Part 13

The nation demands that its population should be kept up to the standard of its requirements; the classes which, for want of a better term, might be called “educated” are refusing adequately to meet the need; the classes whose want of knowledge forbids them to strike, or whose lack of imagination prevents their realizing the pains, responsibilities, and penalties of family duties, still obey brute nature and fling their unwanted children on to the earth. “Horrible!” we either think or say, and inclination bids us turn from the subject and think of something pleasanter. But two considerations bring us sharply back to the point: first, that the nation, and all that it stands for, needs the young lives; and, secondly, that the babies, with their tiny clinging fingers, their soft, velvety skins, their cooey sounds and bewitching gestures, are guiltless of the mixed and often unholy motives of their creation. They are on this wonderful world without choice, bundles of potentialities awaiting adult human action to be developed or stunted.

How does the nation which wants the children treat them? The annals of the police courts, the experience of the attendance officers of the London County Council, the reports of the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the stories of the vast young army in truant or industrial schools, the tales of the Waifs and Strays Society and Dr. Barnardo’s organization are hideously eloquent of the cruelty, the neglect, and the criminality of thousands of parents. For their action the State can hardly be held directly responsible (a price has to be paid for liberty), but for the care of the children whose misfortunes have brought them to be supported by the State the nation is wholly responsible. Their weal or woe is the business of every man or woman who reads these pages. To ascertain the facts concerning their lives every tax-payer has dipped into his pocket to meet the many thousands of pounds which the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws has cost, and yet the complication of the problem and the weight of the Blue-books are to most people prohibitive, and few have read them. Even the thoughtful often say: “I have got the Reports, and hope to tackle them some day, but----,” and then follow apologies for their neglect owing to their size, the magnitude of the subject, or the pressure of other duties or pleasures. Meanwhile the children! The children are growing up, or are dying. The children, already handicapped by their parentage, are further handicapped by the conditions under which the State is rearing them. The children, which the nation needs--the very life-blood of her existence, for which she is paying, are still left under conditions which for decades have been condemned by philanthropists and educationists, as well as by the Poor Law Inspectors themselves.

On 1 January, 1908, according to the Local Government Board return: 234,792 children were dependent on the State, either wholly or partially. Of these:-- 22,483 were in workhouses and workhouse infirmaries; 11,602 in district and separate, often called “barrack,” schools; 17,090 in village communities, scattered, receiving, and other Guardians’ homes; 11,251 in institutions other than those mentioned above; 8,565 boarded out in families of the industrial classes; and 163,801 receiving relief while still remaining with their parents. It is a portentous array, of nearly a quarter of a million of children, and each has an individual character.

Pageants are now the fashion. Let us stand on one side of the stage (as did Stow, the historian, in the Whitechapel children’s pageant) and pass the verdict of the onlooker, as, primed with the figures and facts vouched for by the Royal Commissioners, we see the children of the State exhibit themselves in evidence of the care of their guardians.

First the babies. Here they come, thousands of them, some born in the workhouse, tiny, pink crumpled-skinned mites of a few days old; others toddlers of under three, who have never known another home.

“What a nice woman in the nurse’s cap and apron! I would trust her with any child. The head official, I suppose. But her under staff! What a terrible set! Those old women look idiotic and the young ones wicked. The inmates told off to serve in the nurseries you say they are! Surely no one with common humanity or sense would put a baby who requires wise observation under such women!”

“Alas! but the Guardians do.”

The Report states:--

“The whole nursery has often been found under the charge of a person actually certified as of unsound mind, the bottles sour, the babies wet, cold, and dirty. The Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded draws attention to an episode in connexion with one feeble-minded woman who was set to wash a baby; she did so in boiling water, and it died.”

But this is no new discovery made by the recent Royal Commission. In 1897 Dr. Fuller, the Medical Inspector, reported to the Local Government Board that

“in sixty-four workhouses imbeciles or weak-minded women are entrusted with the care of infants, as helps to the able-bodied or inferior women who are placed in charge by the matron, without the constant supervision of a responsible officer”.

“We recognise,” acknowledges the Report of the Royal Commissioners, “that some improvement has since taken place; but, as we have ourselves seen, pauper inmates, many of them feeble-minded, are still almost everywhere utilized for handling the babies.... As things are, the visitor to a workhouse nursery finds it too often a place of intolerable stench, under quite insufficient supervision, in which it would be a miracle if the babies continued in health.”

“How thin and pale and undersized many of them are! Surely they are properly fed and clothed and exercised!”

