Statement of the Provision for the Poor, and of the Condition of the Labouring Classes in a Considerable Portion of America and Europe / Being the preface to the foreign communications contained in the appendix to the Poor-Law Report

by Nassau William Senior

Much charity is also given through the hands of the clergy. This is, without any doubt, the best distributed, and the most effectual; much of it is devoted to the aged and impotent.

The Sick.

In all the towns, and in many of the large villages, there are hospitals in which any individual suffering under acute sickness, or casualty, may be nursed until his perfect recovery. The principal acute complaint is fever. But there are few hospitals for chronic or incurable cases, and few such patients can obtain access to them: they are, therefore, in general left to private charity.

The hospitals have in general property in land, in the public funds, or lent on mortgage, and when these revenues are insufficient, they are assisted from the local assessments of the parishes and provinces, and by charitable persons. The management of the different hospitals is not uniform; it is in general much under the influence of the government. In some towns, the ecclesiastical authorities and the chapters interfere, and it is in such cases in general that there is most of disorder and abuse. In most parishes the indigent sick receive gratuitous treatment from the physicians and surgeons, who are paid an annual salary by the municipal authorities, or the charitable associations. In Turin, and in some other places, there are dispensaries, distributing gratis, to those who have a certificate of poverty from their clergyman, the most usual and necessary remedies, whenever medically ordered. In general, the sick who cannot procure admission to the hospitals are in a pitiable state of poverty and distress.

Children.

Illegitimate.

If an unmarried woman has a child by an unmarried man, she has recourse to the ecclesiastical tribunal, that is to say, to the episcopal court of the diocese to compel him to marry her. If she succeeds in proving her previous good conduct, and that promises, or other means of seduction were employed against her, the tribunal orders the marriage. The defendant may refuse; but in that case the cause is carried before the civil judges, who admitting the seduction as already proved, award to her damages, regulated by the circumstances of the case.

The child is by law entitled to an allowance for its maintenance, which may be demanded from either parent.

It is to be observed that, in consequence of the constant inclination of the ecclesiastical tribunal, in favour of the female plaintiff, in order that the harm done may be repaired by marriage, and the ease with which children are disposed of in the Foundling Hospitals, few illegitimate children are brought up at home, even in the lowest classes of society.

If the seducer is a member of the family, and under the authority of his father, the girl in general has recourse to his parents for the damages awarded to her. The illegitimate child may claim its allowance from its paternal or maternal grandfather; and if its father and mother have died without leaving it any provision, may claim one from those who have succeeded to their property.