Authority expressing regret that so many cases of senile imbecility were removed from the workhouses to asylums.[729]

Under this policy the number of paupers of unsound mind receiving outdoor relief diminished very slightly, being 4736 on 1st January 1906; those in the asylums of the Metropolitan Asylums Board and in county and borough lunatic asylums rose to no fewer than 92,409; whilst those in workhouses nevertheless did not fall off from the total of thirty-five years previously, being, in fact, on 1st January 1906, 11,484, or an average of nineteen in each workhouse.[730]

Towards the latter part of the time we begin to find the inspectors, somewhat in disaccord with the suggestions of the Central Authority itself, protesting against the presence in the workhouses even of the chronic lunatic, the harmless idiot, or the senile imbecile, on the new ground that their presence caused annoyance to the sane inmates—annoyance which had, for seventy years, been apparently either unnoticed or not considered. "I am sorry to say," reported Mr. Preston-Thomas in 1901, "that in all but six of the workhouses in my district imbeciles mix freely with the other workhouse inmates. Many of them are mischievous, noisy, or physically offensive.

In some instances, even if their bodily ailment is very slight, they sleep in the sick wards in order that they may come under the supervision of the nurses, and they frequently disturb other patients at night. By day they are a source of much irritation and annoyance, and in a small workhouse I have known the lives of a number of old men made seriously uncomfortable by a mischievous idiot for whom no place could be found in an asylum.... I am much afraid," prophetically continued Mr. Preston-Thomas, "that ... the question will be postponed indefinitely, and six or eight years hence the idiots will still be worrying the sane inmates of workhouses.... It is in the country workhouses, sometimes with only a dozen imbeciles or less, divided among the sexes, that the chief difficulty arises.... A good many are often found useful in the laundry and other domestic work of the institution, but I do not think this consideration ought to outweigh what may almost be characterised as the cruelty of requiring sane persons to associate, by day and by night, with gibbering idiots."[731] When the Select Committee on the Bill to establish Cottage Homes for the Aged Poor in 1900 strongly recommended the removal of all imbeciles from workhouses, the Central Authority, observing that the advisability of this step had been repeatedly brought to its notice by guardians and others, declared that the question must be deferred.[732]

G.—Defectives

For the first twenty years after 1871 there is no alteration of policy to record with regard to defectives. In fact, the Central Authority does not seem to have paid much attention to this class, whether mentally or physically defective, during this period. It enjoined no policy for the treatment of them till 1891. A Circular on "Blind and Deaf and Dumb inmates of Workhouses" then required the inspectors to "continue to give special attention" to children among this class, and urge their removal from the workhouse when desirable. It was held that the guardians might, if they chose, pay the whole of the maintenance of deaf and dumb children sent to appropriate institutions. No limit has been fixed, but in no case has more than £20 a year been sanctioned.[733] Adults also were to be given instruction in reading and writing, if able to profit thereby, and if such instruction could not be provided in the union, they might be sent, under contract, to the workhouse of some other union where teaching might be available, either in the workhouse or in the town. It is also suggested that arrangements might with advantage be made for reading aloud to the aged blind in the workhouse. But it was held to be illegal to pay for the technical instruction of blind workhouse inmates at a non-Poor-Law institution.[734] From 1903 onward, however, we have the almost dramatic extension of the scope of the Education Authority with regard to defective children of all kinds—a change which has already gone far to transfer responsibility for the treatment of the blind, the deaf and dumb, the crippled, the epileptic, and the mentally defective children up to sixteen from the Poor Law to the Education Authorities. The first step was the Act of 1893, which required the local Education Authority to provide education for blind and deaf children; but children sent to any institution from the workhouse, or boarded out by the guardians, were expressly excluded.[735] In 1899 similar provision was made for defective and epileptic children; and the guardians were authorised to arrange with the Education Authority to take over Poor Law cases on payment.[736] Under these Acts provision is more and more being made, especially in London, for the education, treatment, and even (where requisite) maintenance in educational institutions of these children up to sixteen.

In 1903 a Special Order provided for the transfer, from the Metropolitan workhouses to the special homes of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, of children who, without being certified as of unsound mind, were mentally defective; and for their retention in such homes until twenty-one years of age.[737] We do not find any corresponding provision with regard to the mentally defective children outside the Metropolis; or for the mentally defectives beyond sixteen years of age. In the rural workhouses, at any rate, which make up three-fourths of the whole, it would seem that in 1907, as it was officially reported in 1879, these mentally defectives, together with "the imbeciles, are more or less mixed up with the ordinary inmates of the class to which they belong."[738]

In recent years we see the Central Authority willingly sanctioning special provision for individual cases. Thus, special assistance may be given for starting in trade persons handicapped by their infirmities. In one case, the Board sanctioned the purchase of tools for a blind man who had been taught a trade.[739] In another case, "an adult having become incapacitated by reason of accident from again following his usual occupation, the guardians were desirous of paying a premium in consideration of his being taught a trade which the nature of his infirmity would not prevent his carrying on. On the proposal being submitted to the Local Government Board, the Board observed that as the person was too old to be bound as an apprentice, there was no authority for the payment of the premium, but they suggested whether the difficulty might not be overcome by out-relief being granted during the period of learning."[740]

A third instance is given as follows: "A boy, aged sixteen years, has been a pupil at an institution for the blind, the fees for his board and education having hitherto been paid by the said board [of guardians] under the Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act 1893. The boy is desirous of competing for a scholarship of the value of £40 a year from the Institution for the Blind in London; total fees, £60 a year. The guardians wish to contribute £13 a year, the father, who earns on an average £2:2s. a week, being willing to pay the balance of £7, in addition to travelling expenses and outfit. The Board hold that the guardians can, assuming the boy is in need of relief, carry out their proposal under 30 and 31 Vic. c. 106, sec. 21."[741] An interesting feature of this case is the vagueness of the term "in need of relief," instead of "destitution."

