POOR LAWS, SCOTLAND. 



POOR LAWS, SCOTLAND. 



poor are M amply supplied u before the Act, but the tnuuwr of ad- 

 ministering relief i* ao regulated, by subjecting the applicant* fur it t<> 

 Ik* dvcipluM of a workhouw and to other restraint*, that the coii.ln i MI 

 of a pauper, living upon the parish fund, U depressed, in jH.ipt of 

 comfort. Mow that of the labourer. Thiu a ready teit is applied to 

 duuuguuh real and pretended destitution, and a powerful incentive to 

 work is held out to all who can find employment. 



The menu* alao of obtaining employment are increased by enlarging 

 the market for the poor man's labour. This U the result of a relaxa- 

 tion in the law of settlement, and )>articularly of settlement by hiring 

 and service. The old law had been found to obstruct the free circu- 

 lation of labour by confining the poor to their own parishes. The 

 labourer himself, from attachment to old scene* and associates, was 

 often unwilling to engage himself for a year in a strange parish, lest, 

 by acquiring a settlement there, he should incur, at some future time, 

 a permanent separation from home ; the fanner, on the other hand, 

 had an equally strong objection to hire a strange labourer on such 

 Urms as to burden his parish with a new settler. 



By the Poor-Law Amendment Act, a settlement by hiring and 

 service cannot now be acquired ; but the Act does not interfere 

 materially with settlements previously acquired. Settlements by 

 office and by apprenticeship in the sea service or to a fisherman can no 

 longer be acquired. Settlement by renting a tenement is clogged with 

 the additional qualification that the occupier must have been <mi>l 

 to the poor-rate, and paid the same for one year. Settlement by 

 estate, like any other settlement, when once gained, used to endure till 

 it was superseded by some new settlement ; but now it is converted to 

 a temporary settlement, and to be retained so long only as the pro- 

 prietor shall live within ten miles of the estate. Settlement* by 

 marriage and by payment of rates are untouched. Settlement by 

 parentage and settlement by birth are both affected to this extent, 

 that illegitimate children born after the passing of the Act are to follow 

 the settlement of the mother until the age of sixteen, or until they 

 acquire a settlement in their own right ; but they revert to their birth 

 settlement after sixteen, unless they shall have acquired another in their 

 own right The effect of this change in the law is that an unmarried 

 woman, whose pregnancy in itself made her chargeable, U no longer 

 hunted from the parish in which she happened to be, in order that 

 the parish may not, by the birth of the child therein, be permanently 

 charged with its maintenance. The old law of settlement waa full of 

 legal difficulties and refinements, and the effect of the change in the 

 law has been to relieve parishes from much litigation. 



As already mentioned, a great change also has been introduced in 

 the general laws of bastardy. Formerly the putative father was liable 

 for the support of a bastard, on the unsupported oath of the mother 

 that he was the father of it. Before the birth of the child, he might 

 be called upon to give security to provide for the child, and, if unable 

 to give such security, might be committed to prison ; and, after its 

 birth, an order of filiation might be made upon him by two justices 

 out of sessions. By the new Act neither the mother nor the putative 

 father of a bastard can be punished, as waa formerly the case. Female 

 incontinence is checked by making the mother liable to maintain her 

 child in the first instance ; and, as already observed, she is left to seek 

 her own remedy against the father of her child, without the intervention 

 of the poor-law authorities. 



Any person who marries a woman having children, whether legitimate 

 or illegitimate, is made liable to maintain them until they attain the 

 age of sixteen, or until the death of the mother. 



(BL's Cumm., 359; Nolan's Poor Lawt ; Qlen's Poor-Law Statutes 

 ami Poor -Law Roanl Ordert.) 



POOR LAWS, SCOTLAND. The foundation of the Old Poor Law 

 of Scotland wan the Act of Parliament 1579, c. 74, which in so many 

 respect* resembled the celebrated English statute of the li;h of 

 Elizabeth, passed a few years earlier, as to have been considered a mere 

 adaptation from it. The Scotch Act, however, fell short of the English 

 in the one important particular of not providing for the care of the 

 able-bodied. By this old Act, a settlement was acquired by birth, and 

 once so established could not be changed unless by a seven years' indus- 

 trial residence in another parish. By the Act of 1672, c. 18, this period 

 was shortened to three years. The method of administering the law, 

 which arose partly out of the terms of the old Acts, partly out of 

 custom, and partly from the directions given to these sanctions by the 

 jndgmenU ! the courts, was as follow! : In the rural parishes, the 

 " kirk sessions," or lowest ecclesiastical judicatories, consisting of the 

 pariah clergyman and certain elders, shared the management with the 

 " heritor*," or rated landed proprietor* ; but it became customary for 

 the Utter body to interest themselves solely in the voting and levying 

 of the rate, leaving it* distribution and the management of the poor to 

 the former. In those municipal corporations holding rank as royal 

 burghs, the assessment and management lay with the corj>or;ite autho- 

 rities. The funds for the relief of the poor were of two kinds : the 

 collections at church doors, along with certain fees and eleemosynary 

 bequests, cotititutl the one department; and rates assessed on the 

 pariah, or a substitute voluntarily |id instead of an assessment, the 

 other. Of the sums collected at the church doors, only a half went to 

 the regular relief of those legally entitled to relief ; the other became a 

 fund for general charitable purposes at the command of the kirk 

 session. In many case* there was no assessment, and the regular 



practice came to be, that if the miscellaneous sources were insnt 1 

 for the relief of the poor, the heritors and session in a count r\ . 

 or the magistrates in a town parish, might levy a rate. It became a 

 common practice for the parties chiefly interested to agree to a "volun- 

 tary assessment," for the purpose of postponing the imposition of a 

 fixed legal rate. When an assessment was imposed, it became a rule 

 that one half of it should be levied on the proprietors of land, in 

 respect of their land ; the other on householders, in respect of their 

 "means and substance," r tin it- incomes so far a* not derived from 

 land. The adjustment of the rating was the ground of much dispute, 

 and different parishes followed very distinct methods in practice. 



