Volume 1

Annual report of the Poor Law Commissioners for England and Wales.

  • Board of guardians
Date:
1835-1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Poor Law Commissioners for England and Wales. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/430 (page 11)
    the Districts first Re-organized. 1] setting able-bodied paupers to work during the day, and allowing them to return to their own homes during the night, were pre- sented to us in practice. It was reported to us, in a large proportion of the cases where ‘we recommended the employment of labourers at task-work, that no fitting land could be obtained at a reasonable expense within the bounds of the single parish, .. Where land was offered, it was frequently perceived, that in providing for this mode of relief considerable danger of jobbing was incurred. ‘The parish farms which have come within our knowledge have all failed of their objects, and have proved to be sources of malversation. Next we had to encounter the difficulties in procuring agents, at any expense proportionate to the gain, to superintend the en- forcement of labour within the smaller parishes. ‘To these difficul- ties were added others in the enforcement of the performance of labour upon sound principles; difficulties usually arising from the erroneous notions of the parish officers as to the obtainment of a profit from the labour, and the erroneous notions of the labourers as to the amount of work which they are bound to give, and of the wages they are entitled to receive from the parish. And fur- ther, the mode of relief was beset by the difficulties adverted to in the instance we have cited, in providing for the necessary inter- ruptions of out-door labour in winter and during bad weather. _ Another practical inconvenience presented to us with relation to such labour of out-door paupers applied independently of any workhouse, is the difficulty of separating and distinguishing the out-door pauper from the independent labourer. The pauper is not distinguished from other labourers when engaged at out-door work. He associates with the other labourers under circumstances to familiarize them with pauper feelings and habits. Out-door labour without the workhouse has also this great and generally insuperable disadvantage, that it is a form of relief which is pecu- liarly liable to be made subservient to plans for pauperizing the independent labourer, inasmuch as it is a form of relief presenting in some degree the aspect of his regular employment, to which he can least object when offered or suggested to him by any em- ployer, who intends to obtain from the parish a contribution of rates in lieu of the wages he would otherwise be compelled to give. ‘These and other circumstances often render this mode of