H.—The Aged and Infirm

(i.) Outdoor Relief

The crusade of the inspectorate of 1871-85, in favour of the "workhouse system" of Poor Law relief, made no exception in favour of aged persons, whether deserving or undeserving, any more than it did in favour of widows with young children or the sick. On the contrary, Mr. Longley assumed, in every paragraph of his Report,[742] that the "workhouse principle" was universally applicable to "the disabled"—the term he used for the aged and infirm—as well as to the able-bodied. A rigid adherence to the policy of "offering the House" would, he argued, lead the poor to provide, or induce their relatives to provide, for old age as well as for sickness and widowhood.[743] Further, Mr. Longley strongly deprecated any deviation in particular cases from what he euphemistically called "the offer of indoor relief." "That which an applicant does not know certainly that he will not get," he forcibly argued, "he readily persuades himself, if he wishes for it, that he will get; and the poor, to whom any inducement is held out to regard application for relief as a sort of gambling speculation, in which, though many fail, some will succeed, will, like other gamblers, reckon upon their own success."[744] For every "hard case" he relied on the springing up in every union of intelligently directed private charity. "It is, in fact, the very existence of charity"—assumed thus to be always at hand whenever required—"which strengthens the hands of the Poor Law administrator in adherence to rule."[745] Yet, with a certain want of logic, he desired this charitable provision to remain "precarious" and "intermittent;" something which it was possible to argue would always be there when a "hard case" occurred, and which, nevertheless, could not be counted upon by the poor themselves. In other words, he seemed to imply that charitable outdoor relief was superior to Poor Law outdoor relief for the very reason that though some applicants for it would succeed, others in like circumstances would fail to get it—thus inducing, one would have thought, exactly the spirit of "gambling speculation" on the part of the poor that he clearly perceived to arise from the adoption by boards of guardians of an intermittent and uncertain relief policy.

How far this policy of offering the House to all aged persons, deserving or undeserving, was assumed by the other inspectors to be the official policy, and how far it was pressed by them, on boards of guardians throughout the country, we have been unable to ascertain. Apart from the approval of Mr. Longley's views implied by the publication of his Reports and the circulation of them among boards of guardians, the Central Authority maintained, between 1871 and 1896, an absolute silence[746] on the question of outdoor relief to the aged. All the more surprising to boards of guardians must have been the sudden and unexpected reversal of this policy by the Central Authority between 1896 and 1900. In July 1896, the Central Authority, under the presidency of Mr. Chaplin, issued a Circular to boards of guardians outside the Metropolis, drawing attention to the importance of the relieving officers and medical officers discharging their duties with the greatest particularity. In a concluding paragraph the Central Authority significantly reminds the guardians of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor, of which an extract is appended. "We are convinced," run the recommendations thus exceptionally brought to the guardians' notice, "that there is a strong feeling that in the administration of relief there should be greater discrimination between the respectable aged who become destitute and those whose destitution is distinctly the consequence of their own misconduct; and we recommend that boards of guardians, in dealing with applications for relief, should inquire with special care into the antecedents of destitute persons whose physical faculties have failed by reason of age and infirmity; and that outdoor relief in such cases should be given to those who are shown to have been of good character, thrifty according to their opportunities, and generally independent in early life, and who are not living under conditions of health or surrounding circumstances which make it evident that the relief given should be indoor relief."[747] But this is not all. The poor, far from being left uncertain as to the grant of outdoor relief, were to be specially told that they would receive it if only they led deserving lives. "It accordingly appears to us eminently desirable," continue the recommendations, as communicated by the Central Authority to the boards of guardians, "that boards of guardians should adopt rules in accordance with the general principles which we have indicated, by which they may be broadly guided in dealing with individual applications for relief, and that such rules should be generally made known for the information of the poor of the union, in order that those really in need may not be discouraged from applying."[748]

How far this reversion to the policy contemplated by the 1834 Report, and continued, as we have shown, by the Poor Law Commissioners, and the Poor Law Board down to 1871, obtained the adhesion of the inspectors who had grown up in the traditions of Mr. Longley's Reports of 1871-5, we have been unable to ascertain.[749] Nor is it clear that the partial circulation[750] by the Central Authority of the recommendations of the Royal Commission affected the admonitions against outdoor relief generally, which the inspectors had for nearly thirty years been addressing to the boards of guardians.[751] Four years later the Central Authority took an even more decisive step.

