Notwithstanding the apparent decisiveness of policy as to vagrants embodied in the Metropolitan Houseless Poor Act of 1864, we find the Central Authority, disturbed by the steady growth of vagrancy throughout the country,[312]still continuing to talk about discrimination. In 1868, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, in announcing that the Poor Law Board contemplated extending to the whole country the Metropolitan system of dealing with vagrants, added, with an inconsistency which we do not understand, that "it would be required ... that guardians should take the responsibility of a sound and vigilant discrimination between deserving travellers in search of work and professional vagrants not really destitute, by the appointment of officers capable of exercising such discrimination; and that, where practicable, the police should be appointed assistant relieving officers. The forthcoming Order would likewise suggest, in cases where it might be practicable, that the accommodation for deserving travellers should be different from that given to professional vagrants."[313]Yet even for the professional vagrant the promiscuous London casual ward of 1864 was not to beextended. "It was," said the President of the Poor Law Board in 1868, "very desirable that ... each person should have a separate or divided bed place."[314]The new policy, which the President seems to have thought was the London policy of 1864, but which was really a revival of Mr. Charles Buller's policy of 1848, was embodied in a Circular, which admittedly reproduced, in all essentials, the Minute of 1848—the necessity of discrimination, the employment of the police, the issue of tickets to genuine honest wayfarers, their comfortable accommodation in workhouses without task of work, and the desirability of uniformity of treatment in the different unions.[315]
It must be added that, before the end of its tenure of office, the Poor Law Board had become convinced that it had as completely failed to solve the problem of vagrancy as had the Poor Law Commissioners. In the Metropolis it was forced on its attention that "the great increase in the pauper population may be traced to the operation of the Houseless Poor Act, which has practically legalised vagrancy and professional vagabondism."[316]Throughout the whole country the number of vagrants nightly relieved in the workhouse, which had between 1858 and 1862 always been under 2000, rose between 1862 and 1870 to between five and six thousand, and to a maximum of 7946 on 1st July 1868, though falling to less in the exceptionally good trade of 1870-1.[317]The fact is that the boards of guardians felt themselves between the horns of a dilemma, against which the inconsistent see-saw policy of the Central Authority was no protection. If they refused relief to those whom their relievingofficers deemed worthless loafers, these bad characters became "masterful beggars," pertinacious tramps, and sources of danger to the countryside, whilst in the bad times of 1866 some of those refused relief suffered hardship and even death.[318]Hence the general reversion to a policy of relief. The Central Authority, under Mr. Goschen's presidency, was at this point considering a new policy, that of penal detention after relief. Mr. Goschen explained to the House of Commons that this would amount, practically, to "a kind of imprisonment," and be "a stronger measure than the administration by the police of the law as at present existing," which had also been proposed, but "if Parliament were inclined to concede power to detain paupers for a longer period than they were now detained, and to keep them at work, he believed that would be a very effectual means of diminishing vagrancy and pauperism."[319]
C.—Women
Women, of whom there were always between 80,000 and 100,000 on outdoor relief, were almost wholly ignored in the Poor Law Legislation of 1847-71, as in the Orders of the Central Authority. The policy of the Central Authority, so far as it appears from the documents, continued to be to permit able-bodied independent women unconditionally to receive outdoor relief, whether or not they were in receipt of wages, so far as concerned the unions under the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order; and to forbid outdoor relief to such women in unions under the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, whether or not this Order was accompanied by an Outdoor Labour Test Order (for men).[320]
The women dependent on able-bodied men, whether themselves able-bodied or not, might be maintained in their homes, on condition of their husbands being employed in test work, not only in all unions under the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, but also in those in which the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order was accompanied by a Labour Test Order. On the other hand, such women, however feeble or infirm, were not allowed to be maintained in their homes, even if their husbands were willing to do test work, in those unions in which the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order was alone in force. No reason appears for these differences in policy as to the method of relief of identical categories of women in the different geographical regions into which the Central Authority had divided England and Wales. But although the policy of the Central Authority with regard to women remained, in each of the three regions into which England was divided by these Orders, apparently unchanged, the regions themselves, as we have mentioned, were being silently altered. The great enlargement of the territory to which the laxer Order was applied and the narrow limitation of the territory governed by the stricter Order, involved an enormous extension of the outdoor relief to women permitted by the Central Authority.
In that part of England and Wales which was under the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, a widow without children continued to be allowed to receive outdoor relief only during the first six months of her widowhood. In all the rest of the country she continued to be allowed to receive outdoor relief indefinitely. Widows with children continued to be allowed to receive outdoor relief under all the Orders.
