English Poor Law Policy

by Sidney Webb; Beatrice Webb

"The antagonism cannot be put too strongly. The Majority proceed upon the principle that where there is a failure of social self-maintenance in the sense above defined, there is a defect in the citizen character, or at least a grave danger to its integrity; add that therefore every case of this kind raises a problem which is "moral," in the sense of affecting the whole capacity of self-management, to begin with, in the person who has failed, and secondarily, in the whole community so far as influenced by expectation and example. This relation to a man's whole capacity for self-management, his "moral," is a distinctive feature, I take it, which separates the treatment required by the destitute or necessitous from anything that can be offered to citizens who are maintaining themselves in a normal course of life."[865]

In this cogent argument for the retention of the Category of the Destitute, and of one Authority, and one Authority only, for all classes of destitute persons, we see two distinct and separate assumptions, one as to fact, and the other as to social expediency. We have first the suggestion that, in all classes of persons who need maintenance at the hands of the State, there is, as a matter of fact, a moral defect, common to the whole class, and requiring specific treatment. Secondly, we see creeping out from behind this suggestion, a further assumption as to the policy which ought to be pursued by the Poor Law Authority. This Authority, which is to have in its charge all the heterogeneous population of infants, children, sick and mentally defective persons, the aged and the infirm, the widows, the vagrants, and the unemployed, is to treat them, not with a single eye to what is best calculated to turn them, or any of them, into efficient citizens, not even with a single eye to what will most successfully remedy the "moral defect" which they are assumed all to possess, but with the quite different object of warning off or deterring, "by expectation and example," other persons for applying for like treatment. In other words, we must, by keeping all the different varieties of people who require State aid under one Authority, and under one that assumes the existence of this "moral defect," retain for all alike, not only the "stigma of pauperism," but also a method of provision which will "deter" others from coming to be treated. As this is the only philosophical argument that we have encountered, by way of justification for the existence of one Authority, and one Authority only, to which the State should indiscriminately commit the care of the infants, the children of school age, the sick, the mentally defective, the aged and infirm, the vagrants and the unemployed workmen in distress, it requires detailed examination.

Let us first examine the initial assumption that the miscellaneous multitude who, year by year, come on public funds for maintenance, are, as a matter of fact, one and all, characterised by a particular moral defect—a feature so uniform, so important, and so specific as to outweigh the differences between infants and adults, the healthy and the sick, the sane and the mentally defective, the aged and the able-bodied; and to require the aggregation of all of them together under a single Authority in each locality, which should specialise upon this common characteristic. We have, in the first place, to realise that two-fifths of all the paupers are infants or children of school age; that is to say, human beings rendered destitute, not by any action or inaction of their own, but through something which has happened to their parents or guardians. An enormous proportion of these children are destitute merely because they are orphans. What rational ground have we for assuming, without enquiry, that these little ones are suffering from any "defect in the citizen character," or from any "moral" defect whatsoever? Their fathers may well have had defects, for they have died; though even with regard to them the more obvious inference would seem to be that they had physical defects or weaknesses; and this, in view of the frequency of mere accident, cannot be deduced with any certainty. We can, at any rate, infer nothing as to the character of the mothers from the fact that the fathers have died. Moreover, even if we could make the assumption that the children of fathers who have died prematurely, or who from some other cause have left their offspring without property, necessarily inherited some weakness of character or specific moral defect, it does not seem to follow that the best way of counteracting this inheritance would be to herd such children together, to segregate them apart from normal children, to brand them as paupers, and to commit them to the care of an Authority not specially concerned with dealing with children as children, but regarding children as only one variety of the pauper class. It seems clear that the real justification for keeping together all the infants and children whom the State has to maintain, and for excluding them from the care of the Local Education Authority, is not any consideration of what is likely to be best for such children—not even what is best calculated to counteract any disadvantageous tendencies that some of them may have inherited—but the second assumption to which we drew attention, namely, that it is expedient so to treat those whom the State must maintain that other persons will not, "by expectation and example," be led to apply for similar treatment. The argument, in short, is really one for affixing the "stigma of pauperism" to all the children that the State has to maintain, not because this will make them grow up into efficient citizens—even, perhaps, at the cost of injuriously affecting their education and their character—but in order merely to prevent other children becoming chargeable. This policy of definitely "Poor Law treatment" for the Children of the State, the Scottish Parish Councils, to their honour, have always repudiated. But if this policy of "Poor Law treatment" of the child is repudiated—if the State is really to set itself to bring up the boys and girls whom it finds on its hands with a single eye to their development into efficient citizens—why should the State not use for them the organ which it has fashioned for this very purpose? What ground is there for treating the child as a pauper at all, when the Local Education Authority stands there, in every parish, already authorised by law to provide all that is requisite, and prepared to treat the child simply as a child?

