Volume 1
The Minority report of the Poor law commission.
- Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress 1905-09
- Date:
- 1909
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: The Minority report of the Poor law commission. Source: Wellcome Collection.
40/978 page 26
![CHAPTER II THE OUTDOOR RELIEF OF TO-DAY The common alternative to maintenance in the Genera] Mixed Workhouse, in England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland alike, is, for all classes of the non-able-bodied, a small allowance, usually weekly, of money, food, and, less frequently, clothing. This practice, which is as old as the Elizabethan Poor Laws, was not condemned, and was scarcely even criticised in the Report of 1834. In contrast with the emphatic condemnation of Outdoor Relief to the able-bodied, the authors of the Report of 1834, like the Poor Law Commissioners of 1835-47, seem, in fact, to have acquiesced, so far as the non-able-bodied classes were con- cerned, in a continuance of the then existing practice of staving off destitution by small money doles, which, in cases of permanent incapacity or old age, became weekly allowances almost mechanically continued during life. There were, however, two requirements made by the Report of 1834 in respect of the administration of relief to the non-able-bodied, as well as to the able-bodied. “ Uniformity in the administration of relief,” says the Report, “ we deem essential, as a means, first, of reducing the perpetual shifting from parish to parish, and fraudu- lent removals to parishes where profuse management pre- vails, from parishes where the management is less profuse ; secondly, of preventing the discontents which arise among the paupers maintained in the less profuse management, from comparing it with the more profuse management of adjacent districts; and thirdly, of bringing the manage- ment, which consist in details, more closely within the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24872726_0001_0040.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
