Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 377, March 1847

The reader may have inquired, upon observing the number of classes into which the recipients of relief are proposed to be arranged, how can accuracy be ensured – how can they be preserved intact? It is admitted, that unless the grounds of the distinctions are clearly defined, and the facts of frequent occurrence, the classes will manifest a tendency to amalgamation. If the reader will take the trouble to refer to the form of “Weekly Relief List” below,3 he will perceive that the fourth, fifth, and sixth classes, have but one column. This was done, because it might be deemed that the distinctions which are there noted might escape the observation of Boards of Guardians. It is not our opinion. We have great confidence in the yeomanry and gentry of England, of whom Boards of Guardians are composed; and we believe that much of the bitter animosity manifested by the local boards against the triumvirate at Somerset House, owes its existence to the authoritative attempts on the part of the latter to prevent these boards from recognising in any practical manner these very distinctions. Independently of this, the period for which the relief is ordered may be so determined as to allow of a particular time for each class; this will be made clear as we proceed. And, lastly, a brief and accurate description of each of the classes may be printed at the head of each of the pages of the Diary, Report Book, and Relief List.

The first class consists of aged and infirm persons who have no natural relations, but are enabled to eke out a subsistence with the aid of an out-door allowance from the parish. The poor of this class are frequently in receipt of other relief. It may be a tribute of memory from a child she nursed, from a family he served, an occasional donation from the church they attend, or a weekly trifle from one of those benevolent societies that assist the aged poor to retain their accustomed dwelling, or to enjoy the unexpensive luxuries which habit has made necessary. The circumstances of each of the individuals in these classes are presumed to be known through the report of the officer; and as each case, when health and vicinity of residence permit, appears personally before the board, it may be carried forward for revisal that day twelve months. The whole of the cases belonging to this class would be so treated. They may be distributed over a given number of Board days, and during a particular month of the year. In the month of July all the names of the poor of this class would appear in the Diary; and the reports of the relieving officer would then be called for, in the order in which the names are entered. Of course, if any change of circumstances should occur in the interval, application may be made to the officer; and as they are paid at their homes in the majority of instances, the application may then be made. At the end of twelve months, each case is formally revisited and reported. It would then appear that some are dead, some are bed-ridden, some are childish, and require an asylum – second childhood has commenced, and they require the nurture of children; they are therefore admitted into the Union. A few others have lost a bounty through the death of a friend, and their allowance requires augmentation.

The entrance to this class should be carefully guarded against admission by accident or undue influence. For instance, a lady not indisposed to relieve human suffering, receives an indirect application from a respectable elderly female, for charitable aid. Her charitable list is full, but she does not like to send her empty away, although she knows nothing of the person except through the excellent note of introduction. Temporary relief is given. The lady’s husband has an intimate friend, who is a guardian. And, through this medium, the female becomes an applicant for parochial relief. Forms are complied with. A sketch of her circumstances is entered in the Report Book, with such accuracy as the fact of the report being required at the next board meeting permitted. Her name appearing at the end of the page of the Diary which now lies before the chairman, and her turn having come, the guardian blandly informs the meeting, that a case has come to his knowledge, of whose fitness to be a recipient of their bounty he is credibly informed there can be no doubt; and the chairman is only too certain that a case so brought before them should be liberally responded to. An unusual amount of relief is given, and the name put on the yearly list. And thus, a decent person, who had by sometimes working, and by sometimes receiving those occasional aids to which her long life of probity and prudence had given her a title, is beguiled into that which it had really been the great object of her life to avoid. Thousands who have been accustomed to a life of labour, and especially those females who have lived in decent servitude, regard the workhouse with horror. Now, to avoid errors of this kind, and also to ensure that the necessities of the case are thoroughly known, it ought to be a “standing order” of the board that no case shall be draughted into the yearly list, without having been visited and reported upon six several times.

