CHAPTER IV

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.

[488] The sequence in the Metropolis seems to have been, first, the exceptional distress in the East End during 1866-7; then a strict administration on deterrent principles, agreed to by conferences of East End Guardians in 1869, under the influence of Mr. Corbett, who had become inspector for the Metropolis in 1866; Mr. Goschen's Circular of 20th November 1869, and the consequent inquiries into Poor Law practice; Mr. Corbett's powerful Report of 10th August 1871; and then the Circular of 2nd December 1871, with the conferences resulting therefrom. Mr. Longley was appointed inspector for the Metropolis in March 1872 (Mr. Longley's Report, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp 196-7).

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.

[489] Circular of 2nd December 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, pp. 63-8.

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]

[490] The first notice that we have seen of the fact that some districts contain "a much higher proportion of the weak and old," than others, and that some have also a much higher rate of mortality among husbands than others, which vitiates any simple comparison of their pauperism, is in a Report by Mr. Culley (inspector) in 1873 (Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 66, 72-3). But the hint was not acted on in the tables of statistics used by the inspectors.

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]

[491] Mr. Longley did definitely recommend that outdoor relief, even to the widows with families, the sick and the "disabled"--by which he meant the aged--should be discontinued, except in cases that might be found to fall outside a series of categories so defined, and so extensive, as practically to include the whole of these classes. Moreover, in his view it was to be "regarded as the next step in the advance towards improved administration that applicants for out-relief shall be called upon to show special cause why they should not receive indoor relief" (Mr. Longley's Report in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 142).

[492] _E.g._ MS. archives, Newcastle Board of Guardians (lithographed letter of Mr. Hedley, inspector, drawing attention to the comparative outdoor pauperism of his unions, and urging reduction).

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]

[493] _History of the English Poor Law_, by T. Mackay, 1899, vol. iii. p. 154.

[494] Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, pp. xix-xx.

[495] Mr. Dodson (President of the Local Government Board) to deputation from Newington and St. Saviour's, Southwark, November 1881, in _Local Government Chronicle_, 26th November 1881, p. 951.

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.

[496] Fifth Annual Report, 1875-6, pp. xvii-xix.

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]

[497] Letter, signed by Sir John Lambert, to Mr. Albert Pell, M.P., Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, pp. 51-7.

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

(i.) _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]

[498] It is to be noted that Mr. Longley, in 1873, drew attention to the uncertainty of practice caused by the lack of definition of "able-bodied," and the different senses in which it was used in the official documents. He pointed out that the absence of definition seriously impaired administration, and urged that authoritative instructions should be issued (Mr. Longley's Report in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 174). We do not find that any action was taken.

(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]

[499] Circular of 2nd December 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 67. With regard to the 85,386 persons who received outdoor relief on 1st January 1873, as "able-bodied male paupers" (including, it must be remembered, 18,037 wives and 45,285 children of such men, 15,133 men relieved on account of their own sickness, 5572 on account of the sickness of wife or child, and only 1339 merely for want of work), the Central Authority observed without discrimination, that: "There would be, in our opinion, no material difficulty in enforcing, throughout all the unions, the _salutary provision_ which forbids the allowance of relief to this class of persons except in a workhouse" (Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. xiv). But no such "provision" existed, in any Statute or Order, or even in any official Circular, so far as we can discover. Mr. Corbett had once suggested that he should "encourage boards of guardians to abstain far _more than at present_, from giving out-relief to able-bodied men on account of their own sickness or accident." But even he did not propose its refusal in all cases (Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871). We cannot find that the Central Authority had ever before formally seemed to give its approval, if it really intended to do so by this _obiter dictum_, to the suggestion that sick persons ought not to receive outdoor relief.

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]

[500] Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. xvii. It also received "applications from a few other unions for assent to temporary out-relief in the case of boatmen or other persons thrown out of work by the frost." Sanction was not actually refused, but it was pointed out that the guardians should have offered the workhouse (_ibid._).

[501] Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. xviii.

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.

[502] Letter of Local Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p. 56.

(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]

[503] Local Government Board to Bristol Union, 16th January 1879, _Local Government Chronicle_, 25th January 1879, p. 69.

[504] Local Government Board to Bedminister Union, January 1881; in _Local Government Chronicle_, 8th January 1881, p. 35.

[505] Letter, Local Government Board to Warrington Union, March 1878; in _Local Government Chronicle_, 30th March 1878, p. 253.

[506] Circular of 2nd December 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 67; _see_ Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871.

[507] Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871.

[508] Instructional letter to inspectors (?) December 1878; cited by Mr. Culley (inspector), to Newcastle Board of Guardians, _see_ MS. archives, 28th December 1878.

[509] Local Government Board letter to Holborn Union, 9th February 1886, in House of Commons, No. 69 of 1886, p. 40.

[510] _Ibid._ pp. 40-1.

(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.

[511] Special Order to Whitechapel Union, 18th April 1887. This new departure was not mentioned in the Annual Report, and the Order has not, as far as we know, been generally published.

