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• 

The Reform of the Poor Law.* 

1.-TaE NEED FoR PooR LAw REl!'ORM. 

O
O
NE of the most urgent needs for democratic social reorganisa· 
tion is found in the existing system of Poor Law Relief. The 
present administration of the nation's provision for its poorer citizens 
is, in many ways, scandalously harsh to those who have the 
misfortune to be driven to accept the pauper dole. 'l'he rulingclasses have deliberately made the lot of these poorer citizens so 
degraded that the more sensitive will die lingering deaths rather 
than submit to it, whilst others prefer going to gaol. In the hopeof getting rid of the burden of maintaining the poor, and of throwing 
every one upon his own resources, the comtort, self-respect and 
personal dignity of whole generations of paupers have been, since 
1834, ruthlessly sacrificed. Although no instructed person would 
for a moment venture to run any risk of restoring the evil days of 
the Old Poor Law, it is time to recognise that the presE:Dt system 
must be fundamentally reformed. After fifty years' trial it has failed 
to extinguish pauperism and destitution. It succeeds in obviating 
any but a few cases of direct starvation; but it does not prevent a 
widespread demoralisation. It often fails to rescue the children 
from a life of pauperism, and the aged from public disgrace. More 
important than all, it fails utterly in its chief and most importantpurpose, of encouraging the provident and the worthy, and discouraging 
the spendthrift and the drunkard. It is, indeed, now coming 
to be denounced by experienced philanthropists as the greatest of all 
the existing hindrances to provident saving, and an instrument of 
serious degeneration of character among the English people.tNevertheless, such is the neglect of social reforms that neither 
the Liberal nor the Conservative Party so much as mentions Poor 

* The greater part of this Tract is reprinted, by permission of the proprietorsof the Contempora1·y Review, from an article by Sidney Webb in that magazine for 
July, 1890, under the same title. Besides the authorities incidentally referred to, 
the following works may be mentioned as dealing with the English Poor Law :Sir 
F. 1\'I. Eden's "State of the Poor" ; Sir G. Nicholl's " History of the EnglishPoor Law"; Dr. F. Ashcrott's "English Poor Law"; Rev. T. W. Fowle's" The 
Poor Law" (a convenient manual); and, above all, the great Poor Law Report ol 
1834, republished by the House of Co=ons in 1885 as" H. C. 347," price 2s. 5d. 
t See "Thrift and Independence," by Canon Blackley ; Mackay's "Ths 
English Poor" ; the Charity Organisation Society's publications, passim; Fawcett's 
"Pauperism"; and the evidence given before the Select Co=ittee on 
.:\ational Provident Insurance, H.C. 270 of 1885. 


' 
' 
Reform of the Poor Law. 


./

Law Reform. The sufferings of the paupers, the degradation of the 
class from which these are mainly drawn, and even the neglect of 
the children among them, fail to interest either Mr.. Gladstone or 
Lord Salisbury. For, indeed, the paupers have no votes. 

Socialists, who object to an industrial system which condemns 
to pauperism one-tenth of the population, believe that the greater 
part of the need for Poor Relief would cease if the owners of land 
and capital were compelled to restore to the workers collectively 
the tribute of rent and interest which is now exacted from them 
individually. Nevertheless, in a land of accident and sickness, 
poverty cannot be wholly extinguished until a complete Communism 
is reached. Some system of relief of the destitute must therefore 
continue to exist for a long time to come. This cannot be left 
to private charity. Socialists assert, with Bentham, that all such 
Poor Relief should be administered under the fullest public responsibility 
by freely elected public bodies. They believe that any 
attempt to substitute the organisation of voluntary charity for public 
relief must prove even more disastrous than a bad Poor Law. 

Moreover, it must not be forgotten that no scheme which aims 
at the abolition or diminution of the present !'evcnue from Poor 
Rates can gain the support either of the public or of .the politicaleconomist. These ten millions sterling, virtually a share of the 
rental of the country, are as much the property of the poor as their 
wages, and no proposal can be for a moment admitted which contemplates 
the absorption of this tribute by the landlords or the 
middle class. National Insurance or Poor Law Reform can alike 
be but suggestions for the better administration of the collective 
revenues of tQe poor-all that is left to them in place of the monastic 
endowments, the mediawal charities and the common lands. 

II.-THE NuMBER OF OuR PAuPERS. 

Those who talk glibly about the abolition of the Poor Law can 
hardly have any adequate conception of the extent and character of 
the pauper class. It seems to ha>e been assumed by the authors of 
the Act of 1834 that real destitution might fairly be regarded as an 
exceptional and accidental state, and that the awful permanence of 
the pauper class was merely the result of the demoralising old system. 
This idea is encouraged by the optimistic statistics reiterated 
by the Local Government Board, which show : "That the mean 
number of paupers relieved in the parochial year ending at LadyDay 1889, was smaller in proportion to the population than in any 
other parochial year included in the table. It amounted to 795,617, 
or a thirty-sixth of the estimated population."* Incl:lding Scotland 
and Ireland, the total becomes over a million. 

A million of our fellow-citizens in pauperism is more than a 
trifle. But that is not the whole tale. It has been pointed out 
over and over again that the Local Government Board statistics of 
pauperism, and especially the references to "one thirty-sixth of the 

• P. lxi of C-5813. 

Reform of the Poor Law. 

population,'' are misleading. They record merely the number of 
persons in actual receipt of Poor Law relief on one particular day.
But Poor Law relief is now usually given for short periods at a. 
time; and a large proportion of those who become paupers during 
any one year are not in receipt of relief during the whole of the 
year. The plan of granting relief only for short periods at a time 
is steadily becoming general. 