In the famous pronouncement on Poor Law Administration generally which Mr. Chaplin issued to all boards of guardians in 1900, systematic and adequate outdoor relief to all aged persons who were at once destitute and deserving was laid down as the definite policy of the Central Authority. "It has been felt," runs this Circular, "that persons who have habitually led decent and deserving lives should, if they require relief in their old age, receive different treatment from those whose previous habits and character have been unsatisfactory, and who have failed to exercise thrift in the bringing up of their families or otherwise. The Board consider that aged deserving persons should not be urged to enter the workhouse at all unless there is some cause which renders such a course necessary, such as infirmity of mind or body, the absence of house accommodation, or of a suitable person to care for them, or some similar cause, but that they should be relieved by having adequate outdoor relief granted to them. The Board are happy to think that it is commonly the practice of boards of guardians to grant outdoor relief in such cases, but they are afraid that too frequently such relief is not adequate in amount. They are desirous of pressing upon the guardians that such relief should, when granted, be always adequate."[752] Nor did the Central Authority content itself with merely issuing the Circular. Letters were sent in a few months' time to all the boards of guardians asking what action had been taken with regard to the suggested grant of outdoor relief to aged deserving persons, and, in particular, whether the practice was to grant an adequate amount to each case. The effect was (to use the words of an inspector) to produce "a good deal of discussion ... upon the question of the amount of outdoor relief granted to aged deserving persons."[753] "I rather fear," said another inspector, "that in some unions it has rather been regarded as a sort of mandate to increase the system of out-relief generally. This the Circular did not intend."[754] On the other hand, yet another inspector remarks that only "a few boards have looked at the (Local Government) Board's suggestions from a sympathetic point of view, and have increased their regular allowances to the aged out-paupers, but in a large majority of the unions the guardians state that alteration is not called for.... The principle is ... warding off destitution, not providing maintenance."[755] Whatever was the intention of the Central Authority, it is evident that the replies (which were not published and which we have not seen) that it received to its repeated inquiries must have revealed an enormous diversity of practice, utterly at variance with the principle of national uniformity. In one union there would be hardly any cases for which the guardians would grant outdoor relief at all. In the next union practically every aged applicant would get it. The conception of adequacy revealed in the replies must have been equally various. In the West Riding the amount allowed per aged person ranged from 1s. 6d. a week to as much as 7s. 6d. a week, whereas in the East Riding the variations were only between 2s. 6d. and 5s. for each person.[756] We happen to know that the Bradford Guardians reported that, with greater uniformity, they gave 5s. a week for each deserving aged person.[757] We have not been able to ascertain what action, if any, was taken by the Central Authority on these replies. No objection appears to have been taken, and no criticism to have been made, either in respect of the virtual refusal of outdoor relief to the deserving aged in some unions, or in respect of its almost indiscriminate bestowal in others, or again, in respect of the wide range of variation between union and union, in the amount allowed for each person. It is thus not clear what is now the policy of the Central Authority on these points. Its latest utterance is the Circular of 1900. Since then, so far as we can discover, it has been silent on the subject.

(ii.) Indoor Relief

Meanwhile there had accumulated in the workhouses of the Metropolis (where the effect of the Metropolitan Common Poor fund had been to offer a premium on indoor relief to two-thirds of the unions), and in those of the unions up and down the country in which Mr. Longley's policy had been more or less carried out, a large number of aged people, who became permanent residents.[758] This fact, already noticeable and officially recorded in 1867,[759] did not lead to any change in the policy of workhouse administration laid down by the Central Authority. The General Consolidated Order of 1847, framed essentially to deal with workhouses in which the able-bodied were the most important feature, was not amended to meet the new conditions. The structural improvements which, as we have already described, began to be adopted after the Lancet inquiry of 1865, continued to be pressed for, and eventually insisted on, so far as regards new workhouses. In this respect the old people in particular unions shared in the general benefit. But we do not find that the Central Authority, after 1871, had any policy of altering the general rÉgime of the old people's wards, corresponding to that which, as we have described, took place with regard to the sick wards. On the contrary, we must note, as part of Mr. Longley's policy, his emphatic warning in 1873, that the workhouses had already become so "attractive to paupers," as to furnish "no test of destitution."[760] He made no exception in favour of the old people's wards. It was, in fact, the "deterrent discipline" of the workhouse that he regarded as "the keystone of an efficient system of indoor relief," not merely for the able-bodied, but also, through its effect on the minds of those who were still young, and on the relations of those who were old, also for the aged.[761] We may, therefore, understand why it is that we find, between 1871 and 1892, practically nothing in the way of expression of the policy of the Central Authority with regard to the indoor treatment of the aged. It stood by the General Consolidated Order of 1847.[762] Even the attempt made in 1867-75 to revert to the policy of the 1834 Report, so far as to have specialised institutions for the aged, the sick, and the able-bodied, as well as for the children, was not persisted in, so far as the aged were concerned. No other unions were found to adopt the joint arrangements of Poplar and Stepney under which the aged and infirm of both unions had a workhouse to themselves, and even this one was brought to an end in 1892.[763]

In 1892 the note changes. From that date onward we get a distinct reversion, as regards the aged indoor pauper, to the policy indicated in the 1834 Report ("the old might enjoy their indulgences"), from which the Poor Law Commissioners of 1834-47, and the successive Central Authorities of 1847-1892, had turned away.

