POOR LAWS. According to Dr. Johnson the term pauper means a poor person ' • one who receives alms. The term, however, Mr. Glen says, is hardly known to the law, and very rarely occurs in any of the statutes relating to the relief of the poor. The word "poor" by the 4 & 5 Wm. IV. c. 76,8.109, is to be construed "to include any pauper or poor or indigent person applying for or receiving relief from the poor rates in England or Wales, or chargeable thereto ;" and in the Lunacy Act, 16 & 17 Viet. c. 97, a. 132, the word pauper " shall mean every person maintained wholly or in part by or chargeable to any parish, union, or county." The latter is the most convenient use of the term, and the word "pauper"" will be so understood in this article.
Those who are ordinarily designated paupers are only one class or division among several who are in the condition of poverty. The poor, as distinguished from the paupers, may be distributed into three classes. 1. Persens without capital, who, being capable of labour, and finding employment, are able to obtain the means of subsistence and no more. 2. Mendicants, capable of labouring, but who will not work, and subsist by obtaining contributions from the humane and charitable. 3. Persona destitute through sickness, infirmity, desertion, or any other cause, and relieved by private charity.
The great object of the earlier efforts in pauper legislation was the restraint of vagrancy. The 12 Richard II. c. 7 (1388), prohibits any labourer from quitting his dwelling-place without a testimonial from a justice of the peace, showing reasonable cause for his going, and without such a testimonial any such wanderer might be appre hended and put in the stocks. Impotent persons were to remain in the towns where they were dwelling at the passing of the Act, pro vided the inhabitants would support them; otherwise they were to go to the places of their birth, to be there supported. By Acta passed in the 11 & 19 of Henry VII. (1495 and 1504) impotent beggars were required to go to the hundred where they had last dwelt for three years, or where they were born, and were forbidden to beg elsewhere. By the Act 22 Henry VIII. c. 12 (1531), justices were directed to assign to impotent poor persons a district within which they might beg, and beyond which they were forbidden to beg, under pain of being imprisoned and kept in the stocks on bread and water. Able-bodied beggars were to be whipped and forced to return to their place of birth, or where they had last lived for three years.
These Acts appear to have had no permanent effect in repressing vagrancy. An Act passed in 1536 (27 Ilenry VIII. C. 25) is the first by which voluntary charity was converted into compulsory payment. It enacts that the head officers of every parish to which the impotent or able-bodied poor may resort under the provisions of the Act of 1531, ehall receive and keep them, so that none shall be compelled to beg openly. The able-bodied were to be kept to constant labour, and
every parish making default was to forfeit twenty shillings a month. The money required for the support of the poor was to be collected partly by the head officers of corporate towns and the church wardens of parishes, and partly was to be derived from collections in the churches, and on various occasions where the clergy bad opportunities for exhorting the people to charity. Almsgiving beyond the town or Parish was prohibited, on forfeiture of ten times the amount given. A sturdy beggar" was to be whipped the first time he was detected in begging; to have his right ear cropped for the second offence ; and if again guilty of begging, was to be indicted " for wandering, loitering, and idleness," and if convicted was " to suffer execution of death as a felon and an enemy of the common wealth." The severity of this Act prevented its execution, and it was repealed by 1 Edward VI. c. 3 (1547). Under this statute every able bodied person who should not apply himself to some honest labour, or offer to serve for even meat and drink, was to be taken for a vagabond, branded on the shoulder, and adjudged a slave for two years to any one who shall demand to be fed on bread and water and refuse meat, and made to work by being beaten, chained, or otherwise treated. If he ran away during the two years, he was to be branded on the cheek, and adjudged a slave for life, and if he ran away again, he was to suffer death as a felon. If not demanded as a slave, he was to be kept to hard labour on the highways in chains. The impotent poor were to be passed to their place of birth or settlement, from the hands of oue parish constable to those of another. This statute, was repealed three years after, and that of 1531 was revived. In 1551 an Act was passed directing that a book should be kept in every parish, containing the names of the house holders nod of the impotent poor ; that collectors of alms should be appointed who should " gently ask every man and woman what they of their charity will give weekly to the relief of the poor." If any one able to give should refuse or discourage others from giving, the ministers and churchwardens were to exhort him, and, failing of success, the bishop was to admonish him on the subject. This Act, and another made to enforce it, which was passed in 1555, were wholly ineffectual, and in 1563 it was re-enacted (5 Eliz. c. 3), with the addition that any person able to contribute and refusing should be cited by the bishop to appear at the next sessions before the justices, where, if he would not be persuaded to give, the justices were to tax him according to their discretion,and on his refusal he was to be committed to jail until the sum taxed should be paid, with all arrears.