For a considerable period the Scottish system was very favourably 

 received by political economist*, who saw the country in a compara- 

 tively sound moral condition, with a jarsimonious poor law, while the 

 lavish system of England seemed to promote profligacy and idleness, 

 lint from the time when these doctrines were first promulgated to the 

 completion of the great change of the English poor taw, a vast internal 

 alteration had token place in the social economy of Scotland. The 

 comparative low rate of wages, attracting manufacturing capita' 

 England, had caused a more than average migration of the rural 

 labourers to the manufacturing district*, and a peculiarly rapid increase 

 of the city population. It was found that with these complicated 

 materials, the simple parochial system adapted to a state of society 

 where each mail watched over the interests and the conduct of lux 

 neighbour, was incapable of grappling. It was found that even for 

 poor country district* the system was unsuitable, because, thou 

 far behind the English system in profusion, the administrators were 

 compelled by the voice of public opinion to become more lil 

 their dispensations, while the managers of the country pariah 

 subject to the same influence kept down the allowances, and thu.-s 

 gave the poor an inducement to endeavour to obtain a settlement by 

 three yean' industrial residence in the cities. Dr. Chalmers was the 

 great champion of the old system. With the assistance of some enthu- 

 siastic followers, he organised the administration of a parish in the 

 poorer parts of Glasgow, as a demonstration of the efficiency of 

 the system was capable. It was a very pleasing picture, but the public 

 soon felt that the success with which one energetic individual and his 

 enthusiastic followers might voluntarily perform the duties generally 

 exacted by legal compulsion, was no sufficient ground for believing 

 that the rest of the community can be at all times and in all places 

 depended upon for the performance of onerous public services without 

 the coercion of law. 



The public were first awakened to the imperfections of the & 

 Poor Law by Dr. W. P. Alison, a physician in Edinburgh, and pro- 

 fessor of the practice of medicine in the university. Having frequently 

 administered professional services to the poorer classes, he showed fn <ui 

 his own experience that the utter inadequacy of the provision afforded 

 to those who, by inability to work, or bad seasons, or revulsions in trade, 

 were reduced to want, was an extensive cause of disease, vice, and 

 misery. The city population speedily answered to this appeal, and 

 associations were formed, and inquiries made in various directions. It 

 was shown that the amount expended on the relief of the ] 

 Scotland amounted to little more than a sixth part of the sum dis- 

 tributed throughout an equal population in England by the economised 

 poor law. In England, the expense of supporting the poor amounted 

 to Gs. lOfd. per head of the population ; in Scotland, to Is. 2Jc/. In 

 some of the Highland parishes, whence the most destitute objects 

 emigrated over the rest of the country, the allov a ludicrously 



small ; and a report made to the General Assembly of the Chi 

 Scotland in 1839, enumerated instances where sums averaging from 3*. 

 to 1. yearly were solemnly awarded to destitute people, as the pro- 

 vision which the Poor Law made for then: wants. In the meantime 

 the discussion of these matters had a tendency gradually to increase 

 the amount of the provision for the poor. The practice of assessments 

 made considerable progress, and a return to parliament in 1843 

 that between 1836 and 1841 the sums raised by assessment had 

 increased from 89.101/. to 128,8582.; while the sums raised by volun- 

 tary assessment had risen from 15,S29/. to 22,3867. A commission \\.is 

 at last appointed to inquire into the whole state of the subject 

 after hearing much evidence, they presented a report, accompanied by 

 a voluminous appendix, in 1843. The amendments proposed in this 

 report were supposed to be of a somewhat narrow nature ; the country 

 expressed dissatisfaction with them ; and in 1845 a measure was passed 

 embodying alterations considerably more extensive. 



By this Act, 8 A 9 Viet., c. 83, a board of supervision is appointed, 

 consisting of persons connected with the municipal bodies anil the 

 administration of justice in Scotland, with one salaried member, who 

 gives constant personal attendance. The office of the board is in K.lin- 

 burgh. This board is endowed with ample menus for ascertaining, in 

 all parts of the country, the condition of the poor, and the method in 

 which the system of relief is administered. The l>< 

 no directory or prohibitory control over the proceedings of the local 

 boards. These bodies are, however, re-org:mi.-e<l by the Art. In the 

 rural parishes where there is an assessment, the local bo:;, 

 sist ol landowners to the extent of -2"l. annual value, the kirk session, 

 tad certain elected representatives of the ratepayers, according to the 

 number fixed by the board of supervision. In city parishes, the boards 

 are each to consist of four person* named by the magistrates, deputies 



