When women entered the workhouse, the policy of the Central Authority (as in the analogous case of "the able-bodied") was to classify them in quite other categories than those which governed their outdoor relief. The woman's status, with regard to a man, so fundamental as long as she remained outside, was, in the workhouse, entirely irrelevant. What became important was whether or not she was sick, "able-bodied" (in the workhouse sense), or "aged and infirm"; whether or not she was a nursing mother, or a mother of children under seven years old; whether or not she was of "good character" or of "dissolute and disorderly habits" or the mother of an illegitimate child. These considerations—leading to classifications inconsistent with each other—affected the women's segregation in the workhouse, the employment provided for them, the dietary and the amount of their freedom. With all this we deal in subsequent sections.
The policy of the Central Authority with regard to the relief of children rested on the general rule that children, residing with their parents (or surviving parent) and dependent on them for support, had to follow them for relief. This was not limited by any condition as to the age of the child, the essential fact being the dependence of the child for support. Looked at from the standpoint of the child, this involved a great and complex difference in policy in the two different areas of the country to which we have had so often to refer. In unions governed by the Outdoor Labour Test Order (afterwards the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, 1852), all such children might be relieved in their homes, the only limitation placed on the discretion of the local authority being that, if they were the children of able-bodied men, at least half the relief granted to the father for their necessities had to be in kind.
In unions in which the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order was in force, the children (although not sick) of certain classes of parents might be relieved in their own homes, whilst those of certain other classes of parents could be relieved only by admission to the workhouse (unless, in particular instances, the grant of outdoor relief was specially sanctioned by the Central Authority). This determination by the Central Authority of the method of relief of such children did not depend on their age, their sex, their characteristics, or their needs, but on the artificial categories in which their fathers (or mothers) were placed. We need not follow these intricacies once more in detail. They can easily be unravelled from the foregoing sections on "The Able-bodied" and on "Women."
Whatever outdoor relief was given to the parent in respect of the child, the policy of the Central Authority was one of absolute non-intervention with regard to its treatment. No directions were given, either for its education or for any other of its needs. The only direction that we find is a decision that the local authority must not pay the school fees for any such child; and must not even add with this view 2d. per week per child to the outdoor relief granted to the parent. [154]
When the child entered the workhouse it passed out of its former classification and entered into an entirely different one. For outdoor relief, as we have seen, the policy of the Central Authority was to distinguish among children only according to the kind of parents they had. Inside the workhouse, the policy of the Central Authority was to regard this classification as irrelevant, and to place all children, of whatever parentage, in categories, dependent on their own age, sex and health. They were either sick or well; and also either (1) Children under seven; (2) Boys between seven and fifteen; or (3) Girls between seven and fifteen. The treatment of these categories is so inextricably mixed up with that of the other inmates of the workhouse that we relegate the matter to our subsequent sections.
The Central Authority gave no direction to change the system under which some local authorities sent their pauper children to establishments kept for private profit. In 1838, this system was implicitly sanctioned by a long instructional letter, dealing with "Mr. Aubin's establishment for pauper children at Norwood," where the children were employed in the workshop on alternate days, and were under the special care of a chaplain.[155]
But the Central Authority was evidently uneasy about the quarter of a million pauper children, of whom it was gradually getting some tens of thousands in the great general workhouses on which it had insisted.[156] Reports on the training of the workhouse children were called for, and a valuable series was published in 1841, in which the establishment of separate boarding schools was suggested, where the children could receive both elementary schooling and industrial training. This proposal united the opposition of the boards of guardians, who objected to a new authority, to that of those who demurred to giving the pauper children any better education than the children of the lowest independent labourer.[157]
In 1844, as we have seen, the Central Authority obtained statutory power to direct the establishment of district schools; but no Order on the subject appears to have been issued prior to 1847.
We pass now to the children of an age to be started in life. Though the Central Authority had been expressly empowered to issue regulations as to apprenticeship, it did not, during its first decade, issue any Order on the subject. The only indication which we can find of the policy which it wished pursued during this decade with regard to such children is a comment on the proposed Bill for the Amendment of the Poor Law in 1840. This comment is strongly adverse to the payment of apprenticeship premiums, and suggests that premiums are only needed in "occasional" cases of lame or blind children. [158] Not until 1845 does the Central Authority issue any directions on the subject. By the Apprenticeship Orders of December 1844, and January 1845, amended in August 1845, and included and amplified in the General Consolidated Order of 1847, elaborate conditions of apprenticeship were prescribed for the protection of the apprentice; limits of age were fixed; the duties of the masters were made more onerous and definite; and the payment of premiums, whilst still allowed for children between nine and sixteen, was expressly prohibited, at first for all over fourteen, but subsequently for all over sixteen, unless physically deformed or defective, except in the form of clothing. [159] But the Central Authority does not advocate apprenticeship. On the contrary, in issuing the Order of 1845, it wrote a special letter to accompany it in which the local authorities were pointedly reminded that it had hitherto refrained from issuing any regulations on the subject; that as Parliament had not abolished the system of apprenticeship it would "doubtless continue to be practised in those districts where it has hitherto prevailed"; that "there are not wanting authorities of weight against the system"; and that local authorities were not to infer that the Central Authority entertained "any desire to promote its introduction." [160]