We have, however, in these years, the first recognition (so far as we can trace) of the difficulty of the problem presented by the inadequate earnings of independent able-bodied women.[321]In Bermondsey, in 1850, where there was no Order in force as to outdoor relief, the Central Authority was forced to face the problem presented by "widows and other females who, though in very constant work as sempstresses or shirtmakers," obtained so trifling a remuneration as to be unable to live. The Central Authority admitted that it was lawful to grant them relief, but discouraged this course, "persuaded that the practice of making up insufficient earnings by outdoor relief must tend to produce and perpetuate the evil." The guardians were advised to refuse partial relief, so that some of the women might be wholly maintained in the workhouse and so taken off the labour market, when pressure of competition on the others would be thereby relieved and their wages would rise. The Central Authority did not, however, take the responsibility of issuing an Order specially enforcing this policy; and it is to be noted (as already mentioned) that by gradually substituting the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order for the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, the Central Authority was, in fact, retreating from the advice to the Bermondsey Guardians of 1850.[322]
Not until 1869 (so far as we can trace) did the Central Authority face the problem presented by the widow with children. Mr Goschen's celebrated Minute of November 20th 1869, incidentally referred (as a frequent exception to the rule against a "rate in aid of wages") to the grant of partial relief "in the case of widows with families, where it is often manifestly impossible that the woman can support the family." Mr. Goschen does not appear to have made any definite suggestion of an alternative policy in these cases. He seems to have regarded it as merely an exception, of no great importance. But the Holborn Board of Guardians, in their reply to the Circular, pointed out that "the exception of widows would of itself constitute so large a proportion that the rule is virtually swallowed up thereby." The Holborn Guardians, apparently understanding that the Central Authority was hinting at the stoppage of outdoor relief in these cases, also pointed out that "it would be impossible to find workhouse accommodation for over 20,000 widows in the Metropolisand their 60,000 children." These figures were indeed exaggerated; but it was incidentally observed by the Central Authority itself that "the amount of destitution in the country generally, caused by the death, absence, or desertion of the male head of the family ... we should estimate ... to be 35 per cent of the whole."[323]In 1858, the "able-bodied widows relieved out of doors" in the whole country numbered 50,468, and the children dependent on them 126,658, making together over 25 per cent of the total pauper population.[324]In the Metropolis alone, out of an outdoor pauper population in 1869 of 121,012 (excluding lunatics and vagrants), the women relieved because of the death or absence of their husbands numbered 11,851, and their children 28,569, making a total of 40,420, or one-third of the whole outdoor pauperism.[325]It was perhaps in view of such statistics that the Central Authority, in reporting on the reply of the Holborn Board of Guardians, among other replies, made no criticism of the grant of outdoor relief to widows with children, and offered no suggestion of an alternative policy. The only suggestions made were that there should be more relieving officers to check the overlapping of outdoor relief and private charity, and that the outdoor relief granted should be "adequate."[326]A special Commissioner (Mr. Wodehouse) was told off to make an official inquiry into the administration of outdoor relief, in which the facts were again laid bare.[327]We do not find that the Central Authority—now fully aware that the category of widows with children, "where" (to use Mr. Goschen's words) "it is manifestly impossible that the earnings of the woman can support the family," comprised about 177,000 persons, and made up at least a quarter of the whole outdoor pauperism—issued any order prescribing what ought to be done in these cases, or ever made any authoritative suggestion on the subject. The Holborn and other boards of guardians had therefore warrant for believing that the grant of outdoor relief to widows with children, even in supplement of earnings, permitted as it was by the Orders, continued, as from 1834 onwards, to have the sanction of the Central Authority.
D.—Children
It was with regard to children that the policy of the Central Authority in this period made the greatest advance. This, however, applies chiefly to the 40,000 children who were being relieved in institutions. With regard to the children being maintained on outdoor relief—who were at least five times as numerous—we do not find that the Central Authority in this period took any cognisance of their condition,[328]except to some small extent with regard to their schooling. Even this was a new feature. In 1844, as already mentioned, the Central Authority had expressly refused to allow 2d. a week to be paid for the schooling of such a child, or even to permit that sum to be added to the outdoor relief to the parent with the same object.[329]This decision was emphasised by a Circular in 1847, laying down that pauper children living at home were not to be educated at the expense of the poor rate.[330]For years the Manchester Board of Guardians, under the leadership of Mr. Hodgson, had tried to get some of their outdoor pauper children to school, the guardians actually maintaining a primitive day school of their own for this purpose. The Central Authority refused to sanction this experiment, forbade its extension, questioned the lawfulness of the guardians' action, and between 1850 and 1855 seems always to have been complaining about it.[331]In 1855, however, Parliament reversed the policy of non-responsibility for outdoor pauper children, so far as to allow the boards of guardians, if they chose, to pay for the schooling of such children between the ages of four and sixteen.[332]They were, however, expressly forbidden to make it a condition of relief that the child should attend school, for fear of exciting religious jealousies, all schools being then denominational. The Central Authority, in transmitting this statute ("Denison's Act") to the boards of guardians, laid stress on its permissive character. No instructions or suggestions were given as to the kind of school to be chosen, though if the guardians in their exercise of their discretion did pay the fees of any children, they were to satisfy themselves of their due attendance.[333]But it trusted that "it will be soon brought into extensive operation," and presently 3986 out of the 200,000 outdoor pauper children were at school.[334]Special efforts were made during the Lancashire cotton famine to get the Act carried out,[335]and gradually more of the boards of guardians adopted the policy.[336]In 1870 the Elementary Education Act made education compulsory over a large part of the country, and authorised boards of guardians not only to payfees, but also to make attendance at school a condition of relief. This, however, came as part of the educational policy of Parliament, not as part of the Poor Law policy of the Central Authority. So far as these children were concerned (though nominal fees continued to be paid out of the poor rate until 1891), the provision of schooling became merged in the general communistic provision of schooling for the whole population. By this beginning of communistic provision of education for the whole population (completed by the Free Education Act of 1891), the Poor Law authorities were enabled to escape—so far as education was concerned—from the embarrassing dilemma of either placing the pauper child in a position of vantage, or of deliberately bringing up the quarter of a million pauper children in a state of ignorance similar to that of the children of the poorest independent labourer prior to 1870. In respect of everything but education the problem remained. So far as regards the couple of hundred thousand children maintained on outdoor relief, the Central Authority left the boards of guardians without advice on this dilemma.