The second class consists of those aged and infirm persons who possess relations who are legally liable to be made to contribute towards their support, or who have friends and relations who, in virtue of those social ties which bind men together, may be reasonably expected to assist them. The separation of the individuals of this class from those of the former one, is not made on the single ground that, according to law, sons and unmarried daughters, and grandchildren, call be compelled to support their sires. If the parochial authorities had no stronger appeal than that which the law of Elizabeth affords, the pauper list would soon be filled to overflowing. The law is more correct in principle than efficient in practice. Fortunately, the natural feelings of humanity effect that spontaneously, which the law with its penalties cannot compel. It is a matter of daily remark by those who mix much and observantly among the poor – not the class merely who struggle hard to preserve a decent appearance, and to drive destitution from their dwelling’s but those who have no qualities which can engage, whose ordinary habits are those of intemperance, whose manners are rough, and whose language is coarse and obscure – and to a class still lower, who are steeped in vice and crime, who seem regardless of God or man, and to whom society appears to have done its worst; that even in these rude, uncultivated, and depraved human beings, a strong under-current of natural feeling wells up and flows perpetually. So strongly are these feelings sometimes manifested in such characters, that they appear to be developed with an intensity proportionate to the extent to which the other feelings have been wrecked, and to the loss of sympathy which these miserables have sustained from the world. It is too often forgotten by those who are concerned for the poor, that these feelings – the love of parents for offspring, and the reverence of children for parents – are instinctive, and that their activity depends upon the fact, whether there are children to be loved and parents to be revered. And this being so, we may be satisfied that they are not extinct in any case. They may not be expressed in good set terms, or in the ordinary language of endearment. The conversation of these persons may sound harsh to unaccustomed ears, and the acts may often coincide with the words. But the bond of union is seen in acts of mutual defence, in acts of mutual aggression, and in acts of mutual assistance. The true ground of separation is, that it would be highly inexpedient, and prejudicial to public morals, if the duties of these relations were to be forgotten or superseded. And, therefore, when it appears from the relieving officer’s report that such connexions exist, the cases should be relieved of course; but it should be intimated that these parties are expected to assist; and it should be formally declared, that they are legally and morally bound so to do. In the majority of instances, the result would be satisfactory. This is not said because a trifle might be saved to parishes. It would most frequently happen, that all these parties could do would be to add a luxury very dear to the aged person, but which the parochial board could hardly grant. A daughter in service may send an article of apparel, a son-in-law may give a Sunday’s dinner, and a son may make a weekly contribution of grocery. In general, it being presumed that the several boards of guardians present a fair average of human nature, no reduction of allowance would ensue. In many instances the result flowing from this method would be still more satisfactory. It so happens in the strife for subsistence, that each striver is so occupied by his own affairs – and even when increased ability or established probity and diligence, has led, to the receipt of a higher wage, the mind is either so entirely absorbed by the new duties and increased responsibilities, or luxuries have so stealthily slipped from their places and become necessities – that he is apt to forget his poorer brethren, who, less fortunate than himself, or unblessed with his own patience and steadiness —

“Poor wights! nae rules nor roads observin’,To right or left eternal swervin’,They zig-zag on,’Till, curst with age obscure and starvin’,They aften groan.”

The attention of this prosperous relation must be arrested. Here is a fact. A man at the advanced age of seventy-six years, and his wife still more aged, applied for relief. He is a mechanic. He had never applied for relief during the threescore years and ten, and upwards, to which his life has spun out. Assistance was rendered. The law of settlement intervened, occasioned much trouble, and prevented the case from being dealt with permanently. This hinderance afforded an opportunity for the relations to consult and arrange. One son is at work in a distant county. Another is a mechanic with a full wage; he has four children – but he is industrious and temperate. The daughter is married to a clerk in a lawyer’s office, and has already two children. No magistrate would make an “order of maintenance” upon the sons, and the daughter being married is not liable. But a consultation is held of relations and friends. That member of the family upon whom there can be no legal demand, and whose circumstances are the least flourishing, is the first to make a proposal. He will take the old lady home: she can have a chair in the chimney-corner, and mind the children when their mother is away. The son in the country will give one or two shillings weekly, according as work is abundant. The son in town will guarantee the payment for the old man’s lodging. The right to a meal is not thought of – it is a matter of course. The old man had supposed that his work on earth was done; and he had therefore fallen into despondency. But the events of the last week have restored him to that elasticity of mind which had sustained him through many trials. Hope is again in the ascendant, and pours upon him her genial influence. His helpmate is provided for; and he has a home secured to himself, and is not in danger of starvation. He now says, “There is some work left in me yet.” He can no longer be the first in the throng, but he can take his place in the crowd. He can do all sorts of odd, light, casual jobs; and by the exercise of that perseverance and care, which enabled him during his long life to drive want from his homestead, he can provide for the future. He is no longer an applicant for parochial relief. This class may be easily distinguished, practically, from the former one, and from all others, without making any distinction or reference to the mode or value of the relief. Each case, after it has been visited and reported upon by the officer six several times, in the same way, and for the same reasons as class number one, must be carried forward in the chairman’s Diary to that board day in the summer months which has been appropriated for the class. This class would undergo revision twice in the year. The reports of the officer would especially refer to the circumstances of relations, and state the assistance which they do or are able to render. All this would become matter of routine.

