Chapter III: The Poor Law Board (2)

[344] The Manchester Board of Guardians had had its own
boarding-school at Swinton since 1844, where, on the advice of Mr.
Tufnell (assistant Poor Law inspector), the children were eighteen
hours a week "at school" and eighteen hours "at labour" (MS.
Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 22nd August 1844). For the
next few years we see them taking great pride in this school, and
receiving the highest commendation from the inspectors. But the
district auditor, in 1846, complains bitterly of the "costly
establishment," warning the guardians that the expense of this
school has "already reached an amount that is inconsistent with
the class of children for whom the schools were designed," and is
"creating dissatisfaction amongst the ratepayers" (_ibid._ 25th
June 1846). And in 1861 the Central Authority itself deprecates
the payment of so large a salary as £250 a year with board and
lodging to the headmaster, and urges the great importance of the
industrial as distinguished from the intellectual training of the
children (_ibid._ 10th and 16th January 1861).

[345] In 1849, at the instance of the Committee of Council on
Education, it issued a Circular extending to workhouse schools the
privilege of getting at a low price the school-books of which the
Government had arranged the publication for elementary schools
(Circular of 25th January 1849, in the Second Annual Report, 1849,
p. 25).

[346] House of Commons, No. 50 of 1867, p. 158 (Letter to
Guardians of the Holborn Union).

[347] Thus, in 1850, it is reported with laudation that "there are
workhouses, like that of the Atcham Union, in which the children
receive an education beyond all comparison better than is within
the reach of labourers in any part of the county. In the girls'
school of the Ludlow Union the children now receive an education
in all respects superior to what the humbler ratepayers are able
to purchase for their children. This high standard of workhouse
education is fast ceasing to be exceptional" (Third Annual Report,
1850, p. 7).

[348] _Official Circular_, No. 17, N.S. July and August 1848, p.
264.

On the other hand, it has to be recorded that there were apparently opposing influences at work, as the Norwich Board of Guardians found to its cost in 1854. That board had in 1846, apparently of its own accord, begun a most interesting experiment. As the workhouse was old and overcrowded, and obviously contaminating to the hundreds of children it contained, separate "Boys' and Girls' Homes" were established, away from the workhouse and under separate management. At these early types of Poor Law schools the children received both scholastic and industrial training. Their special feature was, however, that the boys of sufficient age were placed out in situations in the town, continuing to use the institution as their home, and contributing the wages that they earned towards the cost of their maintenance. The Norwich Guardians had found, as others have done since, that the old style of indoor apprenticeship was nearly extinct. They had resorted to what they called "outdoor apprenticeship." "In nineteen cases out of twenty the apprentices bound out ... have been outdoor apprentices and have resided with their parents, and received certain weekly allowances. Masters will not consent to take into their houses pauper apprentices."[349] The Central Authority had objected to this, and had insisted on enforcing the usual apprenticeship order.[350] Apparently it was not found possible to place boys out on this obsolete system, and the plan was adopted of getting the boys situations at wages, low at first, and not for some years amounting to enough fully to maintain them. This experiment had been undertaken with the full knowledge of the Poor Law inspectors, who constantly visited the homes, and who expressed themselves in high praise of their success, and it had even been specially described in print, with great commendation, by the inspector of pauper schools. Indeed, the eighty-seven boys who had already passed out of the homes (presumably as soon as their wages were big enough to keep them) were, with fewer than a dozen exceptions, well launched in the world and doing well. In 1854, however, after eight years, the Central Authority intimated that the whole expenditure on the homes was illegal, as being unauthorised, and it was in fact disallowed. It added that, whilst it was prepared to sanction the continuance of the homes as mere schools, it could not permit them to be used as homes for the elder boys who went out to work. The grounds on which this decision was arrived at are not clear. In one place it is stated that the Poor Law Board "conceive it to be unjust to the children of the independent poor," presumably unjust to give the pauper boys such advantages. In another place it is stated that the Poor Law Board had only been induced to permit the homes temporarily on the understanding that they were self-supporting--a contention hardly consistent with that of their illegality--whereas the boys who went out to work proved to cost something to the rates, though admittedly less than they would have cost in the workhouse. In a third place it is pointed out that the projected new workhouse will amply accommodate all the children, so that the homes will be unnecessary even as schools--an argument which seems inconsistent with the general policy of the Poor Law Board, unless we are to infer that it wanted only district schools by combinations of unions. We may note, as a final hint of the uncertainty that prevailed, that, after three years' correspondence, the Poor Law inspector advised the guardians to ask the Central Authority to sanction temporarily the continuance of the homes, as "it is quite possible ... that within the next two years the Legislature may resolve on communicating greater vitality to the provisions for the establishment of district schools." He had told the clerk to the guardians verbally that it was probable that Parliament would make it compulsory to provide for pauper children in establishments apart from workhouses, but that he saw "with regret how strongly different views are pressed" in regard to these homes; and that the guardians would meanwhile do well to delay proceeding with any but the adults' wards of the new workhouse.[351]

[349] MS. Minutes, Norwich Board of Guardians, 1845.

[350] Special Order of 30th January 1845.

[351] MS. Minutes, Norwich Board of Guardians, 3rd January and 7th
February 1854, 1st April 1856, and 6th January 1857. We gather
that the inspector's prescience was so far justified that the
Norwich Guardians managed to retain their children's homes, which
were in existence a generation later.

