And at the date of the Report (5th May 1851), the aggregate of the workhouse accommodation available, beyond the numbers then receiving in-door relief, was 60,491. Improvement in the sanitary state of the workhouses, and of the labouring population generally, is said always to follow the increase of workhouse accommodation, and the substitution of in-door for out-door relief; so that although a great reduction of expenditure took place in the last year, a still further reduction may be expected in the present.
1852.
Fifth annual report of the Poor Law Commissioners for Ireland.
The Report of the commissioners for 1851-52 is dated on the 1st of May, as had been theretofore generally the practice, although this date was not adhered to in the three preceding Reports.
Improved circumstances of the country.
The transition from out-door to in-door relief was said to be now complete throughout Ireland, accompanied by a reduction in the number of applicants, as well as a most satisfactory decrease in workhouse mortality, The crops generally had everywhere regained their usual state of productiveness. Famine or fear of famine no longer prevailed, and its effects were only perceptible in the decrease of the population, and the consequent increased demand for labour. All in short was prosperous and promising compared with the state of things five years ago. There was however one exception, several of the western unions being still much embarrassed in their finances, and continuing to require assistance. |The Munster unions an exception.| This was especially the case in Munster; for the Connaught exception, unions had passed successfully through the ordeal, and were comparatively prosperous. “Thus on the 23rd February 1850, while the whole number receiving out-door relief in Ireland was 148,909, the unions in the province of Munster contained 101,803 of that number, and those in Connaught only 19,261; and again, on the 26th April 1851, when the number on out-relief was reduced to 10,935, the eight unions in the county of Clare comprised 6,846, and the 29 unions in the province of Connaught only 232.”
Increase of workhouse relief.
During the progress of the important change which was now taking place in the circumstances of the country, the number of persons relieved in the workhouses had always considerably increased in the spring and early part of the summer. These persons were generally in a state of great exhaustion, and the aid and shelter they received enabled them afterwards in most cases to leave the house with their health and strength restored. Some however remained, especially females and the children of both sexes, by whom it appears the workhouses continued to be unduly burdened. So long as there was an expectation of out-door relief being administered, a considerable amount of disease and mortality often prevailed, owing to the way in which persons really destitute persisted in hanging upon that expectation, instead of earlier seeking for admission to the workhouse; but when all hope for relief otherwise than in the workhouse was removed, “the sequel has invariably been a reduced number of applicants, a decreased rate of workhouse mortality, and an improved sanitary state of the population.”
The increased extent of workhouse accommodation which has been noticed, had been obtained, either by means of permanent additions to the original workhouses, or by building new ones in the newly-formed unions, or by the erection of a cheap kind of temporary structure to meet the emergency; or else by hiring premises for the purpose. The latter of these expedients had been resorted to more extensively than was consistent either with economy or with efficient management, and most of these premises were now given up, or shortly would be so. Anxiety is expressed that the succeeding year should be commenced with the workhouse establishments concentrated as far as practicable in each union, “so as to avoid the disadvantage of using auxiliary buildings.” Such a concentration was no doubt essential to efficient management, and it was only by such management, the commissioners observe, and by a further reduction of expenditure, “that some of the distressed unions in the west can be expected to become so far solvent as to support their own pauperism without further external aid.”
It is certainly important on many accounts that there should be only one workhouse in a union, and that it should have been expressly constructed for the accommodation of the classes to be relieved therein, with all suitable means for their separation and employment. Without these essentials, a workhouse can hardly be effective either as a test of destitution or a medium of relief; and there is always danger of an inefficient workhouse becoming a stimulant, instead of being a check to pauperism.
Annuities under the Consolidated Debts Act.