The third class differs from the two former, in respect that the individuals who compose it are not aged, but are likely to be permanent burdens on parishes, from malformation of brain, or a disturbance in the sensuous system. They are idiotic, fatuous, blind, deaf or lame, or permanently disabled by chronic disease. It has been said that the workhouse is the best place for such persons; and in some localities it may be so. But there are places, where benevolent expedients have been adopted, which have saved these unfortunates from that stagnation of soul approaching melancholia, to which they would have been otherwise doomed. They may now hold converse in books. They are taught trades. They receive assistance which enables them to enter fields of competition with their more perfectly organised fellows. But this aid is often-times withheld, or it is insufficient, and so they become chargeable to parishes.

The fourth class consists of those widows with families upon whom the officer, after a series of visits, is enabled to report facts which must satisfy the guardians that she is industrious, temperate, and of strict probity. Her thoughts as a wife were confined to two great domestic questions, – how can my husband’s income be economised, without making his home no home? and how can I qualify my children to fill their appointed stations in life? During the lifetime of her husband, her mind was so entirely absorbed by her household and family duties, that now she feels and acts like one who has just been disturbed from a long and troubled dream. Death has now turned the channel of her ideas. The change was one of bitter suffering. And now she must provide bread for her children by her own “hand-labour,” – without the habitude of labour. Death acts thus daily; and yet the number of widows so circumstanced, who apply for parochial relief, bears a very small proportion to the total number of persons thus bereaved. The fact is curious; and as sound methods of dealing with pauperism can be discovered only from a minute and comprehensive knowledge of the anatomy and pathology of the lower classes of society, the facts must be studied. The widows who compose this class were, previous to their marriage, either trusted servants in quiet families, daughters of respectable shop-keepers, or younger daughters of widows with small annuities: and their husbands were probably members of religious communities. Suppose the condition of the widow to have been that of a decent servitude. She performed her duties with credit; and her name is not forgotten. During the state of wifehood, intercourse was kept up by the exercise of kindly greetings on the one side, and respectful inquiries on the other. Her present circumstances excite sympathy. “Something must be done for poor Ann!” But she desires to subsist by labour rather than by gifts of charity. This is thought of by the reflecting patron, who knows full well how benefits unearned weaken the moral powers. But there are many ways by which the feeling of charity may be manifested without moral injury. A son may be in chambers, and who can so well clean and arrange them, as the nurse of his infancy? She may be intrusted with the care of an office; or she may be recommended to friends, who have hitherto taken labour from the labour market, at the lowest market price, and are just beginning to perceive that the moral qualities manifested in a prudent carriage, strict honesty, and taciturnity with respect to private affairs, are valuable, and have yet to learn that they are not common, and to be obtained must be paid for. The recommendation is well-timed. And although this friend of the family may miss the moral points of the matter, and would, if the patroness had not fixed her wages, by the force of example, tell the widow how little she gave the other “person,” and offer the same. The widow’s eyes now sparkle. She has reason to be grateful, and is not absolutely dependent. She is now in a fair way to gain an honest livelihood. The parish has not once been thought of. Then she may be a member of a religious body: which congregation is not a question of moment. As a member of the Established Church she has many advantages. Did you, reader, ever hear of a member of the Society of Friends being an applicant for parochial relief? The question may be repeated with respect to the Jews; not, however, with the expectation of an universal negative; but, having regard to the precariousness of their callings, the answer must be —No! The widow is a Wesleyan methodist. She is united with a religious body which includes within its pale many of those who compose the middle – or rather the lower middle – and lower classes of society. The members of it are closely cemented together – spiritually and temporally. As a member of a “class meeting,” her hopes and fears, her temptations, and trials, are known; not only to the members of her own section, but to the minister, and the members of the congregation. It may be true that the class system engenders spiritual pride and hypocrisy: that is not in point. We are dealing with facts. And it is a fact, and one which might be predicated from the circumstances, that the frequent meeting together of persons in nearly the same social position, to converse and advise upon practical religious matters, from which personal interests and temporalities, when they bear down the spirit, cannot be excluded, does exert an important influence on the fortunes of the distressed. In the Church of England, a minister may not mix so freely with his flock. His social position – his language, is different. But although that sense of common interest and common danger, which opens the flood-gates of the soul, and allows it to pour forth an uninterrupted tide of emotion, cannot exist when one order of mind stammers to another order of wind, yet there are compensating circumstances. Learning does not necessarily enervate the active powers. And in these latter we find a common ground of meeting, chords which vibrate sympathetically. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” Then the clergy are the almoners of the rich. These influences, with many kindred ones, might be investigated with advantage; but enough is said to indicate why this class of poor, who at first sight appear so helpless, are not sustained by the poor-rate. But they are sometimes applicants, and as such form a class. It happens that, from the number of her family, her wants are greater than her limited connexions can relieve; or she may be alone. It must be again repeated, that the duty of a board of guardians is not only to relieve destitution, but likewise to check pauperism. This being so, the widow must not be allowed to sink so low as to drive hope away. Her projects, her means, and her actual necessities must be ascertained. Relief in money is the best mode of relief to this class; and it should be given liberally. It will not be given in vain. Of course there are many in this class not gifted with an active temperament, or a strong, mind. To such the warning from the chairman, that parochial assistance can only be temporary, must be frequently given: and sometimes her views and progress may be scrutinised and commented upon. The relief would be continued from time to time and in descending amounts, until it vanishes altogether. By this method of treatment an increase of expenditure may be occasioned for a time; but the widow will be delivered from her affliction, and her children’s names permanently erased from the black roll of pauperism.