Passing now to the 40,000 children in Poor Law institutions, we have described how, between 1834 and 1847, the Central Authority, in disregard of the recommendations of the 1834 Report,[337]had adopted the policy of having one common workhouse for each union, under a single head, and with an almost identical regimen for all classes of inmates. It was necessarily incidental to the policy of the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order which was then widely prevalent, that the wife and children of the destitute man should be relieved only in the workhouse. These institutions came, therefore, to be the homes and places of education of not only orphans and foundlings, but also of tens of thousands of other children, who were often immured in them from birth until they could be placed out in service. Apparently the idea of one general workhouse for each union, under one uniform discipline, was too deeply rooted in the Poor Law Commissioners to allow of any provision being made for children in the Orders concerning workhouse management.No provision was made for the children going out for walks or games or play.[338]No Order required the guardians to appoint a qualified schoolmaster, or, indeed, any teacher at all, or to buy any school-books. Year after year the returns from many unions continue to state "No teachers in workhouse," without evoking from the Central Authority any compulsory Order.[339]
It is to the credit of the new Poor Law Board that it at once admitted that the much-vaunted general workhouse system was, so far as the children were concerned, simply manufacturing paupers. "Too many of those brought up in the workhouse," said Mr. Charles Buller in 1848, "were marked by a tendency to regard the workhouse as their natural and proper home.... They had been accustomed to the workhouse from their earliest infancy and ... to the confinement, ... and when they became adults there was nothing to deter them from entering it."[340]The remedy now proposed was the removal of all children from the workhouses to separate Poor Law schools, and their education, irrespective of cost, in such a way "as may best tend to raise them from the class of paupers to that of independent labourersand artisans."[341]To attain this end the Central Authority secured another statute in amendment of the hitherto abortive Act of 1844, permitting the establishment of "district schools" by combinations of unions.[342]But what enabled this policyto be begun in the teeth of persistent opposition was a terrible outbreak of cholera at Mr. Drouet's establishment at Tooting, where the pauper children of many parishes had continued (as a survival of the old Poor Law, not yet interfered with by the Central Authority) to be "farmed out."[343]
In the course of the same year the Central Authority succeeded in forming half-a-dozen school districts, and approved the establishment of a gigantic boarding-school for each of them, accommodating 800, and even 1000 children. The General Order issued in 1849 for the government of these "district schools" did not prescribe the details of administration so precisely as did the General Consolidated Order of 1847; and much latitude was left to the enterprise of the governing body. Against the formation of these school districts the boards of guardians successfully rebelled, much preferring to have a separate school for each union, and outside London this was the system generally adopted by the more populous unions. These separate schools, which were in all cases distinct from the workhouse, were regulated by special Orders, providing in similar general terms for the elements of good administration, but also leaving much to the discretion of the guardians.[344]The Central Authority now pressed the policy of separate schools on the boards of guardians at every opportunity.[345]In 1856, for instance, we find it saying to the Holborn Guardians that it cannot "too strongly urge upon the guardians the importance of the children being so brought up as to preserve them, as far as possible, free from the habits and associations contracted in a workhouse; and of their receiving such instruction as will fit them to earn their own livelihood. These objects will be best secured by the removal of the children to a separate school."[346]The Central Authority made useful suggestions, and it also encouraged improvements by laudatory description of the best schools in theOfficial Circularand the Annual Reports.[347]When it was objected by some boards of guardians that to teach writing and arithmetic to the pauper children was to give them advantages superior to those of the children of the independent labourer, the Central Authority replied that the provision of a good education for the children was not likely to encourage voluntary pauperism in the parents, and therefore there was no need to apply the principle of less eligibility in this case.[348]
On the other hand, it has to be recorded that there were apparently opposing influences at work, as the Norwich Board of Guardians found to its cost in 1854. That board had in 1846, apparently of its own accord, begun a most interesting experiment. As the workhouse was old and overcrowded, and obviously contaminating to the hundreds of children it contained, separate "Boys' and Girls' Homes" were established, away from the workhouse and under separate management. Atthese early types of Poor Law schools the children received both scholastic and industrial training. Their special feature was, however, that the boys of sufficient age were placed out in situations in the town, continuing to use the institution as their home, and contributing the wages that they earned towards the cost of their maintenance. The Norwich Guardians had found, as others have done since, that the old style of indoor apprenticeship was nearly extinct. They had resorted to what they called "outdoor apprenticeship." "In nineteen cases out of twenty the apprentices bound out ... have been outdoor apprentices and have resided with their parents, and received certain weekly allowances. Masters will not consent to take into their houses pauper apprentices."[349]The Central Authority had objected to this, and had insisted on enforcing the usual apprenticeship order.