222 On Lettering ike Condition of the Poor. 



commodated docs not exceed 17,000 men, women, anJ 

 children. 



The number of distressed objects who do not receive any 

 parish relief', but who are supposed, in many instances, to 

 require it as much a? those who are relieved, may be esti- 

 mated at about 20,000 men, women, and children. 



It will be seen from the above abstracts, that the perma- 

 nent out- door relief seldom averages above 25. to 25. 6d. per 

 week, while the occasional relief is infinitely less, which is 

 barely sufficient to pay the weekly rent of a miserable half- 

 furnished lodging. 



It will also be seen, that many thousand cases may occur, 

 wherehalf- famished families cannot obtain an asylum in their 

 parish workhouse for want of room. And that the propor- 

 tion of those who are relieved at their own dwellings, is 

 nearly four to one. 



Hence it follows as a clear proposition, that there ever 

 has been, and always must be, a very large proportion of 

 the poor of the metropolis, who can derive no benefit from 

 the maintenance afforded in the parish workhouse : and that 

 the pittance allowed in money, can afford little for food, 

 where a family is broke down by sickness, and their only 

 property (the labour of their hands) no longer effectual or 

 productive. Hence, in such cases, the pawnbroker assists 

 in filling up the chasm until their little all is exhausted, and 

 they are not only without food, but also deprived of their 

 apparel and bed clothes. 



To relieve this numerous class, who are subject to so 

 many casualties, reducing them to a state of extreme indi- 

 gence, benevolent individuals have founded hospitals and 

 dispensaries in different parts of the metropolis ; but many 

 of the hospitals arc ill endowed; and from a deficiency of 

 funds, they arc not adequate to the relicfof one-tenth part 

 of the patients who would be glad to become inmates during 

 sickness and disease. 



The dispensaries are more numerous. It appears from an 

 authentic return from thirteen of these establishments in 

 different parts' of the metropolis, that, in the course of the 

 year 1803, medicines were dispensed to 28,134 patients, at 



the 



