Part 17

(4) “Widow with seven children, none working. Received 10s. per week relief. Rent £5 10s. Said to be paid by friends. I visited the home, and found it in a very dirty, I might say filthy, condition. The woman is a sloven. She went about the house in a dazed manner. I tried to get particulars of the way she spent her money, but found it impossible. One of the children was at home from school ill, but had not been seen by a doctor. It is obvious ... that a family of eight persons could not live on 10s. per week.”

(5) “Mrs. W., a widow with five children, receives 10s. per week. She is a notorious drunkard, and has lately been turned out of a house in a street where drunkards abound, because her drunken habits disturbed the whole street. When we called she refused to open the door; the relieving officer concluded she was drunk.”

[3] Majority Report, p. 150.

That the Local Government Board inspectors are and have been fully aware that such conditions exist is shown again and again by their own words.

Mr. Baldwyn Fleming said:[4]--

“There were many cases receiving outdoor relief where the circumstances ... were very undesirable.... The relieving officers were well acquainted with the cases.”

[4] _Ibid._, p. 151.

Mr. Wethered reported:--

“Some were clean and tidy, but in very many instances the rooms were dirty, ill kept, and sometimes verminous”.

Mr. Bagenal’s experience speaks of the out-relief class as “Bankrupt in pocket and character,” and describes their homes in these words:--

“Cleanliness and ventilation are not considered of any account. The furniture is always of the most dilapidated kind. The beds generally consist of dirty palliasses or mattresses with very scanty covering. The atmosphere is offensive, even fetid, and the clothing of the individuals--old and young--is ragged and filthy. The children are neglected, and furnish the complaints of the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”

Mr. Williams said:--

“I found far too much intemperance, and sometimes even drunkenness, in cases in which out-relief was being granted.... Closely allied to it were filth, both of persons and surroundings, and sadder even was the neglect and resultant cruelty to the children, who were ill-fed and ill-clad.”

“Exceptional cases!” I hear you say; “why dwell on them?” So I will read you the words of the Majority Report, ever ready to take the lenient view of the work of the Guardians. Such cases, it reports, “occur with sufficient frequency to be a very potent influence in perpetuating pauperism and propagating disease”.

Perhaps, however, figures will convey more startlingly the facts. In order to classify the investigators divided the mothers into four classes[5]--I., good; II., mediocre; III., very unsatisfactory, i.e., slovenly and slipshod; IV., bad, i.e., drunkards, immoral, wilfully neglecting their children.

[5] Minority Report, p. 753.

The percentages in the rural districts were 19 per cent in the third class, 6 per cent in the fourth. “In the towns conditions were, as a rule, much worse.” In one urban union 18 per cent came under Class IV. In another great union the appalling percentage rose to 22 per cent. To sum up, the number of children on out relief on 1 January, 1908, in “very unsatisfactory” homes in England and Wales, was more than 30,000; while 20,000 were being paid for in homes “wholly unfit for children”. “We can add nothing,” say the Commissioners, “to the force of these terrible figures.”

Neither are the evils only moral ones. “Investigation,” write the authors of the Minority Report, “as to the physical condition of these outdoor relief children in London, Liverpool, and elsewhere brings to light innumerable cases of untreated sores and eczema, untreated erysipelas and swollen glands, untreated ringworm, heart disease, and phthisis,” a seed crop the products of which are the unemployed and unemployable.

But now I would propose that we leave these haunts of evil and go to see the home of a respectable widow who is endeavouring to bring up her children to be God-fearing and industrious.

“Mother a seamstress, earning about 9s. a week, and the Board of Guardians granting another 6s. Four children (eleven, nine, six, and two) made happy by the motherly love of a steady, methodical and careful woman, who, however, cannot support them except by working unceasingly, as well as by getting charitable help towards their clothes from the Church, country holidays from the Children’s Country Holiday Fund, official help in dinners from the Educational Authority, and medical help from the health visitor or nurse engaged by the Town Council.”

What a confusion of sources, what want of inquiry, what danger of overlapping; five organizations to aid the same family, three of them State supplied, two supported by religious or philanthropic persons. On this confusion, which is not only extravagant to the ratepayers, but corrupting to the character of the recipients, the Minority Report lays great stress.

Time forbids me to give more examples, but with this vision of wholesome family affection let us read with attention the following words from the Minority Report:--[6]

“In the vast majority of cases the amount allowed by the Guardians is not adequate”. “The children are under-nourished, many of them poorly dressed, and many barefooted.... The decent mother’s one desire is to keep herself and her children out of the workhouse. She will, if allowed, try to do this on an impossibly inadequate sum, until both she and her children become mentally and physically deteriorated.”... “It must be remembered,” adds a medical expert, “that semi-starvation is not a painful process, and its victims do not recognize what is happening.”