[350]Apparently it was not found possible to place boys out on this obsolete system, and the plan was adopted of getting the boys situations at wages, low at first, and not for some years amounting to enough fully to maintain them. This experiment had been undertaken with the full knowledge of the Poor Law inspectors, who constantly visited the homes, and who expressed themselves in high praise of their success, and it had even been specially described in print, with great commendation, by the inspector of pauper schools. Indeed, the eighty-seven boys who had already passed out of the homes (presumably as soon as their wages were big enough to keep them) were, with fewer than a dozen exceptions, well launched in the world and doing well. In 1854, however, after eight years, the Central Authority intimated that the whole expenditure on the homes was illegal, as being unauthorised, and it was in fact disallowed. It added that, whilst it was prepared to sanction the continuance of the homes as mere schools, it could not permit them to be used as homes for the elder boys who went out to work. The grounds on which this decision was arrived at are not clear. In one place it is stated that the Poor Law Board "conceive it to be unjust to the children of the independent poor," presumably unjust to give the pauper boys such advantages. In another place it is stated that the Poor Law Board had only been induced to permit the homes temporarily on the understanding that they were self-supporting—a contention hardly consistent with that of their illegality—whereas the boys who went out to work proved to cost something to the rates, though admittedly less than they would have cost in the workhouse. In a third place it is pointed out that the projected new workhouse will amply accommodate all the children, so that the homes will be unnecessary even as schools—an argument which seems inconsistent with the general policy of the Poor Law Board, unless we are to infer that it wanted only district schools by combinations of unions. We may note, as a final hint of the uncertainty that prevailed, that, after three years' correspondence, the Poor Law inspector advised the guardians to ask the Central Authority to sanction temporarily the continuance of the homes, as "it is quite possible ... that within the next two years the Legislature may resolve on communicating greater vitality to the provisions for the establishment of district schools." He had told the clerk to the guardians verbally that it was probable that Parliament would make it compulsory to provide for pauper children in establishments apart from workhouses, but that he saw "with regret how strongly different views are pressed" in regard to these homes; and that the guardians would meanwhile do well to delay proceeding with any but the adults' wards of the new workhouse.[351]
No such legislation as was thus foreshadowed took place, but the policy of removing the children from the workhouses was meanwhile incidentally promoted by an Act of 1849, which enabled use to be made of any establishment in which paupers were maintained by contract "for the education of any poor children therein."[352]Similarly the various Industrial Schools Acts opened up another class of schools to pauper children.[353]Finally, the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1869 enabled training ships to be established by school districts and the Metropolitan Asylums Board for the education of pauper boys for the sea service.[354]Already by 1856 it was reported with satisfaction that 78 per cent of the children under boards of guardians in the Metropolis were in separate schools—statistics, however, which continued to ignore the much larger number of children on outdoor relief, of whose existence the Central Authority only gradually became aware.[355]
During the next twenty years we see this policy of separate boarding schools for such of the Poor Law children as were on indoor relief being constantly pressed on boards of guardians. The erection of these costly barrack schools, which were each regulated by a separate Special Order, differing slightly from school to school,[356]the steady improvement in their accommodation and diet, and the continuous rise in the educational standard attained, which is the great feature of the ensuing period (though in accordance with the recommendations of the 1834 Report), marks a definite abandonment, as regards the children, of the principle that the condition of the pauper should always be less eligible than that of the lowest class of independent labourer. But although in the course of the period 1847-71, in the Metropolis and various large towns, the greater number of the boys and girls between five and fourteen were removed from the workhouses to these "barrack schools" and similar institutions, such schools were not made compulsory; the retention of children in the workhouse was not forbidden, and in hundreds of unions[357]they remained unaffected by the new policy of the Central Authority, which apparently felt unable to require the boards of guardians to adopt it. Even when the bulk of the children were placed in separate schools, there were always some in the workhouse itself; and it is remarkable that the Central Authority made no attempt to modify for these the provisions of the General Consolidated Order of 1847, the effect of which upon the workhouse administration of the period we have already described.[358]
Meanwhile the "workhouse schools" continued to improve very slowly in educational efficiency. The policy of the Central Authority was apparently to develop industrial training—agricultural work, the simpler handicrafts, and domestic service—on the model of the "Quatt School" in Shropshire. Whether or not this industrial work militated against more intellectual accomplishments is a moot point, but we hear of "the reports of 'the stagnant dulness of workhouse education' which annually proceed from Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools."[359]
Whether or not from a certain divergence of aim between the departments, the connection was in 1863 severed,[360]and the Poor Law Board thenceforward had its own inspectors of Poor Law Schools, whose criticisms and complaints, all in favour of the large district schools as compared with the single union school, appear from 1867 onward in the Annual Reports.[361]
At the very end of the period we may note the beginning of a reaction against the "barrack schools." It was pointed out by those acquainted with the Scottish system of boarding-out, as well as by persons experienced in English Poor Law administration, that these expensive boarding schools were not answering so well as their admirers claimed, especially as regards the girls. During 1866-9 the alternative of "boarding-out" children in private families at 4s. a week (now 5s.) was warmly discussed, and experimentally adopted in a few places.[362]In 1869 the Central Authority so far yielded to the criticisms made upon these institutions as to permit, under elaborate restrictions and safeguards, the "boarding-out," in families beyond the limits of the union, of the comparatively small class of children who were actually or practically orphans.[363]In these cases all idea of making the condition of the pauper child less eligible than that of the lowest independent labourer was definitely abandoned. The whole concern of the Central Authority was to see that the provision for the boarded-out child was good and complete. Far from being assimilated to the children of the lowest independent labourers, the boarded-out children were only to be entrusted to specially selected families superior to the lowest, who undertook to bring them up as their own, to provide proper food, clothing and washing, to train them in good habits as well as in suitable domestic and industrial work, and to make them regularly attend school and place of worship. For all this the foster parents were to receive with each child a sum three or four times as great as was, with the sanction of the Central Authority, commonly allowed for the maintenance of each of the couple of hundred thousand children at that date on outdoor relief; and which (as Professor Fawcett vainly objected) was far in excess of what the ordinary labourer could afford to expend on his own children.[364]"A plan," observed Mr. Fowle, "which cannot be defended on any sound principles of Poor Law."[365]"It is indeed impossible," says Mr. Mackay in this connection, "to deny that apparently every provision for pauper children may be regarded as a contravention of this rule.... Professor Fawcett's ... argument has been tacitly neglected."[366]
