Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. : Appendix Volume XIX A. Report by the Rev. J.C. Pringle on the effects of employment or assistance given to the "unemployed" since 1886 as a means of relieving distress outside the Poor Law in Scotland.
- Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress 1905-09
- Date:
- 1910
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. : Appendix Volume XIX A. Report by the Rev. J.C. Pringle on the effects of employment or assistance given to the "unemployed" since 1886 as a means of relieving distress outside the Poor Law in Scotland. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![(ii.) To the secretaries of trade unions, when a large number of Scottish replies were received. These were not tabulated. If time permitted of this being done now the results would only facilitate a comparison between 1885 and some previous years. They would not establish recurrence of depressed periods or explain them, though in the aggregate they demonstrate a very general depression culminating in 1886. 2. At the beginning of January, 1894, the general superintendent was asked by the chairman of the Board of Supervision to make an inquiry regarding the relief of the able-bodied unemployed. He reported on February 10th in that year that he had found depression in Dundee, Aberdeen, Leith, Greenock, Galashiels and Hawick. The sum of the evidence collected by him—again not tabulated in any way whatever—would appear to indicate that the year 1892-3 may have been one of unusual depression, but not the year 1893-4, taking Scotland as a whole. Evidence was taken from inspectors of poor, town clerks, labour correspondents of the Board of Trader Charity Organisation and similar societies. Agreements among Sources concerning Depressions. To labour apparent agreements would probably lead to fallacious conclusions. The Edinburgh and Leith Poor's Associations agree in showing 1874-5, 1877-8,. 1878-9 as years of depression. The Glasgow Poor Bate figures corroborate 1878-9, and, in fact, it was the year of the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank. The distress recorded by the Edinburgh Poor's Association in 1880-1 may be another aftermath of that catastrophe. The Leith, Aberdeen and Paisley Poor's Associations found 1885-6 a bad year, likewise the Glasgow Parish Council, the Greenock Savings Bank, the Clyde shipbuilding industry,, and the Dundee shipbuilding industry. The charts show shipbuilding to have been bad in Dundee, Edinburgh and Aberdeen in 1896, in those three and on the Clyde in 1897, and the Paisley Poor's Association found 1896-7 a bad year. The Dundee Year Book shows 1893 to have been a poor shipbuilding year ; the~ Greenock savings bank had a bad year then, and it was a relief work year in several Scottish, centres. (6) The Peedominant Causes op Distress at such Periods. In other words, what are the chief reasons why a section of the population is reduced to varying degrees of destitution when there is a lack of employment ? Whether special periods can be identified or not in Scotland, there seems no doubt that in certain years the resources of a number of people were known to be reduced to a minimum, although it is possible that their resources were very little, if at all, greater in other years. The distress at least is certain. Why have the persons in question not been able to provide for their own necessities ? This article presents]^matter illustrative of the causes of this phenomenon :— ' In Glasgow, from the evidence of Messrs. Jas. Bell (Lord Provost), J. B. Motion^ Inspector of Poor, and A. J. Hunter, secretary of the trades council, given before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the distress due to lack of employment; from 1895. Mr. Motion's Eeport on the subject in 1904-5 and from various articles of his on distress and Poor Law; from the evidence given by Dr. Chalmers to the Inter Departmental 1904. Inquiry on Physical Deterioration ; from the evidence taken by the Eoyal Commission, on Alien Immigration ; and from a Eeport by the chief sanitary inspector for Glasgow. 1906. In Edinburgh, from the Eeport of the Charity Organisation Society on 1,400 school children : 1905. In Dundee, from the Eeport on Housing and Industrial Conditions in Dundee by the Dundee Social Union; from the Memorandum on Employment of Mothers in Factories NOTE.—References made in this Volume, and in the Reports of the Gomm'>ssion to the pages in this Volume^ are to the page-numbering in brackets. irst and Second 'eports.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2439998x_0026.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
