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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    IN MANNER AND AT PERIODS HEREAFTER SPECIFIED* ; AND THAT, ALL RELIEF AFFORDED IN RESPECT OF CHIL- DREN UNDER THE AGE OF 16 SHALL BE CONSIDERED AS AFFORDED TO THEIR PARENTS. It is true that nothing is necessary to arrest the progress of pauperism, except that all who receive relief from the parish should work for the parish exclusively, as hard and for less wages than independent labourers work for individual employ- ers, and we believe that in most districts useful work, which will not interfere with the ordinary demand for labour, may be obtained in greater quantity than is usually conceived. Cases, however, will occur where such work cannot be obtained in sufficient quantity to meet an immediate demand; and when obtained, the labour, by negligence, connivance, or otherwise, may be made merely formal, and thus the provisions of the Legislature may be evaded more easily than in a workhouse. A well-regulated workhouse meets all cases, and appears to be the only means by which the intention of the statute of Elizabeth, that all the able-bodied shall be set to work, can be carried into execution.- gc $ * . sj: $ £ And although we admit that able-bodied persons in the receipt of out-door allowances and partial relief, may be, and in some cases are, placed in a condition less eligible than that of the independent labourer of the lowest class'; yet to persons so situated, relief in a well- regulated workhouse would not be a hardship : and even if it be, in some rare cases, a hardship, it appears from the evidence that it is a hardship to which the good of society requires the applicant to submit. The express or implied ground of his application is, that he is in danger of perishing from want. Requesting to be rescued from that danger out of the property of others, he must accept assistance on the terms, whatever they may be, which the common welfare requires. The bane of all pauper legislation has been the legislating for extreme cases. Every exception, every violation of the general rule to meet a real case of unusual hardship, lets in a whole class of fraudulent cases, by which that rule must in time be destroyed. Where cases of real hardship occur, the remedy must be applied by individual charity, a virtue for which no system of compulsory relief can be or ought to be a substitute. To sum up. What the original Report of the Commission of 1832-4 called the first and most essential of all conditions, and what the Commissioners under the Act of 1834, in report after report, called the fundamental principle of the Poor Law Amendment Act was that the situation of the able-bodied pauperf should be, really or apparently, less eligible than the situation of the independent labourer of the lowest class. And, while this might be secured by a very carefully administered out-door relief system, it could only be effectually secured by the offer of relief in a workhouse, where by labour, discipline, and restraint as well as by dietary, the inmate's situation would be definitely and ascertainably less eligible than that of the poorest class of those who contributed to his support. This was the Workhouse System, and, against such a system, all criticism which spoke of the Act as erecting workhouses for the imprison- ment of those who could not find work outside fell pointless. The workhouse was not an end so much as a means. In the last unhappy resort it was a provision for the really destitute ; primarily, the effer of it was a self-acting test of the reality of the claim on relief.J To secure the carrying out of the principle, two things were necessary: that the wide discretionary powers hitherto exercised by the 15,000 authorities should be taken out of their hands and put into the control of one strong central board, and that the administration should be uniform over the country. Hence the statement: We recommend, therefore, the appointment of a Central Board to control the administration of the Poor Laws, with such Assistant Commissioners as may be found requisite ; and that the Commissioners be empowered and directed to frame and enforce regulations for the government of workhouses, and as to the nature and amount of the relief to be given and the labour to be exacted in them, and that such regulations shaU, as far as may be practicable, be uniform throughout the country (p. 297). The Commissioners were sworn into office on 23rd August, 1834, and at once set to work, under the dominance of the workhouse principle, to enact such preparatory and temporary measures as seemed necessary to check the master evil, as they called it, of relief to the able- bodied. The first measures taken temporarily to apply this principle are contained under the heading Relief, in Orders and Regulations for the Guidance and Govern- ment of the Boards of Guardians of Unions, issued by the Commissioners :•— Firstly. No relief shall be given in money (except in cases of sickness or accident) to any able- bodied male pauper who is in employment (the same not being parish work) and in the receipt of earnings; nor to any part of his family who shall be dependent on him, or for whose relief and maintenance he shall be liable. Secondly. If any able-bodied male pauper shall apply to be set to work by the parish, one-half at least of the relief which may be afforded to him or to his family shall be in kind. Thirdly. One-half at least of the relief which may be afforded to widows or single women, not being aged or infirm, shall be in kind. Fourthly. No relief shall be given to any able- bodied male pauper by payment or payments of, for or on account of, the rent for his house or lodging, or for the house or lodging of any part of his family who shall be dependent upon him and for whose relief and maintenance he shall be liable, or by allowance towards such rent. Fifthly. Except in case of accident, sickness, or other urgent necessity, no relief shall be afforded from the poor rates of any parish or place com- prised in the said Union, to any pauper between the ages of sixteen and sixty, belonging to any such parish or place comprised in the said * The hereafter specified refers to p. 297, where it was said that the prohibition of out-door relief should come into operation at the end of two years, and, as regards new applicants, at an earlier period. As a matter of fact it took much longer than this. No doubt can be entertained that it was the deliberate intention of Parliament, in framing the Poor Law Amendment Act, that all out-door relief to the able-bodied should cease at the earliest possible period that it could safely, and with propriety, be put an end to ; and the question we have to successively decide as to each Union is whether this time may be fairly deemed to have arrived. (Second Report, 1836, p. 7.) | It is rather remarkable that no definition of able-bodied is given in the Report except the negative one on p. 42, that aged, sick, and infirm (grouped under the expression impotent) are not able-bodied. Hence the difficulty in which the Commissioners found themselves as regards relief to the partially disabled. They spoke of the inexpediency of continuing to give partial relief in these cases, and the injustice of thus enabling them to compete with and lower the value of the labour of the able-bodied man. We feel the injustice and impolicy of this course so strongly that, although not desirous of urging or insisting on the application of the workhouse to all cases of this nature, we are of opinion that it is desirable that persons incapable of wholly maintaining themselves should not be suffered to receive partial relief, but should be entiiely supported by the guardians, and should either be set to work by the guardians in such manner as may be suitable to their condition, or should not be suffered to do any work on their own account. (Continuance Report, 1840, p. 43.) J Thus modem readers are apt to think of the Report and of its remedy as hard, even harsh, forgetting that the Commissioners had to deal with a demoralised England, where more than one half or two-thirds of the cases of able-bodied labourers in towns were cases of indolence or imposture, and where it rarely appeared that five or six in a hundred claimants sustained the test. We have it, however, on the authority of Mr. Mackay that Chadwick always objected to the expression workhouse test. The idea of the workhouse, he always insisted, was derived from the practice of the working classes themselves with regard to their own friendly societies. Their rule was all or nothing. The friendly societies prohibit their members from working when in receipt of sick pay, and enforce their rule by a system of inspection. This is not practicable for the public authority, which is therefore obliged to offer all or nothing in some other form. (History of the English Poor Law. Vol. III., p. 126.) NOTE.—References made in this Volume, and in the Reports of the Commission to the pages of this Volume, are to