E.—The Sick
We have shown that, between 1834 and 1847, it was not contemplated that persons actually sick would be received in the workhouse, and that there was no trace in the documents of any desire on the part of the Central Authority to interfere with the usual practice of granting to them outdoor relief, which had not been in any way condemned or discredited by the 1834 Report. The same may be said of the Statutes, Orders, and Circulars of 1847-71. We find no suggestion that the boards of guardians ought not to grant outdoor relief in cases of sickness, or that sick paupers ought to be relieved in the workhouse. On the contrary, the exceptions specifically made in favour of sick persons seem to be even widened in scope. Thus, in 1848, the Central Authority laid it down that widows with illegitimate children were not to be refused outdoor relief, if the children were sick.[367]By the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of December 1852, it was definitely provided that outdoor relief might be given in case of sicknessin the family, even if the head of the family was simultaneously earning wages.[368]The same policy was embodied in the corresponding General Order issued on 1st January 1869, to certain Metropolitan unions.[369]Further, in the panic about cholera in 1866, the Central Authority informed the boards of guardians by circular that in cases of emergency they might call in any medical and other assistance that was needed, and even provide whatever sustenance, clothing, etc., was required,[370]apparently irrespective of "destitution" and of all General Orders, etc., to the contrary. Moreover, early in this period we note the beginning of the special definition of "destitution" as regards medical relief which has since been acted upon, that is to say, the inability to pay for the medical attendance that the nature of the case requires. Thus it was declared by the Central Authority in 1848 that the parish doctor might attend sick servants living in their master's household, who were plainly not destitute in the ordinary sense, as not being without food and lodging, but who, if there were no wages due to them, might be unable to pay for medical attendance.[371]A similar line of thought may be traced in that provision of the Act of 1851 which authorised boards of guardians to make annual subscriptions out of the poor rate to public hospitals and infirmaries, to enable these non-pauper institutions the better to provide "for the poor."[372]"The sick wards of the workhouses," as the Central Authority explained in 1869, "were originally provided for the cases of paupers in the workhouse who might be attacked by illness; and not as State hospitals into which all the sick poor of the country might be received for medical treatment and care. So far is this, indeed, from being the case that at least two-thirds of the sick poor receive medical attendance and treatment in their own homes."[373]When in 1869-71, the Central Authority obtained elaborate reports showing, for all parts of England, the practice that prevailed of normally giving outdoor relief to the sick, and of taking them into the workhouse infirmaries only when this was called for by (a) the nature of the disease, (b) the wishes of the patient, or (c) the nature of the home, and then only where suitable infirmary accommodation was available, there is no indication that any objection was entertained to the policy of outdoor relief to this large class.[374]
What is new in this period is the appearance, as a positive policy, of bringing pressure to bear on the boards of guardians to improve the quality of the medical attendance and medicine supplied. This led to an explicit disavowal, so far as regards the sick paupers, of any application to them of the principle of making the pauper's condition less eligible than that of the lowest grade of independent labourers. It is noteworthy that this new departure applied to outdoor medical relief quite as much as to institutional medical treatment, in which it has subsequently been sometimes excused on the ground that the superior treatment is accompanied by a loss of liberty. The new departure took three directions. It was definitely laid down that the medical attendance afforded to the outdoor paupers was to be of good quality, and thus necessarily above that obtained by the poorest independent labourer, or even by "the poor" generally. This was the outcome of a long campaign on behalf of the poorer members of the medical profession, of which Wakley was the leader in the House of Commons, and theLancetthe efficient organ.[375]In 1853 the Poor Law Board considered that the qualifications of the Poor Law medical officers "ought to be such as to ensurefor the poora degree of skill in their medical attendants equal to that which can be commanded by the more fortunate classes of the community."[376]On the suggestion of the House of Commons Committee on Poor Relief[377]it was authoritatively enjoined on boards of guardians in 1865 by a special circular that they were to supply freely quinine, cod-liver oil, and "other expensive medicines" to the sickpoor;[378]although it must have been plain that such things were beyond the reach of the independent labourers consulting the "sixpenny doctor," and even beyond the usual resources of the provident dispensaries of the period.[379]Finally, in 1867, the Metropolitan Poor Act authorised the establishment throughout London of Poor Law dispensaries. These institutions were consistently pressed on the Metropolitan boards of guardians by the Central Authority, as having been successful in Ireland in reducing the amount of sickness among the poor, and as ensuring, not only regular and more successful medical attention, but also a sufficient supply of medicines and medical appliances of standard quality.[380]By this elaborate systematisation of outdoor medical relief, the Central Authority not only put within the reach of the sick paupers medical attendance far superior to that accessible to the lowest grade of independent labourers, but even placed the sick pauper in the Metropolis, without loss of liberty, in a position equal to that of the superior artisan subscribing to a good provident dispensary.
