6!9 



POOR LAWS. 



POOR LAWS. 



the better it will ride at anchor in swift currents or rough water, and 

 which every sailor knows to be fallacious, the fact being that the safe 

 riding depends on the vertical angle of the bow, while the speed is 

 mainly influenced by the horizontal angle or " lines ; " a vessel with a 

 bow that is straight up and down will bury her head much more than 

 one with a " flare bow," that is, one which projects beyond the water- 

 line, even though the former may have the superiority in point of speed. 



(For many interesting particulars relating to the passage of rivers in 

 military operations, see Sir Howard Douglas, On Military Eridyes.) 



POOR LAWS. According to Dr. Johnson the term pauper means 

 a poor person ; one who receives alms. The term, however, Mr. Glen 

 says, is hardly known to the law, and very rarely occurs in any of the 

 statutes relating to the relief of the poor. The word " poor " by the 

 445 Wm. IV. c. 76, s. 109, is to be construed " to include any pauper 

 or poor or indigent person applying for or receiving relief from the 

 poor rates in England or Wales, or chargeable thereto ;" and in the 

 Lunacy Act, 16 & 17 Viet. c. 97, s. 132, the word pauper " shall mean 

 every person maintained wholly or in part by or chargeable to any 

 parish, union, or county." The latter is the most convenient use of 

 the term, and the word " pauper" will be so understood in this article. 



Those who are ordinarily designated paupers are only one class 

 or division among several who are in the condition of poverty. The 

 poor, as distinguished from the paupers, may be distributed into three 

 classes. 1. Persons without capital, who, being capable of labour, and 

 finding employment, are able to obtain the means of subsistence and 

 no more. 2. Mendicants, capable of labouring, but who will not 

 work, and subsist by obtaining contributions from the humane and 

 charitable. 3. Persons destitute through sickness, infirmity, desertion, 

 or any other cause, and relieved by private charity. 



The great object of the earlier efforts in pauper legislation was 

 the restraint of vagrancy. The 12 Richard II. c. 7 (1388), prohibits 

 any labourer from quitting his dwelling-place without a testimonial 

 from a justice of the peace, showing reasonable cause for his going, 

 and without such a testimonial any such wanderer might be appre- 

 hended and put in the stocks. Impotent persons were to remain in 

 the towns where they were dwelling at the passing of the Act, pro- 

 vided the inhabitants would support them; otherwise they were to 

 go to the places of their birth, to be there supported. By Acts 

 passed in the 11 A 19 of Henry VII. (1495 and 1504) impotent 

 beggars were required to go to the hundred where they had last 

 dwelt for three years, or where they were born, and were forbidden to 

 beg elsewhere. By the Act 22 Henry VIII. c. 12 (1531), justices 

 were directed to assign to impotent poor persons a district within 

 which they might beg, and beyond which they were forbidden to 

 beg, under pain of being imprisoned and kept in the stocks on 

 bread and water. Able-bodied beggars were to be whipped and forced to 

 return to their place of birth, or where they had last lived for three years. 



These Acts appear to have had no permanent effect in repressing 

 vagrancy. An Act passed in 1536 (27 Henry VIII. c. 25) is the first 

 by which voluntary charity was converted into compulsory payment. 

 It enacts that the head officers of every parish to which the impotent 

 or able-bodied poor may resort under the provisions of the Act of 

 1531, shall receive and keep them, so that none shall be compelled to 

 beg openly. The able-bodied were to be kept to constant labour, and 

 every parish making default was to forfeit twenty shillings a month. 

 The money required for the support of the poor was to be collected 

 partly by the head officers of corporate towns and the church- 

 wardens of parishes, and partly was to be derived from collections 

 in the churches, and on various occasion* where the clergy had 

 opportunities for exhorting the people to charity. Almsgiving 

 1 the town or parish was prohibited, on forfeiture of ten times 

 the amount given. A " sturdy beggar" was to be whipped the first 

 time he was detected in begging; to have his right ear cropped for 

 the second offence ; and if again guilty of begging, was to be indicted 

 " for wandering, loitering, and idleness," and if convicted was " to 

 suffer execution of death as a felon and an enemy of the common- 

 wealth." The severity of this Act prevented its execution, and it was 

 repealed by 1 Edward VI. c. 3 (1547). Under this statute every able- 

 bodied person who should not apply himself to some honest labour, 

 or offer to serve for even meat and drink, was to be taken for a 

 vagabond, branded on the shoulder, and adjudged a slave for two 

 years to any one who shall demand him, to be fed on bread and 

 water and refuse meat, and made to work by being beaten, chained, or 

 otherwise treated. If he ran away during the two years, he was to 

 be branded on the cheek, and adjudged a slave for life, and if he 

 ran away again, he was to suffer death as a felon. If not demanded 

 as a slave, he was to be kept to hard labour on the highways in 

 chains. The impotent poor were to be passed to their place of 

 birth or settlement, from the hands of one parish constable to those 

 of another. This statute was repealed three years after, and that 

 of 1531 was revived. In 1551 an Act was passed directing that a book 

 should be kept in every parish, containing the names of the house- 

 hol'l.-rs and of the impotent poor; that collectors of alms should be 

 appointed who should " gently ask every man and woman what they 

 if their charity will give weekly to the relief of the poor." If any 

 one able to give should refuse or discourage others from giving, the 

 ministers and churchwardens were to exhort him, and, failing of 

 success, the bishop was to admonish him on the subject. This Act, 



and another made to enforce it, which was passed in 1555, were 

 wholly ineffectual, and in 1563 it was re-enacted (5 Eliz. c. 3), with 

 the addition that any person able to contribute and refusing should be 

 cited by the bishop to appear at the next sessions before the 

 justices, where, if he would not be persuaded to give, the justices 

 were to tax him according to their discretion, and on his refusal he was to 

 be committed to jail until the sum taxed should be paid, with all arrears. 