[6] Minority Report, p. 747.

Do not all of us who know our parishes know that woman? Her poverty, her strenuousness, her patience, her fatigue, her hopefulness, her periods of hopelessness, and above, below, around all her Mother-love and her faith in God--and what is the result of her efforts, her heroism? Children strong, healthy, skilled, able to support her in her old age and themselves rear a family worthy of such noble moral ancestry? No! her reward will be to see her children weakly men and undergrown girls, all alike in having no stamina, among the first to be pushed out of the labour market. All the love, all the industry, all the heroism ever showered by devoted mothers cannot take the place of milk and bread and air and warmth.

But, it may be asked, “Why does this careful mother so dread the workhouse; there, at least, although she herself would be deprived of her freedom, she would know that her children were well cared for!” To reply to this question it will be necessary once more to turn to the ponderous Blue Book and search the 1238 pages for descriptions of what goes on behind the great walls of those pauper palaces.

It is true that the widow has not read the reports nor even heard of the Poor Law Commission and its colossal labours, worthy of the gratitude and reverence of all who love their country. But these things filter out though not couched in official language. “I can’t a-bear of them to go, ma’am,” says some work-beaten mother. “There’s Mrs. Jones, she lost her baby when they had to go in, as her husband was took with galloping consumption, and her Billy got bad eyes and Susie seemed to lose all her gaiety like.” “No! I’d rather go hungry than see them that way and not be able to kiss ’em when they cries.” But is it true? It is understandable that individual homes which the Guardians only subsidize may not always be all that they could wish, but when the children are entirely under their care surely what this poor woman alleges cannot be true. Alas! it is far less than the truth. Let us read again and see how the children, not being babies, fare when they are kept in the workhouses.

The following are extracts:[7]--

“The children are not kept separate from the adult inmates. The children’s wards left on our minds a marked impression of confusion and defective administration.... The eyes of some of the children seemed suspiciously ‘weak’ and in two or three cases to be suffering from some serious inflammation.”

“The chief defect here, as in so many workhouses, is in the accommodation for the children. The girls use the sewing-room as a day-room. The older children go to school one and a half miles distant, taking bread and butter or jam with them, and dining on their return when the other inmates have their tea. The dining-hall is used by all inmates at the same time.... Altogether, there is great need for reform in the treatment of the children.”

[7] Majority Report, pp. 186, 187.

It is true that children of school age maintained in the workhouses attend the public elementary schools, save for 651 who are still educated within workhouse walls, but the school hours account only for about one-third of the children’s waking existence, and during the other two-thirds, which include the long winter evenings, Saturdays and Sundays, and all school holidays, the workhouse is still their only home.

“We cannot,” says the Minority Report,[8] “too emphatically express our disagreement with those who accept this [the attendance of children reared in workhouses at public elementary schools] as any excuse for retaining children in the workhouse at all.... We paid special attention to this point of the provision for children on our visits to workhouses, large and small, in town and country, in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. We saw hardly any workhouse or poorhouse in which the accommodation for children was at all satisfactory. We unhesitatingly agree with the Inspector of the Local Government Board, who gave it to us as his opinion that ‘no serious argument in defence of the workhouse system is possible. The person who would urge that the atmosphere and associations of a workhouse are a fit up-bringing for a child merely proves his incapacity to express an intelligent opinion upon the matter.’”

[8] Minority Report, pp. 802, 803.

“We are strongly of opinion,” says the Majority Report,[9] “that effective steps should be taken to secure that the maintenance of children in the workhouse be no longer recognized as a legitimate way of dealing with them.”

[9] Majority Report, p. 187.

This evil is of long standing; for a dozen years the pressing necessity for the removal from such surroundings of these State-dependent children has been represented to successive Presidents of the Local Government Board, and to Boards of Guardians, and the saddest fact of all is that, at the date of the latest Local Government Board Return, 24,175 children (more than one-third of the total number who are entirely maintained out of the rates) are still being reared in this unsuitable environment, actually a larger number than in any preceding year since 1899.

To all those gentlemen who have read the Royal Commissioners’ Report I must apologize for quoting it so largely. Those who have not read it will recognize something of the extreme interest of its contents and take it for their winter’s reading.

But to return again to the Widows and Children on out relief. The Majority Report says:--

“The Guardians give relief without knowing whether the recipients can manage on it; they go on giving it without knowing how they are managing on it.” “In short, there is a widespread system of trying to compensate for inadequacy of knowledge by inadequacy of relief.”