Passing from the two-fifths of the paupers who are infants or children, we have then to realise that something like another two-fifths of all those who, in Scotland, apply for maintenance are not merely "disabled" in the technical sense, but are definitely suffering from some specific disease or chronic infirmity of body, for which they have to be medically treated. If the patient happens to be suffering from certain diseases, which are specified in an ever-lengthening schedule, the argument about the "defect in the citizen character," and the "grave danger to its integrity" is abandoned; the sick person is then, by common consent, searched out, urged to accept State aid, freely maintained at the public expense, and—what is very significant to us in this argument—treated without the slightest pretence that he has a moral defect, and without any idea of curing that defect, or avoiding the danger to his integrity, but simply and solely with the object of restoring him at the earliest moment to physical health. Meanwhile the responsible Authority is at work effecting, by cleansing, disinfecting, draining, and improving the housing, the water-supply, and the general sanitation, alterations in the environment in which the disease has occurred, in order to prevent its recurrence, either in that patient or in any one else. The patients of the Local Health Authority, though their numbers are growing day by day, the Majority Report leaves outside the "one Authority and only one Authority" which (as it is suggested) ought to deal with all those for whom maintenance has to be provided. Whilst we on the Poor Law Commission were deliberating, the Local Government Board for Scotland added to this class all the enormous number of persons suffering from tuberculosis.[866] In spite of the fact that the more enterprising of the Parish Councils are already beginning to provide extensively for phthisis patients in their Poorhouses, the work is now to be undertaken by the Local Health Authorities. We note that the Majority Report makes no protest against this enormous extension of the area of overlap between the two sets of Authorities, and expressly assumes that, to the extent that tuberculosis prevails among the present pauper host, the Poor Law is to be broken up, and its functions gradually taken over by the Local Health Authorities. Apparently it is admitted that, with regard to persons suffering from tuberculosis in any of its forms, we must give up the assumption that they have some "defect in the citizen character," in common with the vagrants and the unemployed workmen; or at any rate we must give up any idea of treating them for this moral defect or grave danger to their integrity.

What the public welfare requires is, as is now admitted, that these sick persons should be treated with a single eye to arresting the course of their disease, and restoring them as soon as possible to physical health. Moreover, as sickness is plainly, to an undefined extent, the result of bad environment—of overcrowding, insanitation, unwholesome food, polluted water, or injurious conditions of employment—it is important that it should be in the hands of an authority officially cognisant of this environment, and empowered to alter that which is producing the sickness. The question necessarily arises whether there is any ground for dealing with any neglected sick persons who need medical treatment, in any different way from that in which we have now decided to treat phthisis patients—whether we have any more ground for assuming the co-existence of a "defect in the citizen character" or "grave danger to its integrity," along with cancer, rheumatism, lead poisoning, hernia, or varicose veins, than along with pulmonary consumption—whether, in fact, the State has any justification for treating any sick person at all otherwise than with a single eye to arresting their diseases and preventing their occurrence in others—whether in the interests of the community as a whole we are not bound to drop the idea of "deterring" the sick "by expectation and example" from coming to be cured, and are not bound therefore to put the whole function into the hands of the organ which the State has created for the prevention and treatment of disease, namely, the Local Health Authority?