It is interesting to see that the new departure began over tobacco.[764] The Liverpool Select Vestry determined to give the well-conducted old men in the workhouse the indulgence of a weekly screw of tobacco, whether or not they were employed on disagreeable duties. The auditor objected. The vestry insisted. The Central Authority was obdurate. The local body appealed to its Parliamentary representatives. It was suggested as a compromise that the medical officer might be got to include it in the dietary table, when the Central Authority would not refuse to sanction it.[765] The vestry declined to compromise, and insisted on allowing tobacco as a non-dietetic indulgence. Finally, the inspector was instructed to say that the objection was withdrawn. No publicity was given to the concession, but it gradually leaked out. During the year 1892 we see the Central Authority sanctioning by letter, without any official publication on the subject, such applications as were made by individual boards of guardians to be permitted to allow an ounce of tobacco weekly to the men over sixty in the workhouse.[766] At last, in November 1892, a General Order was issued permitting it in all unions, irrespective of sex, and without limit of amount.[767] Little more than a year later, as some compensation to the old women (though they had not been excluded, in terms, from the indulgence of tobacco or snuff), they were allowed "dry tea," with sugar and milk, irrespective of that provided for in the dietary table.[768] Presently, this indulgence is extended to "dry coffee or cocoa," if preferred, and the men also are allowed to receive it.[769] At last, the Central Authority, by two lengthy Circulars in 1895 and 1896,[770] under the presidency of Sir Henry Fowler and Mr. Chaplin respectively, systematically laid down principles of workhouse administration, so far as the aged were concerned, in sharp contrast with those advocated by Mr. Longley, or indeed, with those which had been inculcated from 1835 to 1892. It was expressly stated that as the character of the workhouse population had so completely changed since 1834, the administration no longer needed to be so deterrent. The old idea of fixed uniform times of going to bed and rising and taking meals was given up, it being expressly left to the master and matron to allow any of the aged (as well as the infirm and the young children) to retire to rest, to rise and to have their meals at whatever hours it was thought fit. The visiting committees of workhouses were now specially enjoined to see that the aged were properly attended to, and recommended to confer with them as to any grievances without any officials being present.[771] It was suggested that the great sleeping wards should be partitioned into separate cubicles. The guardians were reminded that aged or infirm couples might be provided with separate rooms. The well-behaved aged and infirm were to be allowed, within reasonable limits,[772] to go out for walks, to visit their friends, and to attend their own places of worship on Sunday. The rules were to be relaxed to allow them to receive visits in the workhouse from their friends. There was to be no distinctive dress. Those of them who were of good conduct, and who had "previously led moral and respectable lives" were to be separated from the rest, who "are likely to cause them discomfort," and were to have the enjoyment of a separate day-room. The whole note of the administration of the old people's wards of the workhouses was, in fact, to be changed, so far as the Central Authority could change it. In the words of the 1834 Report, the old were to "enjoy their indulgences." Four years later another Circular was issued in stronger terms, reiterating the suggestions of privileges that the guardians ought to allow to the deserving inmates over sixty-five—freedom to rise and go to bed and have their meals when they liked, to have their own locked cupboards for their little treasures, in all cases to have their tobacco and dry tea, to be free to go out when they chose, and to be allowed to receive the visits of their friends. They were to be given separate cubicles to sleep in, and special day-rooms, "which might, if thought desirable, be available for members of both sexes ... and in which their meals, other than dinner, might be served at hours fixed by the guardians."[773] "It is hoped that, where there is room, the guardians will not hesitate to take steps to bring about improvements of the kind indicated in the arrangements for the aged deserving poor."[774] Four or five months later the guardians were stirred up by letter, and asked what they had done towards creating the specially privileged class of deserving aged inmates that had been so strongly pressed on them.[775] During these years the dietaries for the aged and infirm were being altered in the direction of liberality, variety, and freedom of choice. Not only were hot meat or fish dinners provided ("with sauce"), but also tea, coffee, cocoa, milk, sugar, butter, seed cake, onions, lettuce, rhubarb or stewed fruit, sago, semolina, and rice pudding. In 1900 "provision is also made for ... the inmates on special infirm diet ... to receive daily, before bedtime, or at such time as the guardians may fix, a small allowance of milk pudding or similar food to break the interval between the usual meals."[776] The Central Authority in 1904 made no objection to a board of guardians subscribing to a lending library, in order to obtain a constant supply of books for the deserving aged workhouse inmates, and held that no special sanction was required.[777] Finally, "it is open to guardians, if they think fit, to incur reasonable expenses in providing a piano, for use at divine service [and therefore, presumably also at other times, once it was installed] held in a workhouse infirmary for old and infirm inmates";[778] or to provide a harmonium at the cost of the poor rate for the use of the inmates of the workhouse.[779]

