Poor Law

Except in the case of vagrants, relief is normally given to a person only in his own parish, i.e., the parish in which he is legally "settled." Settlement is acquired by birth, marriage, own ership or occupation of property, apprenticeship, or residence. Residence for three years constitutes a full settlement ; but one year's residence gives a status of "irremovability." The harsh settlement laws that caused so much mischief in the old days have been very greatly modified ; but paupers can be, and still are, removed from one Union to another. Removal orders must be signed by two justices of the peace. Of course relief is not withheld because of a doubt or dispute about a person's settle ment. It is given, and the questions of chargeability and re moval are decided subsequently between the Unions concerned.

Vagrancy.

The treatment of vagrancy has certain peculiari ties. The casual ward is subject to the strict regulations of the central authority in respect of tasks, dietary, sleeping accommoda tion, bathing and conditions of admission and discharge. Normally the casual cannot leave before the morning of the second day following his admission, nor till he has finished the task which is the price of his food and lodging. But if he satisfies the superin tendent that he is definitely seeking work, he may be discharged after one night. The casual's task may be stone-breaking, digging, pumping, wood-cutting or grinding, and for women, washing, scrubbing, or cleaning. Oakum-picking was abolished in 1925. Since the report of the royal commission in 1909, some reforms have been introduced in the administration. In the provinces there are county vagrancy committees, representing the boards of guar dians within the county, or sometimes a larger area. Through these committees a more or less uniform treatment is secured, the cost of relief of the casual paupers is pooled, and arrangements are made for mid-day meals and other forms of assistance to men on the tramp for work. Boards of guardians are not compelled to come into these combinations, and many refuse to. Some of the independent casual wards are very unsatisfactory. The majority of the boards, however, have come in, and in 1927 the vagrancy committees represented 48o Unions. In London all the casual wards have been managed since 1912 by one central body, the Metropolitan Asylums Board. The majority of the members of the M.A.B. are representatives of the 25 London boards of guar dians, the rest are nominated by the Ministry of Health. Besides the management of the casual wards it has a number of other duties; e.g., it maintains isolation hospitals (for non-pauper as well as pauper cases), asylums for the mentally defective, a colony for sane epileptics, and the Exmouth training-ship for poor-law boys.

Scotland.

The Scottish system closely resembles the English. It begins with an Act of 1579, entitled "For Punishment of the Strong and Idle Beggars, and Relief of the Poor and Impotent," which corresponds to the English act of 1601. The Poor Law Amendment (Scotland) Act, 1845, corresponding to the English act of 1834, established poorhouses and local authorities known as parochial boards. These were replaced in 2894 by parish

councils, whose duties in regard to the relief of destitution are very much the same as those of the boards of guardians, and which are under the supervision of the Scottish Board of Health. One peculiar feature of the Scottish poor law may be noted, how ever; an able-bodied person, until 1921, had no legal right to relief of any kind. An act of that year, the Poor Law Emergency Pro visions (Scotland) Act, supplemented by another in 1927, gave the right, but only for a limited period (till the end of 1928).

The Old Poor Law.

The Old Poor Law was the creation of Tudor statesmen, and was forced upon them by the necessities of their age. After the Reformation the Church was no longer equal to the task of relieving the needs of the poor, and the social and economic changes of the 15th and 16th centuries had multiplied the numbers of the vagrants and the "idle and disorderly." Various measures were passed for dealing with the mischief, and these were eventually codified in the famous statute of the 43rd year of Elizabeth (16o ). Every parish was required to appoint over seers, whose duty it was to levy rates for the relief of the poor. The rates were to be expended for the apprenticeship of children whose parents could not maintain them ; for providing work for the able-bodied unemployed ; and for assisting those who were unable to work owing to sickness, age or other infirmity. The Elizabethan system was fairly successful for a generation or so, but with the Civil War decay set in. After 1662 the difficulties were aggravated by the law of settlement (under which any per son who came to live in a parish not his own might, if he seemed likely to become a charge on the rates, be turned out, and sent back to the place where he "belonged") and abuses rapidly in creased. Experiments in reform were tried at intervals throughout the 18th century—workhouses, the farming-out of the poor to contractors, and various forms of outdoor relief, ranging from the payment of unconditional doles to the hiring of paupers to farmers at nominal wages which were supplemented out of the rates. Finally the "Speenhamland system" spread far and wide. This developed out of a rule made in 1795 by the Berkshire magis trates, meeting at the Pelican inn, Speenhamland, that allowances of money should be given on a sliding scale regulated by the price of bread. In the early part of the 19th century pauperism was a canker in the body politic, and its cost a crippling burden. In 1818 poor law expenditure reached the figure of nearly £8,000, 000, or 13/3d. per head of the population, and though it fell a little in the following years, it stood at £7,000,000, or 10/– per head of the population, in 1832. In that year a royal commission was appointed to enquire into the whole system, and its recom mendations were the basis of the reforms which were embodied in the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.