No such legislation as was thus foreshadowed took place, but the policy of removing the children from the workhouses was meanwhile incidentally promoted by an Act of 1849, which enabled use to be made of any establishment in which paupers were maintained by contract "for the education of any poor children therein."[352] Similarly the various Industrial Schools Acts opened up another class of schools to pauper children.[353] Finally, the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1869 enabled training ships to be established by school districts and the Metropolitan Asylums Board for the education of pauper boys for the sea service.[354] Already by 1856 it was reported with satisfaction that 78 per cent of the children under boards of guardians in the Metropolis were in separate schools--statistics, however, which continued to ignore the much larger number of children on outdoor relief, of whose existence the Central Authority only gradually became aware.[355]

[352] 12 & 13 Vic. c. 13, sec. 1 (The Poor Law Relief Act 1849).
Out of this sprang the Certified Schools Act of 1862 (25 & 26 Vic.
c. 43), and the provision in the Poor Law Amendment Acts of 1866
and 1868 (29 & 30 Vic. c. 113, sec. 14, and 31 & 32 Vic. c. 122,
sec. 23), enabling the Central Authority peremptorily to order the
removal to a certified school of a child of non-Anglican parents,
when the board of guardians refused to allow religious freedom.

[353] 20 & 21 Vic. c. 48 of 1857; 24 & 25 Vic. c. 113 of 1861; 29
& 30 Vic. c. 118 of 1866.

[354] 32 & 33 Vic. c. 63, sec. 11 (Metropolitan Poor Act of 1869);
these ships were regulated by Special Orders.

[355] "The vast number of the (outdoor) pauper children in London
is as melancholy as it is remarkable" (Twenty-second Annual
Report, 1869-70, p. xxii).

During the next twenty years we see this policy of separate boarding schools for such of the Poor Law children as were on indoor relief being constantly pressed on boards of guardians. The erection of these costly barrack schools, which were each regulated by a separate Special Order, differing slightly from school to school,[356] the steady improvement in their accommodation and diet, and the continuous rise in the educational standard attained, which is the great feature of the ensuing period (though in accordance with the recommendations of the 1834 Report), marks a definite abandonment, as regards the children, of the principle that the condition of the pauper should always be less eligible than that of the lowest class of independent labourer. But although in the course of the period 1847-71, in the Metropolis and various large towns, the greater number of the boys and girls between five and fourteen were removed from the workhouses to these "barrack schools" and similar institutions, such schools were not made compulsory; the retention of children in the workhouse was not forbidden, and in hundreds of unions[357] they remained unaffected by the new policy of the Central Authority, which apparently felt unable to require the boards of guardians to adopt it. Even when the bulk of the children were placed in separate schools, there were always some in the workhouse itself; and it is remarkable that the Central Authority made no attempt to modify for these the provisions of the General Consolidated Order of 1847, the effect of which upon the workhouse administration of the period we have already described.[358]

[356] _See_, for instance, as to the Swinton school of the
Manchester Board of Guardians, Special Order of 6th July 1852; as
to the Cowley school of the Oxford Board of Guardians, Special
Order of 24th November 1854; as to the Kirkdale School of the
Liverpool Select Vestry, Special Order of 7th August 1856.

[357] Even so populous a town as Newcastle-on-Tyne refused to
remove its children from the workhouse. We see the Poor Law
inspector arranging a special visit to inspect them, and to confer
with the guardians to urge a district school (MS. Minutes,
Newcastle Board of Guardians, 10th August and 21st September
1849). He then presses for a joint conference, which does nothing
but adjourn (_ibid._ 17th January and 14th March 1850). Nothing is
done. Six years after he finds the education is still in a
deplorable state (_ibid._ 29th August and 3rd October 1856), and
gets the infants into a separate building. The guardians will not
appoint a resident schoolmaster (_ibid._ 12th December 1856; 23rd
January, 29th May, 18th August, 4th September 1857). It takes
three months and three urgent appeals to get them to appoint an
additional infants' mistress (_ibid._ 19th November 1858; 21st
January, 11th February, 25th February 1859).

[358] The disfavour with which, as we have noted, the Central
Authority regarded apprenticeship, seems to have continued. The
Special Orders of 31st December 1844, and 29th January 1845
(issued to several hundred unions), severely restricting
apprenticeship, and the amending Special Orders of 15th and 22nd
August 1845, which slightly mitigated these restrictions, were
continued in force. Some of the provisions were relaxed in special
cases (_e.g._ Special Order of 11th August 1855, to Leicester
Union for a deaf and dumb girl). No General Order seems to have
been issued on the subject between 1847 and 1871; nor do we trace
any instructions or advice to boards of guardians as to the steps
to be taken to place boys and girls out in advantageous callings.
A few decisions on legal points tended rather to restrict
apprenticeship. The Central Authority held that a child could not
be apprenticed to domestic service as it was not a "trade or
business"; nor bound to a married woman, nor beyond the age of
twenty-one (_Official Circular_, No. 54, N.S., 1856, p. 38;
_ibid._ No. 46, N.S., February 1851, p. 17; _ibid._ No. 34, N.S.,
February 1850, pp. 17-18). In 1851, Parliament passed the Poor Law
(Apprentices) Act (14 & 15 Vic. c. 11), for preventing cruelty to
apprentices; and the Central Authority, in transmitting this
statute to the boards of guardians, carefully abstained from any
indication of policy, as to how pauper children should be placed
out in life (Circular Letter, 26th June 1851, in Fourth Annual
Report, 1851, pp. 19-21). As a minor instance of the merging of
branches of the Poor Law into the general treatment of all classes
of the community, it may be noted that this Act was repealed in
1861, its provisions being practically embodied in the Offences
against the Person Act (24 & 25 Vic. c. 100, sec. 26).

Meanwhile the "workhouse schools" continued to improve very slowly in educational efficiency. The policy of the Central Authority was apparently to develop industrial training--agricultural work, the simpler handicrafts, and domestic service--on the model of the "Quatt School" in Shropshire. Whether or not this industrial work militated against more intellectual accomplishments is a moot point, but we hear of "the reports of 'the stagnant dulness of workhouse education' which annually proceed from Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools."[359]

[359] Eighth Annual Report, 1855, p. 58.