In 1857, a careful computation was made in various ways of the 
number of different persons who, during the year, were paupers at 
one time or another. The total was found to be 3t times the 
number for one day, and this calculation has since usually been 
accepted.* Hence, instead of 2·8 per cent. we get nearly 10 per 
cent. of the population, or at least 3,500,000, as the class actually 
pauper during any one year. 

Nor is this the worst aspect of the case. While a man or woman 
is in the prime of life, and fr.3e from sickness or accident, it may be 
assumed that pauperism is relatively exceptional. The appallingstatistics of the pauperism of the aged are carefully concealed in all 
official returns. No statistics are given by the Local Government 
Board as to the percentage of aged paupers. No information was 
given on this point, even in the census of 1881. Although the occupations 
at each age were then obtained, the Registrar-General discreetly 
and humorously merged all paupers over sixty in the class 
"retired from business," so that the enriched army contractor and 
his aged workpeople were combined to swell this one category. 

<J In 1885, Canon Blackley found that in his parish, 37 per cent. of 
the deaths of persons over sixty, during fifteen years, had been those 
of paupers. Heobtained returns from twenty-five other rural parishes,
and found that 42·7 per cent. of deaths of persons over sixty were 
those of paupers. t Returns obtained from twenty Unions in England,
selected entirely at haphazard, and including metropolitan and provincial, 
urban and rural districts, show the following results: 

1 

Indoor. Outdoor. Total. 
Total paupers in 20 Unions... 12,669 15,922 28,591 
Number over sixty-five years of age 4,332 7,112 11,444 
Percentage 33 45 40 
Number over seventy years of age... 2,728 4,728 7,456 
Percentage 21 30 26 

If we may assume these Unions to be fairly representative of the 
whole-and the results coincioe cl0sely with those given by other 
teHts-it would follow that out of thcl 817 ,1 UO persons simultaneously 
in receipt of relief in England and Wales, on the 1st of January,
1889, there would be at least 250,000 over 65, and 200,000 over 70 
years of age.t· At the census of 1881, the percentage of persons over 

• See Dudley Baxter's "National Income," p. 87; and Mulhall's "Dictionaryof Statistics," p. 346. 
t Report of Committee on National Provident Insurance," p. 159 of H.C. 208,1886. 

t See House of Commons Return, No. 36 of 1890. 


Reform of the Poor Law. 

those ages to the whole population was 4·57 and 2·64 respectively. 
Among the estimated population on January 1, 1889, of 28,628,804, 
there would accordingly be about 1,309,000 persons over 65. One 
in five of these is a pauper. There are approximately 756,000 person13 
over 70. Of these two out of seven are permanent paupers.
Of the 250,000 paupers over 65, about 200,000 get outdoor relief; 
of the 200,000 over 70, about 150,000 receive this weekly dole; the 
remainder are in the workhouse infirmary, or aimlessly gazing at 
vacancy in the dreary "idle room'' of the workhouse itself. 

E xtending these statistics roughly and hypothetically to the 
United Kingdom, with its million of simultaneous paupers, and its 
38 millions of population, we find about 1,700,000 persons of 65 
years of age, of whom about 325,000 are permanent paupers; and 
about 1,000,000 persons over 70, of whom 250,000 are permanent 
paupers. Other statistics go to confirm this broad result. 

In London, one person in every five will die in the workhouse, 
hospital or lunatic asylum. , In 1888, out of 79,099 deaths in Lon· 
don, 41,505 being over 20, 10,170 were in workhouses, 7,113 in 
hospitals, and 380 in lunatic asylums, or altogether 17,663 in public 
institutions.* Moreover, the percentage is increasing. In 1887 it 
was 20·6 of the total deaths; in 1888 it rose to 22·3. The increase 
was exclusively in the deaths in workhouses and workhouse infirmaries. 
Considering that comparatively few of the deaths are those 
of children, it is probable that one in every four London adults will 
be driven into these refuges to die, and the proportion in the case of 
the " manual labor class" must of course be still larger. 

Nor is there much hope of appreciable reduction in these figures 
at any early date. The proportion of paupers to population has remained 
practically stationary for the last twelve years. t The steadydiminution in the number of able-bodied adults relieved is counterbalanced 
by an equally steady growth in the number of sick persons 
and lunatics, for whom collective provision is now made, as well as 
apparently by a slight rise in the number of the children and the 
aged. We may for some time to come reckon on having to make 
constant public provision for the needs of a million people in receipt 
of relief, representing a pauper population of at least three millions. 
It accordingly behoves us to see that this collective provision is as 
far as possible prevented from having demoralising or other injuriouseffects. Collective provision, when not combined with collective 
control of industry, may easily become demoralising to character 
and detrimental to the best interests of the recipients; and againstthis danger we must jealously guard. But we need not deliberatelyadd to the possible objective demoralisation of the collective proYision 
an unnecessary subjective demoralisation due to public stigm •l 
or disgrace. We must depauperise our deserving paupers. The 
whole range of Poor Law experience up to 1834 appeared to sho\V 

• Registrar-General's Report, 1889, C-5846, pp. 2, 72 and 94. 
t Sco Local Government Board Report, C-5813. 

Reform of the Poor Law. 

that public boards could not be trusted to discriminate between 
individual cases; and the cast-iron rigor of the New Poor Law was 
the inevitable result. What we have been learning since 1834 is 
that discrimination must be more and more exercised between classes 
of paupers, not between individual cases, and thi1 t any Poor Law 
reform must necessarily proceed on this basis. 