I.—Non-Residents

There is no change to record in 1871 in the expressed policy of preventing relief to paupers not resident within the union. Such relief (given in order to avoid the expense and hardship of removal) continued in many cases, but was repeatedly blamed by the inspectors. "Non-resident relief is given in almost all the unions ... sixteen per cent of the outdoor paupers of Glendale Union were non-resident."[780] In 1878 the Central Authority suggested that such relief "might be almost entirely discontinued."[781] There has been no explicit abrogation of this policy down to the present day; even in face of representations that it is "harsh and totally out of keeping with the spirit of the times."[782] But from 1871 onwards we have the force of the maxim weakened by the growth of whole classes of cases which the guardians are allowed, and even encouraged, to send to places outside the union, and maintain there. We need do no more than allude to the boarded-out children. Another growing class is that of paupers who are placed in certified schools or homes, either by way merely of boarding-school (frequently recommended as a method of disposing of Roman Catholic children); or for residence in any industrial or reformatory school; or (irrespective of age) for maintenance in an institution for special treatment (blind, deaf and dumb, crippled, epileptic, idiot, etc.); or merely in an asylum for the aged and infirm;[783] or for curative treatment in a hospital, convalescent home, seaside home, or sanatorium.[784] Even able-bodied aged paupers may, as the Poplar Guardians were informed in 1896, be boarded out in country families, under the guise of non-resident relief. The Central Authority has not objected to the transfer of workhouse inmates, provided these do not actively protest, to country workhouses, there to be maintained as non-resident paupers.[785] In one case, indeed, the Central Authority allowed a union to abolish its workhouse altogether (retaining only a casual ward), and approved "arrangements for the boarding-out of the indoor poor in the workhouses of other unions for a period not exceeding five years."[786] It is, therefore, not easy to determine how much is left of the policy of preventing non-resident relief as such.

J.—The Workhouse

We left the Central Authority in 1871, fully accepting the view that the workhouse was not merely a "test" which few only might be expected to pass or to endure for long, but a place of permanent or long-continued residence for whole classes of paupers. The workhouse population on 1st January 1871 numbered, in fact, 168,073. The Central Authority, reverting to the proposals of the 1834 Report, had accordingly started out to differentiate the workhouse into separate institutions for particular classes (the children, the sick, and, in the Metropolis, also the imbeciles and idiots); to impose an altogether new standard of expensive structural efficiency on the boards of guardians; to press incessantly for new buildings of approved pattern; to increase the healthiness and comfort of the wards for the sick, the aged, and the children; and to make the dietaries for these classes better adapted to their likings and their needs. "Those who enjoy the advantages of these institutions," had said the Central Authority's own medical officer in 1867, "are almost solely such as may fittingly receive them, viz. the aged and infirm, the destitute sick, and children. Workhouses are now asylums and infirmaries."[787] There was, after 1871, no change and no arrest in this policy.[788] So far as the children, the sick, and the aged and infirm were concerned, we have already described its continuance and its progressive development. The improvement of the institutional provision for the pauper, by removing some of the objections to the indiscriminate general workhouse of 1835-65, fitted in, we may say, with the new crusade of the inspectorate against outdoor relief as such. That crusade was, however, for the first twenty years, pushed without regard to whether or not the particular boards of guardians had accepted the new idea of the specialised institutional treatment for particular classes, or were still wedded to the indiscriminate common workhouse, which aimed at being "deterrent." Mr. Longley realised that the higher standard of comfort that was coming to be allowed to the aged, the sick, and the children in a general workhouse inevitably tended to prevent the necessary strictness and severity being applied to the able-bodied. The inspectorate accordingly strove in London to get specialised institutions for the able-bodied also, the result being the "Poplar test workhouse" that we have already described.

In 1874 the Central Authority expressed its regret at the slow progress "towards the permanent classification in separate establishments of the various classes of indoor paupers, other than the sick.... We attach the utmost importance to this improvement of the classification of indoor paupers, which we believe to be a necessary condition of the maintenance of that discipline which lies at the root of an effective administration of indoor relief. This improvement, however, cannot be effected, except at an enormous and almost prohibitory cost, otherwise than by the combination of several boards of guardians for this purpose. Their existing workhouses would, in that event, become available for the separate accommodation of various classes of indoor paupers chargeable to the several combined areas. We are advised that in the existing state of the law it is doubtful whether such a combination can be effected otherwise than by the voluntary action of boards of guardians, which we trust may still take place, and the desirableness of which we shall continue to press upon the guardians."[789] No such combinations took place, and the Central Authority, baffled by the expense and apparently not prepared to adopt the heroic expedient of issuing orders merging several unions in one, abandoned the attempt to get classification by institutions, except with regard to the children and the sick. The able-bodied had to be dealt with in a general workhouse; and we must note, for twenty years after 1871, battling with the ameliorative efforts of the departmental architect, the departmental medical officer, and the departmental educational experts, on behalf of particular classes of inmates, an attempt to make the workhouse more "deterrent" to other classes of paupers.

The most marked increase of severity was directed against the class of "ins and outs," called in America "revolvers," and it took the form of enlarged powers of detention. By an Act of 1871 the guardians were enabled to detain a pauper (other than a vagrant) who gave notice to quit, in any case for twenty-four hours; if he had already discharged himself once or oftener within a month before giving the notice, for forty-eight hours; and if he had so discharged himself more than twice within two months, for seventy-two hours.[790] Under the Act of 1899[791] a pauper may even be compulsorily detained for 168 hours (one week) "if he has, in the opinion of the guardians, discharged himself frequently without sufficient reason."