Whether or not from a certain divergence of aim between the departments, the connection was in 1863 severed,[360] and the Poor Law Board thenceforward had its own inspectors of Poor Law Schools, whose criticisms and complaints, all in favour of the large district schools as compared with the single union school, appear from 1867 onward in the Annual Reports.[361]

[360] Circular of 5th September 1863; in Sixteenth Annual Report,
1863-4, pp. 19, 34.

[361] _See_ the first set, in Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, pp.
128-58.

At the very end of the period we may note the beginning of a reaction against the "barrack schools." It was pointed out by those acquainted with the Scottish system of boarding-out, as well as by persons experienced in English Poor Law administration, that these expensive boarding schools were not answering so well as their admirers claimed, especially as regards the girls. During 1866-9 the alternative of "boarding-out" children in private families at 4s. a week (now 5s.) was warmly discussed, and experimentally adopted in a few places.[362] In 1869 the Central Authority so far yielded to the criticisms made upon these institutions as to permit, under elaborate restrictions and safeguards, the "boarding-out," in families beyond the limits of the union, of the comparatively small class of children who were actually or practically orphans.[363] In these cases all idea of making the condition of the pauper child less eligible than that of the lowest independent labourer was definitely abandoned. The whole concern of the Central Authority was to see that the provision for the boarded-out child was good and complete. Far from being assimilated to the children of the lowest independent labourers, the boarded-out children were only to be entrusted to specially selected families superior to the lowest, who undertook to bring them up as their own, to provide proper food, clothing and washing, to train them in good habits as well as in suitable domestic and industrial work, and to make them regularly attend school and place of worship. For all this the foster parents were to receive with each child a sum three or four times as great as was, with the sanction of the Central Authority, commonly allowed for the maintenance of each of the couple of hundred thousand children at that date on outdoor relief; and which (as Professor Fawcett vainly objected) was far in excess of what the ordinary labourer could afford to expend on his own children.[364] "A plan," observed Mr. Fowle, "which cannot be defended on any sound principles of Poor Law."[365] "It is indeed impossible," says Mr. Mackay in this connection, "to deny that apparently every provision for pauper children may be regarded as a contravention of this rule.... Professor Fawcett's ... argument has been tacitly neglected."[366]

[362] _Home Training for Pauper Children_, 1866; _Children of the
State_, by Miss F. Hill, 1869; _The Advantages of the Boarding-out
System_, by Col. C. W. Grant, 1869; _Pall Mall Gazette_, 10th
April 1869; debate in House of Commons, 10th May 1869.

[363] Poor Law Board to Evesham Union, 3rd April 1869; House of
Commons, No. 176 of 1869; Circular of 30th October 1869;
Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 25-6; House of Commons,
No. 176 of 1870, pp. 123-189; Twenty-second Annual Report,
1869-70, pp. lii-lv and 2-8. It was explained to boards of
guardians that they were at liberty to board-out children within
the area of the union at their own discretion, "no orders or
regulations to the contrary having been issued" (Poor Law Board to
Newcastle Union, 17th March 1871).

[364] _Pauperism_, by H. Fawcett, 1871, pp. 79-91.

[365] _The Poor Law_, by Rev. T. Fowle, 1881, p. 144.

[366] _History of the English Poor Law_, by T. Mackay, 1899, vol.
iii. p. 434.

_E._--_The Sick_

We have shown that, between 1834 and 1847, it was not contemplated that persons actually sick would be received in the workhouse, and that there was no trace in the documents of any desire on the part of the Central Authority to interfere with the usual practice of granting to them outdoor relief, which had not been in any way condemned or discredited by the 1834 Report. The same may be said of the Statutes, Orders, and Circulars of 1847-71. We find no suggestion that the boards of guardians ought not to grant outdoor relief in cases of sickness, or that sick paupers ought to be relieved in the workhouse. On the contrary, the exceptions specifically made in favour of sick persons seem to be even widened in scope. Thus, in 1848, the Central Authority laid it down that widows with illegitimate children were not to be refused outdoor relief, if the children were sick.[367] By the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of December 1852, it was definitely provided that outdoor relief might be given in case of sickness in the family, even if the head of the family was simultaneously earning wages.[368] The same policy was embodied in the corresponding General Order issued on 1st January 1869, to certain Metropolitan unions.[369] Further, in the panic about cholera in 1866, the Central Authority informed the boards of guardians by circular that in cases of emergency they might call in any medical and other assistance that was needed, and even provide whatever sustenance, clothing, etc., was required,[370] apparently irrespective of "destitution" and of all General Orders, etc., to the contrary. Moreover, early in this period we note the beginning of the special definition of "destitution" as regards medical relief which has since been acted upon, that is to say, the inability to pay for the medical attendance that the nature of the case requires. Thus it was declared by the Central Authority in 1848 that the parish doctor might attend sick servants living in their master's household, who were plainly not destitute in the ordinary sense, as not being without food and lodging, but who, if there were no wages due to them, might be unable to pay for medical attendance.[371] A similar line of thought may be traced in that provision of the Act of 1851 which authorised boards of guardians to make annual subscriptions out of the poor rate to public hospitals and infirmaries, to enable these non-pauper institutions the better to provide "for the poor."[372] "The sick wards of the workhouses," as the Central Authority explained in 1869, "were originally provided for the cases of paupers in the workhouse who might be attacked by illness; and not as State hospitals into which all the sick poor of the country might be received for medical treatment and care. So far is this, indeed, from being the case that at least two-thirds of the sick poor receive medical attendance and treatment in their own homes."[373] When in 1869-71, the Central Authority obtained elaborate reports showing, for all parts of England, the practice that prevailed of normally giving outdoor relief to the sick, and of taking them into the workhouse infirmaries only when this was called for by (_a_) the nature of the disease, (_b_) the wishes of the patient, or (_c_) the nature of the home, and then only where suitable infirmary accommodation was available, there is no indication that any objection was entertained to the policy of outdoor relief to this large class.[374]

[367] _Official Circular_, Nos. 14 and 15, N.S. April and May
1848, p. 228.

