living.) This seems to be the origin of the " roundsman "
system, under which the unemployed poor went round
from house to house and were to be employed for at least
one day by every householder of a certain rental (Ashley,
p. 366). It is in the 18 Eliz. that the objects and
conditions of legal provision of work are most clearly laid
down (Burns, p. 81): "Also to the intent youth may be
accustomed and brought up in labour, and then not like
to grow to be idle rogues ; and to the intent also that such
as be already grown up in idleness, and so rogues at this
present, may not have any excuse in saying that they
cannot get any service or work " (/>. for a test) ; "and that
other poor and needy persons, being willing to labour,
may be set on work " — the justices are instructed to
provide " a competent stock of wool, hemp, flax, iron, or
other stuff, as the country is most meet for." The method
in which the stock is to be disposed of is also clearly laid
down ; it is to be delivered to the poor and needy persons,
to be wrought by them within a given time, and to be paid
according to the desert of the work. The system is to be
self-supporting when once started, for the wrought stock is
to be sold at some market or other place, and more stuff
bought with the money coming of the sale '■''in such wise



XIII HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH POOR LAW 209

as the stock shall not be decayed in value.'''' No mention is
made of a workhouse, but Houses of Correction are to be
provided for those who refuse the work, or " taking such
work shall spoil or imbesil the same " ; also for the punish-
ment of vagabonds.

The 43 Eliz. merely repeats former instructions
with regard to the able-bodied poor, for the clause
authorising the provision of necessary places of habita-
tion seems to apply to the impotent poor only.^ The
directions issued by Privy Council in 1630 contain two
interesting clauses: (i) "That the Lords of manoures
and townes take care that their tenants, and the
parishioners of every towne, may be relieved by worke,
or otherwise at home, and not suffered to straggle
and beg up and downe in their parish " (thus throwing
the responsibility on the landowners) ; and (4) " That
the Statute of Labourers, for retaining of servants, and
ordering of wages between the servant and the master,
be not deluded by private contracts, before they
come to the statutes ; and the common fashion of
assoynging many absent, not to be allowed of course, as
is used."

The next legislation directly affecting the interests of
this class appears in the famous Settlements Act, 13 and
14 Ch. IL This begins, "Whereas by reason of some
defects in the law, poor people are not restrained from
going from one parish to another, and therefore do en-
deavour to settle themselves in those parishes where there
is the best stock, the largest commons or wastes to build
cottages, and the most woods for them to burn and
destroy ; and when they have consumed it, then to another
parish, and at last become rogues and vagabonds, to the
gnat discouragement of parishes to provide stocks where it is
liable to be devoured by strangers.'''' It would appear from
this that it is not the true industrial stock of the com-
munity which is to be defended by the Acts of Settlement,
but the stock which is artificially provided by law ; and,

1 Sir Matthew Hale (1683) siiys that the law makes no provision for
workhouses.



210 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xiii

indeed, it could only be the legal obligation to set to work
upon the stock persons incapable of making a profitable
use of it, which would make the multiplication of labourers
in any parish a hardship. Aschrott regards it as legisla-
tion in the interest of rich districts, from which the poor
are to be kept at a distance. It seems more natural to
regard it as legislation on behalf of the landowners, upon
whom fell the chief burden of the rates (Sir Matthew Hale,
p. 7 ; see also ante, p. 23), and who would resent the
migration of the poor from districts where provision for
them was neglected to districts where it was enforced.
Pashley (Poor Lazv and Pauperising p. 223) points out that
"the neglect to carry out the provision of the statute of
Elizabeth during the interval between 1601 and 1662
w^ould be likely to produce a considerable difference in the
burden of pauperism in different parts of the country," and
on p. 2 2 1 he quotes from Dekker's Greevous Grones for
the Poore (1622), that there had been no collection for the
poor, " no, not these seven yeares, in many parishes of
this land, especiallie in countrie townes."

