That these recommendations had in view only the adult able-bodied person, capable of obtaining employment for wages, is supported by the explicit statement of the Commissioners that "the outdoor relief of which we have recommended the abolition is, in general, partial relief ... at variance with the spirit of the 43rd of Elizabeth, for the framers of that Act could scarcely have intended that the overseers should 'take order for setting to work' those who have work and are engaged in work; nor could they by the words 'all persons using no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by' have intended to describe persons 'who do use an ordinary and daily trade of life.'"[18]
II. That the able-bodied should be offered maintenance in a workhouse. It is important to notice exactly what the Commissioners here proposed, with all the emphasis of large type. Relief to the able-bodied and their families was to be "in well-regulated workhouses (i.e. places where they may be set to work according to the spirit and intention of the 43rd of Elizabeth)." [19]
These workhouses for the able-bodied were to be separate from the buildings in which the aged and the children were accommodated; they were to be under separate officers; and were expressly not to form part of one great establishment containing other classes of paupers.[20] The character of the employment to be found for the able-bodied must also be noted, as the Commissioners made this a cardinal point. It will be remembered that the 43rd of Elizabeth directed that the overseers should obtain "a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, and other necessaries for the poor to work upon," i.e. that they should "set the poor to work" on a normal productive enterprise. This principle is repeated and emphasised by the Commissioners. The employment to be found for the able-bodied "ought to be useful employment." Fictitious, artificial, or useless labour was "pernicious," and "ought to be carefully prevented.... The association of the utility of labour to both parties, the employer as well as the employed, is one which we consider it most important to preserve and strengthen; and we deem everything mischievous which unnecessarily gives to it a repulsive aspect. At the same time we believe that in extended districts the requisite sources of employment will be easily found. The supply of the articles consumed in workhouses and prisons would afford a large outlet for the manufactures carried on in the House." [21] They even refer with approval to outdoor employment as possible in most districts.
With regard to vagrants, the Commissioners were convinced that they would "cease to be a burden," if they were treated like the ordinary able-bodied pauper. The difficulty was to enforce this, and they therefore recommended that the Central Authority should "be empowered and directed to frame and enforce regulations as to the relief to be afforded to vagrants and discharged prisoners." [22]
With regard to the treatment of women, it cannot be said that the Report of 1834 afforded much guidance to the Central Authority. Whether or not the Commissioners meant to propose the abolition of outdoor relief to the legally independent able-bodied woman is, as we have shown, indeterminate. In this Report the single independent woman is nowhere mentioned. The wife is throughout treated exactly as is the child; and it is assumed that she follows her husband, both with regard to the continuance of outdoor relief to the aged, the impotent, and the sick; and with regard to its abolition in the case of the able-bodied. Such women as entered the workhouse were apparently to be regarded as divided into only two classes; they were to be accommodated either in the building for "the aged and really impotent," or else in the House for the "able-bodied females." [23] With regard to the really baffling problems presented by the widow, the deserted wife, the wife of the absentee soldier or sailor, the wife of a husband resident in another parish or another country—in each case whether with or without dependent children—the Report is silent.