(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]

[512] Mr. Corbett's Report of 14th January 1868, in Twentieth Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1867-8, p. 126; repeated in his Report of 10th August 1871.

[513] Office Minute by Mr. Longley, 1873. Much the same words occur in his Annual Report. The "lax discipline of the workhouse" in London is described as tending "to deprive it of its function as a test" (Mr. Longley's Report in Third Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1873-4, p. 166).

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, a nd 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]

[514] Mr. Longley's Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis; in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. 49.

[515] _Ibid._ p. 42.

[516] Mr. Longley's Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. 43.

[517] _Ibid._ p. 47. We have not verified the statement that the intention of the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867 included the allocation of separate workhouses exclusively for the able-bodied. We see that in January 1868 Mr. Corbett was suggesting it as if it were an idea of his own. "I am more than ever convinced," he says, "that one of the great wants of the Metropolis is the establishment of new, or the appropriation of existing workhouses for the able-bodied classes of _groups_ of unions, in each of which one sex only should be received; a far more complete system of classification maintained than has hitherto been attempted, at least in Metropolitan workhouses; and strict discipline enforced under proper regulations and superintendence" (Mr. Corbett's Report of 4th January 1868, in Twentieth Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1867-8, p. 126). Whether or not this was exactly in the mind of the legislature or of the Central Authority in 1867, it seems true, as Mr. Longley pointed out, that the provisions of the Metropolitan Poor Act were extensive enough to cover, "whether directly or indirectly," not merely an improvement in workhouse sick wards, but "the reception in distinct buildings of separate classes of paupers or ... classification, not in a workhouse, but by workhouses" (Mr. Longley's Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1874-5, p. 42).

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]

[518] Special Order to Poplar and Stepney, 19th October 1871; Special Order to Poplar, 6th March 1872 (extending the use of the Poplar Workhouse to the able-bodied of any Metropolitan union); Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871.

[519] First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. xxiv; Second Annual Report, 1872-3, pp. xxvi-xxvii.

[520] Second Annual Report, 1872-3, p. xxvii.

[521] Letters, Poplar Guardians to Local Government Board, 4th November 1878; Local Government Board to Poplar Guardians, 19th December 1887. Even this very strict Board of Guardians had, in 1871, used, as a labour test for women, "a task of work in a _needle-room_ ... provided by the guardians," and this had been recommended even by Mr. Corbett (Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871). But oakum-picking had apparently been substituted for needlework, and the Central Authority, in 1878, did not see its way to any alternative. "With regard to the objection ... to oakum-picking as an employment for women ... very great difficulty was experienced in finding labour which shall not interfere with the market for the work of the independent poor, and ... even oakum-picking is not altogether free from this objection.... Work of this description is in use in workhouses in various parts of the country, not as punishment ... but as one of the most available means of employing the able-bodied indoor paupers.... General experience has shown that it is not physically injurious, and in this particular workhouse it is found that many of the female paupers can pick the prescribed quantity with ease.... It is erroneous to suppose that a particular description of work is necessarily degrading because it happens to be exacted in gaols, since there are but few kinds of menial work in all large institutions to which the same objection may not also be applied; and it should be added that, unless this kind of employment is resorted to, it would not be practicable to find sufficient occupation for the female inmates of the workhouses, and that enforced idleness is more demoralising than even disagreeable work" (Local Government Board to Poplar Union, 19th December 1878, in _Local Government Chronicle_, 4th January 1879, pp. 8-9). Twenty years later the official view, as we shall see, completely changed.

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]

[522] Special Order to Poplar Union, 4th February 1881; Local Government Board to Poplar Guardians, 9th February 1881; MS. Minutes, Poplar Guardians, 18th February 1881.

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]

[523] Special Orders of 13th October 1880, 24th August 1881, and 11th February 1887.

[524] MS. Minutes, Manchester Guardians, July and August 1887. The Manchester Guardians did not act on this, but ten years later united with the Chorlton Guardians in setting aside (under the Poor Law Act 1879) one workhouse for the double purpose of a casual ward and "a test house for able-bodied paupers" (See Special Orders to Manchester and Chorlton, dated 20th March 1897, and 9th April 1898; Twenty-Seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, pp. 127-8). This still continues. The whole experience of these Able-bodied Test Workhouses is reviewed in the Minority Report, 1909.