We have hitherto been so impressed with the danger of increasing 
the number of the shiftless poor, that we have managed to 
exercise a degrading and demoralising effect on those persons, manytimes more numerous, whose poverty is their misfortune, not their 
fault. We must now try a bolder experiment in what is necessarily 
our great collective laboratory of individual character. The time 
has come for us to maintain not only the bare existence, but the 
respectability of the aged, infirm, and orphaned poor, rather than 
content ourselves with the mere repression of the idle rogue and 
vagabond, whom the existing social order has often demoralised 
beyond redemption. 

IIL-STATE PENSIONS FOR THE AGED. 

The Poor Law Commissioners did not, in their great Report of 
1834, recommend the withdrawal of outdoor relief from the aged or 
the infirm. The common impression that they advocated the total 
abolition of outdoor relief is incorrect. The whole drift of their 
conclusions is against any subsidy in aid of wages; but they did not 
regard collective provision for old age as any real allowance in aid of 
wages, in the sense of wages being likely to be higher if no such 
provision were made. Modern political economists cannot do otherwise 
than confirm this view. 

No determined attempt has accordingly been made, except in 
London, Manchester, and a few other places, to abolish outdoor 
relief to the aged; and the statistics already quoted appear to prove 
that at least one-fifth of the people who attain the age of sixty-
five are compelled to resort to the relieving officer for that bare subsistence 
upon which they linger out their lives. 

Nothing can be more discouraging to provident saving, even 
where it is possible, than our present practice in such cases. When 
a man is absolutely destitute we provide for him a bare subsistence. 
If he can manage to save, by the time he is sixty-five, as much as 
£150, he can provide for himself and wife practically as well as he 
and she would be provided for if they had saved nothing at all. 
Once past that minimum, there is every inducement to save which 
"gentility" and independence can offer. Anything short of thatl 
minimum is virtually useless. Poor Law relief cannot legally be 
given except to the absolutely destitute; and the aged domestic 
servant, or farm-laborer, who has accumulated £50, must dissipate 


Reform of the Poor Law. 

that small hoard before his future will be secured from want.* The 

man who has a shilling a week from his friendly society is legally no 

better off than he who has nothing.t Both must be just kept alive, 

and legally neither can demand more. 

Now the virtual minimum which enables an aged couple to dis


pense with poor 1"'" relief is far beyond the reach of a large propor


tion of the population. Instead, however, of encouraging them to 

save as much as they can towards their support, we, in effect, dis


courage them by making them no better off than those who save 

nothing at all. 

Would it not be better frankly to recognise the provision of a. 
minimum pension for old age as a collective charge? Every person 
must necessarily pay rates and taxes in one shape or another all his 
life long. It seems desirable to promote in every way the feelingthat "the Government" is no entity outside of ourselves, but merelyourselves organised for collective purposes. Regarding the State as 
a vast benefit society, of which the whole body of citizens are 
necessarily members, the provision of pensions to the aged appears 
to be an obvious expansion of the Democratic idea. 

At present we give a superannuation allowance to about 160,000 
retired civil servants; military and naval officers and men, policemen, 
postmen, &c. The system is being extended to elementaryschool teachers and nurses. In all these cases the pension is given 
practically as a matter of right; it is granted in addition to whatever 
may have been saved by the recipient; and it carries with it 
no stigma of public disgrace. 

We also give what are virtually superannuation allowances to 
250,000 aged paupers, besides workhouse accommodation to 75,000 
more. In their case the pension is awarded as of grace ; it is only 
awarded where there are no savings, or where the savings have been 
consumed; and it is accompanied by public opprobrium and legaldisqualification for the duties of citizenship. 

The result in the first case is to encourage thrift and saving to 
supplement the pension, without the slightest demoralisation of 
charact~r. The result in the second case is absolutely to discouragethrift and aaving, and to break down whatever character had survived 
the losing fight of life. If we intend to give pensions to our 
aged poor, as we virtually now do, had we not better do so in such 
a way as to improve rather than to injure their character, and in a 

.......·--·-------


• A domestic servant who, with incredible perseverance and patience, he.d 
saved up some £60 or £70, found this little hoard gradually melting away in her 
struggle to maintain her respectability, and appeared before the WhitechapelBoard of Guardians with the balance, asking what she should do. Legally, the 
board could have given uo relief until the amount was dissipated. Ultimately an 
adequate annuity was privately purchased for her, the extra sum required beingfound by subscription. 
t So absurd is this legal discouragement of saving, that a practice is growing 
up of allowing half of any such pension to benefit the pauper-thus, ifhe has two 
shillings a week from his club, the normal relief is reduced only by one shilling.
This illegal expedient is connived at by the Local Government Board. 


ltcjc., rm nj the l'oor Law. 

manner calculated to promote rather than to discourage their owu 
efforts to provide for their old age? 

'l'his proposal, though it is essentially one for National Insur:.
nce, must not be confounded with the current schemes which bear 
that name. The poor of this country will never vote away the poor-
rate. No Government is at all likely to attempt to collect compulsory 
insurance premiums from men already supporting their trade-
unions and friendly societies, their benefit clubs and their buildingsocieties, and paying, moreover, a not inconsiderable poor-rate.
Nor is there any reason for any such collection. The expenditureand the rGvenue sides of the Budget ought economically to be keptdistinct. If aged pensions are desirable let us have them. When 
the funds come to be raised, let it be done according to the classic 
economic ml1xims of taxation. It is pretty clear that these maxims 
will yield no support to the imposition of what would be virtua.lly a 
new poll-tax. 