[368] Outdoor Relief Regulation Order of 14th December, 1852.

[369] General Order of 1st January 1869, in Twenty-first Annual
Report, 1868-9, pp. 28, 79-82.

[370] Circular of 27th July 1866, in Nineteenth Annual Report,
1866-7, p. 39.

[371] _Official Circular_, No. 20, N.S. Nov. and Dec. 1848, p.
297.

[372] Fourth Annual Report, 1851, p. 15; 14 & 15 Vic. c. 105, sec.
4.

[373] Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, pp. 27-8.

[374] Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xxiv-xxvii,
38-108; Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, pp. xliv-lii, 173-188.

What is new in this period is the appearance, as a positive policy, of bringing pressure to bear on the boards of guardians to improve the quality of the medical attendance and medicine supplied. This led to an explicit disavowal, so far as regards the sick paupers, of any application to them of the principle of making the pauper's condition less eligible than that of the lowest grade of independent labourers. It is noteworthy that this new departure applied to outdoor medical relief quite as much as to institutional medical treatment, in which it has subsequently been sometimes excused on the ground that the superior treatment is accompanied by a loss of liberty. The new departure took three directions. It was definitely laid down that the medical attendance afforded to the outdoor paupers was to be of good quality, and thus necessarily above that obtained by the poorest independent labourer, or even by "the poor" generally. This was the outcome of a long campaign on behalf of the poorer members of the medical profession, of which Wakley was the leader in the House of Commons, and the _Lancet_ the efficient organ.[375] In 1853 the Poor Law Board considered that the qualifications of the Poor Law medical officers "ought to be such as to ensure _for the poor_ a degree of skill in their medical attendants equal to that which can be commanded by the more fortunate classes of the community."[376] On the suggestion of the House of Commons Committee on Poor Relief[377] it was authoritatively enjoined on boards of guardians in 1865 by a special circular that they were to supply freely quinine, cod-liver oil, and "other expensive medicines" to the sick poor;[378] although it must have been plain that such things were beyond the reach of the independent labourers consulting the "sixpenny doctor," and even beyond the usual resources of the provident dispensaries of the period.[379] Finally, in 1867, the Metropolitan Poor Act authorised the establishment throughout London of Poor Law dispensaries. These institutions were consistently pressed on the Metropolitan boards of guardians by the Central Authority, as having been successful in Ireland in reducing the amount of sickness among the poor, and as ensuring, not only regular and more successful medical attention, but also a sufficient supply of medicines and medical appliances of standard quality.[380] By this elaborate systematisation of outdoor medical relief, the Central Authority not only put within the reach of the sick paupers medical attendance far superior to that accessible to the lowest grade of independent labourers, but even placed the sick pauper in the Metropolis, without loss of liberty, in a position equal to that of the superior artisan subscribing to a good provident dispensary.

[375] _See_, for instance, _The Administration of Medical Relief
to the Poor--Reports by the Poor Law Committee of the Provincial
Medical and Surgical Association_, 1842; _Life and Times of Thomas
Wakley_, by S. Squire Sprigge, 1897.

[376] Mr. Baines (President of the Poor Law Board), 12th July
1853; _Hansard_, vol. 129, p. 138.

[377] Sixteenth Annual Report, 1863-4, p. 108.

[378] Circular of 12th April 1865, in Eighteenth Annual Report,
1865-6, pp. 23-24.

[379] Some boards of guardians rebelled in this connection against
a departure from the principle of "less eligibility" that they did
not understand. When the circular of the Central Authority
inviting compliance with the recommendation of the House of
Commons Committee reached the Manchester Board of Guardians, it
was referred to a committee. When the committee, after eighteen
months' delay, recommended compliance, its report was rejected
(MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 20th April 1865, and
25th October 1866).

[380] Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xliv-lii.

The most remarkable change of front was, however, that relating to the institutional treatment of the sick. Down to 1847, it is not too much to say that "what may be called the hospital branch of Poor Law administration"[381] was ignored alike by Parliament, public opinion, and the Central Authority. We have shown that the institutional provision for the sick was not so much as mentioned in the Report of 1834, and that it remained practically ignored in all the Orders, Circulars, and Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners. The same is true of the first eighteen years of the Poor Law Board. Few and far between are the incidental references to the "sick wards" of the workhouses. There is not even a hint of a suggestion that relief to the sick poor could most advantageously take the form of an offer of "the House." On the contrary, it was held in 1848 that applicants for admission suffering from "fever" might even be refused admission, the relieving officer being enjoined to find lodging elsewhere for them,[382] though how this was to be done the Central Authority did not, in 1848, say. In 1857, the Metropolitan Boards of Guardians were recommended to send such cases to the London Fever Hospital[383] (involving a payment by the guardians of 7s. weekly). Finally, in 1864-5, we have an outburst of public indignation, at the condition into which the sick wards of the workhouses had been allowed to drift. The death of a pauper in Holborn workhouse, and of another in St. Giles's workhouse, under conditions which seemed to point to inhumanity and neglect, led to an enquiry by three doctors (Anstie, Carr, and Ernest Hart), commissioned by the _Lancet_ newspaper, the formation of an "Association for improving the condition of the sick poor," and a deputation to the Poor Law Board.[384] The publication of various reports on the workhouse infirmaries, in which terrible deficiencies were revealed,[385] led to public discussion and Parliamentary debates. The Central Authority at once accepted the new standpoint. It made no attempt to resist the provision of the necessarily costly institutional treatment for the sick poor, whether or not their ailments were infectious or otherwise dangerous to the public. The progressive improvement of "the hospital branch of Poor Law administration," to use the phrase of the Central Authority itself, which had in the preceding thirty years grown up unawares, was now definitely accepted as an important feature of its policy. Statutory powers were obtained for the provision of hospitals in the Metropolis by combinations of boards of guardians. Urgent letters were written pressing the boards of guardians to embark on the expenditure required to enable them to provide efficiently for the sick paupers.[386] From 1865 onward, we see the Central Authority, on the public-spirited initiative of Mr. W. Rathbone and the Liverpool Select Vestry, pressing on the boards of guardians the employment of salaried and qualified nurses to attend to the sick paupers, whatever their complaints.[387] We have even in 1867, so far as the sick are concerned, the explicit disavowal by the Central Authority of the very idea of the deterrent workhouse, which had formed so prominent a part of the policy of 1834-1847. Mr. Gathorne Hardy, speaking as President of the Poor Law Board, said "there is one thing ... which we must peremptorily insist on, namely, the treatment of the sick in the infirmaries being conducted on an entirely separate system, because the evils complained of have mainly arisen from the workhouse management--which must to a great degree be of a deterrent character--having been applied to the sick, _who are not proper objects for such a system_."[388]