“In one large workhouse,” writes the Commissioners, “it was noticed that from perhaps about eighteen months to two and a half years of age the children had a sickly appearance. They were having their dinner, which consisted of large platefuls of potatoes and minced beef--a somewhat improper diet for children of that age.” “Even so elementary a requirement as suitable clothing is neglected.” “The infants,” states a lady Guardian, “have not always a proper supply of flannel, and their shirts are sometimes made of rough unbleached calico.” “Babies of twelve months or thereabouts have their feet compressed into tight laced-up boots over thick socks doubled under their feet to make them fit into the boots.” “In some workhouses the children have no toys, in others the toys remain tidily on a shelf out of reach, so that there may be no litter on the floor.”

“In another extensive workhouse it was found that the babies of one or two years of age were preparing for their afternoon sleep. They were seated in rows on wooden benches in front of a wooden table. On the table was a long narrow cushion, and when the babies were sufficiently exhausted they fell forward upon this to sleep! The position seemed most uncomfortable and likely to be injurious.”

In another place it was stated:--

“That the infants weaned, but unable to feed themselves, are sometimes placed in a row and the whole row fed with one spoon ... from one plate of rice pudding. The spoon went in and out of the mouths all along the row.”

“We were shocked,” continues the Report, “to discover that the infants in the nursery of the great palatial establishments in London and other large towns _seldom or never got into the open air_.”

“We found the nursery frequently on the third or fourth story of a gigantic block, often without balconies, whence the only means of access even to the workhouse yard was a flight of stone steps down which it was impossible to wheel a baby carriage of any kind. There was no staff of nurses adequate to carrying fifty or sixty infants out for an airing. In some of these workhouses it was frankly admitted that these babies never left their own quarters (and the stench that we have described), and never got into the open air during the whole period of their residence in the workhouse nursery.”

In short, “we regret to report,” say the Commissioners, “that these workhouse nurseries are, in a large number of cases, alike in structural arrangements, equipment, organization, and staffing, wholly unsuited to the healthy rearing of infants”.

“See, here come the coffins!”

Coffins--tiny wooden boxes--of just cheap deal; some with a wreath of flowers, and followed by a weeping woman; others just conveyed by officials--unwanted, unregretted babies.

As far as one’s eye can reach they come. Coffins and coffins, and still more coffins; almost as many coffins as there were babies?

Not quite. The Report repeats the evidence of the Medical Inspector of the Local Government Board for Poor-Law purposes, who some years ago made a careful inquiry and found that one baby out of every three died annually. “A long time ago,” did I hear you murmur, “and things are better now”?

Would that it were so, but a more recent inquiry made by the Commissioners shows that “out of every thousand children born in the Poor-Law institutions forty to forty-five die within a week, and out of 8483 infants who were born during 1907, in the workhouses of the 450 Unions inquired into, no fewer than 1050 (or 13 per cent) actually died on the premises before attaining one year.” “The infantile mortality in the population as a whole,” writes the authors of the Minority Report, “exposed to all dangers of inadequate medical attendance and nursing, lack of sufficient food, warmth, and care, and parental ignorance and neglect, is admittedly excessive. The corresponding mortality among the infants in the Poor-Law institutions, where all these dangers may be supposed to be absent, is between two and three times as great.”

“It must be the fault of the system, it is often said, that children, like chickens, cannot for long be safely aggregated together.”

“It is difficult to say whether it is the system or the administration which is most to blame, but the facts are incontrovertible. In some workhouses 40 per cent of the babies die within the year. In ten others 493 babies were born, and only fourteen, or 3 per cent, perished before they had lived through four seasons. In ten other workhouses 333 infants saw the light, and through the gates 114 coffins were borne, or 33 per cent of the whole.”

This variation would appear to point to faults of administration. On the other hand, the system is contrary to nature; for the natural law limits families to a few children, and usually provides that King Baby should rule as sole monarch for eighteen months or two years. On this the Report says:--

“It has been suggested to us by persons experienced in the peculiar dangers of institutions for infants of tender years, that the high death rate, especially the excessive death rates after the first few weeks of life, right up to the age of three or four, may be due to some adverse influence steadily increasing in its deleterious effect the longer the child is exposed to it. In the scarlet fever wards of isolation hospitals it has been suggested that the mere aggregation of cases may possibly produce, unless there are the most elaborate measures for disinfection, a dangerous ‘intensification’ of the disease. In the workhouse nursery there is practically no disinfection. The walls, the floors, the furniture, must all become, year after year, more impregnated with whatever mephitic atmosphere prevails. The very cots in which the infants lie have been previously tenanted by an incalculable succession of infants in all states of health and morbidity.”

“Is the long undertaker’s bill to be deplored, considering the parentage of this class of children and the way the Guardians rear them?”

