His policy received unexpected endorsement in a letter sent to him by an old woman of eighty-three in a provincial town. She wrote to him in the summer of 1906 at the time others were attacking him for his policy.
Your noble efforts on behalf of penniless old people like me I see are being condemned in some of the papers. They can't know the facts. I was managing very comfortably until the Liberator crash took away my income. I started a small school and maintained myself until I was seventy. After that I was no good for work. What I should have done I don't know had it not been for a few friends who, like yourself, believe in out-relief grants of sufficient amount to keep a person living; and they persuaded the Guardians to help me. I thank you for the fight you are making on behalf of hundreds of helpless old people like myself. May the King soon call you Sir Will Crooks.
He was examined at some length on his Living Pension policy at the Local Government Board Inquiry into the Poplar Guardians' administration. He admitted that old people over sixty receiving out-relief in Poplar were costing the borough a sixpenny rate.
"I say it is wicked to compel us," he stated in evidence, "to maintain out of our local rates these old people who ought to be a charge—as I have said hundreds of times, and repeat—for the whole metropolis or for the nation rather than the locality. These industrial veterans are thrust upon us in Poplar to maintain, notwithstanding that most of the wealth they created has been enjoyed by people who live elsewhere, and thus escape their share of the burden of maintaining their old workers in old age. But because this unjust state of things exists, are we, with a full sense of our responsibility, to tell these broken-down old workers that we refuse to bear the burden ourselves, and that they must do the best they can?"
Then followed a rapid fire of questions and answers between himself and the legal representative of the Poplar Municipal Alliance.
Q.—Is not that rather a dangerous doctrine? If local authorities generally allowed their sympathies to carry them into acts not contemplated by their constitution and their powers, what do you think the general result would be?
A.—It is contemplated by our constitution. We are here to relieve distress. We are created for that purpose.
Q.—Do you say there is any machinery or power in the Poor Law which authorises you to give allowances which are, in fact, old age pensions to these people?
A.—It allows us to give out-door relief. You can call it what you like.... We cannot refuse to give people help and assistance in old age.
Q.—I am not quarrelling for a moment with the proposition in the abstract; I am quarrelling with your method of carrying it out in your local machinery.