This is a severe condemnation both of the Guardians and the Local Government Board, whose inspectors we know had been long aware of the facts. Moved by the outcry caused by the publication of these revelations, a circular on the “Administration of Outdoor Relief” was issued by the Central Authority last March to the Boards of Guardians, calling on them for greater discrimination in the selection of cases and the adoption of uniform principles.

That these demands were not unnecessary is shown by the following instances of unequal treatment given in the Reports:--

“In one case a widow with four dependent children, and one boy earning 15s. a week, with a total income to the family of 25s., received 7s. from the Guardians, bringing their total up to 32s. a week for six persons. One Board gives 6d. and 5 lb. of flour per week for each child; another family received 5s. a week, bringing their total to 51s. 6d. per week; another 6s. a week for the mother and three children (all little tots) with ‘no other known income’.”

The action of Boards on this circular has been varied. Some have declared themselves “satisfied with their proceedings,” and that “no alteration is required”. Others have set to work to settle a scale of payments for certain defined cases; but though every one must rejoice that a circular (though a belated one) has been issued from the Local Government Board, and that the Guardians are moving, yet the proposals do not seem to me to meet the case. The world cannot be divided into good or bad, white or black--infinite are the shades of grey. More, much more, than adequacy or uniformity of payment is required. Many classes of help are needed. I would suggest as possible solutions of this difficult problem (and my long experience of thirty-three years’ life in Whitechapel does not allow me to minimize the difficulty) the following plans:--

I.--The children could be boarded out with their own mothers. We have to travel back to Egypt to see how well it succeeded when tried on Moses, and it succeeded because it obtains for the child the one essential basis of all education--i.e. Love. The plan is based on quite a simple principle.

Women have to be engaged by the State to rear children--it is done in workhouses, barrack schools, scattered homes, village communities, and in boarding-out. Why should not some of the women so engaged be the children’s own mothers? The mother so employed must be of good character, and have thrifty, home-making virtues, the same sort of qualities, in short, as are sought for in the foster parents of boarded-out children. She would be moved into the country, or into a healthy suburb, and, if her own family is not large enough adequately to employ her, she could have one or two more children or babies sent to her. She would be under close inspection, and the Boarding-out Committee would make her feel that, though the children were her own, yet it was the duty of the State to see that she did her duty to them on a high plane.

For some families this seems to me the best of all possible solutions, but I have to recognize that it is not practicable except for self-respecting worthy women.

II.--To suit those affectionate mothers who are too untutored to do without set tasks of employment and daily supervision, there might be some sort of modification of the plan. Some twenty of these women could be placed in small cottages, or tenements in a quadrangle, and employed for part of the day at one of the giant official institutions for the infirm or imbecile which are scattered all over the country. The children could be kept at school for dinner, and care taken that the women’s hours of labour were short enough to enable them to home-make morning and evening when the children return from school.

III.--For other women, who, as the Report says, are “too ignorant to be effective mothers,” and yet whose only thought is their children, teaching colonies might be established, the mothers putting themselves into training, with the hope of being ultimately counted as worthy to rear their own children at the expense of the State--a goal to strive for when they have mastered the skilled trade of “mothering”.

IV.--For women who are already employed at suitable work, special arrangements could be made as the condition of their receiving out-relief, either concerning their hours of labour or to secure the household assistance necessary to maintain their children as children of every class ought to be kept. I can imagine certain employers, such as the ever public-spirited Mr. Cadbury, being willing to arrange shifts of labour to suit these needs.

V.--From other mothers the children should be removed altogether, and for these children I should counsel emigration, for all workers can cite cases of the ruin of young people, when they reach wage-earning ages, by bad parents claiming their rights over them.

To turn these suggestions into facts would take much work, thought, patience, prayer. “Each case,” as the Majority report says, “seems to call for special and individual attention.” But is it not worth while? Can we as Christians allow the present condition of things to go on?

Gentlemen, there are 178,520 children in your parishes being more or less supported by the State. Do the clergy know them? What have the clergy done about them? Have many joined the Board of Guardians? Have they remonstrated at the inadequacy of the relief given? Have they made themselves even acquainted with the facts of Poor Law administration in their unions? The other day, I, by chance, met a clergyman--a nice man, vicar of a big church in a large watering-place. His conversation showed he was alert and up-to-date on all controversial matters, even to the place of a comma in the Lord’s Prayer, but to my questions as to how the Poor Law children were dealt with in his parish he had to reply, and he did so unashamed, “I don’t know”. I remember as a child thinking that it was a cruel injustice to punish the man for breaking the Sabbath, when he did not know that there was a law to command him to keep it, and now, looking back down the vista of many years’ experience, I understand that Moses but expressed in a detail the law of God which affects the whole of social life. The man was punished because he did not know. At least he bore the penalty of his own ignorance, but in this case it is the children who are punished because of our ignorance.