The most remarkable change of front was, however, that relating to the institutional treatment of the sick. Down to 1847, it is not too much to say that "what may be called the hospital branch of Poor Law administration"[381]was ignored alike by Parliament, public opinion, and the Central Authority. We have shown that the institutional provision for the sick was not so much as mentioned in the Report of 1834, and that it remained practically ignored in all the Orders, Circulars, and Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners. The same is true of the first eighteen years of the Poor Law Board. Few and far between are the incidental references to the "sick wards" of the workhouses. There is not even a hint of a suggestion that relief to the sick poor could most advantageously take the form of an offer of "the House." On the contrary, it was held in 1848 that applicants for admissionsuffering from "fever" might even be refused admission, the relieving officer being enjoined to find lodging elsewhere for them,[382]though how this was to be done the Central Authority did not, in 1848, say. In 1857, the Metropolitan Boards of Guardians were recommended to send such cases to the London Fever Hospital[383](involving a payment by the guardians of 7s. weekly). Finally, in 1864-5, we have an outburst of public indignation, at the condition into which the sick wards of the workhouses had been allowed to drift. The death of a pauper in Holborn workhouse, and of another in St. Giles's workhouse, under conditions which seemed to point to inhumanity and neglect, led to an enquiry by three doctors (Anstie, Carr, and Ernest Hart), commissioned by theLancetnewspaper, the formation of an "Association for improving the condition of the sick poor," and a deputation to the Poor Law Board.[384]The publication of various reports on the workhouse infirmaries, in which terrible deficiencies were revealed,[385]led to public discussion and Parliamentary debates. The Central Authority at once accepted the new standpoint. It made no attempt to resist theprovision of the necessarily costly institutional treatment for the sick poor, whether or not their ailments were infectious or otherwise dangerous to the public. The progressive improvement of "the hospital branch of Poor Law administration," to use the phrase of the Central Authority itself, which had in the preceding thirty years grown up unawares, was now definitely accepted as an important feature of its policy. Statutory powers were obtained for the provision of hospitals in the Metropolis by combinations of boards of guardians. Urgent letters were written pressing the boards of guardians to embark on the expenditure required to enable them to provide efficiently for the sick paupers.[386]From 1865 onward, we see the Central Authority, on the public-spirited initiative of Mr. W. Rathbone and the Liverpool Select Vestry, pressing on the boards of guardians the employment of salaried and qualified nurses to attend to the sick paupers, whatever their complaints.[387]We have even in 1867, so far as the sick are concerned, the explicit disavowal by the Central Authority of the very idea of the deterrent workhouse, which had formed so prominent a part of the policy of 1834-1847. Mr. Gathorne Hardy, speaking as President of the Poor Law Board, said "there is one thing ... which we must peremptorily insiston, namely, the treatment of the sick in the infirmaries being conducted on an entirely separate system, because the evils complained of have mainly arisen from the workhouse management—which must to a great degree be of a deterrent character—having been applied to the sick,who are not proper objects for such a system."[388]
At first the new policy of the Central Authority for the institutional treatment of the sick took the form of the erection of special hospitals by "Sick Asylum Districts."[389]Presently, however, it came to the conclusion that this involved an unnecessary expense, and that it would be cheaper to revert to the idea of the Report of 1834, and use the existing workhouse buildings by a system of classification by institutions.[390]So definitely was this recognised as a reversion to 1834 that the Central Authority actually quoted the passage of the 1834 Report in justification of its plan.[391]From this point may be dated the adoption of the policy of the provision, in connection with the workhouse, but practically as a separate institution, of what is now called the Poor Law Infirmary.[392]In 1870 the Central Authority took pains to collect special statistics as to the extent to which this recently developed provision for the sick was being taken advantage of. It observes (and, significantly enough, without expression of disapproval) that "the numbers on the lists of relieving officers may beswollen by poor persons who in previous years, though really poor, refrained from coming on the rates, but whom changes in the law or in the mode of its administration have since attracted."[393]"Workhouses," it notes, "originally designed mainly as a test for the able-bodied, have, especially in the large towns, beenof necessitygradually transformed in to infirmaries for the sick. The higher standard for hospital accommodation has had a material effect upon the expenditure. So again it has been considered necessary to attach to workhouses separate fever wards; and wherever it was possible, these wards have been isolated by the erection of a separate building."[394]The extent to which the Poor Law had become the public doctor was indeed remarkable. The number of persons on outdoor relief who were "actually sick," apart from mere old age infirmity, and without their families, was found to be 13 per cent of the whole, equal to about 119,000. The number in the workhouses who were "actually sick," irrespective of "the vast number of old people disabled by old age, but not actually upon the sick list," varied in different unions from 14 to 39 per cent in the provinces, and up to nearly 50 per cent in some Metropolitan Unions; amounting, for the whole country, to about 60,000 actual sick-bed cases.