The actual working of the system may be best inferred from the detailed accounts supplied by Sir Edward Disbrowe of 18 parishes.
Of these four, that is Obertürkheim, Osweil, Necker Weihingen, and Egolsheim, provide for their poor by rates levied on all the inhabitants. During each of four years, from 1829 to 1832 inclusive, the persons receiving relief in Obertürkheim were three out of a population of 842, at an annual expense of 5l. 0s. 3d., or about 1½d. per head on the whole population. In Osweil the average number was eight, out of a population of 1608; average annual expense 25l., or about 3½d. a head. In Necker Weihingen, of which the population is 1070, the persons relieved were, in 1829, one man; in 1830, one man and one woman; in 1831, one man and one woman; and the annual expense in 1829 was 5l.; and in each of the years 1830 and 1831, 4l. 3s. 4d., or about 1d. a head. The number relieved in Egolsheim, of which the population is 618, is not mentioned; but it must have been very trifling, since the average annual expense is stated at 2l. 1s. 8d., which is less than 1d. per head.
In those places in which the relief of the poor is wholly or principally supplied from endowments, the annual expenditure is, as might have been expected, much larger. But even in these it seldom amounts to 1s. per head on the whole population, being about one-twelfth of the average expenditure in England. And in the whole bailiwick of Ludwigsberg, containing 29,068 inhabitants, in the year 1831 only 372 persons received regular, and 371 persons irregular (and indeed merely medical) relief. The kingdom of Wurtemberg, therefore, appears to have been, as yet, eminently successful in reconciling a recognition of the right to relief with economy in its distribution.
[6] See above for the statement of the different grounds on which a man may claim the right to obtain a settlement in a parish.
[7] The word “suppe,” here and elsewhere translated by the word soup, has, however, a far more general signification; the proper definition of it being “boiled fluid food, eaten alone, warm, with a spoon.” Thus the Germans have water-soup, beer-soup, milk-soup, bread-soup, flour-soup, wine-soup, &c.
BAVARIA.
With respect to the Bavarian institutions we have little information excepting the text of the law. The following extracts will show its general law tendency: (pp. 556, 557, 558, 559, 560, 562, 563.)
Poor Law authorities.
Each town, market, and village, is to have an institution for the poor; but if several villages wish to unite in forming one of these institutions, it is not only to be permitted, but every facility is to be afforded it.