[381] _Ibid._ p. x.

[382] _Official Circular_, Nos. 14 and 15, N.S., April and May
1848, p. 237.

[383] Circular of 1st August 1857, in Tenth Annual Report, 1857,
p. 37. The Central Authority did not, prior to 1867, face the
responsibility of deciding to require boards of guardians to
provide hospital accommodation even for infectious diseases. In
1863, indeed, under fear of small-pox, it got so far as to
transmit to Metropolitan boards of guardians an alarmist letter by
Dr. Buchanan, and to permit the taking of temporary premises for
"the destitute poor attacked by contagious or infectious disease"
(Circular of 30th April 1863, in Fifteenth Annual Report, 1862-3,
pp. 37-9). We believe that practically nothing was done upon this.
In 1866, when cholera was imminent, another Circular was sent
which, significantly enough, makes no mention of temporary
hospitals, but points to an increase of the outdoor medical
relief, disinfectants, sustenance and clothing to meet the "great
increase of destitution" to be apprehended. "As far as practicable
... the admission of cholera patients into the workhouse should be
prevented" (Circular of 27th July 1866, in Nineteenth Annual
Report, 1866-7, pp. 39-40).

[384] _See_ for all this the Eighteenth Annual Report, 1865-6, pp.
15-16; Nineteenth Annual Report, 1866-7, pp. 15-18, 39; Twentieth
Annual Report, 1867-8, pp. 25-28; Report of Dr. E. Smith on
Metropolitan Workhouse Infirmaries and Sick Wards, in House of
Commons, No. 372 of 1866; _The Condition of the Sick in London
Workhouse Infirmaries_ (Association for the Improvement of the
London Workhouse Infirmaries, 1867); _Opinions of the Press upon
the Conditions of the Sick Poor in London Workhouses_ (_ibid._
1867); _The Management of the Infirmaries of the Strand Union, the
Rotherhithe and the Paddington Workhouses_ (1867?).

[385] The provincial newspapers took up the work that the _Lancet_
had begun. On 31st January 1865, a long report appeared in the
_Manchester Examiner_ revealing serious deficiencies in the
Manchester Workhouse sick wards.

[386] Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, pp. 17-21. This new
departure of the Central Authority was long strenuously resisted
by many of the boards of guardians who prided themselves on the
purity of their Poor Law policy. Thus, the published complaints of
the Manchester Workhouse Infirmary led to an inquiry by the
inspector, who made various suggestions for improvement. The board
of guardians, on the advice of their own medical officer, held
that the existing conditions were sufficiently satisfactory.
Finally, after fifteen months, the Central Authority censured the
master, asked for more nurses and (while avoiding any censure of
the guardians for their past policy) practically invited them to
adopt the new standpoint (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of
Guardians, 1st February 1865; 22nd February and 3rd May 1866). Two
years later, Manchester was still objecting. When a conference of
important North Country boards of guardians in 1862 (W. Rathbone
presiding) had recommended a national grant-in-aid to improve the
"pauper hospitals," the Manchester Board of Guardians formally
dissented (though now only by a majority of one), protesting:
"That the much higher system of medical treatment and nursing and
the other advantages sought to be introduced into workhouse
hospitals by the proposed measures would tend to discourage the
provident habits and self-reliance of the industrious poor by
providing for them therein far better accommodation and treatment
than they can usually secure for themselves in cases of sickness"
(MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 20th February 1868).

[387] Circular of 5th May 1865; Eighteenth Annual Report, 1865-6,
pp. 16, 24-5, 62-8; _Nurses in Workhouses and Workhouse
Infirmaries_, by Miss Wilson, 1890.

[388] _Hansard_, 8th February 1867, vol. 185, p. 163.