No! the clergy have not known hitherto; but now they can know. The facts are before them in that vast and fascinating storehouse of knowledge bound in blue, and, having learnt, they can speak; and speaking, what will they say?

Will they blame the Guardians? Will they scold the Local Government Board? Will they shrug their shoulders and talk about “the difficulties of social problems in a complex civilization,” or will each say to himself, “Thou art the man” whose fault this is, and then speak and work to get things altered?

Gentlemen, you tell us often that children, child-bearing, child-teaching, child-rearing, child-loving is the vocation of my sex. I agree with you. I want no better calling myself than home-making and child protection, and therefore you will not take it amiss that I, a woman, speak boldly for the children’s sake. You have joined in the neglect of these State-dependent children hitherto. You have allowed them by your ignorance to be injured. Are you now going to injure them further by sitting helplessly down before these terrible revelations? The whole world knows how England treats State-supported children, its national assets, the representatives of those the Master took up in His arms--the whole world waits to see what England will do. It is for you to lead. Are you going to accept the facts as irremediable, or by getting them altered thus pay your vows to the Lord?

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

THE PRESS AND CHARITABLE FUNDS.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

July, 1906.

[1] From “The Independent Review”. By permission of Messrs. Fisher Unwin & Co.

The Press had been the Church’s ablest ally in its effort to fulfil the apostolic precept, and teach the nation to remember the poor. The social instinct may be native to humanity, but it requires an impulse and a direction. The Press has again and again stirred such an impulse and given such direction. Charity was never more abundant, and methods of relief were never more considered.

The Press has been the ally of the Church in creating the better world of the present. But the Press, caught in these later years (as so many persons and bodies have been caught) by the lust of doing and the praise thereof, has aspired to be an administrator of relief. It has not been content with the rôle of a prophet or of a teacher, it has taken a place alongside of Ladies Bountiful, Relief Committees, and Boards of Guardians. It has invaded another province, and rival newspapers have had their own funds, their own agents, and their own systems of relief.

The result is probably an increase in the volume of money given by the readers of the papers. A large fund may, however, be a fallacious test of sympathy. The money subscribed under the pressure of appeal may have been diverted from other objects; and gifts are sometimes made, not for the relief of the poor so much as for the relief of the givers. People have been known to give, that they may enjoy themselves more comfortably; and they may relieve their feelings by a gift, so as to be free to spend a family’s weekly income on their own dinner. A large fund is not, therefore, a sufficient evidence of increased sympathy.

But let it be granted that the Press action has brought more money to the service of the poor. The question is: Has it been for good?

I.

The first characteristic of a Press fund is that, when a newspaper undertakes the administration of relief, it has to create its own machinery. It may begin by sending down to the distressed district a clever young man with a cab-load of tickets. Nothing seems easier than to give to those who ask, and so money is poured into the hands of applicants, or sent to the clergy for distribution. A rough experience soon enforces the necessity of inquiry and organization. In West Ham, in the winter of 1904-5, when the Borough Council was spending £28,000 on relief, when the Guardians had 20,000 persons on their out-relief lists and 1300 men in the stone yard, the Press funds were distributed without any inquiry or any attempt at co-operation. I gather a few notes from reports made at the time by a resident in the district.

“Mr. C---- received a large sum from the _D. T._ He relieved 400 regularly; and there was no interchange of names.”

“I found one street in which nearly every one had relief.”

“I was asked to visit a starving case on Sunday; and found a good dinner stowed away under the table.”

“One man in receipt of 47s. a week in wages received twelve tickets from the _D. N._ on Christmas Eve, and did not turn up to his work for four days, though extra pay was offered for Boxing Day.”

“A man,” says a relieving officer, “came to me on Friday and had 3s. He went to the Town Hall and got 4s. His daughter got 3s. from the same source; his wife 5s. from a Councillor, and late the same night a goose.”

Another relieving officer reported:--

“Outside my office a 4-lb. loaf could be bought for 1d., and a 2s. relief ticket for two pots of beer.”

“The public-houses did far better when the relief funds were at work.”

“My impression is, that more than 500 people who were in receipt of out relief in my district received relief from the funds; but we were never consulted.”

“The relieving officers had to be under police protection for four months.”