A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



married after the passing of the Act should be entitled to such relief. The 

 clerk to the board of guardians of East Preston Union had, moreover, assimi- 

 lated the administration of out-relief as far as possible to the new Act to the 

 saving, since 1837, of fifty per cent, in the keeping of the poor, and at Button 

 a considerable reduction of expenses was effected between 1832 and i837. SM 



The commission of 1844, however, revealed the most extraordinary 

 abuses in the incorporations. The master of East Preston workhouse was 

 unable to read or write, and had indeed been himself a pauper in Yapton 

 workhouse. He had been brought to East Preston to teach sack manufac- 

 turing, and while there had married the matron of the workhouse, who 

 apparently held office by a sort of hereditary title. 326 Under his governorship 

 the able-bodied men were not employed, the children were ill-taught, and in 

 one Case, certainly, most insanitary conditions had been allowed to prevail in 

 the treatment of disease. Neither here nor at Sutton was there any proper 

 classification of the inmates, and in both cases irregularities in the administra- 

 tion of the details of the Act had been permitted. 328 In spite, however, of 

 all these drawbacks, considerable reluctance was still felt to dissolve the 

 incorporations. It was said that the inmates of the workhouse were better 

 fed and more contented than they were in the neighbouring Poor Law unions, 

 and two clergymen, who had always taken the keenest interest in the question, 

 though they thought Gilbert's Act might well be amended, were yet most 

 urgent that it should not be repealed. 837 



This was, perhaps, the less surprising in view of the partial failure 

 of the local authorities to administer the new Act successfully. In 

 1848 the Commission on Vagrancy showed how far the guardians and 

 relieving officers had failed in dealing with casual paupers, and in exercising 

 that discretion with regard to admittance to the workhouse which was vested 

 in them. From Hailsham came the complaint that the number of vagrants 

 was greatly on the increase, and that the guardians were of opinion that it 

 had become a system with many to travel from union to union to obtain food, 

 the same individuals having applied more than once under different names at 

 intervals of three or four months. At Midhurst the number of casual paupers 

 was said to be ' fearfully increasing, now almost daily crowding the doors of 

 the workhouse, and the residences of our relieving officers .... as well as 

 encouraging idleness and vagrancy throughout the district.' In a similar 

 strain the Steyning guardians wrote that 



in consequence of opinions . . . given in your reports from time to time upon this subject, 

 officers fear the responsibility attaching to them if they refuse applicants a night's lodging in 

 the workhouse. It is a fact that until the union workhouse was built at Shoreham, that 

 parish was seldom troubled with applicants of this description. . . . Vagrants consider they 

 have a right to lodgings in a workhouse, they go to the relieving officer and state that they 

 are destitute . . . and take care never to have money about them. 328 



The second half of the century, however, saw a real improvement in the 

 situation, new poor-law unions were created, and in the half-year ending 



*** Accts. and Papers, \ 844, x. M5 So also did the governor of Sutton workhouse. 



"* Thus the guardian of Broadwater admitted that some things were probably done against the law. 

 The overseer, for instance, often did the guardian's work ; he himself, however, had never read the Act 

 thoroughly, and did not know what provisions it contained. At Sutton the treasurer was appointed without 

 security, the guardian did not, in his official capacity, try to find work for the able-bodied, and a certain 

 amount of contracting was admitted. 



m Accts. and Papers, \ 844, x. *" Ibid. 1 847-8, liii. 



210 