The principle of Settlement is as old as the fourteenth
century, when many regulations were made to prevent the
labourers wandering in search of work (Ashley, p. 334);
but throughout the sixteenth and the first half of the
seventeenth century it was only vagabonds or those who
actually became a burden who could be legally removed
to their last settlement or birthplace. The Act of 1662
authorises such removal in the case of any person ^'■likely
to be chargeable " to the parish, unless he gave sufficient
security. The newcomer was safe if he occupied a tene-
ment of the yearly value of j[,^-o or over, but Pashley
points out that a rent of ^10 in 1662 is equivalent to one
of ^50 in the present currency, so that the exception does
not really protect the labourer at all. That the Act worked
as a real oppression is obvious from the fact that poor
people were wont to conceal themselves for the forty days
after their arrival, during which they were removable, thus
necessitating an Act in 1685 ordaining that the forty days
should be counted from the time they gave notice to the



xiii HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH POOR LAW 211

overseers of their residence, and another in 1691^ ordering
such notice to be read in church. It is curious that while
this Act of 1662 made the enforcement of removals more
stringent and burdensome, it also made the settlement
easier to obtain. Originally a person had his settlement
in the place where he last abode by the space of three
years, or in his birthplace ; in the reign of James I. the
three years were diminished to one, and by the Act of
1662 forty days were sufficient to constitute a settlement.-
It is difficult to produce evidence as to how far these
restrictions on the free movements of the labourer were an
industrial evil. Eden thinks that the hardships imposed
by them upon the poor have been exaggerated (vol. i.
p. 298), and that a respectable man could find his
security. That they would cause great inequalities in the
rates of wages seems a priori certain ; and we find Defoe
pointing out in 1704 that whereas in Kent a poor man
will earn 7s., los., or 9s. a week, in the north he will earn
4s. or perhaps less. Richard Dunning, also, in 1685 cal-
culates that a Devonshire day labourer could earn 5d. a
day all the year round, and his diet, which he estimates at
5d. a day more. But these differences are hardly more
striking than could be cited for different parts of the
country at the present day, even if we confine our-
selves to agricultural labourers. Pashley, however, quotes
(p. 238) the preamble to an Act in 1696 as proving incon-
trovertibly how injurious the statute of Charles II. had
proved in its influence on the distribution of labour.
" Forasmuch as many poor persons, chargeable to the
parish, township, or place where they live, merely for want
of work, would in any other place, where sufficient employ-
ment is to be had, maintain themselves without being
burthensome . . . they are for the most part confined to
live in their own parishes, townships, or places, and not

' See Fowie, p. 64. The same Act dispenses with written notices in
the case of those who execute any public annual ofiice, pay rates for a
year, or are legally hired or apprenticed ; but in 1722 it is ordained that
rates paid to the scavenger shall not suffice to constitute a legal settle-
ment.

'•^ Burns, p. 108.



212 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xiii

permitted to inhabit elsewhere, though their labour is
wanted in many other places, where the increase of manu-
facture would employ more hands." The Act then pro-
vides that the penalties of removal may be avoided by the
production of a certificate from the churchwarden, over-
seers, and two justices of the last settlement, which would
make the possessor irremovable until he became actually
chargeable.

The first suggestion of workhouses as places in which
the respectable poor should be set to work seems to have
come from Stanley, the reformed highwayman (1646).
He protests against the injustice of punishing people for
being idle without first offering them work, and urges that
houses and convenient places should be provided to set
the poor to work. ..." Surely many of them would go
to work if such houses were provided for them." This
ignoring of the legal provision for employing the poor
seems to point to the fact that the authorities had allowed
this part of their work to fall into abeyance, possibly be-
cause they found it impossible to keep their stock intact
when competing with capitalist production on an increas-
ingly larger scale.

