Transcriber's note. The cover image was created by thetranscriber and is placed in the public domain.
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.,
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON,
NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA.
1910. (Second Impression, 1913)
Nothing of to-day, it may be suggested, can be really understood withoutits history. This, at any rate, is true of the complicated policy of theEnglish Poor Law, which is now (1910) costing the public (for the UnitedKingdom) close upon twenty millions sterling every year; and which isproducing, on the whole, results which led the Royal Commissioners of1905-1909, without distinction of political or economic party or creed,to their unanimous and emphatic condemnatory verdict. That policy isembodied in a bewildering chaos of Statutes and Orders, Circulars andMinutes, general reports and official letters, the specific provisionsof which, so far as they are contemporaneously in force, and so far asthey are publicly known, the legal text-books and elementary manualsseek to re-arrange in such a way that the Poor Law Guardian or WorkhouseMaster may learn, at any rate, what is legally prescribed. But though aprecise statement of what is to-day prescribed, in alphabetical or otherorder, may suffice for the practical work of the administrator, it doesnot afford us any idea of the general policy that lies behind theprescriptions, and fails even to enable the ordinary citizen tounderstand what is being done. We suggest, in short, that the EnglishPoor Law policy of to-day cannot be correctly appreciated, or evenintelligently comprehended, without some knowledge of the stages throughwhich, in the course of the past seventy-five years, it has graduallybeen moulded into its present form. To any one who compares the contentsof the Annual Report of the Local Government Board of to-day with thoseof the slim little volume in which the Poor Law Commissioners of 1835described their activity, it will be evident that, throughout the wholerange of the [vi] Poor Law, the Policy of the Central Authority hasundergone great changes. What these changes have actually been, and atwhat dates and in what order they occurred, the following chronologicalanalysis of the action of the Poor Law Commissioners, the Poor LawBoard, and the Local Government Board for England and Wales attempts toset forth.
The extent, the complication, and what may be thought the aridity ofthis analysis may probably daunt many who ought to read it. But if theywill persevere, they will find that the severe and exact chronologicalrecord through which they are taken with regard to each class ofpaupers—the Able-bodied, the Vagrants, the Sick, the Women, theChildren, the Aged, etc.—will presently reveal to them the currentin which they are themselves moving, the stream of tendencies down whichwe are all floating, with a clearness of comprehension not otherwise tobe obtained. It is here not a question of whether we approve of thisevolution of policy, or of whether we should seek to promote or toresist it, but merely of what exactly it has been, and therefore now is.
In view of the attention given to the Poor Law by many writers, it is,perhaps, a matter for surprise, that no such chronological analysis ofpolicy has before been undertaken. Except in regard to a few specialmatters, it is impossible, in any published work, to trace the exactcourse of development of English Poor Law policy since