“We are strongly of opinion,” says the Majority Report,[[9]] “that effective steps should be taken to secure that the maintenance of children in the workhouse be no longer recognized as a legitimate way of dealing with them.”
[9] Majority Report, p. 187.
This evil is of long standing; for a dozen years the pressing necessity for the removal from such surroundings of these State-dependent children has been represented to successive Presidents of the Local Government Board, and to Boards of Guardians, and the saddest fact of all is that, at the date of the latest Local Government Board Return, 24,175 children (more than one-third of the total number who are entirely maintained out of the rates) are still being reared in this unsuitable environment, actually a larger number than in any preceding year since 1899.
To all those gentlemen who have read the Royal Commissioners’ Report I must apologize for quoting it so largely. Those who have not read it will recognize something of the extreme interest of its contents and take it for their winter’s reading.
But to return again to the Widows and Children on out relief. The Majority Report says:—
“The Guardians give relief without knowing whether the recipients can manage on it; they go on giving it without knowing how they are managing on it.” “In short, there is a widespread system of trying to compensate for inadequacy of knowledge by inadequacy of relief.”
This is a severe condemnation both of the Guardians and the Local Government Board, whose inspectors we know had been long aware of the facts. Moved by the outcry caused by the publication of these revelations, a circular on the “Administration of Outdoor Relief” was issued by the Central Authority last March to the Boards of Guardians, calling on them for greater discrimination in the selection of cases and the adoption of uniform principles.
That these demands were not unnecessary is shown by the following instances of unequal treatment given in the Reports:—
“In one case a widow with four dependent children, and one boy earning 15s. a week, with a total income to the family of 25s., received 7s. from the Guardians, bringing their total up to 32s. a week for six persons. One Board gives 6d. and 5 lb. of flour per week for each child; another family received 5s. a week, bringing their total to 51s. 6d. per week; another 6s. a week for the mother and three children (all little tots) with ‘no other known income’.”
The action of Boards on this circular has been varied. Some have declared themselves “satisfied with their proceedings,” and that “no alteration is required”. Others have set to work to settle a scale of payments for certain defined cases; but though every one must rejoice that a circular (though a belated one) has been issued from the Local Government Board, and that the Guardians are moving, yet the proposals do not seem to me to meet the case. The world cannot be divided into good or bad, white or black—infinite are the shades of grey. More, much more, than adequacy or uniformity of payment is required. Many classes of help are needed. I would suggest as possible solutions of this difficult problem (and my long experience of thirty-three years’ life in Whitechapel does not allow me to minimize the difficulty) the following plans:—