The Rev. W. Moore Ede suggests* that certain payments mightbe required from the recipients of the n.ged pension as a test of thrift, 
and a means of improving character. Without for a moment countenancing 
the heartless hypocrisy which recomm':lnds " thrift" to 
men who are in deplorable need of more money to spend on the 
immediate well-being of their families, Mr. Ede may have good 
reason to think that reform may most easily begin by grantingaged pensions at first only to those persons who co.n show that 
they have made some attempt partin.lly to provide for their old 
age. At present such persons often end their days in the workhouse. 
A large number of those compelled in their old age to 
resort to this refuge for the destitute have made ineffectual 
efforts at thrifty provision for their declining years. In 1881, 
out of 183,872 inmates of workhouses (one-third being children 
and another third women) no fewer than 11,30<l had been memuers 
of benefit societies. In 3,913 cases the society had broken 
up, usually from insolvency.t A better arrangement can surel)
be made. The possession of smn.ll savings, continued subscription 
to a friendly society or club, life insurance, or lengthymembership of a trade-union, co-operative or building society, 
might all be accepted as relevant evidence of providence. But 
the object of the measure would be defeated unless the thrift 
condition were made easy enough to be satisfied by the poorest class 
of laborers, of merely average foresight and strength of charn.ctcr. 
At present we fail to encourage thrift because we stigmatise all as 
semi-criminals who fall below C~. quite impossible standard. If we 
really desire to comfort and help the weak-hearted, and to strengthensuch as do stand, we must pitch our requirements so as to be within 
reach of their attainment. 

""A Scheme for N11tion11l Pensions." 
t House of Commons Retum, 1881, No. 444. 



Reform of the PooT Law. 

It will at first be contended by members of the Charity Organisation 
Society on the one hand, and by the officials of friendly societies 
on the other, that any such public provision of honorable pensions 
would seriously discourage and thwart the efforts now being made 
to create private superannuation funds. There is, hcwever, good 
reason for supposing that this would not be the case. At presentthese efforts are hindered by the futility of subscribing for anything 
short of a pension adequate for maintenance.* Anythingless than this amount merely goes in aid of the. rates, by reducing 
the amount of relief required. But once let the public pension be 
independent of other means, and it will become worth while to subscribe 
for an annuity of even sixpence per week. The great hindrance 
to saving at present is the hopelessness of being able to save 
enough. With a minimum pension assured, even the smallest addition 
becomes worth ·providing. If membership of a friendly society ' 
or a life insurance policy carried with it almost a certainty of an 
honorable State pension, instead of degrading Poor Law relief, the 
strongest possible encouragement would be given to the admirable 
efforts now being made by the existing popular agencies for saving 
which are already doing so much for the more prosperous of our 
artisan classes. At present they do not succeed to any extent in 
providing for old age. Their benefits for sickness absorb practically 
all the available savings of the poor. The cost of providing adequate 
pensions is found to be too serious for the great friendly societies, 
and for any but a few of the more powerful trade-unions. The 
financial equilibrium of some of these is more than doubtful. But 
small additions to the public pension could at once be made attractive 
to tens of thousands who could never aspire to obtain even ten 
pounds a year. 

There is a further direction in which these public pensions 
would encourage individual effort and social sympathy. Nothingis more brutalising than the manner in which the grown-up children 
of paupers are virtually encouraged to treat their aged parents. The 
Guardians have the greatest possible difficulty in obtaining contributions 
from sons towards the maintenance of their pauper parents.
The money is given grudgingly, because it mc1·ely saves the rates. 
But once let it become possible for the poor, as it is for the middle-
class and the rich, to soothe and comfort the declining years of their 
parents by those small gifts which cost so little and mean so much, 
and we may have at least a chance of awakening those filial feelings 
which go far to humanise and elevate personal character. If a son'_s 
a<>sistance to his State-pensioned father or mother means the addition 
of tobacco or tea to their bare subsistence, that assistance is a 

;. "The Manchester Unity has long desired to establish annuity or supero.nnuation 
benefit funds; to co=ence at sixty-five is recommended, and not less 
than 5s. per week. The cost of such a benefit has h1tberto proved deterrent." 
(Evidence of Mr. Watson, actuary to Manchester Unity of Odd Fellows, before 
bommittee on National Insurance, H.C. 270, 1885, p. 66.) "After two years onlyfour members had joined the fund." (Evidence of Mr. Holmes, a director, p. 59.) 


Reform of the Poor Law. 

great deal more likely to be given than when it means merely the 
reduction of his parent's cost to the parish. At present we deliberately 
dry up and starve the higher feelings of the poor.

Some persons will be frightened at the cost of providing anywidespread system of aged pensions. It must, however, be remembered 
that the proposal involves really no new expense to the community. 
The aged poor are in any case maintained at the cost of 
the able-bodied workers; and the substitution of pensions for Poor 
Law relief is merely a rearljustment. It may be assumed that in 
the United Kingdom to-day there would be about 1,700,000 persons 
over sixty-five. Of these probably 150,000 already receive public 
pensions of one kind or another, and about 325,000 are in receipt of 
Poor Law relief, costing on an average £10 lOs. 101d. each annually.* 
What proportion of the others would be eligible for and 
would apply for a pension it is impossible to predict. If the pension 
of. £10 per head were made universal the extra cost involved 
would be covered by less than a quarter of the yield of a re-assessment 
of the present (nominal) four shillings in the pound Land Tax. 

If the pension were made payable at seventy years of age, only 
2j per cent. of the population would be alive to claim it, or just a 
million for the United Kingdom, of whom probably 250,000 are 
already paupers, and perhaps 100,000 public pensioners. The extra 
charge involved would, in this case , not exceed threepence in the 
pound on the Income Tax. 