The nation wants the babies; indeed, to maintain its position it must have them, and “the tendency of nature is to return to the normal”--a scientific fact of profound civic importance. Besides, the Report says:--

“We find that it is generally assumed that the women admitted to the workhouse for lying-in are either feeble-minded girls, persistently immoral women, or wives deserted by their husbands. Whatever may have been the case in past years, this is no longer a correct description of the patients in what have become, in effect, maternity hospitals. Out of all the women who gave birth to children in the Poor-Law institutions of England and Wales during 1907, it appears that about 30 per cent were married women. In the Poor-Law institutions of London and some other towns the proportion of married women rises to 40 and even to 50 per cent.”

As to how the Guardians rear the babies that is another matter. But let us leave Institutions with the high walls, the monotony which stifles, the organization which paralyses energy, the control which alike saps freedom and initiation, and the unfailing provision of food no one visibly earns, so that we may go and visit some of the homes which the Guardians subsidize, and where they keep, or partially keep, out of the ratepayers’ pockets 163,801 children.

I.--A clean home this, mother out at work, earning 4s. 6d. by charing; the Guardians giving 7s. 6d. Four children (thirteen, nine, six, four), left to themselves while she is out, but evidently fond of home and each other. A small kitchen garden which would abundantly pay for care, but fatigue compels its neglect. No meat is included in her budget, and but 3d. a week for milk; but 12s. a week, and 4s. 6d. of it depending on her never ailing and her employers always requiring her, is hardly adequate on which to pay rent and to keep five people, providing the children with their sole items of life’s capital--health, height, and strength.

II.--A dirty home this, in a filthy court. The mother is out; the children playing among the street garbage. Their clothes are ragged, their heads verminous, their poor faces sharp with that expression which always wanting and never being satisfied stamps indelibly on the human countenance. One bed and a mattress pulled on to the floor is all that is provided for the restful sleep of six people; and 3s. a week is what a pitiful public subscribes via the rates to show its appreciation of such a home life. Waste and worse. The Majority Report quotes with approval the words of Dr. McVail: “In many cases the amount allowed by the Guardians for the maintenance of out-door pauper children cannot possibly suffice to keep them even moderately well”. This could be applied to Case I. “Many mothers having to earn their living ... cannot attend to their children at home, so that there is no proper cooking, the house is untidy and uncomfortable, and the living rooms and bedrooms unventilated and dirty.” This could be applied to Case II.

III. A disgraceful home this, best perhaps described in the words of the Majority Report:--

“A widow with three children, a well-known drunken character, was relieved with 3s., one of her children earning 7s. making a total of 10s. It was urged by the relieving officer that it was no case for out relief, as it was encouraging drunkenness and immorality.... It was held that the relief having been suspended for a month, she had suffered sufficient punishment. The officer said: ‘She still drinks,’ and that 4s. relief was given on 13 December, ‘to tide her over the holidays’. She had been before the police for drunkenness. It was considered (by the Guardians) to meet the disqualification of the case by reducing the relief to 3s. instead of 4s.”

IV. An immoral home this, again best described in official words:--

“I saw in one instance out-relief children habitually sent out to pilfer in a small way, others to beg, some whose mothers were drunkards or living immoral lives.... These definitely bad mothers were but a small minority of the mothers whom we visited, but there were many of a negatively bad type, people without standard, whining, colourless people, often with poor health. If out relief is given at all ... those who give it must take the responsibility for its right use.”

In 1898, when Lord Peel was the Chairman of the State Children’s Association, its Executive Committee brought out a chart which showed that there were children nationally supported under the Local Government Board, under the Home Office, under the Education Department, under the Metropolitan Asylums Board, under the Lunacy Commissioners, each using its own administrative organization. At that time the same children were being dealt with by what may be called rival authorities, without any machinery for co-operation or opportunities of interchange of knowledge or experience. Since then there has been but little change, the Reports point out forcibly the existence of the same conditions only worse, inasmuch as more parents now seek free food and other assistance for their children from official hands.

Face to face with such a serious confusion of evils, affecting as they do the character of the people--the very foundation of our national greatness; confronted with the complicated problem how to simplify machinery which has been growing for years, and is further entangled with the undergrowth of vast numbers of officials and their vested interests; distressed on the one hand by the clamour of that section of society who think that everything should be done by the State, and on the other by the insistent demand of those who see the incalculable good which springs from volunteer effort or agencies, the bewildered statesman might be sympathized with, if not excused, if he did feel inclined to agree with Mr. John Burns’s suggestion, and leave it all to him.

