Annual report for the year 1910 : (13th year of issue) / Metropolitan Asylums Board.
- Metropolitan Asylums Board (London, England)
- Date:
- 1911
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Annual report for the year 1910 : (13th year of issue) / Metropolitan Asylums Board. Source: Wellcome Collection.
18/398
![probable introduction of a scheme for national insurance against sickness,, invalidity and unemployment, these must inevitably re-act on the work of all poor law authorities to an extent which it is not possible now to forecast, but it cannot be doubted that they will eventually largely restrict the operation of the poor law so far as adults are concerned to those destitute persons, who by total incapacity are debarred from any prospect of occupying a useful place in the community. 4. Nothing has occurred to weaken the view expressed last year that, poor law work should continue to be controlled by entirely separate authorities, the manifold activities of municipal corporations being already more than sufficient to occupy all the time they have at their disposal. Meanwhile the progress made in poor law reform by administrative measures is being steadily continued under the present regime at the Local Government Board. 5. The question of classification is one to which frequent reference is made by poor law reformers, but the experience of the Board has shown that the desired results can best be obtained by adequate grouping of areas under one independent authority rather than by dividing the classes to be provided for between different committees. 6. Sir Arthur Downes, M.D., Senior Medical Inspector of the Local Board for Poor Law purposes and a member of the Poor Law Commission, in a recent publication on poor law reform writes The principle adopted [i.e., the grouping of units of administrative areas for such general or special purposes as local needs may require] was the keynote of the Metropolitan Poor Act, 1867, and it is to be hoped that no final decision as to future legislation will be arrived at without a careful examination of the more than forty years’ experience of the departure then taken by Mr. Gathorne Hardy. It may not be generally known that— taking only a sub-division of their work—the Metropolitan Asylums Board have now under admirable care with infinite classification, approximately four thousand poor law children (exclusive of those certified as of unsound mind) ; that during the last five years, although this work has doubled, they have not raised a loan for any purpose. So satisfactory indeed is their present financial position that within the same period they have paid off nearly one million pounds of their outstanding debt, and within eleven years from now will have cleared the remaining two and a half millions if no new obligations are put upon them. I attribute this achievement firstly to the advantage which a single authority for various classes of public assistance has in adapting its accommodation to special needs as the occasion may require, thereby avoiding the waste which must attend a multiplication of authorities to take the different classes. Secondly to a recognition of the fact that a great administrative body must depend on its own constitution for an effectual financial control. The idea that such a control could be applied by another body or by an independent committee, as contemplated by the County Councils Association, would be found in practice both ineffective and productive of friction. I give this illustration of work within my own knowledge, because the recent history of the Metropolitan Asylums Board is not generally well known, and because it affords an actual example of the principle which underlies the suggestions.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b3030037x_0018.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
