IKA.NSACTION::) OF SECTION F. 833 



relief in ' out-of-work ' cases, and subsequently in other cases also. Sick persons, 

 widows, and the aged and infirm were only relieved out of the workhouse on 

 conditions strictly applicable to their individual cases. The latter class were not 

 so relievedunless it was proved that they had been thrifty and had no children or 

 other relatives legally or morally liable to support them and able to do so, and 

 even they ceased to be a charge on the rates after the establishment of the Tower 

 Hamlets Pension Fund, which was formed for the express purpose of savin" the 

 really deserving poor from the Poor Law. The result has been that outdoor 

 relief has gradually ceased to exist in Whitechapel, and that no cases, other than 

 those of sudden or tirgent necessity relieved by the relieving officer in kind, have 

 been added_ to the Outdoor Relief lists for more than twenty years. Notwith- 

 standing this, tlie number of indoor paupers has not increased. Inquiry was made 

 into every case in which outdoor relief was withdrawn during the two years 

 ended Lady Day 1875, from able-bodied widows and deserted women, the most 

 helpless of all classes, with the result that out of 1G7 cases, comprising 600 in- 

 dividuals, 77 were found to be doing as well as or better than when m receipt 

 of outdoor relief without further assistance, 52 were obtaining an independent 

 living after having received assistance from charitable agencies or other sources, 10 

 had been admitted to the workhouse, 18 had apparently left the district, two had 

 died, and eight only, owing to vicious habits or tlie refusal of the assistance offered, 

 were believed to be not doing well. It will thus be seen that of the 1C7 cases no less 

 than 129 had been taken from the ranks of pauperism, with the best results to them- 

 selves, to say nothing of the ratepayers, and with moral results to the community 

 at large which cannot be described in detail here, but which must be obvious. 

 Mr. Loch, the Secretary of the Charity Organisation Society, in his work ' Old- 

 age Pensions and Pauperism," has given details showing what the results have 

 been of a similar Poor Law policy in two other poor Metropolitan Unions, Stepney 

 and St._ George's-in-the-East, thelatter, taken as a whole, being the poorest of all 

 the Unions in London, and comparing them with the Unions of the Strand and 

 Bethnal Green. He has also shown the results of careful administration in Unions 

 the very opposite to the London districts abovementioned, namely, the rural 

 Unions of Brixworth in Northamptonshire and Bradfield in Berkshire, as compared 

 with the two similar Unions of Linton in Cambridgeshire and Midhurst in Sussex. 

 The facts brought out by these two sets of comparisons are striking and conclusive. 

 In Unions in which there has been a careful administration of the Poor liaw for a 

 period, more or less, of twenty years, it has been proved that the proportion of 

 paupers over sixty to population can iDe reduced in the country to about four per 

 cent., and in London, judging by its poorest Union, by more than half the present 

 number. Can it be doubted that in these cases the bugbear of old-age pauperism 

 has already been faced and in a great measure dispelled, and is there any reason, 

 beyond the force of habit and a vis mertice which surely might be grappled with, 

 why both town and country Guardians should not follow the example set them by 

 the pioneers of this movement, and by a common effort subdue the common 

 enemy ? Let us not, with the experience we liave to guide us, be led astray in 

 this matter, though some of our philanthropists and political economists seem 

 mclined to countenance a large increase of public expenditure in connection with 

 the relief of the poor. Among the many nostrums for the cure of the disease 

 under which the State is supposed to labour is a proposal by Mr. Bartley, M.P., 

 embodied in the ' Old-age Provident Pension Bill ' which lie brought in during 

 the last session of Parliament. Mr. Bartley proposes that every person (man or 

 woman) of sixty-five, who is not a criminal or drunkard, and who is unable to 

 earn the wages of his calling, shall be entitled to a pension of 7s. per week from 

 the local authorit}', which is to be the County Council, provided that he has never 

 received poor-law relief. If he has purchased an annuity from the Post Office or 

 some friendly society, or paid a lump sum for the purchase of a deferred annuity 

 Irom the Post Office, or is prepared to pay a lump sum of not less than 10/. to the 



' Old-age Pensions and Pauperism. An Inquiry as to the Bearing of the Statistics 

 of Pauperism quoted by the Right Hon. J. Chamberlain, M.P., and others in support 

 of a scheme for National Pensions (London : Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892). 



1892. 3 H 



