Poor law guardian

“ Job, great, good, patient soul that he was, had his sour moments—a medical friend of mine believes that he had a liver,—I am sorry not to take the patriarch’s advice, but I do not see my way to hold my peace about the law and the poor, and that is why I propose to try and point out how and why the law as a system is hard on the poor, and wherein the governors and great ones of the earth may further temper the wind to the shorn lamb. ”

“ How many poor men and women whose children have been taken away from them for long terms of years to a reformatory or sent to gaol for months with hard labour, to the knowledge of all their neighbours, will read that report, and what will they think and say of the justice of our criminal law? ”

“ The law, as I told you, left it entirely to the taste and fancy of the judges what evidence they should receive, and though nowadays all judges honestly endeavour, I think, not to carry out the law to the full extent of its cruelty, yet naturally different men hold different views of the rights and liabilities of the poor, and so there is no sort of equality in the treatment they receive in different districts. ”

“ Although the criminal law has in the main been fairly administered and equally enforced against rich [Pg 199] and poor there are certain classes of laws which have often, no doubt from worthy motives, been used as engines of oppression against the poor. ”

“ I thought I had been a suffragist before I became a Poor Law Guardian, but now I began to think about the vote in women's hands not only as a right but as a desperate necessity. ”

“ The exposure of the evils of the system, which was made in the report of the famous Poor Law Commission appointed in 1832, and the attempt to abolish them by the provisions of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, ought to be studied by every citizen who desires to perform his full duty as a guardian of public interests, and especially by every individual whose sympathies lead him to undertake any practical effort for the amelioration of pauperism. ”

“ It implies, I think, the abolition of Boards of Guardians and of all the special machinery for relief. It implies, perhaps, the abolition of the Poor Law itself. There is no class of “the poor” as there is a class of criminals. Poverty is not a crime, and there are poor among the most honourable of the people. Poverty is a loose and wide term, involving the greater number of the people. There must, therefore, be some loss of self-respect in those of the poor who feel themselves set apart for special treatment. ”

“ But those who are convinced of its truth, may, with the most anxious desire of extending the comforts and elevating the condition of the lower classes of society, rationally express their apprehensions, that the attempt to sanction by law a right which in the nature of things cannot be adequately gratified, may terminate in disappointment, irritation, and aggravated poverty. ”

“ That is to say, according as he and his ancestors have rested their feet cramped in pinched shoes under the mahogany of the wealthy or tramped barefoot along the highway in the freedom of poverty, so will a judge’s principles of natural justice favour the rich or the poor.
We cannot get away from the fact that our judges make a great deal of law. The idea that a law is somewhere in existence and that the judges merely adopt it will not, I think, hold good for a moment. ”

“ What is wanted is not to abolish the Poor Law, but to widen, strengthen, and humanise the Poor Law, so as to make it respond to a demand for a more considerate, elastic, and, so far as possible, curative treatment of the Able-bodied. ”

“ I have dwelt on this subject at some length because in most of the chapters of this book my complaint has been that the laws are insufficient to help the poor, because they have in past days been enacted by the rich, and are still being administered by the rich, without knowledge of, and sympathy for, the best interests of the poor. ”

“ And I shall not confine myself to their effects upon wealth. I shall consider how far a well-framed poor-law may promote the moral as well as the material welfare of the labouring classes, and an ill-administered poor-law may produce moral, intellectual, and physical degradation. ”

“ The poor are suffering to-day at the hands of the law because in the evolution of things we have a lot of old derelict law made by slaveowners for slaves, by masters for serfs, by the landlords for the landless. It is law that has no more relation to the wants of to-day, and would be of no more purpose to a Ministry of Justice—if we had one—than crossbows and arquebuses would be to the War Office, or coracles to the Admiralty. And, instead of cursing the judges, who, poor fellows, are doing their best, I wish our parliamentary masters would look into the history of the matter. ”

“ One would not wish to say a word against leniency to the young however much it may savour of class-tenderness, but the concealment of a criminal’s name on his trial because his parents are well-to-do and respectable, is just one of those things that the poor people treasure up and quote as an instance of the law’s unfairness. ”

“ Paupers who have been warned in vain concerning bad conduct and idleness shall be proceeded against without favour, by the power of magistrates, and be punished accordingly.
The poor institutions can claim repayment from those hypocrites who, although they possess private means, embezzle and grasp at the gifts and assistance which are only intended for true poverty, which shall be fully repaid. The poor institutions can make the same claim from those persons who have renounced their duty of supporting those relations whom they are obliged to support, either by law or by contract. ”

“ At a time when every effort should be made to impress on the poor the impartiality of the law little cases of this kind, arising no doubt from motives of kindness and humanity, are exaggerated and quoted as typical of our criminal administration—which assuredly they are not. ”

