[311] General Order of 3rd March 1866, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1867, p. 37.
[312] Reports on Vagrancy made to the President of the Poor Law Board, 1866.
[313] Sir M. Hicks Beach, 28th July 1868 (Hansard, vol. 193, p. 1910).
[314] Sir M. Hicks Beach, 28th July 1868 (Hansard, vol. 193, p. 1910).
[315] Circular of 28th November, 1868, in Twenty-first Annual Report, 1868-9, pp. 74-76. It is curious that the dietary suggested in this Circular allowed (without explanation), the guardians to give male adults eight ounces of bread and a pint of gruel, whereas the General Order to the Metropolitan Unions of the preceding year had definitely limited adult males to six ounces of bread and a pint of gruel.
[316] St. George's, Hanover Square, to Poor Law Board. The numbers of "casual and houseless poor" relieved in the Metropolis went up from 1086, on 1st July 1866, to 2085 on 1st July 1868, and 1760 on 1st July 1870 (Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-1, p. xxiv).
[317] Ibid. pp. 394-5.
[318] On Vagrants and Tramps, by T. Barwick L. Baker (Manchester Statistical Society, 1868-9, p. 62).
[319] Mr. Goschen (President of Poor Law Board), 13th May, 1870, Hansard, vol. 201, pp. 660-2.
[320] The prohibition was made even more embracing in the Official Circular for April and May 1848 (Nos. 14 and 15, N.S., pp. 227-8), where the term "able-bodied" (though the Central Authority expressed itself as willing to consider relief by gifts of clothing in special cases) was held to include females, not sick or disabled, who were nevertheless unable to earn sixpence a day at field work; "young females" just emancipated; persons of weak constitution, or having frequent ailments, but in receipt of "full wages"; and persons not of weak constitutions, but employed at low wages from inaptitude to labour. Thus, for outdoor relief in the part of England to which this Order applied, the term "able-bodied" ceased to have any relation to any physical conditions whatsoever, but was used as a term covering a heterogeneous class of men and women, strong or weak, healthy or subject to epileptic fits, able or unable to earn complete sustenance. On the other hand, within the workhouse, as we have seen, the same term was becoming more and more definitely restricted to adult persons on normal diet, requiring no medical treatment.