Whether Stanley intended his workhouses as places of
residence is not clear. Sir Matthew Hale renews the idea
in his Discourse touching Provision for the Poor, 1683, and
certainly means them only as places to which the poor
shall resort to work, just as they do to the mill or factory
of to-day. Probably the change from giving out work to
the poor in their own homes to gathering them together
in a workhouse, was merely intended to enable the work
provided by law to keep pace with that of private enter-
prise, which was already beginning to develop the factory
system. A master is to be appointed, who is to supervise
the work, and can be authorised by a justice of the peace
to chastise defaulters by imprisonment or moderate cor-
rection within the Workhouse. Hale goes minutely into
the financial prospects of such an institution, and is very
optimistic in his calculations. Not only is the stock to
maintain itself, but the wages to be paid will set the rate



XIII HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH POOR LAW 213

for covetous masters in hard times who strive to take
advantage of the poor. The Workhouse is to be a refuge
where they can be employed at reasonable wages. At the
worst, he argues, even if there is loss in the system, it will
be as cheap as maintaining the poor under the present
system, while the education in habits of work will more
than countervail the loss of a very considerable stock,
especially as the Workhouse will serve also as a school for
the children, and a test for wanderers and beggars.

An elaborate scheme was also drawn up by Sir Josiah
Child for London, Westminster, and Southwark, which
includes the provision of workhouses, and a similar sug-
gestion was made in a pamphlet published in 1687, four
years later, by Thomas Firmin, " Some Proposals for the
Employing of the Poor, especially in and about the City
of London, and for the Prevention of Begging." Burns
also quotes seven other schemes for employing the poor.

No legislation, however, followed these suggestions until
after the new commissioners, in 1696, were ordered "to
consider of proper methods for setting on work and em-
ploying the poor, and making them useful to the pubhc "
(Mr. E. C. Price, The Poor Law and the Unemph^yed).
The next year a special Act of Parliament was passed for
establishing a workhouse in the city of Bristol, much upon
the lines proposed by Sir Josiah Child. This experiment
seems to have been the special venture of a certain Mr.
Cary, and he writes of it about 1700 (Burns, p. 181)
that it had " very good success, insomuch that there was
not a common beggar, or disorderly vagrant, to be seen in
the streets." Adverse critics, however, were not wanting,
and Eden (p. 281) quotes one: "From their first erection
in the year 1696 to the year 17 14, they continued to put
the poor to work — I mean, those they had in their work-
house called the Mint. And they tried them upon a great
many different sorts of work, to make them useful toward
their support, but not only without any benefit from their
labour but to the great loss of the Corporation. For as
soon as they came to do anything tolerably well, that they
might have been assisting to the younger and less practised,



214 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xiii

they went off to sea, or were apprenticed in the city ; by
which means the public were so far benefited, though the
Corporation bore the loss of the charge of teaching them,
and of all the tools with which they were to work, and of
the materials for it. For they made nothing perfect or
merchantable from their work, but only spoiled the
materials. So that instead of lessening the charge of
maintaining the poor, they increased it. ..." They then
gave up the work and merely contracted the labour out to
a gentleman, " for whom they made sacks for a small
gratuity, being maintained by the public." Eden says : " It
appears from this account that the way by which the
magistrates of Bristol reduced the charges of maintaining
the poor, was by driving away paupers who were not
settled in that city." Writing in 1700, Gary recommends
the establishment of similar houses over the country as
a test, and not as commercial enterprises. " Nor should
these houses hinder any who desire to work at home, or
the manufacturers from employing them ; the design being
to provide places for those who care not to work anywhere,
and to make the parish officers more industrious to find
them out, when they know whither to send them ; by
which means they would be better able to maintain the
impotent." They were, therefore, to take the place of
the old Houses of Correction. But though three years'
experience had taught Cary the right function of a work-
house, the idea of a labour test was certainly not the one
uppermost in a Bill introduced into Parliament in 1704.
(Pashley, p. 243). " The object of this proposed legisla-
tion was a complete organisation of labour, by establishing
great parochial manufactories and raising capital by poor-
rates, in order to carry on in each such manufactory a
trade in which paupers might be employed as labourers.
The wild scheme met with the complete approbation of
the House of Commons, and was passed there with great
applause, but was rejected by the other House." It was
the occasion for Defoe's celebrated pamphlet, " Giving Alms
no Charity," in which he points out very forcibly the dis-
astrous consequences .likely to result from the diverting of



XIII HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH POOR LAW 215

industry from its natural channels in favour of the least
efficient members of the community. Nevertheless, an
Act was passed in 1720, prohibiting the use of printed
calicoes, in order to effectually employ the poor in the silk
and woollen manufactures.