But a beginning might be made by sanctioning a certain number 
of pensions every year, within a fixed limit, the number beinggradually increased so as to absorb more and more of those who 
would otherwise end their days as paupers. It must never be forgotten 
that the object of the pension system is not only the comfort 
of the individual pensioner, but also the stoppage of the degradationand demoralisation of the existing pauper class. The main objectis to avail ourselves of the salutary aspect of individual responsibility 
by removing the present hopelessness. We must put some water 
into the pump in order to make it draw. 

IV.-EFFICIENT EDUCATION FOH THE CHILDHEN. 

As the State undertakes to fulfil all the duties of parentage to 
over 50,000 children (this is the average number of indoor pauperchildren: 32,000 of them are actually orphans),t and prevents, 
moreover, any interference by their relatives in the matt~r, it is 
clear that the State is bound, as a matter both of morabty and 
public policy, to ensure tha.t these duties are fulfilled in the very best 
possible manner. The Government should, at any rate, set, as a 
parent, a good and not a bad example. 

*Local GoYernment Board Report, p. lxxix. 0-5813. 
t P. 279 of 0-5813. 


Reform of the Poor Law. 

The grim principle of the 183:1 Commissioners, that the pauper's"situation, on the whole, shall not be made really or apparently so 
eligible as the situation of the laborer of the lowest class," cannot, 
even by the blindest devotee of the now discredited laisst!-r-fain 
principle which so misled the able authors of that remarkable 
report, be held to apply to orphan chiluren whilst the situation 
of the children of the lowest laborer remains below the level of 
nurture and education at which they can be prepared for the 
struggle of life. To manufacture paupers wholesale inside the 
workhouse, merely because individual parents are doing so outside, 
has proved too stupid even for the scientific Poor Law pedant;
and a vast improvement has taken place in the care of indoor 
pauper children. 

Boarding out is still restricted, both by its limitation to orphan 
or deserted children, and by the difficulty of securing efficient supervision; 
but 3,778 were boarded out on July 1, 1888,* and, in the 
great majority of cases, were found to be well cared for. 

The facilities for boarding out and emigration, now confined 
by the order of the Local Government Board to orphans and 
deserted children, might well be extended to other pauper chiluren. 
It is even suggested by experienced Poor Law workers that 
the children of permanent indoor paupers might equally be boardecl 
out, just as they are now sent away to the Poor Law School. 
The others, instead of being herded together in pauper barracks, 
or crowded in gigantic ophthalmic workhouse schools, as they are 
in all but a few exceptional institutions, need, if they cannot be 
boarded out, to be allotted in comparatively small parties in 
"cottage homes," to the care of "house-mothers." They shoulc1 
be kept free from any pauper taint; sent if possible to mix with 
other children in good public elementary schools; and carefullytaught some trade or useful occupation, by which they can fullil 
the duties of good citizenship, incumbent O!J them as on other:;. 
The apprenticeship of pauper chilureu to unskilled trades, or the 
placing of them out as errand-boys or farm-laborers, ought to be 
definitely abandoned. 

Their elementary education requires, too, considerable improvement. 
16,216 children were in Metropolitan workhouse scl10ols i11 
1886-7. Out of these only 359 were in Standard VI. (only 221 of 
these passed). The Poor Law inspectors are always deploriug lh.: 
inferiority of the Poor Law Schools. 

It docs not seem too much to ask that every child to which l11o 
State assumes the duties of parentage should be given, up to foul't 
ee ll, Lhe best elementary education possible, followed by appn.!lltiee::;
hip to some highly skilled trarle, so as to ensure that everyworkhouse child shall become a, skilled instead of an, economically 
speaking, "unskilled '' recruit in the labor market. 

* P. 27') o [ C.: i:i813. 

Reform of the Poor Law. 

V.-COLLECTIVE PROVISION FOR THE SICK. 

Few persons realise how rapidly we are " municipalising" our 

hospitals. The workhouse infirmary is coming to be more and more 

accepted as the proper home of the wage-earners who are seriously

ill. In London, where our magnificent voluntary hospitals, 78 in 

number, provide about 6,415 occupied beds, the 27 Poor Law in


firmaries and "sick asylums" have 9,639, and the eight hospitals of 

the Metropolitan Asylums Board 1820, a total of 11,459. Nearly

two-thirds of our Metropolitan hospital accommodation is therefore 

now provided from public funds. 

Nothing could be more advantageous from the public point of 
view than that every case of serious illness should be treated in 
hospital. It is to the public interest that the worker should as 
quickly as possible recover his health and strength, with the least 
possible privation to his family. The great advance in medical 
treatment during recent years has been in nursing and in antiseptic 
treatment, neither of which is possible in a crowded home. The 
isolation of infectious disease is an obvious public gain. But when 
80 per cent. of our households are those of manual wage-earnerswhen 
in our great cities 30 to 40 per cent. herd in single rooms, and 
as many more in two or three room-tenements, neither isolation nor 
proper nursing are possible in the home. The treatment of the sick 
must necessarily become more and more a matter of collective 
provision; and it is fortunate that the subjective demoralisation 
which we have done our best to attach to it by making (in London)
two-thirds of the inmates technically paupers, is dying away before 
the common sense of the doctors and the patients. It was stated to 
the House of Lords' Committee that, "in consequence of the excellence 
of the treatment in these infirmaries, and their separationfrorn the workhouse, the poor are so ready to resort to them that 
there is a tendency to regard them as a kind of 'State hospital,' 
entrance to which does not imply that the patient is a pauper. "* 

This excellent discrimination seems so horrible to the BirminghamGuardians .that "they have determined to make all persons who 
come to their infirmary pass through the gate which leads to the 
workhouse grounds, so that they may not draw a distinction between 
the workhouse and the infirmary."*

This sapient instance of the nelibemle " pauperisation " of those 
free from this taint is characteristic of far too much of the existingPoor Law administration. We are often so intent on reducing the 
cost of the collective provision for our poorer brethren that we even 
prefer to make that provision as demoralising to them as w e possibly 
can, on the chance that we may thereby exclude (to their detriment 
and occasional starvation) some of the more dignified among them. 