[525] Mr. Lockwood's Report, in Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. 446. Already in 1898, however, the Central Authority had told its inspectors to urge that oakum-picking, which had been the staple of the test workhouse, should be given up, as an occupation for workhouse inmates, especially for women; and did not suggest any possible alternative (Twenty-eighth Annual Report, 1898-9, p. lxxxiv). "Oakum-picking by the inmates of the workhouses should be discontinued," said Mr. Chaplin (_Hansard_, 23rd May 1898, vol. 58, p. 326). This was a complete reversal of policy. As recently as 1890 the Central Authority had actually invited the Poplar Board of Guardians to undertake some oakum-picking for the Government, and the board had undertaken to pick 30 tons at £3 per ton (Local Government Board to Poplar Board of Guardians, 9th July 1890). By 1904, not only oakum-picking, but also corn-grinding with a piecework task, was given up. "As regards the proposed task of corn-grinding, the board states that in cases where their consent is necessary they do not sanction a task of corn-grinding by quantity, and they consider that a time limit should be fixed for such work. As to oakum-picking, they are of opinion that, on account of its associations, it is open to objection as a task for workhouse inmates, and as far as practicable, it should be discontinued for all inmates of workhouses" (Local Government Board to Islington Union, September 1904; _Local Government Chronicle_, 8th October 1904, p. 1049).

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]

[526] 34 & 35 Vic. c. 108, sec. 4; Circular of 18th November 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 54.

(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]

[527] Mr. Chamberlain to Metropolitan Board of Works, 19th February 1886, in House of Commons, No. 69 of 1886, p. 44.

[528] The Circular incidentally criticised the character of the labour test usually imposed on the able-bodied applicant for poor relief, as being unfit for skilled artisans. Spade labour was suggested as "less objectionable"; and "the board will be glad to assist the guardians by authorising the hiring of land for the purpose" of setting a task of work to able-bodied paupers on outdoor relief (Circular of 15th March 1886, in Sixteenth Annual Report, 1886-7, p. 6). This has now been done at Leicester, where the board of guardians hires land on which to set the able-bodied to dig (Thirty-third Annual Report, 1903-4, p. 205).

[529] Circular of 15th March 1886, in Sixteenth Annual Report, 1886-7, pp. 5-7.

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]

[530] Mr. Ritchie to deputation as to children in workhouses, _see_ _Local Government Chronicle_, 17th December 1887, p. 1058.

[531] Circular of 16th January 1891, in Twentieth Annual Report, 1890-91, p. 206; Local Government Board to Poplar Board of Guardians, 21st January 1891 (_see_ for the action thereon of Boards of Guardians, MS. archives, Poplar Board of Guardians, January 1891).

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]

[532] Circular of 14th November 1892, in Twenty-second Annual Report, 1892-3, p. 38.

[533] Circulars of 27th March and 30th September 1893, Twenty-third Annual Report, 1893-4, pp. lxiv-lxv; Board of Trade Report on Agencies and Methods for dealing with the Unemployed, 1893 (C. 7182), pp. 187-206.

[534] Twenty-fourth Annual Report, 1894-5, pp. lxxi-lxxiii. The local authorities were taking action before the Circular was sent; _see_, for instance, MS. Minutes, Bradford Board of Guardians, 4th February 1895, showing that they had decided on a deputation to the town council on 23rd January; and that the town council, on 25th January, had agreed to find work in clearing away snow.

[535] _Ibid._ p. lxxiii; First, Second, and Third Reports of the Select Committee on Distress from Want of Employment, 1895.

[536] Twenty-fourth Annual Report, 1894-5, p. lxxiv.

[537] Third Report of Select Committee on Distress from Want of Employment, 1895, p. 560.

[538] The Lord Mayor of Manchester, in reply to deputation from the Chorlton Board of Guardians, 1895; _see_ Second Report of Committee on Distress from Want of Employment, 1895, p. 54.

[539] Third Report of Committee on Distress from Want of Employment, 1895, p. v. The Committee also recommended the abolition of the penalty of disfranchisement, on persons in receipt of poor relief, so far as "the deserving man forced to become dependent on public aid" was concerned (_Ibid._).

[540] _Ibid._ p. iv. _See_ Mr. Shaw Lefevre's answer in House of Commons 18th February 1895 (_Hansard_, vol. 30, p. 969). The Central Authority persisted in its attitude with regard to these powers, and the rules, without which they cannot be used, have not in fact been issued; _see_ Mr. Gerald Balfour's answer in House of Commons, 19th July 1905 (_Hansard_, vol. 149, pp. 1179-80). Similar powers were, however, granted to distress committees of local municipal authorities by the Unemployed Workmen Act 1905, under which the necessary rules have been issued.

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]

[541] 5 Edw. VII. c. 18 (Unemployed Workmen Act 1905); Local Government Board to Metropolitan Mayors, 20th October 1904, and Circulars of 24th and 31st October 1904, 20th September, 10th October, 8th and 22nd December 1905, 13th January 1906; Orders of 20th September, 10th October, 6th December 1905, 13th January 1906. Thirty-fourth Annual Report, 1904-5, pp. cxxii-iii, 150-6; Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, pp. clxxx-cxcii, 349-438.

(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.

[542] In answer to an inquiry in 1887, as to what action had been taken on the Circular of 1886, the Poplar Board of Guardians replied that no exceptional measures had been taken, and that they had found it unnecessary even to open a labour yard (Local Government Board to Poplar, 11th January 1887; Poplar to Local Government Board, 12th January 1887).