Special Acts authorised the establishment of workhouses
in six towns (Bristol, Worcester, Plymouth, Exeter, Hull,
and Norwich),^ and the General Act of 1722 authorises
their erection in all parishes, and provides that relief may
be refused to all who decline to be lodged in such houses.
The " offer of the house " is therefore definitely made a test
of destitution. Eden gives an interesting account of the
effects of this policy (vol. i. pp. 260 sgq.), quoting the ex-
penditure of several parishes. That of St. Andrew's, Hol-
born, is typical. The Workhouse there was opened in June
1727. Before that period the poor rate was ;;^iooo per
annum; before 1730 it was reduced to ^750; while in
1776 it had risen to ;j^i32g. The reason for this rise
may be found in another change of policy ; towards the
end of the century the idea of admission to the Workhouse
being used as a test seems to have been almost entirely
lost sight of, to judge from the Regulations for the Relief of
the Poor of St. Giles, Bloomsbury, issued in 1781. In
these " it is earnestly recommended to the officers to con-
sider the Workhouse only as an asylum for the aged, for
orphans in an infant state, for idiots, lunatics, and the
lame, blind, sick, or otherwise infirm and diseased persons ;
and that no persons who are able to earn a livelihood . . .
should be admitted into or be permitted to remain therein."
It is reasonable to suppose that before the change in policy
could be so definitely formulated it had already been for
some time practised.

In the latter half of the eighteenth century, therefore, the
Workhouse approaches more nearly to being a hospital for
the impotent and a refuge for the infirm and children,
than to either the Houses of Correction or the industrial
schools from which they developed.

^ There seems also to have been a " house of niaintainence " for .St.
Giles and St. George.



2i6 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xiii

(C) Poor Law Provision for Children. — The importance
of industrial education has never been wholly lost sight
of, however inadequate such education may at times
have been. Of education in any wider sense of the word
we find little trace. Pashley (p. 244) thinks that some
idea of educating the poor was current in the early part of
the eighteenth century, and quotes Mandeville as arguing in
1 714 against such education, on the ground that "Going
to school in comparison to working is idleness ; and the
longer boys continue in this easy sort of life the more unfit
they will be, when grown up, for downright labour, both as
to strength and inclination." It is interesting to find an
Act for the protection of children so early as the 3 and 4
Ed. VI. (1551), in which it is enacted " that if any men and
women going a-begging do carry children about with them,
any person may take such child, above the age of five
years and under fourteen, to be brought up in any honest
labour and occupation ; if a woman-child, until the age
of fifteen years, ' or be married ' ; if a man-child, to the age
of eighteen." The same order is made in 14 Eliz., only
that the age to which the child may be kept is raised — for
a girl to eighteen, for a boy to twenty-four.

With respect to illegitimate children it is established in
EHzabeth's earlier legislation that they shall be kept by the
parish, but that the justices shall have power to make a
weekly or other charge upon the child's parents.

By the 39 Eliz. the overseers are ordered to set to
work " the children of all such whose parents shall not be
thought able to keep and maintain their children." Or
" to bind such children to be apprentices, where they shall
see convenient, till such man-child shall come to the age
of twenty-four years, and such woman-child till the age of
twenty-one." By the end of the century difficulties seem
to have arisen in finding persons willing to receive the
children as apprentices, for it is ordered that unless the
persons to whom they are appointed shall receive and
provide for them they shall forfeit ;Q\o.

The 43 Eliz. emphasises the principle of parental and
filial responsibility : " Where, in the former Act, it is said



XIII HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH POOR LAW 217

that parents or children, being of abihty, shall maintain
such poor persons respectively, it is here expressed that
the father and grandfather, and the mother and grand-
mother, and the children, of every such poor person shall
maintain them " (Burns, p. 93).