At first the new policy of the Central Authority for the institutional treatment of the sick took the form of the erection of special hospitals by "Sick Asylum Districts."[389] Presently, however, it came to the conclusion that this involved an unnecessary expense, and that it would be cheaper to revert to the idea of the Report of 1834, and use the existing workhouse buildings by a system of classification by institutions.[390] So definitely was this recognised as a reversion to 1834 that the Central Authority actually quoted the passage of the 1834 Report in justification of its plan.[391] From this point may be dated the adoption of the policy of the provision, in connection with the workhouse, but practically as a separate institution, of what is now called the Poor Law Infirmary.[392] In 1870 the Central Authority took pains to collect special statistics as to the extent to which this recently developed provision for the sick was being taken advantage of. It observes (and, significantly enough, without expression of disapproval) that "the numbers on the lists of relieving officers may be swollen by poor persons who in previous years, though really poor, refrained from coming on the rates, but whom changes in the law or in the mode of its administration have since attracted."[393] "Workhouses," it notes, "originally designed mainly as a test for the able-bodied, have, especially in the large towns, been _of necessity_ gradually transformed in to infirmaries for the sick. The higher standard for hospital accommodation has had a material effect upon the expenditure. So again it has been considered necessary to attach to workhouses separate fever wards; and wherever it was possible, these wards have been isolated by the erection of a separate building."[394] The extent to which the Poor Law had become the public doctor was indeed remarkable. The number of persons on outdoor relief who were "actually sick," apart from mere old age infirmity, and without their families, was found to be 13 per cent of the whole, equal to about 119,000. The number in the workhouses who were "actually sick," irrespective of "the vast number of old people disabled by old age, but not actually upon the sick list," varied in different unions from 14 to 39 per cent in the provinces, and up to nearly 50 per cent in some Metropolitan Unions; amounting, for the whole country, to about 60,000 actual sick-bed cases.[395] Taking indoor and outdoor patients together, the total simultaneously under medical treatment in the twelfth week of the half-year ending Lady Day 1870, was estimated at 173,000, being three quarters of one per cent of the population, and perhaps one out of four of all the persons under medical treatment in the whole population. The story from this date is one continuous record, on the one hand of an ever-increasing number of patients treated, and, on the other, of never slackening pressure by the Central Authority to induce apathetic or parsimonious boards of guardians to expend money in making both the outdoor medical service and the workhouse infirmaries as efficient and as well adapted and as well equipped for the alleviation and cure of their patients--without the least notion of "the principle of less eligibility"--as the most scientifically efficient hospitals and State medical service in any part of the world. After 1867, indeed, there was developed, for the Metropolitan paupers suffering from infectious diseases, the splendid hospital system of the Metropolitan Asylums Board.[396] At the very end of the existence of the Poor Law Board, Mr. Goschen seems almost to have been contemplating a yet further extension. "The economical and social advantages," he observed, "of _free medicine to the poorer classes generally as distinguished from actual paupers, and perfect accessibility to medical advice at all times under thorough organisation_, may be considered as so important in themselves as to render it necessary to weigh with the greatest care all the reasons which may be adduced in their favour."[397]

[389] _See_, for instance, the Special Orders for the Poplar and
Stepney Sick Asylum District, 23rd April and 16th May 1868, and
7th March 1871; and that for the Central London Sick Asylum
District of 2nd May 1868.

[390] Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 16-18; Circular of
30th October 1869; Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp.
xxxvii-xli.

[391] The "policy of providing workhouses for separate classes of
the poor was fully recognised by the Commissioners of Inquiry into
the operation of the Poor Law in 1834, who in their Report
recommended 'that the Central Board should be empowered to cause
any number of parishes to be incorporated for the purpose of
workhouse management, and for providing new workhouses where
necessary, and to assign to those workhouses separate classes of
poor though composed of the poor of distinct parishes.' And in
another part of the same Report they say that it appears to them
'that both the requisite classification and the requisite
superintendence may be better obtained in separate buildings than
under a single roof. Each class then might receive an appropriate
treatment; the old might enjoy their indulgences without torment
from the boisterous, the children be educated, and the able-bodied
subjected to such courses of labour and of discipline as will
repel the idle and vicious'" (Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9,
pp. 16-17).

[392] For a Special Order for such an Infirmary, _see_ that of
27th June 1871.

[393] Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, p. xi.

[394] _Ibid._ p. x.

[395] _See_ the statistical inquiries summarised in the
Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, pp. xxiv-xxviii; House of
Commons, No. 312 of 1865; No. 372 of 1866; No. 4 of 1867-8; No.
445 of 1868; House of Lords, No. 216 of 1866.

[396] _See_ the Special Orders of 15th May, 18th June, and 17th
July 1867; and 23rd December 1870.

[397] Twenty-second Annual Report of Poor Law Board (G. S.
Goschen, president), 1869-70, p. lii. Already in 1846 and again in
1853 the Central Authority had expressed its "decided opinion ...
that money judiciously expended ... in the improvement of the
sanitary condition of the poorer classes, and in the prevention or
removal of causes of disease, has a direct tendency to diminish or
prevent future destitution and pauperism; and will thus be found
to be most profitably expended, even in reference to the more
direct object of the duties of the guardians" (Circular of 21st
September 1853; in Sixth Annual Report, 1853, p. 36).

_F._--_Persons of Unsound Mind_

It is difficult to discover what was the policy of the Central Authority during this period with regard to lunatics, idiots, and the mentally defective. Lunacy had always been, and remained, a ground of exception from the prohibition to grant outdoor relief. The provision of a lodging for a lunatic was, moreover, an exception to the prohibition of the payment of rent for a pauper. As a result of these exceptions, there were on 1st January 1852, 4107 lunatics and idiots on outdoor relief,[398] and this number had increased by 1859 to 4892[399] and by 1870 to 6199.[400] The Central Authority took no steps to require or persuade boards of guardians not to grant outdoor relief to lunatics, nor yet to get any appropriate provision made for them in the great general workhouses on which it had insisted. Parliament in 1862 (in order to relieve the pressure on lunatic asylums) expressly authorised arrangements to be made for chronic lunatics to be permanently maintained in workhouses, under elaborate provisions for their proper care.[401] These arrangements would have amounted, in fact, to the creation, within the workhouse, of wards which were to be in every respect as well equipped, as highly staffed, and as liberally supplied as a regular lunatic asylum.[402] The Central Authority transmitted the Act to the boards of guardians, observing, with what almost seems like sarcasm, that it was not "aware of any workhouse in which any such arrangements could conveniently be made";[403] and the provisions of this Act were, we believe, never acted upon. Whilst consistently objecting to the retention in workhouses of lunatics who were dangerous, or who were deemed curable, we do not find that the Central Authority ever insisted on there being a proper lunatic ward for the persons of unsound mind who were necessarily received, for a longer or shorter period, in every workhouse.[404] Moreover, the Central Authority took no steps to get such persons removed to lunatic asylums. In 1845 it had agreed with the Manchester Board of Guardians (who did not want to make any more use of the county asylum than they could help) that they were justified in retaining in the workhouse any lunatics whom their own medical officer did not consider "proper to be confined" in a lunatic asylum.[405] In 1849 it expressly laid it down that a weak-minded pauper or, as we now say, a mentally defective, must either be a lunatic, and be certified and treated as such, or not a lunatic, in which case no special treatment could be provided for him or her in the one general workhouse to which the Central Authority still adhered.[406] We can find no indication of policy as to whether it was recommended that such mentally defectives should be granted outdoor relief, or (as one can scarcely believe) required to inhabit a workhouse which made no provision for them.[407]

[398] Fifth Annual Report, 1852, pp. 7, 152.