[543] Local Government Board to Poplar Board of Guardians, 15th January, 6th June, 17th August, and 4th October 1895; MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 1895-1900.

[544] No Order appears to have been issued, sanctioning or regulating this new experiment, the Local Government Board's approval being apparently conveyed, partly by a brief letter, partly by verbal communications through the inspector MS. archives, Poplar Board of Guardians, 8th and 22nd July, 16th and 30th September, 21st October, 25th November 1903; 13th April 1904; Local Government Board to Poplar Union, 16th and 28th July 1903, and 11th April 1904. The Central Authority refused to modify the General Dietaries and Accounts Order 1900, which had prescribed model dietaries for inmates of workhouses, but had not included any for men engaged all day out-of-doors at agricultural labour, but it sanctioned the extra expenditure illegally incurred for a more appropriate dietary (Local Government Board to Poplar, 10th January 1905; MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 11th January 1905).

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]

[545] Special Order to Poplar of 4th February 1905 (modified workhouse test). It is not clear whether: (i.) the men at the farm colony; or (ii.) their families, were in 1904 included in the statistics of indoor, or in those of outdoor, pauperism; nor whether any change in the actual statistical classification was made on receipt of the Order of February 1905.

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.

[546] MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 30th March, 18th May, 15th June 1904; Local Government Board to Poplar Board of Guardians, 25th March and 2nd June 1904.

[547] Local Government Board to Bradford Board of Guardians, 14th January 1905. The Bradford Board had asked the Central Authority in vain, two years before, to get powers to enable Boards of Guardians to combine to form labour colonies of their own, especially for vagrants (MS. archives, Bradford Board of Guardians, February 1903).

[548] Local Government Board to Poplar Board of Guardians, 1st December 1903.

_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]

[549] 34 & 35 Vic. c. 108, secs. 5, 6, 9.

[550] Circular Letter on Vagrancy of 18th November 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 55.

[551] This Circular was issued after the passing of the Pauper Inmates Discharge and Regulation Act, and a few days before the General Order, of which the provisions will shortly be described. In the next year the Board reported a diminution in the number of vagrants, and allowed some of the less stringent of the Metropolitan casual wards to be closed, an action which caused difficulties in later years. In the unions where there were no casual wards, ordinary vagrants were referred to that of a neighbouring union, but the workhouse officials were bound to admit any applicants who, from sickness or other cause, were unable to proceed farther, and generally any case of urgent necessity (Second Annual Report, 1872-3, pp. xxii-xxiii). In 1872 also the Board advised guardians to dispense with the services of police constables as assistant relieving officers, and appoint the superintendents of the casual wards instead (Circular on Vagrancy in the Metropolis, of 30th May 1872; in _ibid._ p. 17). No reason is given for this change, and thirty years later the co-operation of the police in this manner is still assumed, for the board sanction a subscription by the guardians towards the cost of providing a mid-day meal for vagrants when proceeding from one workhouse to another, "where the superintendent of police is appointed assistant relieving officer for vagrants" (_Local Government Chronicle_, 29th November 1902, p. 1203).

[552] 45 and 46 Vic. c. 36 (Casual Poor Act 1882); General Order of 18th December 1882, in Twelfth Annual Report, 1882-3, pp. 64-71. The Metropolis was now deemed to be one town for the purpose of punishing resort to the casual ward more than once in a month.

[553] Circulars of 16th April 1885, 7th November 1887, and 18th January 1888; _see_ Fifteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Annual Reports.

[554] Circular of 13th June 1892; Order of 11th June 1892; Twenty-Second Annual Report, 1892-3, pp. 14-15.

[555] _See_ its Report, Cd. 2852 of 1906.

_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]

[556] By the Divided Parishes and Poor Law Amendment Act 1876, the law which had for poor relief purposes put a woman whose husband was beyond seas in the same position as a widow was extended to a married woman living separate from her husband (39 & 40 Vic. c. 61 sec. 18; _Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board_, vol. iii. 1888, p. 186). It is also to be noted that under the Married Women's Property Act, 1882, a married woman having separate property was made liable to maintain her husband, and, concurrently with her husband, also her children and grandchildren if they became chargeable to the poor rate (45 & 46 Vic. c. 75, secs. 20, 21).

[557] Circular, 2nd December 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 67.

[558] For the "Manchester Rules" _see_ Fifth Annual Report, 1875-6, pp. xvii-xix, 130-133. Somewhat similar rules were at the instance of the inspectorate adopted by the Cheshire Unions as late as 1891 (Twenty-first Annual Report, 1891-2, pp. 164-5).