When children were first consigned to the Workhouse
instead of being boarded out does not appear clear. That
grave evils attended both systems is obvious from an Act
passed in 1762, ordering the registration and periodical
revision of "all poor infants under four years of age," as
means of preserving the lives of such infants. What was
the extent of the evil hinted at in this Act we may learn
from a pamphlet published by the governors of the parish
of St. James, Westminster, 1797. It is called, "Sketch of
the State of the Children of the Poor in the year 1756, and
of the Present State and Management of all the Poor in
the Parish of St. James, Westminster, in January 1797."
The " Sketch " is so brief that it may be quoted in full : —

"In the year 1756 the Honourable House of Commons
required an account from every Parish within the Bills of
Mortality of the Number of Children they had respectively
brought up, and placed out as Apprentices, by which it
appeared that only Seven Children had been brought up
and placed out by '11 the Parishes, 147 in Number. In an
Account delivered at the same Time by the Governors of
the Foundling Hospital, they boasted to have lost only 75
per Cent per Annum of the Children entrusted to their
care."

The pamphlet goes on to describe how, under the Act
of 1662, the governors withdrew the children "moulder-
ing away in the Workhouse," and after much search and
great difficulty found several cottagers on Wimbledon
Common who were fit to be trusted with the children, and
who were bribed to keep them alive by premiums on every
illness which they survived.

(Z)) 2'he Provision for the Aged and Impotent Poor has
always been the first care of the community since Poor
Law legislation began. Adopted at first as a religious
virtue it was afterwards accepted as a civic duty, and from



2i8 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xiii

the latter point of view, considerations of policy and of
unselfish charity came to light which had been gradually
lost sight of as almsgiving had come to be more and more
practised for the sake of the donor's salvation. It was the
State which reintroduced the principle of discrimination
which had been entirely lost sight of by the Church. The
loving care of the poor, voluntarily exercised by religious
organisations, which Ratzinger^ regards as the true type of
religious almsgiving, had long been superseded by the in-
adequate and indiscriminate scattering of doles, when in
1536 the State first ordained that the poor of every place
should be succoured, found and kept, by way of voluntary
charity, "in such wise as none of them of very necessity shall
be compelled to go openly in begging," on pain that every
parish making default forfeit 20s. a month {27 H. VIII.)
(Before that the only legal provision made was the granting
of begging licenses.) Several subsequent Acts repeat these
instructions, with directions as to the best methods of carry-
ing them out, and in 1572 (14 Eliz.) still fuller provision
is ensured by instructions to all the justices of the peace
to search out " all aged, poor, impotent, and decayed
persons to register their names in a book, and to assign to
them convenient places of habitation." It is in this Act
that we first find a clause inserted, forbidding " any dis-
eased or impotent poor person, living on alms, to repair to
the city of Bath, or town of Buckstone, to the baths there,
for ease of their grief, unless they be licensed so to do by
two justices, and be provided for by the inhabitants from
whence they came of such relief towards their maintenance,
as shall be necessary for the time of their abode and return
home again." This clause constantly appears in subse-
quent Acts, and poor persons going to Bath Hospital still
have to get their papers signed by two Guardians and
deposit ^3 caution money.

By the 35 Eliz. a special rate is ordered for the main-
tenance of such as have adventured their lives and lost
their limbs in the defence and service of her Majesty and
the State; and by the 39 Eliz. an important step is taken

^ Geschichte der Kirchlichen Armenpflege.



XIII HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH POOR LAW 219

in authorising a rate for the erection of convenient houses
of dwelhng for the impotent poor, in each of which are to be
placed "inmates, or more famiUes than one." In 1601 it is
expressly stipulated that these cottages shall not be used for
any other habitation, but only for the impotent and poor.

How far these provisions for the impotent poor —
adequate enough in themselves — were actually carried out
it is difficult to say ; there is no further legislation of any
importance on their behalf until 1691. By that time the
idea of keeping a register of those to be " put upon the
collection " seems to have been forgotten, and it is renewed
by the 3 Will. III. in consequence of the misspending of
public money by the officials. A few years later further
precautions were found necessary, and it was ordered that
every person put upon the collection should wear the badge
of a large Roman P in red or blue cloth.

The legislation for the next fifty years is mainly
connected with difficulties of administration calling for