[399] Twelfth Annual Report, 1859-60, p. 17.

[400] Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-71, p. xxiii.

[401] 25 & 26 Vic. c. 111, secs. 8, 20, 31 (Lunacy Acts Amendment
Act, 1862).

[402] Sixteenth Annual Report, 1863-4, pp. 21, 38-9.

[403] Circular of 15th December 1862, in Fifteenth Annual Report,
1862-3, pp. 35-7.

[404] On 1st January 1859, the number of persons of unsound mind
in the workhouses was 7963 (Twelfth Annual Report, 1859-60, p.
17). This had risen by 1870 to 11,243 (Twenty-third Annual Report,
1870-71, p. xxiii).

[405] Poor Law Commissioners, 24th December 1845; in MS. records,
Manchester Board of Guardians.

[406] _Official Circular_, No. 25, N.S., May 1849, pp. 70-1.

[407] In 1868 visiting committees were recommended to see that
weak-minded inmates were not entrusted with the care of young
children (Circular of 6th July 1868 in Twenty-first Annual Report,
1868-9, p. 53).

The explanation of this paralysis of the Central Authority, as regards the policy to be pursued with persons of unsound mind, is to be found, we believe, in the existence and growth during this period of the rival authority of the Lunacy Commissioners, who had authority over all persons of unsound mind, whether paupers or not. The Lunacy Commissioners had not habitually in their minds the principle of "less eligibility"; and they were already, between 1848 and 1871, making requirements with regard to the accommodation and treatment of pauper lunatics that the Poor Law authorities regarded as preposterously extravagant. The records of the boards of guardians show visits of the inspectors of the Lunacy Commissioners, and their perpetual complaints of the presence of lunatics and idiots in the workhouses without proper accommodation; mixed up with the sane inmates to the great discomfort of both;[408] living in rooms which the Lunacy Commissioners considered too low and unventilated, with yards too small and depressing, amid too much confusion and disorder, for the section of the paupers for whom they were responsible.[409] Such reports, officially communicated to the Poor Law Board, seem to have been merely forwarded for the consideration of the board of guardians concerned. But other action was not altogether wanting. Under pressure from the Lunacy Commissioners, the Central Authority asked, in 1857, for more care in the conveyance of lunatics;[410] urged, in 1863, a more liberal dietary for lunatics in workhouses;[411] in 1867 it reminded the boards of guardians that lunatics required much food, especially milk and meat;[412] it was thought "very desirable that the insane inmates ... should have the opportunity of taking exercise";[413] it concurred "with the Visiting Commissioner in deeming it desirable that a competent paid nurse should be appointed for the lunatic ward," in a certain workhouse;[414] it suggested the provision of leaning chairs in another workhouse;[415] and, in yet another, the desirability of not excluding the persons of unsound mind from religious services.[416] In 1870 it issued a circular, transmitting the rules made by the Lunacy Commissioners as to the method of bathing lunatics, for the careful consideration of the boards of guardians.[417] But we do not find that the Central Authority issued any Order amending the General Consolidated Order of 1847, which, it will be remembered, did not include among its categories for classification either lunatics, idiots, or the mentally defective; and the Central Authority did not require any special provision to be made for them.

[408] MS. Minutes, Plymouth Board of Guardians, 28th January 1846.

[409] _Ibid._ 5th November 1847. Some of the rooms were only 3-1/4
feet long and 7 feet wide, in fact, mere cupboards, which the
Lunacy Commissioners said were unfit for any one. Yet nothing was
done, and the "rooms" were still occupied in 1854 when the
district auditor mildly commented on the fact (Letter Book,
Plymouth Board of Guardians, August 1854).

[410] Circular of 27th February 1857, in Tenth Annual Report,
1857, p. 34.

[411] House of Commons, No. 50, Session 1 of 1867, p. 247.

[412] Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, p. 60.

[413] House of Commons, No. 50, Session 1 of 1867, p. 444.

[414] _Ibid._ p. 426.

[415] _Ibid._ p. 407.

[416] _Ibid._ p. 114.

[417] Circular of 21st March 1870, in Twenty-third Annual Report,
1870-71, p. 3.

The policy of the Lunacy Commissioners was to get provision made in every county for all the persons of unsound mind, whatever their means, in specially organised lunatic asylums in which the best possible arrangements should be made for their treatment and cure irrespective of cost, and altogether regardless of making the condition of the pauper lunatic less eligible than that of the poorest independent labourer. Unlike the provision for education, and that for infectious disease, the cost of this national (and as we may say communistic) provision for lunatics was a charge upon the poor rate. Under the older statutes, the expense of maintaining the inmates of the county lunatic asylums was charged to the Poor Law authorities of the parishes in which they were respectively settled; and the boards of guardians were entitled to recover it, or part of it, from any relatives liable to maintain such paupers, even in cases in which the removal to the asylum was compulsory and insisted on in the public interest.[418] The great cost to the poor rate of lunatics sent to the county lunatic asylums, and the difficulty of recovering the amount from their relatives, prevented the whole-hearted adoption, either by the boards of guardians, or the Central Authority, of the policy of insisting on the removal of persons of unsound mind to the county asylums. For the imbeciles and idiots of the Metropolitan Unions, provision was made after 1867 in the asylums of the Metropolitan Asylums Board.[419] But no analogous provision for those of other unions was made. The result was that, amid a great increase of pauper lunacy, the proportion of the paupers of unsound mind who were in lunatic asylums did not increase.[420] On the other hand the indisposition of the Central Authority to so amend the General Consolidated Order of 1847 as to put lunatics in a separate category, and require suitable accommodation and treatment for them--an indisposition perhaps strengthened by the very high requirements on which the Lunacy Commissioners would have insisted--stood in the way of any candid recognition of the fact that for thousands of lunatics, idiots, and mentally defectives, the workhouse had, without suitable provision for them, and often to the unspeakable discomfort of the other inmates, become a permanent home.