[559] Circular of 2nd December 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 67. This suggestion we trace to Mr. Corbett, in 1869, though in the milder form of limiting the grant of outdoor relief to recently deserted wives, to two or three weeks only (Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871, as reprinted by the Central Authority for official circulation, February 1873). Ten years later the Central Authority found that this policy was not justified by the law, so far as regards deserted wives having children under seven (as is the case with most of them). In such cases it was found necessary in 1880 to advise that outdoor relief could, in case of destitution, not be refused, even if the woman was able-bodied, and irrespective of her character, the cause or duration of the husband's absence, possible collusion with him, etc. The Central Authority decided that, "assuming that the applicant in this case is a married woman, whose husband, though living, is not residing with her, she would not be liable for the support of the children, who, being within the age of nurture, cannot lawfully be separated from her; and the guardians would not be justified, under these circumstances, in withholding out-relief _for the children_" (_Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board_, vol. ii. 1880, p. 71).

[560] Local Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p. 56.

[561] Circular, 30th August 1882, in Twelfth Annual Report, 1882-3, pp. 43-4.

[562] "Widows and their dependent children [on 1st January 1873, 25,740] constitute 33 per cent of the total outdoor pauperism of London, and 57 per cent of so much of that pauperism as is caused otherwise than by age and permanent infirmity" (Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 179).

[563] Circular of 2nd December 1871, in First Annual Report, 1871-2, p. 67. The injurious results of this policy were reported by Mr. Culley, _see_ his Report in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 74. On the other hand Mr. Longley preferred the "offer of the House" to widows, in order to make their deceased husbands provident. "The condition of a widow with a large family," said Mr. Longley, "however deplorable it undoubtedly is, is one of the ordinary contingencies of human circumstances, which may, in some degree or other, be provided against equally with sickness, or accident, or other bereavement.... A man in receipt of regular weekly wages may be fairly called upon to secure his widow if [un]able to work for her living, against dependence upon Poor Law relief" (Mr. Longley's Report, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 183, 185).

[564] Local Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p. 56. Some of the inspectors altogether disapproved of the policy of taking the children into the workhouse (_see_, for instance, Mr. Culley's Report, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 74). One inspector, at least, realised the connection of the destitution due to widowhood with the absence of compensation for accidents and industrial diseases among workmen. "Male life, at least, is longer in the rural than in the manufacturing, mining, and seaport unions. In the latter ... male life is more frequently cut short by illness or accident arising from the nature of the employment.... The proportion of children (exclusive of orphans) to widows ... varies from 0·48 in the purely agricultural union of Bedale to 2·30 in the manufacturing and shipbuilding district of Jarrow.... I found ... on examining the returns from the different relief districts that the highest rate of mortality amongst husbands prevailed in the inland portion of the union, a state of things which the relieving officers attributed to accidents in shipbuilding yards and the unwholesome nature of the employment in chemical works. In the same manner, in Tynemouth Union, I found that the proportion of widows with young families was considerably higher in the mining district than in the town of North Shields.... In Teesdale the rate of mortality amongst the leadminers is very great, owing, I was informed, to the bad ventilation of the mines" (Mr. Culley's Report, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 72-3). We do not find that the point was followed up until the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1900.

[565] Local Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, pp. 55-6. We find the policy of reducing "the widow's six months" suggested by Mr. Corbett in 1869. At the Conference of East End Guardians summoned by him, it was agreed "that the widows without children should, as a rule, after a period not exceeding three months from the commencement of their widowhood, be relieved only in the workhouse" (Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871; as reprinted by the Central Authority for official circulation, February 1873).

[566] _Ibid._

[567] Twenty-third Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1870-1, p. 374.

[568] Third Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1873-4, p. 588; Twenty-first Annual Report, 1891-2, p. 365.

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.

[569] It is, however, to be noted that in the model rules which the most zealous inspectors were pressing on Boards of Guardians in 1902--herein differing from the much commended Manchester rules of 1875--the widow with only one child is recognised as a fit case for outdoor relief (Mr. Preston-Thomas's Report, in Thirty-Second Annual Report, 1902-3, p. 100).

_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]

[570] Twenty-third Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1870-71, p. 378.

[571] On 1st January 1892, the 336,870 children of 1871 had fallen to 177,245, probably the lowest figure of the whole seventy years (Twenty-first Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1891-2, p. 365).

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]

[572] 36 & 37 Vic. c. 86, sec. 3 (Elementary Education Act 1873); 39 & 40 Vic. c. 79, sec. 40 (Elementary Education Act 1876); 43 & 44 Vic. c. 23, sec. 5 (Elementary Education Act 1880). It was held in 1877 that the guardians might, if they chose, pay, besides the school fee, also for books and stationery (_Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board_, vol. i. 1880, p. 49).

[573] 39 & 40 Vic. c. 79, sec. 10 (Elementary Education Act 1876).

[574] Circulars of 30th December 1873 and 30th December 1876, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 4-7, and Sixth Annual Report, 1876-7, pp. 23-6; MS. Minutes, Bakewell Board of Guardians, 12th January and 9th February 1874.

[575] _Ibid._ 30th August 1880.

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]

[576] 31 & 32 Vic. c. 122, sec. 37 (Poor Law Amendment Act 1868).

[577] Circular of 31st December 1888, in Eighteenth Annual Report, 1888-9, p. 105.