The fifth class includes those widows who have, throughout their lives, been accustomed to labour. They have not the advantages of the former class, as regards connexions. They have been “dragged”4 up. As an infant, “it was never sung to: no one ever told it a tale of the nursery. It was dragged up, to live or die, as it happened. It had no young dreams: it broke at once into the iron realities of life. The child exists not for the very poor as any object of dalliance; it is only another mouth to be fed, a pair of little hands to be betimes inured to labour. It is the rival, till it can be the co-operator, for food with the parent. It is never his mirth, his diversion, his solace; it never makes him young again, with recalling his young times. The children of the very poor have no young times. It makes the very heart bleed to overhear the casual street-talk between a poor woman and her little girl, a woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition rather above the squalid beings which we have been contemplating. It is not of toys, of nursery-books, of summer holidays, (fitting that age); of the promised sight, or play; of praised sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and clear-starching, of the price of coals, or of potatoes. The questions of the child, that should be the very outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked with forecast and melancholy providence. It has come to be a woman before it was a child. It has learned to go to market; it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it murmurs; it is knowing, acute, sharpened: it never prattles.” Such was the child. The passage from the single to the married state, which generally changes the course of woman’s life, has to her been nothing more than a brief interval of pleasure. She soon joins the bands of the busy daughters of care. So the loss of her husband has been to her but a tragedy. The last act is over; the curtain has fallen: she is now in the outer world again; she is oppressed by sadness, vague and undefinable; but the noise and bustle around her, the tumult of her own thoughts, and her continued labour, afford that alleviation which the solitary and the unemployed seek for in vain. Those who would step in and, relieve her of her toil, may be well-meaning persons; but, they are interfering in matters they do not understand. They would spend their money more beneficially, and with greater regard to the principles of Christian charity, if each would take care that those who do for him any kind of labour, receive an adequate remuneration. It may be a politico-economic law, that we buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest; and, by a sophistical process, the limits of the principle may have been enlarged, so as not only to include raw materials, but manufactured products, and the labour which we ourselves employ. But it is forgotten, that a law which expresses merely what men do, has not the universality or fixity of a law of matter, but is liable to variation from the action of moral causes. The law may be partially true, as eliminated from a study of the present age. It is an age of calculators and economists. In a moral age it would be false. It is false in the present day, when moral men have to do directly with their lower and ruder brethren. This is an individual and personal matter, and each one will find that he has enough of his own work to do in his own sphere. This widow is an applicant for parochial relief. Repeated visits, and a succession of reports, at brief intervals, have enabled the officer to present an accurate narration of facts, both with reference to her past life and her present condition. It becomes clear that this widow differs from the other, in respect that she has greater habitude for labour, and that her mind is cramped down to the hard matters of the present hour: she goes to her work in the morning, and she returns home fatigued in the evening. To-morrow’s meal is secured, and the scene of to-morrow’s labour is known. Within the narrow limits of a week is her soul penned up. It is clear, then, what the duties of the guardians are. If their wish is to check pauperism, they must attend to that which this widow’s limited capacities prevent her from doing. In her young day, reading and writing were accomplishments; but the world has jogged on a little since then, without her knowing it. Reading and writing, as one of the mechanical arts, have become indispensable to every boy and girl. The same economic reasons which lead to the inference, that a girl should be taught to darn her own stockings, or mend her own frock, would also show that a boy and girl should be taught to read and write. The spread of education is something very different from the diffusion of knowledge. So, then, the officer’s report would show whether the children are duly sent to school; their progress might also be tested. At a future period, it might appear that the girl is strong enough to enter service, and the boy fit to be apprenticed either to a trade, or to the sea. In either case, the fitness of the master or mistress is ascertained and reported. A premium or outfit is given; and the particulars of the case are duly entered in the appropriate book, according to the existing method, and the master and child visited from time to time. The widow would thus be relieved in that particular respect in which she is least qualified to help herself, and her children are saved. She would soon discover that the time occupied in waiting for relief could be more profitably employed, and she soon ceases to apply.