With regard to the able-bodied pauper, at any rate for the first fifteen years after 1871, there was to be no leniency. The spirit of the administration, whether of the workhouse or of the casual ward, was that subsequently expressed by Mr. Walter Long. "I would treat the wastrel and the vagabond, and the man who makes his wife and children paupers because of his own degraded habits, in a severe way, and I would make life a burden to him while he remains in the workhouse. I try to insist upon it that in the administration of our workhouses we should make such men realise that if we are compelled to keep them out of the rates we will do it at some discomfort to them."[792] But it was not, in fact, found practicable to avoid improving the accommodation, even for the able-bodied. For them, as for all other inmates, the Central Authority insisted on a sufficient supply of blankets, sheets, bedroom furniture and conveniences. For them, too, the Central Authority insisted on such comforts as knives and forks to eat their meals with—in one case having a long tussle with a recalcitrant board of guardians on this point.[793] The able-bodied shared, too, in the improvement of the cooking which took place, particularly after the general investigation which led to the new Dietaries Order of 1900. "This Order," said an inspector, "has certainly had two good incidental results. It has induced many boards of guardians to engage paid cooks, instead of employing chance inmates knowing nothing about the work ... and the cooking appliances have in many cases been overhauled and improved. In some places they have been of the most rudimentary character."[794] The able-bodied may even get special privileges. Inmates employed on specially heavy work are permitted to receive an extra meal, as lunch. The discretion in this matter at first belonged to the medical officer, but now the guardians have power to order lunch as they think fit. In no case can any inmate claim it as a right, and it is not to be given merely on account of household work. Lunch, when allowed, is very plain, and may not include alcohol. The medical officer is to advise as to the degree of employment necessitating lunch, but the Central Authority suggests that "heavy work," earning lunch for able-bodied men and women, should be taken to mean "an average day's work with sustained exertion, e.g. corn-grinding, pumping, stone-breaking or crushing, shifting heavy goods, digging, scrubbing, washing, ironing, etc.," while heavy work for the aged and infirm (or light work for the able-bodied) is "employment without sustained exertion, e.g. wood-chopping and wood-bundling, hoeing or weeding, sorting light articles, sewing, etc."[795] Beer was particularly objected to. In 1877 the Hackney Board of Guardians, who wanted to give beer to two paupers who assisted the coachman, were told that they were "legally empowered to require from inmates such labour as might be required without having recourse to exceptional indulgences"—in this case the giving of beer—"which would only, in effect, vitiate the principle of the workhouse being a pauper test."[796] On the other hand, it appears that beer is habitually allowed to the able-bodied inmates of certain workhouses at certain times, in return for work. A number of boards of guardians, having land to cultivate, have been permitted by Special Orders to "make to paupers employed in harvest work on land belonging to the guardians such allowance of food and fermented liquor as may be necessary," without any direction of the medical officer.[797] And when in 1903 an auditor surcharged a workhouse master for beer allowed to certain inmates for work done, it was explained "that if such allowance was withheld, some of the paupers would leave the workhouse"—surely a strange threat to make to a Poor Law authority—and with others "difficulties would arise to get them to work." On this explanation the Central Authority (whilst upholding the auditor's decision in point of law) remitted the surcharge.[798] Finally, it may be observed that the shelter of the workhouse was not to be denied to the able-bodied, even for bad conduct. The master must admit all persons who present the proper order, at whatever hour of the day or night. He may not refuse admission even to a man in a state of drunkenness.[799] Nor could a man be punished for being admitted whilst suffering from delirium tremens.[800]

There is, thus, a marked change of tone after 1885 in workhouse administration, as in other branches of policy. This change of tone becomes specially marked in the Circular of January and the Memorandum of June 1895, in which the newly elected boards of guardians, chosen for the first time on a democratic franchise and without any high rating qualification, were specially instructed as to their administrative duties. These authoritative documents breathe a spirit of humane consideration for the pauper inmates, without excepting the able-bodied, which Mr. Longley would, we think, not have regarded as "deterrent." The medical officer, rather than the master, was to advise the guardians on practically all the points on which the general regimen of the institution depended. The visiting committees were to take care that all the arrangements were in order; they "should satisfy themselves whether there is any structural defect in any part of the house; whether painting or lime-washing is required; whether the wards are clean and provided with such conveniences as lockers or shelves, so that they may be kept in proper order; whether there is any defect in the construction of the sanitary arrangements or in the general sewerage of the house; whether the yards are defective as airing courts or places of recreation. The attention of the visiting committee should be carefully directed to the subject of ventilation, which should be effected by special means, apart from the usual means of doors, windows, and fire-places, and should be so arranged that each ward may be brought into uninterrupted communication with the open air."[801] The classes of inmates are to be subdivided "with reference to their moral character or behaviour, or to their previous habits."[802] The employment to be provided is to be "unobjectionable in its character."[803] The clothing of inmates when absent on leave from the workhouse "should not be in any way distinctive or conspicuous in character."[804] The visiting committees are to see that there is always enough underclothing in stock to allow all the inmates the requisite changes; that "sufficient means for ensuring personal cleanliness are provided; that a convenient lavatory, as well as baths,[805] with water laid on, and supplied with towels, soap, and combs, are accessible to each class."[806] "A piece of cocoa fibre matting or other material, or a mattress, should be placed between the bedstead and the bed. A sufficient supply of blankets, sheets, bedroom furniture and conveniences should be provided."[807]

