On employing the Poor in Parish Workhouses. 361 

 dle-wicks. At the Asylum for the Blind in Edinburgh, 

 I found that part of the employment of those unfortunate 

 objects was making shoe -mats, baskets, and picking hair for 

 mattresses. 



1 must not omit to mention a manufacture of coarse 

 hats, which has been established at ihe county gaol in Dor- 

 chester by a gentleman of great respectability*, whose un- 

 remitting attention to the proper management of the gaol is 

 highly meritorious. 



However promising the introduction of any particular 

 manufacture in a parish workhouse might appear, I would 

 earnestly recommend that it should be adopted with great 

 caution, and not to the exclusion of another principle we 

 should never lose sight of, which is, to emploi/ evert/ wan, as 

 far as circumstances will admit, in thai sort of business 

 which is most habitual to him. 



On visiting the county gaol, house of correction, and 

 penitentiary workhouse, at Gloucester, I was informed that 

 some of the most able and attentive magistrates of that 

 countvt intended to have established a manufacture of sail- 

 cloth there ; but on the most mature consideration, it was 

 judged expedient to carry on various employments, and that 

 the several persons should be employed as nearly as may be 

 in using the tools to which they had been accustomed. A 

 shoe-maker can best use his awl, and a tailor his needle. 

 At the large house of industry at Liverpool, the same idea 

 is adopted and carried into practice in its full extent. The 

 reduced ship-carpenlers there are sujjplied with locals and 

 timber, and a yard is set apart fur tlicni, where tiiey are em- 

 ployed in building boats for sale. Employments o'f this 

 sort in commou parish workhouses a;e impracticable. It is 

 not, however, necessary that the poor should aU be emjiloyed 

 within, the workhouse,, or in working up materials provided 

 by the parish. The purchase of slscIi materials in small 

 quantities, the inferiority of workmanship, and tjie sale of 

 the comn)odily, will all operate against the parish. It will 

 therefore generally be found most l)ene(icial and desirable to 



• William Morton Pitt, esq., M. P. for the county of Doiict. 



t 'I'lie (jreat ineriis of sir O. O, I .lul, ban., are sufllcieiitlj kiiov/n. 



the 



