Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress.
- Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress 1905-09
- Date:
- 1909
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. Source: Wellcome Collection.
230/1272 page 204
![OF THE POOR LAW. is that, where this form of relief with employment is given to meet a genuine and temporary crisis, and where the men are expected and made to give real work, it has answered its purpose well, and has enabled the recipients to tide over the difficult time until they could resume work under normal conditions. 454, But, unfortunately, after the first period of careful administration the tendency has always been for Guardians to allow this form of relief to become permanent, and even to keep a stoneyard always open as a rough-and-ready way of disposing of any able-bodied applicant. When this is the case there grows up a nucleus of loafers, who have found the stoneyard under lax supervision an easy way of earning a scanty living, and who act as a centre of corruption when the crisis does come and the respectable workers are forced to have recourse to the Poor Law. 455. We find this difficulty strongly emphasised in 1870-1, when Mr. Wodehouse reported that in the Metropolis the Guardians were giving orders for the labour-yard for indefinite periods, and that young able-bodied men were becoming permanent habitués of them. “In the City of London Union a relieving officer informed me that two young men, perfectly able-bodied, had been working in the labour-yard for more than two years. In Mile End Old Town I was informed that a man, aged sixty-two, had not been absent from the labour yard for seven daysin eighteen months. The class of men who are to be found in the labour-yards during the summer months are probably the least deserving class of paupers that could be named, and it is certain that in the case of many of them the labour-yard does not act as a sufficient test, In“the) Parish of07.. 22... 208. Westminster, a week’s notice was given a few months ago that after the expiration of that time no further relief in the labour-yard could be given to able-bodied men or women without families. Of the seventy paupers who were discharged under this order, only eight were found to have sought admission into the workhouse.”! ; 456. Upon extending his investigations into the country, Mr. Wodehouse found that the labour-yard was being converted into a means of maintaining the farmer’s labourers for him, much as in the days preceding 1834 :— a “In unions in which relief is habitually given during the winter under the Supplemental Outdoor Labour Test Order, the same individuals are, in many instances, found to apply for it winter after winter. In the Gravesend and Milton Union I asked an applicant for relief how he got his living during the summer, to which he replied that he worked for Mr. 7 naming a farmer in the neighbourhood. I then enquired how he lived during the winter, to which he answered: ‘I work for the guardians here in Gravesend.’” , 457. The difficulty has made itself felt even more strongly in our own time. Accordin z to Mr. Davy :— } “Under the Regulation Order, or under the Prohibitory Order where the guardians have an Outdoor Labour Test Order attached, the guardians may give outdoor relief to able-bodied men under what is known as the stone-yard system, that is to say, the men are given a certain number of days’ work in the stone-yard, in lieu of being taken into the workhouse.”2 And Mr. Bagenal states that :— “A labour yard is a thing that has to be very carefully guarded and watched, becausé there are certain classes of the community who are perfectly willing, for some curious reasons to live on the most ridiculously small wage, so long as it is regular. They can get a regular subsistence out of a labour yard as long as it is there and they can go to it. ‘These sort of people become stereotyped, and unless you can deal with them in varied ways, they will be on top of you all the time.” i _ 458. This difficulty arises when the work in the labour-yard is less strenuous or con- tinuous than work outside, and there is a great tendency in this direction :— | “I myself,” says Mr. Davy, “have known men who have been six or seven years in the stone- yard. The Order says that the man shall be kept on work during the time he is being relieved, which would mean he ought to be kept on work for six days a week. Now do what we can—and we have written some very forcible letters on the subject recently—we have th utmost difficulty in preventing boards of guardians giving a man one, or two, or three days a we ok in the yard.”4 1 Twenty-third Annual Report, Poor Law Board [Cd. 396], 1871, p.33. 2Davy, 2443. 8 Bagenal, 7 662, 4Davy, 2443. ‘ 4](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32170555_0230.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