[395]Taking indoor and outdoor patients together, the total simultaneously under medical treatment in the twelfth week of the half-year ending Lady Day 1870, was estimated at 173,000, being three quarters of one per cent of the population, and perhaps one out of four of all the persons under medical treatment in the whole population. The story from this date is one continuous record, on the one hand of an ever-increasing number of patients treated, and, on the other, of never slackening pressure by the Central Authority to induce apathetic or parsimonious boards of guardians to expend money in making both the outdoor medical service and the workhouse infirmaries as efficient and as well adapted and as well equipped for the alleviation and cure of their patients—without the least notion of "the principle of less eligibility"—as the most scientifically efficient hospitals and Statemedical service in any part of the world. After 1867, indeed, there was developed, for the Metropolitan paupers suffering from infectious diseases, the splendid hospital system of the Metropolitan Asylums Board.[396]At the very end of the existence of the Poor Law Board, Mr. Goschen seems almost to have been contemplating a yet further extension. "The economical and social advantages," he observed, "offree medicine to the poorer classes generally as distinguished from actual paupers, and perfect accessibility to medical advice at all times under thorough organisation, may be considered as so important in themselves as to render it necessary to weigh with the greatest care all the reasons which may be adduced in their favour."[397]
F.—Persons of Unsound Mind
It is difficult to discover what was the policy of the Central Authority during this period with regard to lunatics, idiots, and the mentally defective. Lunacy had always been, and remained, a ground of exception from the prohibition to grant outdoor relief. The provision of a lodging for a lunatic was, moreover, an exception to the prohibition of the payment of rent for a pauper. As a result of these exceptions, there were on 1st January 1852, 4107 lunatics and idiots on outdoor relief,[398]and this number had increased by 1859 to 4892[399]and by 1870 to 6199.[400]The Central Authority took no steps to require or persuade boards of guardians not to grant outdoor relief to lunatics, nor yet to get any appropriate provision made for them in the greatgeneral workhouses on which it had insisted. Parliament in 1862 (in order to relieve the pressure on lunatic asylums) expressly authorised arrangements to be made for chronic lunatics to be permanently maintained in workhouses, under elaborate provisions for their proper care.[401]These arrangements would have amounted, in fact, to the creation, within the workhouse, of wards which were to be in every respect as well equipped, as highly staffed, and as liberally supplied as a regular lunatic asylum.[402]The Central Authority transmitted the Act to the boards of guardians, observing, with what almost seems like sarcasm, that it was not "aware of any workhouse in which any such arrangements could conveniently be made";[403]and the provisions of this Act were, we believe, never acted upon. Whilst consistently objecting to the retention in workhouses of lunatics who were dangerous, or who were deemed curable, we do not find that the Central Authority ever insisted on there being a proper lunatic ward for the persons of unsound mind who were necessarily received, for a longer or shorter period, in every workhouse.[404]Moreover, the Central Authority took no steps to get such persons removed to lunatic asylums. In 1845 it had agreed with the Manchester Board of Guardians (who did not want to make any more use of the county asylum than they could help) that they were justified in retaining in the workhouse any lunatics whom their own medical officer did not consider "proper to be confined" in a lunatic asylum.[405]In 1849 it expressly laid it down that a weak-minded pauper or, as we now say, a mentally defective, must either be a lunatic, and be certified and treated as such, or not a lunatic, in which case no special treatment could be provided for him or her in the one general workhouse to which the Central Authority still adhered.[406]We can find no indication of policy as to whether it was recommended that suchmentally defectives should be granted outdoor relief, or (as one can scarcely believe) required to inhabit a workhouse which made no provision for them.[407]
The explanation of this paralysis of the Central Authority, as regards the policy to be pursued with persons of unsound mind, is to be found, we believe, in the existence and growth during this period of the rival authority of the Lunacy Commissioners, who had authority over all persons of unsound mind, whether paupers or not. The Lunacy Commissioners had not habitually in their minds the principle of "less eligibility"; and they were already, between 1848 and 1871, making requirements with regard to the accommodation and treatment of pauper lunatics that the Poor Law authorities regarded as preposterously extravagant. The records of the boards of guardians show visits of the inspectors of the Lunacy Commissioners, and their perpetual complaints of the presence of lunatics and idiots in the workhouses without proper accommodation; mixed up with the sane inmates to the great discomfort of both;[408]living in rooms which the Lunacy Commissioners considered too low and unventilated, with yards too small and depressing, amid too much confusion and disorder, for the section of the paupers for whom they were responsible.[409]Such reports, officially communicated to the Poor Law Board, seem to have been merely forwarded for the consideration of the board of guardians concerned. But other action was not altogether wanting. Under pressure from the Lunacy Commissioners, the Central Authority asked, in 1857, for more care in the conveyance of lunatics;[410]urged, in 1863, a more liberal dietary for lunatics in workhouses;[411]in 1867 it reminded the boards of guardians that lunatics required much food, especially milk and meat;[412]it was thought "very desirable that the insane inmates ... should have theopportunity of taking exercise";[413]it concurred "with the Visiting Commissioner in deeming it desirable that a competent paid nurse should be appointed for the lunatic ward," in a certain workhouse;[414]it suggested the provision of leaning chairs in another workhouse;[415]and, in yet another, the desirability of not excluding the persons of unsound mind from religious services.[416]In 1870 it issued a circular, transmitting the rules made by the Lunacy Commissioners as to the method of bathing lunatics, for the careful consideration of the boards of guardians.[417]But we do not find that the Central Authority issued any Order amending the General Consolidated Order of 1847, which, it will be remembered, did not include among its categories for classification either lunatics, idiots, or the mentally defective; and the Central Authority did not require any special provision to be made for them.
