Volume 6

Annual report of the Poor Law Commissioners for England and Wales.

  • Great Britain. Poor Law Commissioners.
Date:
1835-1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Poor Law Commissioners for England and Wales. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/532 (page 2)
    similar pressure in the year 1837, the explanations which were circulated by us of the successful measures then adopted, and the firmness and good sense which, for the most part, characterise the Boards of Guardians in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, have led to the maintenance of sound principles in the administra- tion of relief, and have prevented the increase and prolongation of distress which has been shown to result from the abandon- ment of those principles. With very few exceptions, which it is unnecessary to particularize, the Guardians in these districts have steadily refused relief in aid of wages. 3. Where the accommodation in the workhouse has been suf- ficient, they have confined themselves to relief in the workhouse ; and where (as in the cases of the Hinckley, Basford, Barrow- upon-Soar, Mansfield, and Nottingham Unions) the workhouse has been full, and it has become necessary for us to suspend the regulations prohibiting out-door relief to the able-bodied, the Guardians have shown no disposition to make a lax or improper use of such suspension, but have refused relief to the partially employed, and, when the local circumstances of the Union have permitted, have adopted an out-door labour test as a temporary substitute for the workhouse system. 4, Mr. Edward Senior, our Assistant Commissioner, who acts in the counties of Nottingham and Leicester, informs us that, as respects the Unions of Shardlow, Loughborough, Lutterworth, and Market Harborough, where the population in some villages is exclusively manufacturing, in others exclusively agricultural, although the greater part of the operatives have been only par- tially employed during the last nine months, and a very large proportion unable to find manufacturing employment, the Guar- dians have firmly refused relief to this class, except in the work- house. 5. He further states, that in the Market Harborough Union, a special meeting was called by the Guardians, to consider the propriety of granting out-door relief to the unemployed stocking- makers; but so convinced were the Guardians of the impolicy of this measure, that the motion was negatived ; and in the Ashby-de-la-Zouch Union, the Guardians having recently applied to the Commissioners for advice as to the propriety of relaxing the rule, and the Commissioners having directed Mr. Senior to confer with the Board of Guardians, it was resolved, without a dissentient voice, to confine relief solely to the workhouse. 6. We are also informed by him of the remarkable fact, that under the circumstances described, the number in the workhouses in the last-mentioned Unions has not been largely increased; that the operatives, having to choose between agricultural labour and the workhouse, have induced the neighbouring farmers to take them into employment; and that increased numbers have also