[578] 52 & 53 Vic. c. 44, secs. 1, 12 (1889); 57 & 58 Vic. c. 41, sec. 1 (1894); Circular of 30th September 1889, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1889-90, pp. 92-5.

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]

[579] 4 Edw. VII. c. 15, sec. 5.

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]

[580] Mr. Davy's Report, in Twenty-Second Annual Report, 1892-3, p. 72.

[581] _Ibid._

[582] Mr. Baldwyn Fleming's Report, in Twentieth Annual Report, 1890-1, p. 222.

[583] Mr. Kennedy's Report, in Twenty-eighth Annual Report, 1898-9, pp. 168-9.

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.

[584] Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871, as reprinted by the Central Authority in 1873 for official circulation.

[585] Bradford Union to Local Government Board, 26th January 1901 (MS. archives, Bradford Board of Guardians).

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]

[586] Circular of 27th April 1905, in Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, pp. 317-20.

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]

[587] Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. cxxxi.

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]

[588] Twenty-third Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1870-71, p. 374.

[589] There are few statutory provisions of this period which affect the institutional treatment of children, and these few deal simply with financial questions. It is worth noting, however, that they tend to improve accommodation, as they facilitate increased expenditure, by allowing a larger sum to be raised for building, fitting up, and furnishing Metropolitan District Schools (Poor Law Loans Act 1872, 35 Vic. c. 2, sec. 1), and by allowing the expenses of maintenance in a certified school to be paid up to any limit to be fixed by the Local Government Board; and provide against over-crowding by allowing no repayment from the common poor fund in respect of children in a school in excess of a maximum number fixed for the school by the board. The special provisions for the education of defective children will be considered under the heading "Defectives."

(ii.) _In Poor Law Schools_

The main preoccupation 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 drawbacks, 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]

[590] In his Report for 1898, the inspector of Poor Law schools for the six northern counties describes the changes of the preceding thirty-seven years. In 1871-5 there were seventy-four unions, having considerable numbers of children, which educated them all in schools within the workhouse walls. Four had distinct schools, but on the workhouse premises; and four only had entirely separate schools. In 1898, only one union had workhouse schools for girls and two for boys; three had distinct schools, but on the workhouse premises; with half-a-dozen others with similar arrangements for part of the children, or for the children awaiting transfer only. Elsewhere the children were in entirely separate schools or cottage homes, or removed to certified schools; or in scattered homes or boarded out (Mr. Mozley's Report, in Twenty-eighth Annual Report, 1898-9, p. 183).

[591] The last in the published documents seems to be the incidental reference in the Circular of 4th August 1900 as to the aged and deserving poor (Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p. 18).

[592] Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871.

[593] _Hansard_, 1st February 1897, vol. 45, p. 904.

[594] _Ibid._ 2nd June 1899, vol. 72, p. 258. The process of discovery of the evils of these large schools may be interestingly traced in the annual reports of the L.G.B. Inspectors of Poor Law Schools from 1871 to 1895; the _Report on the Health of Metropolitan Pauper Schools_, by J. H. Bridges, 1890; and Report of the Committee on Poor Law Schools, 1896.

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]

[595] The "cottage homes" required special orders widely differing from those for the "barrack schools"; _see_, for instance, that for the Marston Green Cottage Homes of the Birmingham Union of 8th November 1879.

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]

[596] Local Government Board to Camberwell Union. The Sheffield "Scattered Homes" were described in Mr. Kennedy's Report, in the Twenty-third Annual Report, 1893-4, p. 138. They were (as "isolated homes") regulated by Special Orders of 4th November 1896, 23rd February 1898, and 7th February 1906.

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]

[597] Mr. Hervey's Report, in Thirty-first Annual Report, 1901-2, p. 80.

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]

[598] Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. cxxxi. The policy of placing children out in private venture homes run for profit (the old "farming" system) was not wholly given up. In 1874 the Central Authority decided to "withdraw from the almost nominal supervision" which it had exercised over the private venture seaside homes for children; and to leave these, as certified schools, entirely to the supervision of such boards of guardians as chose to make use of them, the payments being classed as non-resident relief (Circular of May 1874, in _Local Government Chronicle_, 23rd May 1874, p. 334). Yet a Special Order of 17th September 1879 regulated the admission of pauper children to the Metropolitan Infirmary for Children, Margate (John Weekly, proprietor). Others of 29th November 1880 and 30th June 1886, did the same for the Downlands Seaside Infirmary for Children, Rottingdean (J. F. Landguist, proprietor). In 1889, the North Surrey School District established a Convalescent Home of its own at Broadstairs (Special Orders of 8th February 1889 and 17th October 1891).

(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]

[599] Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. cxxx. This includes a comparatively small number of sick children in Poor Law infirmaries.

[600] General Order of 22nd July 1889 (as to Metropolis); and of 10th February 1899 (to all unions). In 1878, indeed, the North Surrey District School had refused to receive children under four, and the Central Authority had declined to interfere (_Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board_, vol. i. 1880, p. 178).

