A history of the Irish poor law, in connexion with the condition of the people

by Sir George Nicholls

Employment.

Notwithstanding that past experience and the deductions of sound principle were alike opposed to the notion that pauper labour could be made a source of profit, many boards of guardians and other persons of undoubtedly excellent intentions, are said to have advocated plans for employing the able-bodied inmates of the workhouses in ordinary agricultural labour, or in the draining and subsoiling of lands belonging to private individuals, or in carrying on manufactures within the workhouse, the produce to be disposed of to other unions, or else sold to the public under the current market-price. But none of these nor any similar propositions were sanctioned by the commissioners, who nevertheless failed not to urge upon boards of guardians the importance of enforcing work of some kind amongst the inmates, not only as tending to promote health and keep up habits of industry, but also as a means of securing the discipline of the establishment, and maintaining the efficiency of the workhouse as a test of destitution.

The workhouse children.

The case of the workhouse children differs essentially from that of the adults. The house is no longer a test, as applied to them; but a place of refuge, supplying in a great degree the wants of home, and responsible also for the fulfilment of home duties. Every consideration of humanity and policy therefore establishes the propriety, not only of providing for the education of these children, but also for their instruction in useful occupations by which they may earn their subsistence in after life; and much appears to have been done in these respects with the children of both sexes in the several workhouses. The power conferred of forming district industrial schools had not yet been acted upon, neither under the depressing circumstances which have existed in most parts of the country, could it be expected that the guardians would attempt to found such institutions, which must, especially at the outset, entail a very considerable expenditure.

Amount of expenditure, and numbers relieved.

The expenditure from the rates on the relief of the poor in the 131 unions during the twelve months ending 29th September 1849, as stated in Table No. 1, Appendix B, was 2,177,651l.[^[187]] The number of inmates on that day was 141,030 and the total number relieved in the workhouses during the year was 932,284. The number then receiving out-door relief was 135,019; and the total number who received out-door relief during the year was 1,210,482.

1851.
Fourth annual report of the Poor Law Commissioners for Ireland.

The commissioners’ Report for 1850-51 is dated on the 5th May. After giving the usual statistics, and adverting to the fact that the maximum number on the out-relief lists in the previous year terminating on the 29th September 1850, was 148,909, whilst in the following seven months the number had in no instance exceeded 10,935; the commissioners “notice the still more satisfactory circumstance, that during the year ended 29th September 1850, and the seven months which had since elapsed, the worst evils of the famine, such as the occurrence of deaths by the wayside, a high rate of mortality in the workhouses, and the prevalence of dangerous and contagious diseases, had undergone a very material abatement.” This change was, they consider, owing to a combination of favourable circumstances; but they “do not hesitate to affirm that the extension of workhouse room had afforded the means of relieving actual destitution, far more efficiently than could have been done by a corresponding expenditure in out-door relief; and that life has been preserved with more certainty, and the general condition of the population been improved, wherever a sufficient extent of workhouse room has enabled the guardians to meet all applications for relief, and thus to remove from the minds of the labouring population every expectation of the recurrence of an extensive system of out-door relief.”

State of the workhouses.

With regard to the mortality which had occurred in the workhouses, it is remarked “that an accumulation of cases of chronic sickness among persons who survived the famine, but whose enfeebled constitutions afford little hope of any other result than a permanent residence in the workhouse, had filled the workhouse hospitals and infirmaries with a great number of sick.” Many of these poor people die in the more inclement seasons of winter and spring, and thus the average mortality of the workhouses is stated in the returns to be increased. Yet if not admitted into the workhouse, larger numbers would have perished, as is shown by the great mortality which took place in the county of Clare, where the unions were too much impoverished to provide sufficient workhouse accommodation for the extent of destitution that prevailed, the condition of Clare being at this time much worse than any other part of Ireland. The people had there suffered more, and the revival of the potato crop had brought them less relief. |State of Clare.| They exhibited in fact an exception to the improvement elsewhere happily apparent, and nowhere more so than in Connaught, the unions in which province were among the most forward in recovering from the effects of the famine.