• Report of House of Lords' Committee on Poor Law Relief, H.L. 363, 1888, 
p. viii. 

Reform of the Poor Law. 

As regards medical aid, however, public opinion is now running too 
strongly to be resisted. By sec. 7 of the Diseases Prevention pletropoli 
) Act, 1 83, treatment in the magnificent public ITo pita.ls of the 
Metropolitan Asylums Board is not deemed "parochial rehef." In 1 
Parliament provided that the receipt merely of medical relief should 
not disqualify a man for exercising the franchise. In the next Parliamentary 
Registration Bill, a clause will inevitably be carried, which 
few members of Parliament will dare even to resist, definino "medical 
relief" to include treatment in a Poor Law Infirmary or Sick Asylum. 
Why, moreover, should we deprive a man of the rights of citizenship 
because he bas had the misfortune to have his wife or child compulsorily 
removed from his care as dangerously insane, and remitted to 
a public lunatic asylum?*

The existing distinction between the voluntary and the rate-supported 
hospital cannot possibly be maintained; and it may be hoped 
that some order will soon be introduced into the barbaric chaos of 
London hospital administration. What appears to be wanted is the 
complete separation of medical and hospital relief from the Poor Law 
system. In large cities the provision for the sick needs classification 
according to the kind of disease, rather than according to the haphazard 
distinction of how each particular institution is maintained or 
administered. We require in London an elected Hospitals Board, 
managing all public provision for the sick and the insane, and auditing, 
supervising and controlling all "voluntary" hospitals. Such a Board 
would relieve the London County Council of its burdensome care of 
lunatic asylums, and take over the hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums 
Board. In other counties it would probably be found sufficient 
to give similar powers of hospital management and control to the existing" 
Asylums Committee" of the County Council, thus removing all 
provision for the sick from any contact with Poor Law Administration. 

VI.-PuBLIO BuRIAL oF THE DEAD. 
Itis part of the imperfection of the existing PoorLaw statisticR that 
none exist as to the number of pauper funerals. The proportion of these 
to the total deaths must, however, be very large. Many persons are 
buried by the parish who were not in receipt of relief when alive. If13 
per cent. of the deaths in London are those of persons actually in the 
workhouse or Poor Law infirmary; if over 22 per cent. die in some public 
institution or another; if in the rural districts 30 to 40 per cent. of 
the deaths of persons over sixty are those of paupers; if 10 per cent. of 
the population obtain relief during any one year, and 20 per cent. of 
those over sixty-five are permanent paupers; it is probable that at least 
one-third of our funerals are already paid for from Poor Law funds. 
To be " buried by the parish " is felt by the poor to be a disgrace 
o.nd a. dishonor to a greater extent that can easily be realised. The 
o.ged laborer, who will rely without shame on the parish doctor, use 

Nor is there a.ny va.lid ground for depriving a.ny other pa.uper of the right.
of citizeushlp. (See Fa.bia.n Tract No. 14, "The New Reform Bill," cla.use S.) 


Reform of the Poor Law. 

w~thout d~sgrace the P?or Law dispensary or infirmary, and acceptWithout dishonor the bitter bread of out-door relief, revolts against 
the pauper funeral, and starves himself to hoard the sum necessary 
to avmd this last humiliation. Yet so hard and so demoralising are 
the conditions of life of the great mass of the population, that ib 
seems probable that at least one-third of them fail to maintain even 
this "final rally on the narrow ledge" of digmty and self-respect, and 
are eventually carried down to a pauper's grave. 

There is, of course, nothing necessarily degrading in a publicfuneral. In the case of a soldier, a sailor, or a member of a religious 
order, the collective provision for burial is accepted as a matter of 
course. It is merely that we have deliberately chosen to make this 
particular form of public funeral-the lot of one-third of our brethren 
-an additional anxiety during their lives, a source of bitterness 
during their last moments, and a stain of disgrace to their relations. 
We have failed in our effort to abolish the public funeral, and have 
succeeded merely in making it one more pang to the dying, and one 
more engine of demoralisation to the living. Has not the time coma 
for depauperising our parishfunerals? We do not even take the trouble 
to make the burden easy to the poor. We charge unnecessary and 
irksome fees for the mere privilege of burial; we permit, in soma 
cases, an absentee rector to levy a toll on all burials from his district, 
wherever and by whomsoever performed; we allow the provisionof cemeteries to become, in many places, a matter of private speculation, 
and a source of unnecessary individual gain; and we leave 
the sorrowing household to bargain with a tradesman for the means 
of performing what is essentially a public duty. There seems no 
reason why the collective organisation of the people should not be 
utilised to minimise the trouble and expense of the burial of the dead. 

In Paris the whole of the cemeteries are public property, ann the 
funerals are conducted by what is virtually a public organisation. The 
one" undertaker"is the Companyof" Pompes funebres," chartered and 
subsidised by the municipality, and under its supervision and control. 
Funerals are provided according to a definite scale of charges, varying 
from nothing to the highest amount demanded by Parisian taste. Ib 
does not seem an impossible dream that we might one day "municipalise" 
our undertakers, expanding the existing "Burial Boards" into 
a complete municipal department for interments, the minimum _chargebeing fixed low enough to enable even the very poorest to enJOY the 
luxury of paying something for the last offices to the loved dead. 

