THE MISSING LINK IN THE POOR-LAW. T HE Poor-law, though it
works throughout the country as well as most laws, breaks down in the great cities, and the very conspicuous break-down in London during the win- ter 1860-1861 impelled the House of Commons to order a Committee of Inquiry. The Committee sat a very long while, an unconscionably long while, when it is considered that most of the facts were patent ; but it collected a good deal of evi- dence, and in May last presented the result of its labours. The report upon many points does not amount to much, being worded, as usual, with the primary motive of effecting a compromise among irreconcilable opinions, but it does contain one important recommendation. As to the regular distress and starvation the Committee has not very much to say. It is true that in the bad winter distress was very bad, so bad that everybody except Poor-law Guardians thought it extreme, that magistrates, not a markedly credulous class generally, testified to "frightful misery," to the pawn- ing of the last remaining articles of furniture, to a hatred of the Unions BO deep that the poor,—the expression is one unanimously repeated,—" would rather die" than accept its aid ; but still you see the Poor-law had not "broken down." The Guardians could have raised the money required, and though they did not raise it, and the charitable did, and but for the charitable the people would have died by the score of starvation, that obviously is no fault of the law ! So the Committee pass that point by, merely sug- gesting, as becomes committees with able officials sitting among them, that organization would prevent waste, and that a central relief committee like that of Lancashire would pro- bably do a great deal of good, wherein we heartily agree. They also think that if the principal officers of unions and parishes were, when superannuated, paid off, great benefit might result, which, considering the usual course of human affairs, and the tendency of aged persons to become blind, deaf, or rheumatic, may also be admitted without much question. But having made those remarks, they pass on to a very important admission, and a suggestion based thereupon which will become, we trust, the subject of legislative action. The Committee admit frankly and fully that the arrange- ments for the relief of the casual poor in London, of the thousands of homeless men and women who are every night forced to accept the alternatives of the workhouse or the open air, are very inadequate, and in some localities fail altogether The "parishes" simply hate this class of applicants, throw every obstacle in their way, or refuse them relief altogether, and as the total number of London "tramps" is calculated by the Society for the Relief of Distress at twelve thousand the scenes witnessed every winter's night in London are naturally appalling. At Paddington there is no casual ward, so in Paddiugton old men are ordered to wander to Kensington, or die in the streets, as they please. In the City of London Ward, the wealthiest district on earth, there is none, the over-tired paupers being sent three miles farther on to Bow ; in St. Martin's, as we all
know, the difficulty of admission is so great that women stand for hours shivering with the cold only to be rejected and pro- bably taken to prison next morning. There is probably no misery in the world like that which can be witnessed in the long evenings of February opposite St. Martin's entrance, no want so keen, no suffering so real and heartbreaking. This the Committee pro?ose at once to relieve. The cause of the mischief is a simile one, the intense reluctance of persons who are comfortable to spend any money in an official way for the relief of those who are in misery,—a reluctance so great that many parishes fight the law boldly, refuse to establish casual wards, and declare almost openly that it is cheaper to bear the penalty, which we could almost wish Heaven might one day exact of them, than to pay the extra pennies required to keep destitute paupers alive. The Committee, with a fine sense of the limits of ratepaying selfishness, propose to meet this by establishing and maintaining asylums out of a general metropolitan rate, which, pressing specially upon no one, and be- ing borne byparishes like St,. James's where millionaires pay no- thing, as well as parishes like St. Pancras, where struggling, pro- fessionals pay often 4s. in the pound, would not only seem but be lighter upon the mass. They also evidently lean towards, though they do not recommend, a proposal circulated by the Poor-law Board in 1858, under which the metropolis would be divided into six or more districts, each with its vagrant asylum. That proposal was defeated by the passive resistance of the Guardians, who in London are accustomed to believe that their sole duty is to the ratepayers, and not to the rate- payers and the starving; but it seems a most sensible idea. Taken with the new official recommendation it would establish in London say ten great official asylums, where the homeless could find lodging and the houseless food without the interven- tion of parish beadles, or other persons brutalized by parochial power. In a few months these asylums would be perfectly well known, the police of London would be en rapport with their officers, and one portion of the great aggregate of misery, and sin, and suffering, amidst which we are all so comfortable, would cease away from the earth.
A. more humane suggestion it would be difficult to conceive. Whatever else may be outside our duty, the prevention of death in the streets from hunger, and exposure, and naked- ness, and the weary waiting till London Guardians have found their consciences, and parish beadles have had their gin, must be within it, and we trust that Parliament, anxious as it is to improve the breed of horses and to punish people who play false notes on cheap barrel-organs, and to snub Mr. .Gladstone, may still find the time, and the temper, awl the energy to attend this Session to this "trifling detail," with the few hundred lives it involves. But we would go one step farther. It would not be very expensive, or very much out of the ordinary official routine, to attach a medical officer to each of these asylums, and make him the paid and responsible centre of the relief organization suggested so sensibly by the Committee. He would do his work well and heartily, and money would flow in in perennial streams. Nothing is want- ing at this moment but a link between the abounding charity existing in this great city and its still more abounding misery, and here it is ready to our hands. Nobody is going to trust sixpence to an average relieving officer, but no magistrate ever asks for money for the poor without being astonished at the response, and medical officers selected ad hoc would be trusted as fully as magistrates. They would be the distri- butors of all that mass of money which men with deep pity for the suffering, but no time for benevolence, will give to any responsible man not connected with Poor-law management.
They give some of it now to clergymen, but they would prefer an almoner pure and simple, partly because clergymen are apt to ask questions about conduct not necessary when human beings are starving, and partly because there exists in London no connection between the clergy and their richer parishioners.
The medical officers of the asylums, chosen from among men like Dr. Moore, of Bethnal Green, who risked his post rather than let starving women die of Mr. Christie's obstinacy, would
acquire the confidence of the poor, and, being disconnected
with the unions, could assist classes who, as the Committee acknowledge and all its witnesses allege, die of starvation rather than "sacrifice their independence," or accept alms at the hands of low-bred men who, being paid out of the rates, hold the recipients of the rates lower than the mangy dogs they are so fond of keeping. The asylum would provide the
funnel between the wealthy and the starving over the want of which the poard has so long grieved in vain, perhaps put an end to the scandal that in the wealthiest city in the world there are, on an average, two deaths a week traceable in an official way to want of food.
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