The policy of the Lunacy Commissioners was to get provision made in every county for all the persons of unsound mind, whatever their means, in specially organised lunatic asylums in which the best possible arrangements should be made for their treatment and cure irrespective of cost, and altogether regardless of making the condition of the pauper lunatic less eligible than that of the poorest independent labourer. Unlike the provision for education, and that for infectious disease, the cost of this national (and as we may say communistic) provision for lunatics was a charge upon the poor rate. Under the older statutes, the expense of maintaining the inmates of the county lunatic asylums was charged to the Poor Law authorities of the parishes in which they were respectively settled; and the boards of guardians were entitled to recover it, or part of it, from any relatives liable to maintain such paupers, even in cases in which the removal to the asylum was compulsory and insisted on in the public interest.[418]The great cost to the poor rate of lunatics sent to the county lunatic asylums, and the difficultyof recovering the amount from their relatives, prevented the whole-hearted adoption, either by the boards of guardians, or the Central Authority, of the policy of insisting on the removal of persons of unsound mind to the county asylums. For the imbeciles and idiots of the Metropolitan Unions, provision was made after 1867 in the asylums of the Metropolitan Asylums Board.[419]But no analogous provision for those of other unions was made. The result was that, amid a great increase of pauper lunacy, the proportion of the paupers of unsound mind who were in lunatic asylums did not increase.[420]On the other hand the indisposition of the Central Authority to so amend the General Consolidated Order of 1847 as to put lunatics in a separate category, and require suitable accommodation and treatment for them—an indisposition perhaps strengthened by the very high requirements on which the Lunacy Commissioners would have insisted—stood in the way of any candid recognition of the fact that for thousands of lunatics, idiots, and mentally defectives, the workhouse had, without suitable provision for them, and often to the unspeakable discomfort of the other inmates, become a permanent home.
G.—Defectives
During this period, the blind, the deaf and dumb, and the lame and deformed were increasingly recognised by Parliament as classes for whom the Poor Law authorities might,if they chose, provide expensive treatment. This was done by authorising boards of guardians, if they chose, to pay for their maintenance, whether children or adults, in special institutions.[421]We do not find that the Central Authority suggested the adoption of this or any other policy or gave any lead to the boards of guardians with regard to these cases.[422]
H.—The Aged and Infirm
We have shown that neither the Report of 1834 nor the Central Authority between 1834 and 1847 even suggested any departure from the common practice of granting outdoor relief to the aged and infirm. This continued, so far as the official documents show, to be the policy of the Central Authority during the whole of the period 1847-1871.[423]The only two references to the subject in the Orders and Circulars of this period assume that the aged and infirm will normally be relieved in their own homes. Thus, in 1852, in commenting on the provision requiring the weekly payment of relief, the Central Authority said, "as to the cases in which the pauper is too infirm to come every week for the relief, it is on many accounts advantageous that the relieving officer should, as far as possible, himself visit the pauper, and give the relief at least weekly."[424]And in the first edition of the Out-relief Regulation Order of 1852 (that of 25th August 1852) the Central Authority, far from prohibiting outdoor relief to persons "indigent and helpless from age, sickness, accident, or bodily or mental infirmity," formally sanctioned this practice, by ordering that "one third at least of such relief" should be given in kind (viz., "in articles of food orfuel, or in other articles of absolute necessity"),[425]the object being expressly explained to be, not, as might nowadays have been imagined, the discouragement of such relief, but the prevention of its misappropriation.[426]This provision was objected to by boards of guardians up and down the country, on the ground that it would be a hardship to the aged and infirm poor. The Poplar Board of Guardians, for instance, stated "that there are a large number of persons under the denomination of aged and infirm whom the guardians have, in their long practical experience, found it expedient and not objectionable to relieve wholly in money, feeling assured that it would be beneficially expended for their use, and that in consequence of their infirmity the relieving officer or his assistant, if necessary, is thereby enabled to conveniently relieve them at their own house."[427]The Norwich Guardians stated that it would be difficult "to determine (especially for the aged and sick poor) what kind of food or articles should be given." They also communicated with forty other unions, summoning them to concerted resistance.[428]A deputation "from most of the large and populous unions in the north of England ... and from several Metropolitan parishes, representing in the aggregate upwards of 2,000,000 of population,"[429]assembled in London, and objected to nearly all the provisions of the Order.
Accompanied by about twenty-five members of Parliament, the deputation waited on the Poor Law Board, and specially urged their objection to being compelled to give a third of all outdoor relief in kind. After two hours' argumentative discussion, Sir John Trollope said that the board would reconsider the whole Order, which need not in the meantime be acted upon; and he hinted at a probable modification of the Article relating to relief in kind.[430]In response to these objections, the Central Authority does not seem even to havesuggested that outdoor relief to the aged and infirm was contrary to its principles. It first intimated its willingness to modify the Order if its working proved to be "accompanied with hardship to the aged or helpless poor"[431]and then within a few weeks withdrew the provision altogether as regards any but the able-bodied.[432]It was expressly explained that the Order, as re-issued, was intended as a precaution "against the injurious consequences of maintaining out of the poor rateable-bodied labourers and their familiesin a state of idleness," and that the Central Authority left to the boards of guardians "full discretion as to the description of relief to be given to indigent poor of every other class."[433]From that date down to the abolition of the Poor Law Board in 1871, we can find in the documents no hint or suggestion that it disapproved of outdoor relief to the aged and infirm. On 1st January 1871, nearly half the outdoor relief was due to this cause.[434]
I.—Non-Residents
There was no change in the policy of preventing relief to paupers not resident within the union. The Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of 1852 embodied the prohibition with the same exceptions as had been contained in the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order of 1844, omitting, however, that of widows without children during the first six months of their widowhood. But, as has been already mentioned, at the very end of the period the Boarding-Out Orders of 1869, etc., permitted children to be maintained outside the union.
J.—The Workhouse
We have seen that between 1834 and 1847 the Central Authority turned directly away from the express recommendations of the 1834 Report with regard to the institutional accommodation of the paupers. Instead of a series of separateinstitutions appropriately organised and equipped for the several classes of the pauper population—the aged and infirm, the children, and the adult able-bodied—the Central Authority had got established, in nearly every union, one general workhouse; nearly everywhere "the same cheap, homely building," with one common regimen, under one management, for all classes of paupers.