But we shall one day go a step further. The expenses of burial mus~ 
necessarily be shared among the living; and Death knocks at the door 
of every household, on an average, once in ten years. Why should we 
add to the trouble and economic disturbance necessarily incident to 
death by levying a toll on burial? The disposal of the dead is a matter 
of common concern; the fulfilment of this public duty presses crushingly 
on the poor in their hour of greatestneed; ''communismin funerals" 
is not likely to lead to reckless increase in the demand for graves; and 
anv simplification of the expenses now incnned would be a great boo~. 


Reform of the Poor Law. 

VII.-ABOLITION OF THE CASUAL WARD. 

For the first 200 years of its history-indeed, during the whole 
era of the middle ages-Poor Law legislation aimed almost exclusively 
at repression, not relief; and we must, to-day, not forget the necessity 
of undertaking the reformation of sturdy rogues and vagabonds.

Many otherwise sensible people have a most immoral belief that all 
paupers belong to this class. They forget that one-third of the paupers 
are children, one-tenth insane, and one-half infirm, a.ged, or disabled 
adults. Less than one-tenth are classed as able-bodied adults; and of 
these three-fourths are women, mostly deserted or widowed mothers, 
with families demanding all their strength. Only 3 per cent. are classed 
as usually adult able-bodied males; and even as to these the Local 
Government Board explains (p. 278 of C. 5813) that theyinclude "those 
relieved (1) on account of sudderi and urgent necessity; (2) on account 
of their own sickness, accident, or infirmity; (3) on account of the sickness, 
accident, or infirmity of some member of the family, or througha funeral; and (4) on account of want of work." The number of vagrants 
relieved is only about 6000; and the total number of" sturdy beggars" 
profiting by the Poor Law must be but a trifling proportion of 
the population. Nevertheless vagabonds exist in demoralising numbers, 
moving gaily from one " Queen's Mansion" to another, until 
their faces become perfectly well-known to the superintendent.

The existing casual wards appear, indeed, to be permanent foci 
of moral infection. Filled almost exclusively by habitual tramps, they 
serve at present merely to deprave their inmates The few innocent 
persons who drift into them from sheer lack of shelter are almost inevitablydrawn 
into the eddy of the evil current, and become permanentcasuals. -'~The ·only reform that can be suggested is total refusal to 
recognise or provide for the" poor traveller," now become obsolete; 
the admission to a "Reception Ward" of any destitute person, and 
his searching individual examination there ; the stern and rigorouscommitment to a penal "labor colony" of every recognised habitual 
casual; and the prompt discharge, after humane succor and performance 
of a reasonable task of useful labor, of the merely destitute 
laborer, who should be in every possible way assisted to obtain employment. 
We might certainly take as much trouble to save human 
lives from the shipwreck of permanent pauperism as we do to pre


vent the loss of ships and cargoes on our coasts. 

For the chronic cases of sturdy vagrancy, idle mendicity and incorrigible 
laziness, we must have recourse to organised pau1Jer llllJOr, 
strictly disciplined and severely supervised. These classes, like tile 
criminals, are the "failures" of our civilisation; and whilst tb<~y 
must be treated with all just kindness, and offered opportunities 
earning their subsistence, they must nevertheless be sternly denied 
all relief until they are willing to repay it by useful labor. The 
present Poor Law system fails to deal with them; and all reformers 
demand further public action. Mr. Charles Booth urges* that we 
must" open a little the portals of the Poor Law, or its administra


• "Life and Labor in East London," p. 168. 

Reform of the Poor Law. 

tion, making within its courts a working guild under suitable discipline," 
and eliminate the idle loafers from society by making their 
existence in the ordinary community more and more impossible, 
whilst we, on the other band, offer them constantly the alternative 
of the reforming "labor colony" to which all incorrigible vagrantsand beggars could be committed by the magistrate for specified terms 
on the indictment of the police or Poor Law officer. 

VIII.-REFORM OF PooR LAw MACHINERY. 

No Poor Law administration will, however, be stable until its 
members enjoy the confidence of the public, now effectually de· 
stroyed by the defective manner of their election. Tbe reform of 
the administrative machinery of the Poor Law is therefore a matter 
of vital importance, especially in the metropolis. Indeed, it is pro·
bable that this side of the problem will force itself upon the notice 
of Ministers long before they can be induced to deal with the equally 
urgent reforms already referred to. 

The administration of the Poor Law is, in England and Wales, 
committed to 647 boards of guardians, acting for 647 aggregations 
of 14,827 rarishes. In London there are 30 boards of guardians 
acting either for separate parishes (14) or for "unions" (16) of 
smaller parishes. The " overseers of the poor," appointed by two 
J.P.'s, have become practically obsolete as to function. 

The boards of guardians are main! y elected bythe ratepayers (eitherannually or triennially in the month of April, according to the particular 
arrangement in force for each parish)upon a system of plural voting,
each elector having from one to six votes, according to the rateable 
value of his house. Owners are entitled to vote as well as occupiers, 
and may even vote by proxy; and an occupying owner can give double 
votes. If, moreover, he is rated for more than one house, whether 
as a " house-farmer'' or not, his voting power is further multipliedin proportion to the number of his houses. Under this system it occasionally 
happeps (as in Bethnal Green in April, 1889) that a minorityof the large householders prevails over the poorer majority. 

The elections are conducted carelessly, voting papers being left 
at each house by a policeman, and collected next day, without anysafeguards against personation or fraud. Very little public interest 
is aroused ; and only a small proportion of the papers are filled up. 

Justices of the Peace in any parish are ex-officio members of its 
board of guardians; but they seldom attend. The Local Government 
Board.may nominate additional members of any board. l'he bulk of 
the work is left in the hands of the paid officials; and the ''clerk to the 
guardians"-frequently a local solicitor-isoften anofficialpluralist (asin Chelsea) receiving huge emoluments, and practically beyond control. 