[418] There had apparently been a doubt as to whether a husband
was legally bound to contribute towards the maintenance of a wife
who had been removed under legal authority to a lunatic asylum. In
1850 the Central Authority got an Act passed to require him to pay
(13 and 14 Vic. c. 101, sec. 4) on the ground that "great hardship
has been frequently occasioned to parishes, who have been
burthened with the heavy expense of such maintenance without the
means of recovering from the husband even a partial reimbursement"
(Third Annual Report, 1850, p. 16).

[419] Special Orders of 18th June 1867, 6th October 1870, 23rd
December 1870, 17th June 1871, etc. It may be noted that in 1862
the Guardians of St. George's, Southwark, provided a separate
establishment at Mitcham for their idiotic and imbecile paupers,
which was regulated by Special Order of 30th April 1862.

[420] On 1st January 1852, the number in the county or borough
asylums was 9412, and in licensed houses 2584; making a total of
11,996 out of 21,158 paupers of unsound mind (Fifth Annual Report,
1852, p. 152). On 1st January 1870, the number in asylums had
risen to 26,634, and that in licensed houses had fallen to 1589,
making a total of 28,223 out of 46,548 paupers of unsound mind
(Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-71, p. xxiii).

_G._--_Defectives_

During this period, the blind, the deaf and dumb, and the lame and deformed were increasingly recognised by Parliament as classes for whom the Poor Law authorities might, if they chose, provide expensive treatment. This was done by authorising boards of guardians, if they chose, to pay for their maintenance, whether children or adults, in special institutions.[421] We do not find that the Central Authority suggested the adoption of this or any other policy or gave any lead to the boards of guardians with regard to these cases.[422]

[421] 25 & 26 Vic. c. 43, sec. 10 (Poor Law Certified Schools Act
of 1862); 30 & 31 Vic. c. 106, sec. 21 (1867); 31 & 32 Vic. c.
122, sec. 42 (1868).

[422] In 1849 the expenses of conveying a blind pauper to hospital
were allowed to be paid under the head of non-resident relief in
case of sickness (_Official Circular_, No. 24, N.S., April 1849,
p. 64).

_H._--_The Aged and Infirm_

We have shown that neither the Report of 1834 nor the Central Authority between 1834 and 1847 even suggested any departure from the common practice of granting outdoor relief to the aged and infirm. This continued, so far as the official documents show, to be the policy of the Central Authority during the whole of the period 1847-1871.[423] The only two references to the subject in the Orders and Circulars of this period assume that the aged and infirm will normally be relieved in their own homes. Thus, in 1852, in commenting on the provision requiring the weekly payment of relief, the Central Authority said, "as to the cases in which the pauper is too infirm to come every week for the relief, it is on many accounts advantageous that the relieving officer should, as far as possible, himself visit the pauper, and give the relief at least weekly."[424] And in the first edition of the Out-relief Regulation Order of 1852 (that of 25th August 1852) the Central Authority, far from prohibiting outdoor relief to persons "indigent and helpless from age, sickness, accident, or bodily or mental infirmity," formally sanctioned this practice, by ordering that "one third at least of such relief" should be given in kind (viz., "in articles of food or fuel, or in other articles of absolute necessity"),[425] the object being expressly explained to be, not, as might nowadays have been imagined, the discouragement of such relief, but the prevention of its misappropriation.[426] This provision was objected to by boards of guardians up and down the country, on the ground that it would be a hardship to the aged and infirm poor. The Poplar Board of Guardians, for instance, stated "that there are a large number of persons under the denomination of aged and infirm whom the guardians have, in their long practical experience, found it expedient and not objectionable to relieve wholly in money, feeling assured that it would be beneficially expended for their use, and that in consequence of their infirmity the relieving officer or his assistant, if necessary, is thereby enabled to conveniently relieve them at their own house."[427] The Norwich Guardians stated that it would be difficult "to determine (especially for the aged and sick poor) what kind of food or articles should be given." They also communicated with forty other unions, summoning them to concerted resistance.[428] A deputation "from most of the large and populous unions in the north of England ... and from several Metropolitan parishes, representing in the aggregate upwards of 2,000,000 of population,"[429] assembled in London, and objected to nearly all the provisions of the Order.

[423] For instance, in 1861, the Central Authority, in reply to a
request from the Guardians of St. James's, Westminster,
recommended the application of the workhouse test for the
able-bodied males, but as regards the aged and infirm, warmly
approved the policy of the guardians, to "cheerfully supply all
that their necessities and infirmities require" (Poor Law Board,
19th January 1861, in Thirteenth Annual Report, 1860-1, p. 36).

[424] Letter to Board of Guardians, Barnsley Union, 26th October
1852, in House of Commons, No. 111 of 1852-3, p. 17.

[425] General Order of 25th August 1852, art. 1 (in Fifth Annual
Report, 1852, p. 17).

[426] Circular of 25th August 1852, in Fifth Annual Report 1853,
p. 22.

[427] MS. Minutes, Poplar Board of Guardians, 18th October 1852.