When we turn to the aged, who make up the bulk of the remainder of the pauper host, the question of whether or not we can assume the universal existence of a "defect in the citizen character" or "grave danger to its integrity" becomes irrelevant. As there can, speaking practically, be no idea of improving the character of the aged, it is difficult to see why it should be suggested that the worn-out men and women for whom the State has to provide, and whose moral defects cannot now be cured, should necessarily be merged with the persons whose assumed moral defects are still curable, and who are therefore to be placed under an Authority specialising on this business of treating the "defect in the citizen character" that always accompanies the need for State maintenance. In the case of the aged, in fact, the assumption that they should be placed under a Poor Law Authority with a view to remedying their assumed defects becomes hypocritical. In their case, it is clear, their retention in the class "pauper," and their relegation to the Poor Law Authority, is advocated, not for their own good. They are, it is suggested, to be accorded a treatment other than that which the State would otherwise afford to them—that is to say, they are to suffer the stigma of pauperism—merely in order "by expectation and example" to deter other persons from taking advantage in their old age of the maintenance which the State affords. This policy we are relieved from having to characterise, because by the passing of the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, the community has, even whilst we were deliberating, definitely declared against it. We see, therefore, no need whatsoever, now that there is in every County and Burgh a special Authority for the aged (the Local Pension Committee), for relegating any aged persons to the Poor Law Authority.

Of the non-able-bodied paupers—and it is for the non-able-bodied that the Scottish Poor Law lawfully provides—there remain only "the feeble-minded," and the epileptic, and the persons of "unsound mind," who make up nearly one-fifth of the whole of Scottish pauperism. Of this fifth, about two-thirds are already under the administrative care, not of the Poor Law Authority at all, but of the Local Lunacy Authority, whilst about one-third (including the epileptics, the uncertified imbeciles, and the merely feeble-minded) are still looked after by the Parish Councils. All these persons, we must admit, actually do have, co-existing with their pauperism, a "defect in the citizen character," a mental weakness frequently "moral" in its nature, and one which is coming more and more to be regarded as susceptible to appropriate treatment. Here then, if anywhere, one might think that there is ground for assigning these paupers to the Authority which is by its supporters assumed to specialise on the treatment of the specific "defect in the citizen character," which is asserted to be co-extensive with the need for State maintenance. But the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded, after exhaustively examining the subject and concentrating its whole attention upon it, came to the conclusion that the Poor Law Authority was inherently unsuited for treating any kind of mentally defective person, and decided to recommend the removal of all such persons from the sphere of the Poor Law, and their being placed henceforth entirely in the hands of an Authority, the Local Lunacy Authority, which had both the special knowledge and the special machinery for treating the mental defectiveness that had been actually proved to exist, rather than the hypothetical "defect in the citizen character" that their need of State maintenance is supposed to imply. Our colleagues who have signed the Majority Report, torn between their own assumption of the need for "one Authority and only one Authority" for all the destitute, and the very authoritative recommendations of the contemporary Royal Commission, have apparently been unable to come to any certain conclusion as to what they wish done with regard to this one-fifth of all the paupers. In the Majority Report for England and Wales, dated February 1909, our colleagues concurred with us in recommending the carrying out of the proposals of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded; in desiring the transfer of all provision for the mentally defective to the Local Lunacy Authorities; in urging the removal from this unfortunate class of the "stigma of pauperism," and in so far "breaking up the Poor Law," and departing from the idea of relegating all who needed State maintenance to "one Authority and one Authority only," which should treat them all for their assumed common "defect in the citizen character."[867]In the case of Ireland, where the lunatic asylums are at present entirely outside the Poor Law, and their inmates are not paupers, our colleagues, in their Majority Report, dated June 1909, recommended exactly the opposite course from that which they proposed for England and Wales. Instead of transferring the feeble-minded to the Local Lunacy Authority, they recommended that the Local Lunacy Authority should cease to exist as a separate Authority; and that all the lunatics and lunatic asylums should be transferred, along with the unemployed workmen and the infectious sick, to the new Authority that they wish to administer the Poor Law. When we come to Scotland, our colleagues, in their Majority Report dated October 1909, made no recommendations on the subject at all as to the Authority;[868] and are therefore in the position of implicitly endorsing the status quo, which, as we have mentioned, is one of overlap between the Poor Law and Lunacy Authorities, each of which has under its administrative care a certain proportion of the lunatics, idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, and feeble-minded for whom Scotland has to provide, and with regard to some of whom very inadequate provision is now made. We cannot agree to leave the matter in this way. We do not see that the nature of lunacy or feeble-mindedness differs in the three Kingdoms to such an extent as to warrant three different policies in its treatment. We think that the first mind of our colleagues was the best. We, like the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded, see no reason why lunatics should be treated as paupers any more than as criminals. We certainly see no reason why Scottish lunatics and feeble-minded should remain paupers, when English lunatics and feeble-minded are to be relieved from this stigma. We, therefore, think that Scotland should see to it that the mentally defective of all grades are, at the earliest possible moment, wholly removed from the Poor Law and the Poor Law Authority, and placed entirely under the care of the special Lunacy Authority, which can deal with them with a single eye to the needs of their condition.