It remains only to mention the great improvement in the workhouse dietary carried out, after prolonged inquiries, in the General Order of 1900.[808] During the preceding twenty years there had been but little attention paid to the subject. The Central Authority had, in 1871, sanctioned the use of Australian tinned meat.[809] It had also authorised in over a hundred unions fish dinners once a week.[810] In 1892 it had drawn attention to the great variation among unions in the amount of alcoholic drink consumed.[811] In 1896 it had engaged in a prolonged struggle with the Chorlton Board of Guardians, and others elsewhere, who objected to the waste involved in supplying each inmate with a fixed and weighed-out allowance of bread, and who found by experiment that much less was used (and very much less thrown into the pig-trough) if the paupers were allowed to help themselves at meals without stint. The Central Authority long resisted this subversive proposal, and insisted on the General Consolidated Order of 1847 being obeyed. When the rebellious boards persisted, the Central Authority gave way—not, however, amending its Orders, but permitting, by letter, the breach of them.[812] An official Departmental Committee appointed to consider the matter advised the president that the injunction of the Order to weigh out a fixed ration to each pauper might with advantage be abandoned in the case of bread.[813] But when, in 1901, the Association of Poor Law Unions asked that the same principle should be applied to vegetables, the Central Authority consented only to bear the suggestion in mind.[814]

In 1900 the new Dietaries Order, as we have already mentioned, greatly increased the nutritive value, variety, and attractiveness of the diets allowed; whilst the accompanying Memorandum formulated a whole code of suggestions for the improvement of the meals.[815]

K.—Emigration

For many years after 1871 there is no change, either of policy or of practice, to record as to emigration, beyond the continuance and slow growth of a tiny trickle of child emigration to Canada. Down to recent years, at any rate, the Colonies expressed a decided objection to any Poor Law emigration of adults, being, as the Central Authority explained, "unwilling to run the risk of thus receiving persons of bad character, or those who, from weak health or other causes, might become burdensome to them," and "in consequence of representations which have been made by the Government of the United States" the Central Authority feels itself "precluded from sanctioning any expenditure from the poor rates in connection with the emigration to that country."[816] Nevertheless, the Act of 1849 had not been repealed and the guardians were not debarred from emigrating, not paupers only, but any poor persons settled in their unions, whether in receipt of relief or not. The number so emigrated (apart from orphan or deserted children) continued, however, to be small.[817] In 1905 the Central Authority, under Mr. Long's presidency, in connection first with the relief of the unemployed by the guardians, and then under the Unemployed Workmen Act, revived the old policy of 1835-53 and expressly encouraged the emigration, at the public expense, of suitable persons, whether or not otherwise in receipt of aid from the rates.[818]

Meanwhile, the emigration of Poor Law children to Canada continued, special applications for the sanction of the Central Authority having to be made in each case.[819] The question of the superior position in which such children were thus placed, compared with those of the lowest grade of independent labourer, does not appear to have been raised. The emigration and special supervision in Canada were the subject of repeated circulars and correspondence.[820] The numbers of orphan and deserted children thus removed to superior conditions rose, from 100 or 200 annually, to 398 in 1903 and 491 in 1905.[821]

L.—Relief on Loan

We note, without any explicit change of policy, a growing tendency to extend the sphere of relief on loan. It is in Mr. Corbett's Report of 1871 that we find a revival of the suggestion thrown out in 1840 that medical relief, in particular, might be given on loan; and even that it should be "generally granted by way of loan,"[822] without regard, it would seem, to the probability of its being recovered. This opinion of the inspectorate, though (as we gather) constantly pressed on boards of guardians, did not, in 1877, receive the explicit endorsement of the Central Authority. An influential proposal to make all relief (and especially all medical relief) recoverable as if given on loan was definitely negatived. "The policy of the existing law," it was declared, "is that the question whether or not relief shall be granted on loan, or, in other words, whether it shall be recoverable at a future time, is to be determined by a consideration of the actual circumstances existing at the time the relief is granted, and it would be at variance with that policy if every recipient of relief were to feel that after he again succeeded in obtaining employment any savings he might be able to put by would be liable for the repayment of the relief which he might have received."[823] This seems to be the latest declaration of policy. There is a particular difficulty in the way of granting medical relief on loan when the medical officer is paid by salary, which does not arise when he is paid by fee—namely, that of fixing the amount to be recovered. The Central Authority suggested that the difficulty might perhaps be met by paying him partly by fee and partly by salary, but it expressed no decided views as to either the practicability or the expediency of such a course.[824]

Moreover, the Central Authority held that "the relieving officer has no power to compel any applicant to accept relief on loan. If, therefore, in a case of sudden or urgent necessity a person refuses to accept the offer of medical relief upon the condition that the cost thereof be repaid, the Board consider that the relieving officer would not be exempt from all further responsibility in the case, unless he had reason to believe that the applicant was in a position to procure the requisite medical aid without assistance from the poor rate."[825] When it was laid down in 1876 that no relief to a lunatic could be recovered unless and until declared to be on loan, it was remarked that "it will be incumbent upon the guardians ... to examine each case ... to consider all its circumstances, and not to declare the relief to be given on loan, until they are satisfied that the circumstances will justify such a declaration." Nor was it permissible to fix the value of medical relief at an arbitrary sum. "There are great practical difficulties," concludes the Central Authority in 1886, "in the way of determining the value of such relief," for the purpose of recovering it when made on loan.[826]

