English Poor Law Policy

by Sidney Webb; Beatrice Webb

The difficulty seems to have continued, for, in 1881, the Central Authority issued an Order permitting the Poplar Guardians to use their workhouse for other than the able-bodied, thus bringing the experiment to an end.[522]

It is to be noted that, in spite of the Poplar experience, the policy of a special "Test House," devoted exclusively to the able-bodied, continued to be pressed on guardians by the Inspectorate. The Birmingham Guardians established such a "test house," in 1880, but it seems to have been opened to other classes in 1887.[523] In the latter year, notwithstanding this renewed abandonment, we see Mr. Henley pressing the same policy on the Manchester Guardians, leading them to visit Birmingham to inspect the test house there.[524] In the Metropolis, the inspectorate got the Kensington workhouse made use of in 1882, in substitution for that of Poplar, though only for males; and able-bodied applicants were, for thirteen years, referred thither. This arrangement came to an end in 1905, greatly to the regret of the inspectorate. This Kensington test house, it was said, "for many years did useful work as a place where really able-bodied men were received from all parts of London, and kept hard at work under strict surveillance. As the Kensington Guardians now need the workhouse for their own purposes this arrangement has of necessity ceased.... The number of really able-bodied men in the London workhouses at one time is never very large, but it is large enough to make it extremely desirable that there should be at least one workhouse exclusively for such a class, to which, and to which only, they might be admitted."[525]

As an adjunct of the policy of the deterrent workhouse for the able-bodied, we have to note the coming-in of compulsory detection. This, of course, had been entirely absent from "the principles of 1834," according to which every inmate of the workhouse was to be free to quit it, with no more notice than was required for the convenience of the establishment. "Much evil," said a Circular of 1871, "has arisen, and ... the discipline of the workhouse has been seriously impaired by the frequent exercise of the power which the inmates have hitherto possessed of discharging themselves from the workhouse at short and uncertain notice, claiming re-admission as might best suit their inclination and convenience." This was remedied by a statute in 1871 which gave the guardians a power to detain, with which we shall deal in our section on the workhouse.[526]

(vi.) The Provision of Employment

In the midst of all the efforts of the inspectorate to secure stricter administration, made apparently with the ungrudging support of the Central Authority, there came, in February 1886, an altogether incongruous intervention by the new President (Mr. Chamberlain), who had then been only a few weeks in office. On 19th February 1886, he addressed a public letter to the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works, saying that "there is considerable distress amongst workpeople of a class above that of the persons who usually apply for poor law relief"; and urging the Board "to expedite as far as practicable the commencement of any public works which they may be contemplating, so that additional employment may be afforded."[527] Four weeks later this policy was embodied in a circular to all boards of guardians, which may be said to have begun, for good or for evil, a new era as regards the treatment of such of the able-bodied as were classed as "the unemployed." Whilst nominally upholding the workhouse test and, when that is impossible, the labour test,[528] for the relief of the able-bodied pauper, the circular lays it down emphatically that an altogether different provision must be made for the unemployed wage-earner. The President was "convinced that in the ranks of those who do not ordinarily seek poor law relief there is evidence of much and increasing privation," among persons "usually in regular employment." It was, in his view, "not desirable that the working classes should be familiarised with Poor Law Relief;" and the guardians were recommended "to endeavour to arrange" with the local municipal authorities for the execution of such public works as the laying out, paving and cleansing of streets, sewerage and water works, the laying-out of recreation grounds and new cemeteries, and "spade husbandry on sewage farms." The men to be selected from among the special class referred to were to be engaged by the municipal authorities upon the recommendation of the guardians. They were to be paid wages, though at somewhat below the ordinary rates; every encouragement being given to the municipal authorities to raise loans for the purpose. The men would thus not be paupers, nor in receipt of anything from the Poor Rate, the intervention of the guardians being confined to inciting the local municipal authorities to undertake the work, and to recommending the candidates for employment.[529]