We proceed now to consider the last section of all, the adult able-bodied man or woman without means, who becomes destitute through not being in employment at wages. We think that it is invidious and unwarranted to assume that such unemployment is, in any particular case, wholly or even mainly the result of any "defect of the citizen character." We have been unable to resist the evidence that unemployment, and even acute distress from unemployment, comes, as a matter of fact, to workmen of excellent skill and character. We have been much impressed, amid the heterogeneous crowd of "the unemployed," by the number of worthy and capable men who have found themselves thrown out of long-held situations by the bankruptcy of their employers, by some change of industrial process, by the invention of a new machine, or by the decay of particular industries. In these cases, as has been well brought out by Mr. W. H. Beveridge,[869] the very excellence of the workman, by his long continuance in the groove to which the employer has required him to fit, may have rendered him less capable of obtaining another situation, and even less able to fill it when found. Notwithstanding the frequency of cases of this sort, it is, we think, clear that a majority of those who, in any given state of trade, come into distress through long-continued unemployment or chronic "under-employment," are—with many individual exceptions—either the less strong or the less fit, the less skilled or the less capable, the less responsible or the less regular in their industry of the wage-earning community. Hence though it is the relative defectiveness of the social environment (such as the lack of organisation of the Labour Market, or the anarchic fluctuations of trade) that in the main determine the amount of Under-employment, or the degree to which Under-employment prevails, at any given place and time, it is the relative defectiveness of one wage-earner as compared with another that in the main determines upon which individuals the Unemployment or Under-employment will actually fall. This fact, though it does not relieve us from the necessity of providing for these individuals, serves as a warning against certain proposed methods of provision. Moreover, whilst persons cannot voluntarily become infants or children, or aged or mentally defective, in order to qualify for the provision which the State makes for these sections, and are not likely to make themselves acutely sick or permanently infirm in order to get medically treated, even if this incidentally includes their maintenance, there is an obvious danger that the lower types of men will tend to become destitute through chronic unemployment, if "by expectation and example" they see any chance of maintenance without sustained effort, under conditions as pleasant to them as work at wages. Hence, in the case of the able-bodied, it is true that the result of the State provision on the amount and quality of productive effort, not only in the persons treated, but also in all those who might "by expectation and example" be led to apply for treatment, becomes the paramount consideration.

The suggestion that "where there is a failure of social self-maintenance ... there is a defect in the citizen character, or at least a grave danger to its integrity," is, indeed, in any careful analysis, seen to be true, if at all, of the able-bodied and of the able-bodied only. It is exactly because we realise the overwhelming importance to the character of the community of stimulating, in all sections of the able-bodied, the desire and faculty for self-maintenance, that we urge the necessity of having an Authority dealing with the able-bodied, and with the able-bodied only. It is, we suggest, just because the Parish Council, as a Poor Law Authority, has been required to be simultaneously a Hospital Authority for the sick, an Asylum Authority for the mentally defective, an Education Authority for the children, and a Pension Authority for the aged, that it has never been able to deal efficiently with the able-bodied. If it had been able to keep its Poorhouse exclusively for the able-bodied—even for the able-bodied whom the medical officer felt obliged to certify as temporarily disabled lest they should starve to death—it might, at any rate, by appropriate discipline, have stopped the Poorhouse from becoming a visible source of deterioration of the able-bodied inmates. The inference, therefore, that we draw from the argument as to the "moral factor" in destitution, of which, in the case of the able-bodied, we recognise the full force, is that it is imperative that there should be, not one Authority for all persons needing public assistance, whatever their age, sex, or condition, but one Authority for all the adult able-bodied persons who are not specially certified as sick or permanently incapacitated, as mentally defective, or as having attained a specified limit of age. We regard the wise treatment of all such adult able-bodied persons as have to be maintained from public funds as being of such great difficulty and complexity as to demand, not only that it should be the work of a single Authority specialising on their problem, but also that this Authority should be one free from the influences of particular localities, and able to command the highest administrative skill that the nation can supply.