Thus, it can perhaps not fairly be said that the inspectors' policy of using the power of granting relief on loan as a means of deterring applicants from applying for or accepting it, has received formal endorsement by the Central Authority. On the other hand, unions which have adopted the policy of systematically granting all medical relief on loan, irrespective of the applicant's circumstances, have—so far as we can discover—not been reproved or criticised by the Central Authority for what is, apparently, a breach of its instructions. On a complaint being made of this practice, the Bradfield Board of Guardians contended that it was justified; and their contention was apparently upheld.[827] And the practice of the Bristol Board of Guardians of granting all outdoor relief on loan, irrespective of the applicant's circumstances, or even of his actual acceptance of it as a loan, has not been stopped. Moreover, by the Feeding of School Children Order, the Central Authority (in apparent contradiction of its decision in 1877) directed such relief to be given on loan irrespective of the father's circumstances.[828]

M.—Co-operation With Voluntary Agencies

We left Mr. Goschen and the Poor Law Board much impressed with the value of systematic and organised co-operation with voluntary organisations in order to avoid the combination of outdoor relief with any other source of income. In 1873 we find an interesting report by Miss Octavia Hill on official and voluntary agencies in administering relief, which the Central Authority published and commended.[829] But, in spite of Mr. Goschen, the boards of guardians by no means invariably accepted the doctrine of never giving outdoor relief in aid of other pecuniary resources. The Brixworth Guardians, indeed, as part of their strict policy, refused to accord any favour to the person having an allowance from a friendly society; but even they seem to have made up from the poor rate the amount necessary for full maintenance. Most other boards of guardians, however, as the Central Authority was officially informed in 1873, reckoned, by a rough compromise, the friendly society pay at half its amount,[830] in flat contradiction of the dictum of the Central Authority of 1840 and 1870.[831] This course was incidentally reproved by the Central Authority in 1888. "The guardians," it was stated, "are bound to take into consideration all the means of support possessed by the applicant; ... if ... the allowance from the club or society appears to the guardians to be inadequate to meet all the requirements of the case, they should take such allowance into account in determining what amount of relief is required to relieve the destitution of the applicant."[832] It was, however, apparently found impracticable to take any official action; and there is, until 1894, scarcely any later mention of the subject.[833] The policy of "all or nothing," which Mr. Goschen had suggested as a counsel of perfection, was, in fact, not persisted in by the Local Government Board. The practice of making up insufficient incomes, whether derived from charity, from property or friendly society allowance or annuity, or even (in the case of women) from earnings, continued; not infrequently with the explicit sanction of the Central Authority.[834] In 1894 the policy of supplementing other resources received a partial sanction from Parliament. By the Outdoor Relief Friendly Societies Act 1894, boards of guardians were legally empowered if they thought fit, to ignore the fact that an applicant for relief had a friendly society allowance.[835] This gave a legal sanction to the usual compromise of counting such an allowance at half its value, and thus giving the thrifty person half the advantage of his thrift. It is difficult to see how the case of a person having a small friendly society allowance could be logically distinguished from that of a person having other means or sources of income insufficient to maintain him. Presently the Central Authority expressly extended the new doctrine to other forms of saving. In 1903 it declared that relief in supplement of property (in case of sickness or infirmity of the applicant or any dependent) was lawful. In the case of an applicant actually possessing property, "if the guardians are satisfied, after due inquiry, that the means possessed by an applicant are insufficient to support himself and family, they are empowered, subject to the regulations in force, to grant such relief as will meet the necessities of the case."[836] In the following year Parliament followed suit by expressly enacting that boards of guardians should not under any circumstances take into consideration any friendly society allowance up to 5s. a week.[837] There is, accordingly, in 1907 reported to be much outdoor relief avowedly given in supplement of charitable aid and other sources of income.

This kind of co-operation between voluntary agencies and the Poor Law, in the pecuniary relief of the same individual, is, as we need hardly point out, in direct contravention of the principle enunciated by Mr. Goschen in 1869. Nothing, in fact, has been done since Mr. Goschen's Circular that is even in the direction, so far as domiciliary relief is concerned, of the entire allocation of particular cases to one kind of organised aid or the other. On the other hand, there has been, since 1871, an almost continuous encouragement of another kind of co-operation, namely, the use, by the Poor Law Authority, of institutions under voluntary management for the maintenance and treatment of particular classes of paupers, at the expense, wholly or partially, of the poor rates. The number of paupers who are technically in receipt of outdoor relief, but who are, in fact, maintained in specialised voluntary institutions, is always increasing. Certified schools for children of all denominations, and with all kinds of defects; certified sanatoria and convalescent homes for the sick; voluntary hospitals of all kinds and sorts;[838] industrial and reformatory institutions for the able-bodied; asylums for the crippled and the epileptic, and the various kinds of "Farm Colonies" are all now admitted as laudable experiments, expressly authorised, systematically inspected, and extensively subsidised, in the curative treatment of destitute persons. We may infer that it is in institutional treatment of this sort rather than in domiciliary relief that the Central Authority maintains the principle of co-operation with voluntary agencies that Mr. Goschen laid down.