The policy thus laid down by Mr. Chamberlain, of finding municipal work for the unemployed, was, it will be seen, a revival of the expedient adopted in the Lancashire Cotton Famine. But Mr. Chamberlain omitted to safeguard his proposal in the way in which the works started out of the Government loans to the Lancashire municipal authorities in 1863-6 had been (in practice, though not explicitly in terms) safeguarded. It was not explained—perhaps it was not realised—that the conditions of success in the Lancashire experiment had been: (i.) that no pretence should be made of taking on the unemployed as such, and, in particular, that the casual labourer class, whether temporarily unemployed or not, should be definitely excluded; and (ii.) that the direct advantage to unemployed workmen should be limited to the taking on, to do the unskilled labourer's work, of a restricted proportion of selected applicants, not of the labouring but of the skilled artisan class. These necessary conditions were not expounded by the Central Authority either in 1886 or in subsequent years. Successive presidents repeated Mr. Chamberlain's suggestions, with no more limitations than he had laid down. Mr. Ritchie, for instance, in the following year, told a deputation of Boards of Guardians that, although they could not legally give employment, as distinguished from poor relief, they "might assist the local authorities, if the latter undertook public works, by sending to them persons applying for relief, who would no doubt prefer to be relieved by temporary employment rather than by becoming a burden on the rates."[530] In 1891 (a year of "good trade," by the way) Mr. Ritchie sent a circular to the Metropolitan vestries and district boards, urging them to provide employment by street cleaning, etc., "in concert with the Boards of Guardians," who were to be "afforded the opportunity of recommending for employment persons who from their previous circumstances and condition it is most desirable should not be placed under the necessity of receiving relief at the cost of the rates."[531] Similar letters were sent to the Boards of Guardians. In November 1892, Mr. Fowler, afterwards Lord Wolverhampton, reproduced Mr. Chamberlain's Circular of 1886, and recommended municipal works, "in order that the pauperisation of those persons whose difficulties are occasioned only by exceptional circumstances arising from temporary scarcity of employment ... may as far as practicable be avoided."[532] In 1893 again, under Mr. Shaw Lefevre's presidency, similar circulars were sent out.[533] In 1895, Mr. Shaw Lefevre, afterwards Lord Eversley, again issued circulars using the very phrases of that of 1886, which were addressed, first to all the boards of guardians, and then to all the rural and urban district councils, asking the former about the distress, and urging the latter to undertake works, in conference with the boards of guardians, in order to afford employment to artisans and others, reduced to want through the prolonged frost.[534] The House of Commons, two days later, appointed a Committee to consider what could be done, at the request of which circulars were sent to all municipalities and district councils asking what had been done.[535] Called upon to justify itself by the Committee presided over by Mr., afterwards Sir Henry, Campbell-Bannerman, the Central Authority explained what had been done, both in the way of Presidential Circulars about unemployment, and in the way of Poor Law relief to the able-bodied. It did not in this emergency suggest or issue any new General Orders, but it sanctioned "departures from the rules as regards outdoor relief in particular cases."[536] Moreover, there was, as Sir Hugh Owen explained, "no indisposition on the part of the Local Government Board to comply with an application from a board of guardians for the issue of the Outdoor Labour Test Order when the circumstances have appeared to be such as to require it."[537] Meanwhile the public controversy that was taking place, the reports of the proceedings of the Committee, and above all the circulars demanding information from all the local authorities in the Kingdom, enormously stimulated the idea that the unemployed had got to be specially dealt with in such a way as to "prevent the stigma of pauperism, and the consequent loss of citizenship."[538] The Committee, after making elaborate inquiries, practically endorsed the policy of Mr. Chamberlain's Circular of 1886, of bringing municipal work to the aid of the unemployed, and carried it even further. They definitely recommended the adoption, as a constant feature of municipal work, though only in respect of the annually recurring slackness of employment in the winter months, of the policy of using the public orders in such a way as to regularise the aggregate volume of employment. As regards the Metropolis, it was recommended that individual boards of guardians might contribute, with the sanction of the Local Government Board, out of the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund, half the cost of the works undertaken by the vestries or district boards at their instance.[539] Moreover, as it had been discovered that the Acts of 1819 and 1830 had not been repealed, which authorised the local Poor Law authorities to purchase or hire not exceeding 50 acres of land on which to set the poor to work at reasonable wages—statutes which the Central Authority had persistently ignored as obsolete, and had refused to make the rules under which alone they could be made operative—the Committee recommended: "That the Local Government Board should consider the application of such powers, and make rules for the use of boards of guardians in relation thereto."[540]

Finally we come, with regard to the relief of the section of the able-bodied who may be deemed to be "the unemployed," to Mr. Long's scheme, embodied in the Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905, under which distress committees of the local municipal councils, formed partly of members nominated by the boards of guardians, are empowered to make special provision for those of the able-bodied who are "unemployed," without their becoming paupers, in the way of: (i.) emigration; (ii.) internal migration; (iii.) temporary employment; (iv.) farm colonies; or (v.) labour exchanges; at the expense, so far as emigration, migration, labour exchanges, and the cost of the whole machinery are concerned, of the local municipal rates, and, so far as the actual relief or wages is concerned, of voluntary subscriptions or subventions from the National Exchequer.[541]