[601] Memorandum, "Duties of Visiting Committees," June 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 122.

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.

[602] _Ibid._

[603] Circular Letter, 29th January 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 110.

[604] June 1897, in Twenty-seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, p. 24.

[605] _Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board_, vol. ii. 1883, p. 258.

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.

[606] _Ibid._ vol. iii. 1888, p. 55; _Hansard_, 13th March 1883, vol. 277, p. 365.

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]

[607] Circular, "Supply of Books, Newspapers, etc.," 23rd January 1891, in Report of Royal Commission on the Aged Poor, 1895, vol. iii. No. C. 7684, ii. p. 967; Twentieth Annual Report, 1890-1, p. xc.

"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]

[608] Circular Letter of 29th January 1895, on "Workhouse Administration," in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 110.

[609] _Local Government Chronicle_, 18th August 1900, p. 841.

[610] _Ibid._ 14th June 1902, p. 614.

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]

[611] Mr. Jenner Fust's Report, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1, p. 147.

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.

[612] _Local Government Chronicle_, 22nd June 1878, p. 489.

[613] _Hansard_, 6th September 1886, vol. 308, p. 1316.

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]

[614] _Local Government Chronicle_, 2nd July 1904, p. 707.

[615] _Ibid._ 8th November 1902, p. 1126.

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]

[616] _Hansard_, 21st June 1888, vol. 327, pp. 809-10; _Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board_, vol ii. 1883, p. 139.

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]

[617] We ought perhaps to add that the Central Authority is found putting pressure on boards of guardians who refuse to make any adequate provision for their children. In 1898 it is reported that, because the Darlington Board of Guardians refused to make such provision, the Central Authority had refused to sanction any alteration of the workhouse whatsoever until such provision had been made (_Local Government Chronicle_, 19th February 1898, p. 175).

The 21,526 workhouse children appear to be made up of: (_a_) infants under three; (_b_) children between three and fourteen, scattered in groups of a dozen to as many as seventy in the workhouses of the unions having no separate schools of their own (in the York Workhouse there are usually about seventy children); and (_c_) children temporarily in the workhouse on their way to separate schools, boarding-out, being apprenticed, etc. In another classification they are: (_a_) the newly-born infants of the women in the lying-in ward; (_b_) children between three and fourteen, who are orphans or deserted; (_c_) children of indoor paupers, who are either (i.) permanent residents; or (ii.) "ins-and-outs." We cannot find any expression of policy of the Central Authority with regard to any of these classes. In the Metropolis, it should be said, provision has been made for the relegation to special institutions of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, not only of children suffering from ophthalmia, etc., but also of children temporarily remitted to the care of the guardians by the police ("remand children"), who had heretofore been sent to the workhouses (Circulars of 19th January and 5th April 1897, and General Order of 2nd April 1897, Twenty-seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, pp. 8-9). We do not gather that any corresponding provision has been made for such children outside the Metropolis.

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]

[618] Mr. Baldwyn Fleming's Report in the Thirty-first Annual Report, 1901-2, p. 91.

(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.

[619] There was not much pretence of technical instruction in the earlier Orders. What was aimed at was putting the children to work, chosen for its utility, not for its instructiveness (_i.e._ digging rather than gardening, mending the shoes of the establishment rather than learning the art of shoemaking). In the Special Order to the Walsall and West Bromwich School District of 1st July 1871, it was laid down that the children might be employed (under certain circumstances, wholly employed) "upon works of industry." In an amending Special Order of 20th July 1893, the age was raised, but the phrase was retained.

[620] Order of 30th January 1897 in Twenty-seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, pp. 5-8; _see_ for its effect Thirty-third Annual Report, 1903-4, p. 256.

[621] General Order "prescribing attendance" as regards workhouse schools, 30th October 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, p. 204.

[622] Circular Letter, 1st February 1897, in Twenty-seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, p. 5.

[623] _Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board_, vol. i. 1880, p. 224; _Local Government Chronicle_, 30th January 1904, p. 113.

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]

[624] By a General Order of 20th May 1881, corporal punishment is absolutely forbidden in Poor Law Schools as regards "any female child" of any age. This rule has not yet been made by the Board of Education for the schools attended by non-paupers nor by most local education authorities.

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]

[625] Thirty-third Annual Report, 1903-4, p. 256.

(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]

[626] Circular Letter of 4th August 1900, on Aged Deserving Poor, in Thirtieth Annual Report, 1900-1901, p. 18.

[627] _Hansard_, 8th May 1894, vol. 24, p. 598.

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]

[628] 10th September 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, pp. 193-200.

[629] Macmorran and Lushington's _Poor Law Orders_, second edition, 1905, p. 1331.

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.

[630] _Local Government Chronicle_, 16th August 1902, p. 825.

[631] _Ibid._ 27th April 1889, p. 338; _Hansard_, 2nd July 1897, vol. 50, p. 966; _Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board_, vol. ii. 1883, p. 94. On the other hand, a contrary decision seems to have been given in 1885 (_ibid._ vol. iii. 1888, p. 187).