We need in our Poor Law representative government, "one man 
one vote" on the County Council register, uniform triennial elec· 
tions, exclusion of all J.P.'s and other nominated members, abolition 
of rating qualification, payment of members for each day's attendance, 
election arrangements under the Corrupt Practices Acn 


Reform of the Poor Law. 

on the lines of those for the School Boards (but allowing, as now 
for Parliamentary elections, though not for municipal elections, 
meetinas, &c., in working men's clubs), and removal of the alleged 
disability of married women to be guardians or electors of guardians.

Each board of guardians now administers relief, and collects its 
rates independently of the others; but in London the cost of the 
maintenance of the poor inside the workhouses, infirmaries and 
schools, the salaries of Poor Law officials, and the expenses of vac· 
cination, are defrayed from a "Common Poor Fund,'' and divided 
amongst the parishes in proportion to the rateable value of theiz 
property. This principle needs to be further extended. But anycomplete equalisation of the London poor-rate requires an efficient 
central authority; and the metropolis sadly needs a central "Board of 
Guardians" to ensure the extinction of the demoralising inequality of 
treatment which thirty separate administrative boards in one city can 
never fail to produce. Unity of administration would make possible, 
not only much stricter classification n.nd educational discrimination, 
but also a relaxation in the treatment of the aged and the worthy,
along with the needful discipline in separate establishments for the 
wilfully idle. The financial economy of amalgamation, in space, in 
time, and in money, need only be mentioned. 

No reformer would, however, for a moment propose to add anyfunctions or powers to London's only central Poor Law organisation,
the Metropolitan Asylums Board. London needs a single Poor Law 
Council, which, like its County Council and School Board, must springexclusively from the direct election of the people. The Poor Law 
Council should retain for itself all power of deciding the principles ol 
administration and of poor relief, delegating nothing to local boards of 
"district almoners" but the duty of administering and granting relief 
upon those principles. It would naturally take over all the powers,
duties, and property of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and the administration 
of all workhouses, casual wards, and Poor Law schools. 
The London Poor Law Council should be placed as nearly as may be 
practicable in the same position as regards independence of the Local 
Government Board as the London County Council and School Board. 

Outside the Metropolis it appears unnecessary to make any imme· 

diate alteration of Poor Law machinery or change in Poor Law areas. 

The existing 647 Poor Law Unions cannot be disturbed without the 

most serious reo.djustments of property, debts, officers, rates, and 

official machinery. No one would propose to transfer them to the 

County Councils, which are quite unfitted for the detailed examina· 

tion of individual cases which should form the leading feature in 

Poor Law administration. It will probably be found that "district" 

as di::;tinct from "parish" councils are needed only in London, where 

they will replace the existing vestries and district boards of works. In 

a few of the larger counties an authority intermediate between the 

parish and the shire may be called for; but this can best be supplied 

by local committees of the county council, empowered to administer 

local aff,~irs on the lines laid down by the whole council. Even in 


Reform of the Poor Law. 

these cases the Poor Law Union could not be adopted as the area, 
because it is desirable that the areas of the local committees should 
be, as far as possible, homogeneous in character, with special separation 
of urban from purely rural districts. Now most of the Poor Law 
Unions were deliberately formed so as to unite urban with rural districts, 
in order somewhat to equalise the rates, and distribute anyspecial pressure. They often cut across municipal boundaries and 
unite the most diverse districts. Thus, the Barton Regis Union includes 
Clifton and other suburbs of Bristol, with a large slice of purelyagricultural country. Leeds is in three Poor Law Unions, each containing 
a huge cantle of the neighbouring rural area. The omission 
of the Poor Law administration from the Local Government Act 
was an inevitable necessity of the incongruity of the union areas 
with those of any possible arrangement of district councils. 

Nor can Poor Law administration be made wholly parochial. 
The 14,827 parishes in England and Wales cannot possibly each have 
its workhouse, its infirmary, its lunatic asylum, its casual ward, and 
its labor yard. The parish council may well be empowered to remit 
cases to the appropriate union institution, and possibly act as a 
local consultative committee to the board of guardians of the union, 
and to the public authority administering the aged pensions ; but 
further than this no experienced Poor Law worker would desire to 
go. To allow the parish council to grant out-door relief would 
promptly land us in all the demoralising horrors of the Old Poor 
Law; and to make each parish maintain its own poor would bringback all the absurdities of the old Law of Settlement, with the inevitable 
results of "closed parishes," demolition of cottages, compulsory 
removals, litigation, inter-parochial envy, hatred, malice, and all 
uncharitableness. We must therefore retain, outside London, the 
Poor Law union with its board of guardians, reformed as to election, 
the members paid for each day's attendance as well as reimbursed 
their reasonable travelling expenses. They should be relieved of 
their present medley of sanitary and educational functions, and thus 
set free to devote themselves entirely to their task of worthily administering 
the collective provision for the poorer citizens. 

IX.-CONCLUSION. 

The foregoing tentative proposals for Poor Law reform all proceed, 
it will be seen, on the lines of "depauperising " the presentcollective provision of the community for its weaker members, and 
of " democratising " the machinery of its administration. They do 
not form a complete scheme; for they deal neither with the " unemployed" 
nor with the constant Poor Law problem of the widow 
with young children. To those far-sighted reformers who see that 
we shall not always have the poor with us, they are offered as provisional 
measures kept carefully upon progressive lines. No attempt · 
is made to do more than to suggest immediately practicable reform, 
of which nothing but popular apathy dela.ys the execution. 


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