The next statute on the subject, which was passed in 1572 (14 Eliz. 

 c. 5), shows how ineffectual the former statutes had been. It enacted 

 that all rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, including in this 

 description "all persons whole and mighty in body, able to labour, not 

 having land or master,, nor using any lawful merchandise, craft, or 

 mystery, and all common labourers, able in body, loitering and refusing 

 to work for sufth reasonable wages as is commonly given," should " for 

 the first offence be grievously whipped, and burned through the gristle 

 of the right ear with a hot iron of the compass of an inch about ; " for 

 the second, should be deemed felons ; and for the third, should suffer 

 death as felons, without benefit of clergy. For the relief and susten- 

 tation of the aged and impotent poor, the justices of the peace within 

 their several districts were "by their good discretion" to tax and assess 

 all the inhabitants dwelling therein. Any one refusing to contribute 

 was to be imprisoned until he should comply with the assessment. By 

 the statutes 39 of Elizabeth, cc. 3 and 4 (1598), every able-bodied 

 person refusing to work for the ordinary wages was to be " openly 

 whipped until his body be bloody, and forthwith sent, from parish to 

 parish, the most straight way to the parish where he was born, there to 

 put himself to labour as a true subject ought to do." 



The next Act on this subject, the 43 Elizabeth, c. 2, has been in 

 operation from the time of its enactment, in 1601, to the present day. 

 An entire change in the mode of administration which had grown up 

 under its provisions was however effected by the Poor-Law Amend- 

 ment Act (4 & 5 Wm. IV. c. 7'i), which was passed in 1834. During 

 that long period many abuses crept into the administration of the laws 

 relating to the poor, so that in practice their operation was subversive 

 of the morals of the most numerous class, and injurious to the welfare 

 of the whole country. In its original provisions, the Act of Elizabeth 

 directed the overseers of the poor in every parish to " take order for 

 setting to work the children of all such parents as shall not be thought 

 able to maintain their children," as well as all such persons as, having 

 no means to maintain them, use no ordinary trade to get their living 

 by. For this purpose they were empowered " to raise, weekly or other- 

 wise, by taxation of every inhabitant, parson, vicar, and other, and of 

 every occupier of lands, houses, tithes, mines, &c., such sums of money 

 as they shall require for providing a sufficient stock of flax, hemp, 

 wool, and other ware or stuff, to set the poor on work, and also com- 

 petent sums for relief of lame, blind, old, and impotent persons, and 

 for putting out children as apprentices." Power was given to justices 

 to send to the house of correction or common jail all persons who 

 would not work. The churchwardens and overseers were further 

 empowered to build poor-houses, at the charge of the parish, for the 

 reception of the impotent poor only. The justices were further 

 empowered to assess all persons being of sufficient ability for the 

 relief and maintenance of their children, grandchildren, and parents. 

 The parish officers were also empowered to bind as apprentices any 

 children who should be chargeable to the parish. 



These simple provisions were in course of time greatly perverted, 

 and so many abuses were engrafted upon the statute, that it became an 

 instrument of more general demoralisation than was ever sanctioned 

 by legislative authority. It would greatly exceed any reasonable 

 limits to trace the progress of these abuses. The most injurious 

 practice was that which was established about the year 1795, when, 

 in order to meet the pressure upon the labouring population caused 

 by the high price of provisions, an allowance was made out of the 

 parish fund to every labourer in proportion to the number of his 

 family, and without reference to his being employed or without 

 employment. This allowance fluctuated with the price of flour, and 

 the scale was so adjusted as to return to each family the sum which a 

 given quantity of flour would cost beyond the price in years of 

 ordinary abundance. If things had been left to take their course in 

 England, as they were in Scotland, the labourer's wages would have 

 enabled him to purchase the same, or nearly the same, amount of pro- 

 visions and other articles of necessary consumption as before the 

 advance, and when the necessity for such a rise in wages had passed 

 away everything would have reverted to its former state. Under the 

 allowance system the labourer was made to receive a part of his 

 earnings in the form of a parish gift, and as the fund out of whijh it 

 was provided was raised from the contributions of those who did not 

 employ labourers, as well as of those who did, it followed that the 

 labourers were degraded from the condition of honourable inde- 

 pendence to that of parish paupers, and that their employers, being 

 able in part to burden others with the payment for their labour, had 

 a direct interest in perpetuating the system. Accordingly it was 

 found that a constant and rapid deterioration took place in tin- 

 character of the labouring agricultural population, and that they 

 became unable to obtain a rate of wages adequate to their support 

 without parish relief, however moderate might be the prices of the 

 necessaries of life. 



There are no accounts of the sums levied year by year in England 