“I care for the people,” in effect he said, “I know their needs. I have the officials to do the work. I am the President of the Local Government Board. Be easy, leave it all to me, I will report to the House once in three months. All will be well.”

It sounds a simple plan, but, before it can be even seriously advocated, it would be as well to survey the recent history of the Local Government Board, and see if, even under this President, its past record gives hope for future effective achievement. Once more let us begin with--

(_a_) _The Babies._--Sir John Simon, Chief Medical Officer of the Local Government Board, wrote forcibly on the subject more than a generation past. Dr. Fuller’s Report was made years ago. Again and again reform has been urged by Poor Law Inspectors and workhouse officials, who have asked for additional powers to obtain information or classification or detention. What has the Local Government Board done? The following extract from the Minority Report can be the reply:--

“Alike in the prevention of the continued procreation of the feeble-minded, in the rescue of girl-mothers from a life of sexual immorality, and in the reduction of infantile mortality in respectable but necessitous families, the destitution authorities, in spite of their great expenditure, are to-day effecting no useful results. With regard to the two first of these problems, at any rate, the activities of the Boards of Guardians are, in our judgment, actually intensifying the evil. If the State had desired to maximize both feeble-minded procreation, and birth out of wedlock, there could not have been suggested a more apt device than the provision, throughout the country, of general mixed workhouses, organized as they are now to serve as unconditional maternity hospitals.... While thus encouraging ... these evils they are doing little to arrest the appalling preventible mortality that prevails among the infants of the poor.”

(_b_) _The Children in the Workhouses._--“So long ago as 1841 the Poor-Law Commissioners pointed out forcibly the evils connected with the maintenance of children in workhouses.” In 1896 the Departmental Committee, of which Mr. Mundella was chairman, and on which I had the honour of sitting, brought before the public the opinion of inspectors, guardians, officials, educationists and child-lovers, all unanimous in condemning this system. “In the workhouse the children meet with crime and pauperism from day to day.” “They are in the hands of adult paupers for their cleanliness, and the whole thing is extremely bad.” “The able-bodied paupers with whom they associate are a very bad class, almost verging on criminal, if not quite,” is some of the evidence quoted in the Report, and the Committee unanimously signed the recommendation “that no children be allowed to enter the workhouse,” and now, thirteen years afterwards, the same conditions prevail. The Majority Report thus describes cases of children in workhouses:--

“The three-year-old children were in a bare and desolate room, sitting about on the floor and on wooden benches, and in dismal workhouse dress. The older ones had all gone out to school ... except a cripple, and a dreary little girl who sat in a cold room with bare legs and her feet in a pail of water as a ‘cure’ for broken chilblains.... The children’s wards left on our minds a marked impression of confusion and defective administration.... In appearance the children were dirty, untidy, ill-kept, and almost neglected. Their clothes might be described with little exaggeration as ragged.... The boys’ day-room is absolutely dreary and bare, and they share a yard and lavatories with the young men.... An old man sleeps with the boys. It is a serious drawback (says the inspector) that every Saturday and Sunday, to say nothing of summer and winter holidays, have for the most part to be spent in the workhouse, where they either live amid rigid discipline and get no freedom, or else if left to themselves are likely to come under the evil influence of adult inmates. The Local Government Board inspectors point out that, even if the children go to the elementary schools for teaching, the practice of rearing them in the workhouse exposes them to the contamination of communication with the adult inmates whose influence is often hideously depraving.”

“Terrible!” my reader will say; “but surely the reform requires legislation, and the Poor Law is too large a subject to tinker on, it must be dealt with after time has been given for due thought.” To this I would reply that even if it did require legislation there has been time enough to obtain it during all these years that the evils have existed; but to quote the Majority Report: “So far as the ‘in-and-out’ children are concerned it is probable that no further power would be needed, since the Guardians already have power under the Poor Law Act, 1899, to adopt children until the age of eighteen.” This Act, I may say in passing, was initiated, drafted, and finally secured, not by the responsible authorities but by the efforts of the State Children’s Association.

Why, then, has not the Local Government Board removed the children from the workhouses? Why, indeed?

(_c_) _The Ins and Outs._--In 1896 the Departmental Committee quoted the evidence of Mr. Lockwood, the Local Government Board Inspector, who referred to “cases of children who are constantly in and out of the workhouse, dragged about the streets by their parents, and who practically get no education at all,” and he puts in a table of “particulars of eleven families representing the more prominent ‘ins and outs’” of one Metropolitan West-end workhouse of whom “one family of three children had been admitted and discharged sixty-two times in thirteen months.” Other cases were given, for instance:--

“D----, a general labourer, who has three boys and a girl, who come in and out on an average once a week.