Among the German towns in which Poor Law Authorities possess and enforce the powers here referred to, are the four Saxon towns of Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz, and Plauen, also Stuttgart, Hamburg, Oldenburg, Ulm, Heilbronn, Ludwigsburg, Rostock, Schwerin, and Dessau. I have described the Dresden Labour House in another place,[66] and it will be sufficient for present purposes to summarise the principal characteristics of the Leipzig institution.
MUNICIPAL LABOUR HOUSE AT LEIPZIG.
This municipal Labour House is one of the oldest institutions of the town, for the building was anciently a monastic hospital; later it served for the reception of orphans, deserted and neglected children, imbeciles, etc., and it has been applied to its present purpose for some seventeen years.
The Labour House is officially described as serving for "the detention, suitable employment, and moral improvement" of the following classes of people:—
(a) Work-shy, intemperate and dissolute persons who, owing to their mode of life, become chargeable, or cause others for whose maintenance they are responsible to become chargeable, to the Poor Law.
(b) Persons under eighteen years who become a public nuisance owing to demoralisation, neglect, or idleness, and whose detention is proposed by their parents or guardians.
(c) Children under fifteen years who are in danger of moral contamination until they can be placed in reformatories, in so far as it is inexpedient to admit them into the Municipal Orphanage.
(d) Homeless persons whom it is inexpedient to place elsewhere (in this case only temporary detention is contemplated).
(e) Persons sentenced by the police to simple detention with hard labour.
(f) Persons sentenced by the Police to simple detention who wish to be employed during their term of confinement and who voluntarily enter the House.