436 APPENDIX II. POOR LAW 



characters, skill, or industry, provided only that they kept out of the class 

 of sturdy rogues and vagabonds, or, as they were now called, " the idle 

 and disorderly." 



Such measures as the encouragement of Friendly Societies, the foundation 

 of Savings Banks, the establishment of industrial schools were designed by 

 the Legislature to improve the condition of the labouring classes and to pro- 

 vide means of escape from poverty. Their remedial effects were necessarily 

 slow : they could afford no relief to the hardships and privations into which 

 wage-earners were suddenly plunged by the exceptional rise in the price of 

 provisions in 1796-6. The labouring classes must have been brought to the 

 verge of famine, unless the advance in the cost of necessaries was met by a 

 corresponding rise in wages, or unless wages were supplemented by some 

 form of charitable allowances. In these circumstances, legislators and county 

 magistrates unfortunately turned for their immediate remedies to permanent 

 alterations in the Poor Law. In 1795 a tardy attempt was made to remedy 

 the worst abuse of the laws of settlement. The removal of any persons was 

 prohibited until they had actually become chargeable to the parish (35 Geo. III. 

 c. 101). In the same year the Berkshire magistrates, by what was from their 

 place of meeting known as the Speenhamland Act, endeavoured to fix a 

 " fair wage " by using the rates to supplement earnings in proportion to the 

 price of bread and the size of families (see Chapter XIV.). Other counties 

 adopted similar scales of supplementary allowances out of the rates. At 

 the time the expedient was of doubtful legality ; but in the following year 

 (1796) Parliament confirmed its principle. It sanctioned indiscriminate out- 

 door relief (36 Geo. III. c. 23) by completely abandoning the workhouse test 

 of destitution. That part of the Act of 1722 (9 Geo. I. c. 7) which had 

 permitted relief to be made conditional on entry into the workhouse was 

 repealed, on the ground that it prevented " an industrious poor person from 

 receiving such occasional relief as is best suited to his peculiar case," and 

 held out " conditions of relief injurious to the comfort and domestic situation 

 and happiness of such poor persons." Overseers were authorised to give 

 occasional relief in cases of temporary illness or distress at the houses of the 

 industrious poor unconditionally, although the recipients refused to enter 

 any house provided for their maintenance. 



Justices were also empowered, at their discretion, to order money grants 

 to be given to the industrious poor in their own homes. The consequences 

 of these successive relaxations of the Poor Law were not at the time visible. 

 During the greater part of the war they were mainly used for the relief of 

 winter unemployment. Substantial advances in wages, the progress of 

 manufactures, the increased demand for labour created by the larger area 

 under tillage combined to relieve distress. It was during the period of 

 depression 1813-36 that the full effects were revealed. Both in manufacturing 

 towns and agricultural districts employment had become scarce. Employers, 

 hard-pressed by falling prices, took advantage of the relaxed Poor Law to 

 reduce their expenses, by throwing on the ratepayers the greater part of 

 their labour bills. A single justice was further empowered, at his discretion, 

 to order relief to be given to poor persons in their own homes for one month ; 

 two justices might extend the order for two months, " and so on from time to 

 time, as the occasion shall require." l 



Within the next forty years the consequences of these relaxations of the 

 Poor Law were fully developed. They are summarised in the Report of the 

 Parliamentary Committee of 1817, and with greater detail by the Poor Law 

 Inquiry Commissioners, appointed in 1832, whose Report was published two 



1 These poweis were still further enlarged in 1815 (55 Geo. III. c. 137). A single 

 justice misrht make an order for three months, and two justices for six. months, "and so on 

 from time to time as the occasion shall require." 



