Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. : Appendix Volume XII. Memoranda by individual commissioners on various subjects.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress.
Date:
1910
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. : Appendix Volume XII. Memoranda by individual commissioners on various subjects. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    A. THE REPORT OF THE COMMISSION OF 1832. The remit of the Commission was to make a diligent and full inquiry into the practical operation of the Laws for the Relief of the Poor in England and Wales, and into the manner in which those laws were administered, and to report their opinion whether any and what alterations, amendments, or improvements might be beneficially made in the said laws, or in the manner of administering them, and how the same might be best carried into effect. The Commission consisted of the Bishops of London and Chester, Sturges Bourne, Nassau W. Senior, Edwin Chadwick, and four others. The method of investigation adopted was to prepare questions for circulation in the rural districts, and afterwards in the towns. For the prosecution of the inquiry, Assistant Commissioners were appointed to visit the several districts and report the practices which they found to prevail, the different modes of relief, and the effects produced. From difficulty of getting suitable persons, however, some districts were left altogether unvisited, among them being South Wales. Individual Assistant Commissioners made inquiries also in Scotland, Guernsey, Flanders and France, and some valuable information regarding the public provision for the poor in other countries of the Continent and in America was printed in the Appendix. The Evidence thus came from every county and almost every town, and from a very large proportion of even the villages in England. It was :— Derived from many thousand witnesses, of every rank and of every profession and employment, members of the two Houses of Parliament, clergymen, country gentlemen, magistrates, farmers, manu- facturers, shopkeepers, artisans, and peasants, differing in every conceivable degree in education, habits and interests, and agreeing only in their practical experience as to the matters in question, in their general description both of the mode in which the laws for the relief of the poor were administered, and of the consequences which had already resulted from that administration, and in their anticipation of certain further consequences from its continuance. After a short introduction, containing the substance of the principal enactments from 12 Rich. II. (1388) down to the 39 Eliz. (1598), omitting, as unnecessary, any account of the 43rd of Elizabeth, or any subsequent Acts,* the Report abruptly began:— It is now our painful duty to report, that in the greater part of the districts which we have been able to examine, the fund, which the 43rd of Elizabeth directed to be employed in setting to work children and persons capable of labour, but using no daily trade, and in the necessary relief of the impotent, is applied to purposes opposed to the letter, and still more to the spirit of that law, and destructive to the morals of the most numerous class and to the welfare of all. The first section of the Report dealt with Outdoor Relief. It is prefaced thus :—• The great source of abuse is the outdoor relief afforded to the able-bodied on their own account,, or on that of their families. This is given either in kind or in money. I.—Outdoor Relief of the Able-bodied in KiND.f The most usual form of this relief was that of relieving the applicants, either wholly or partially, from the expense of house room. One form of this was the exemption from rates given, almost always in the case of parishioners, frequently, in the case of non-parishioners.} This had led to * The intermediate legislation is, however, referred to under various headings, particularly in pp. 118-121. The 43rd of Elizabeth is given in a supplement. t P. I*- I This distinction in favour of parishioners was one of the many modes in which the Law of Settle- ment and the practice of relief narrowed the market, and interfered with the proper distribution of labour. NOTE.—References made in this Volume, and in the Reports of the Commission to the pages of thisVolume