“I saw in one instance out-relief children habitually sent out to pilfer in a small way, others to beg, some whose mothers were drunkards or living immoral lives.... These definitely bad mothers were but a small minority of the mothers whom we visited, but there were many of a negatively bad type, people without standard, whining, colourless people, often with poor health. If out relief is given at all ... those who give it must take the responsibility for its right use.”
In 1898, when Lord Peel was the Chairman of the State Children’s Association, its Executive Committee brought out a chart which showed that there were children nationally supported under the Local Government Board, under the Home Office, under the Education Department, under the Metropolitan Asylums Board, under the Lunacy Commissioners, each using its own administrative organization. At that time the same children were being dealt with by what may be called rival authorities, without any machinery for co-operation or opportunities of interchange of knowledge or experience. Since then there has been but little change, the Reports point out forcibly the existence of the same conditions only worse, inasmuch as more parents now seek free food and other assistance for their children from official hands.
Face to face with such a serious confusion of evils, affecting as they do the character of the people—the very foundation of our national greatness; confronted with the complicated problem how to simplify machinery which has been growing for years, and is further entangled with the undergrowth of vast numbers of officials and their vested interests; distressed on the one hand by the clamour of that section of society who think that everything should be done by the State, and on the other by the insistent demand of those who see the incalculable good which springs from volunteer effort or agencies, the bewildered statesman might be sympathized with, if not excused, if he did feel inclined to agree with Mr. John Burns’s suggestion, and leave it all to him.
“I care for the people,” in effect he said, “I know their needs. I have the officials to do the work. I am the President of the Local Government Board. Be easy, leave it all to me, I will report to the House once in three months. All will be well.”
It sounds a simple plan, but, before it can be even seriously advocated, it would be as well to survey the recent history of the Local Government Board, and see if, even under this President, its past record gives hope for future effective achievement. Once more let us begin with—
(a) The Babies.—Sir John Simon, Chief Medical Officer of the Local Government Board, wrote forcibly on the subject more than a generation past. Dr. Fuller’s Report was made years ago. Again and again reform has been urged by Poor Law Inspectors and workhouse officials, who have asked for additional powers to obtain information or classification or detention. What has the Local Government Board done? The following extract from the Minority Report can be the reply:—
“Alike in the prevention of the continued procreation of the feeble-minded, in the rescue of girl-mothers from a life of sexual immorality, and in the reduction of infantile mortality in respectable but necessitous families, the destitution authorities, in spite of their great expenditure, are to-day effecting no useful results. With regard to the two first of these problems, at any rate, the activities of the Boards of Guardians are, in our judgment, actually intensifying the evil. If the State had desired to maximize both feeble-minded procreation, and birth out of wedlock, there could not have been suggested a more apt device than the provision, throughout the country, of general mixed workhouses, organized as they are now to serve as unconditional maternity hospitals.... While thus encouraging ... these evils they are doing little to arrest the appalling preventible mortality that prevails among the infants of the poor.”
(b) The Children in the Workhouses.—“So long ago as 1841 the Poor-Law Commissioners pointed out forcibly the evils connected with the maintenance of children in workhouses.” In 1896 the Departmental Committee, of which Mr. Mundella was chairman, and on which I had the honour of sitting, brought before the public the opinion of inspectors, guardians, officials, educationists and child-lovers, all unanimous in condemning this system. “In the workhouse the children meet with crime and pauperism from day to day.” “They are in the hands of adult paupers for their cleanliness, and the whole thing is extremely bad.” “The able-bodied paupers with whom they associate are a very bad class, almost verging on criminal, if not quite,” is some of the evidence quoted in the Report, and the Committee unanimously signed the recommendation “that no children be allowed to enter the workhouse,” and now, thirteen years afterwards, the same conditions prevail. The Majority Report thus describes cases of children in workhouses:—
“The three-year-old children were in a bare and desolate room, sitting about on the floor and on wooden benches, and in dismal workhouse dress. The older ones had all gone out to school ... except a cripple, and a dreary little girl who sat in a cold room with bare legs and her feet in a pail of water as a ‘cure’ for broken chilblains.... The children’s wards left on our minds a marked impression of confusion and defective administration.... In appearance the children were dirty, untidy, ill-kept, and almost neglected. Their clothes might be described with little exaggeration as ragged.... The boys’ day-room is absolutely dreary and bare, and they share a yard and lavatories with the young men.... An old man sleeps with the boys. It is a serious drawback (says the inspector) that every Saturday and Sunday, to say nothing of summer and winter holidays, have for the most part to be spent in the workhouse, where they either live amid rigid discipline and get no freedom, or else if left to themselves are likely to come under the evil influence of adult inmates. The Local Government Board inspectors point out that, even if the children go to the elementary schools for teaching, the practice of rearing them in the workhouse exposes them to the contamination of communication with the adult inmates whose influence is often hideously depraving.”
“Terrible!” my reader will say; “but surely the reform requires legislation, and the Poor Law is too large a subject to tinker on, it must be dealt with after time has been given for due thought.” To this I would reply that even if it did require legislation there has been time enough to obtain it during all these years that the evils have existed; but to quote the Majority Report: “So far as the ‘in-and-out’ children are concerned it is probable that no further power would be needed, since the Guardians already have power under the Poor Law Act, 1899, to adopt children until the age of eighteen.” This Act, I may say in passing, was initiated, drafted, and finally secured, not by the responsible authorities but by the efforts of the State Children’s Association.