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]

[632] Boarding out without the Union Order, 1889, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1889-90, p. 49. The "within the Union Order" contains some modifications for the case where there is no committee.

[633] Circular Letter, 9th December 1905, in Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. 328.

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]

[634] Memorandum of the Local Government Board, June 1900. See _Local Government Law and Legislation_, by W. H. Dumsday, 1900, p. 126.

[635] _Local Government Chronicle_, 31st October 1903, p. 1070.

[636] Memorandum of the Local Government Board, June 1900, _Local Government Law and Legislation_, by W. H. Dumsday, 1900, p. 126.

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 over-crowding. 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]

[637] _Local Government Chronicle_, 12th March 1904, p. 290.

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]

[638] The rate of 1s. and one loaf for the support per week of each child on outdoor relief was deliberately sanctioned, in 1869, by a Conference of Metropolitan Guardians, presided over by Mr. Corbett (Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871, as reprinted for official circulation in 1873 by the Central Authority). The dividing line between children merely on this outdoor relief, and those "boarded out" at 4s. or 5s. per week, it must be remembered, is not kinship, but whether or not the person with whom the child lives is legally liable for its maintenance. Thus, the policy of the Central Authority has been that children living with a stepfather and stepmother, with a widower stepfather, with a widowed stepmother, or even with a brother, a sister, an uncle, or an aunt (none of whom is legally liable for their maintenance) require all this elaborate supervision and protection; whereas if the children live with their own mother and father, with their widowed mother, with their widower father, with any or all of their grandparents, or exposed to the tender mercies of a father and stepmother, no such supervision and protection is insisted on. But although this is the rule, we are informed that the Central Authority, in practice, now makes no difficulty, if applied to, in sanctioning the transfer of children living with grandparents, uncles and aunts, or brothers and sisters, from the category of ordinary outdoor relief to the more regulated and more richly endowed category of boarding-out. It still objects in the case of parents (_Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government Board_, vol. iii. 1888, p. 187; _Decisions of the Local Government Board_, 1903-4, by W. A. Casson, 1905, p. 78).

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]

[639] _Hansard_, 8th August 1898, vol. 54, p. 576.

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]

[640] Circular Letter, 29th May 1889, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1889-90, pp. 36-41.

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]

[641] Mr. Ritchie, President of the Local Government Board, _Hansard_, 4th July 1887, vol. 316, pp. 1598-9.

[642] Circular Letter, 29th May 1884, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1889-90, p. 44.

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.

[643] Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. cxxxii.

(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]

[644] Circular on "Outfits for Children sent to Service," 14th July 1897, in Twenty-seventh Annual Report, 1897-8, p. 26.

[645] _Local Government Chronicle_, 18th October 1902, p. 1051.

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]

[646] _Ibid._ 31st October 1903, p. 1070.

[647] _Local Government Chronicle_, 31st January 1903, p. 102.

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]

[648] _Ibid._ 15th October 1904, p. 1072; _Decisions of the Local Government Board_, 1903-4, by W. A. Casson, 1905, p. 118.

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]

[649] Circular Letter of 31st May 1873, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 3-4.

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

[650] _See ante_, p. 17.

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

[651] Circular of 2nd March 1895, in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 118.

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

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

[653] Omitting children receiving medical relief only; and the casuals and insane (_ibid._ p. cxxxi).

(vii.) _Adoption_

From 1871 to 1889 the powers and responsibilities of Poor Law authorities with regard to children whose parents claimed the control of them were, as against the parents, extremely limited. The Central Authority clung to the principle of parental authority. In 1887, Mr. Ritchie said:

"No doubt there are some instances in which the interests of children are prejudiced by their parents claiming them from the guardians, but I should not be prepared to propose legislation which would enable a board of guardians to withhold a child from its parent when claimed by him."[654]

[654] _Hansard_, 28th May 1887, vol. 315, p. 857. The policy of the Central Authority was apparently against allowing the guardians to assume parental responsibilities. In 1889 Mr. Ritchie had prepared a Bill "to provide that, on application to the justices, an Order might be made detaining a child already under the care of the guardians or boarded out" (_Local Government Chronicle_, 23rd March 1889, p. 238), but not extending the duties or responsibilities of the guardians.

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

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

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

[656] Circular of 28th September 1899, in Twenty-ninth Annual Report 1889-1900, p. 48.

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

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

The class of children to which the law applies was, at the instance of the Central Authority, considerably enlarged in 1899, and it is worth considering how extensive it now is. "Where a child is maintained by the guardians of a Poor Law union, and: (i.) the child has been deserted by its parent; or (ii.) the guardians are of opinion that by reason of mental deficiency, or of vicious habits, or mode of life, a parent of the child is unfit to have the control of it; or (iii.) a parent is unable to perform his or her parental duties by reason of being under sentence of penal servitude or of being detained under the Inebriates