“ No doubt, however, its good effects will be but slowly perceived, and I fear there is much disappointment in store for the millions of poor labourers, who expect to have abundance of food and clothing the moment the Bill becomes a law. Poor creatures, their state is most deplorable and haunts me day and night. The very best of Poor Laws must be quite insufficient. Indeed, wherever there is a necessity for a Poor Law at all there must be something wrong, I think; for if each proprietor, farmer and clergyman did his duty there would be no misery, and if they do not, no Poor Law can prevent it. ”

“ The extreme severity of the law shows how grievous the burdens for the maintenance of the poor were felt, and that it was deemed necessary to check the evil by attaching degradation to pauperism. The humanity of later times has removed it from the statute book: the extent of the evil had long rendered the enforcing it impracticable. The act is so strong a proof of the rapid diffusion of the mischievous effects of the system, that I cannot omit reciting a part of it to the House. ”

“ It is a commonplace that even rich men looked upon a law-suit as a dire misfortune, even if they gained the case; and as for a poor one—why, it was considered a miracle of justice and beneficence if a poor man who had once got into the clutches of the law escaped prison or utter ruin. ”

“ It seems to me that to demonstrate to the man in the street the unfairness of our law of imprisonment for debt is such a feasible proposition, that I have come to regard the subject as very fitting for the citizen’s kindergarten education on legal reform. Once understand the history, and the causes of the continued existence, of imprisonment for debt, and its evil effect on right action, conduct and social life, and you will find it easier to diagnose the more obscure legal diseases which are partially the outcome and partially the cause of much real distress among the poor. ”

“ But what if he neglect the care of his soul? I answer: What if he neglect the care of his health or of his estate, which things are nearlier related to the government of the magistrate than the other? Will the magistrate provide by an express law that such a one shall not become poor or sick? Laws provide, as much as is possible, that the goods and health of subjects be not injured by the fraud and violence of others; they do not guard them from the negligence or ill-husbandry of the possessors themselves. No man can be forced to be rich or healthful whether he will or no. ”

“ There is some reason for these laws, as long as the poor-laws are duly executed; as long as the poor are duly relieved, according to law; but, unless the poor-laws exist; unless they be in full force; unless they be duly executed; unless efficient and prompt relief be given to necessitous persons, these acts, and many others approaching to a similar description, are acts of barefaced and most abominable tyranny. ”

“ When a harsh and parsimonious law was substituted for one which was excellent in itself, but had been long and sadly misused; when poverty was first virtually pronounced criminal, and punished by statute; when the vices of the past, and the follies of rich magistrates, were visited upon the present generation, and upon the heads of the poor; when those whom God had joined together were put asunder by legislation, and when a deputy parliament, irresponsible directly to the people, was created to make laws and regulations for those who are denied a voice in the senate, or a vote at an election ”

“ It has been recently decided by the British Parliament, that in cases of this kind the starving poor shall not be permitted to enter the law courts of the country, there to sue for a pittance to support life, until an intermediate newly-erected court, alien to the Constitution, before which they must plead at their own expense, shall have first given them permission to prosecute their claims. ”

“ But I should like to see imprisonment kept entirely for evil-doers, and that side of the police court work which consists in rate collecting and semi-civil proceedings transferred elsewhere. At present many are sent to gaol in the police court for the crime of poverty. In the cases of non-payment of rates or of orders on parents to pay subscriptions to industrial homes it seems a very bad policy to send a poor man to prison. It takes a man from [Pg 221] work, it does not produce money, and it throws a family into the workhouse. ”

“ Difficult, almost impossible, as such discrimination between deserving and undeserving is, it is felt that any genuine reform of our present poor law system demands that some attempt in this direction should be made. ”

“ The aristocracy had joined the outcry against the new Poor Law, and talked about the rights of the poor merely by way of throwing as they thought a tub to the whale, and drawing the attention of the people from looking at heavier grievances. ”

“ Should a poor man have a leg or an arm broken, through the carelessness of a drunken coachman, his poverty prevents his having recourse to law. Justice, in these cases, nine times in ten, is entirely out of the question, and an arrangement, between him and the proprietors, is easily effected ”

“ A law which says, ‘You shall not beg or steal, but you shall starve,’ would be contrary to natural justice, and would be disobeyed; but if the law first makes provision for the destitute, and then says, ‘You shall not beg, but you shall be relieved at the public 182charge,’ the alternative thus offered will entitle the community to suppress a practice which is held to be injurious. On these grounds, I think the law which establishes a system of public relief for destitution, should at the same time prohibit mendicancy. ”

“ We also boast of our love of justice, and that the law protects rich and poor alike, yet we retain money fines as a punishment, and make the very first steps to obtain justice a matter of expense—in both cases a barbarous injustice, or denial of justice to the poor. ”

“ Even the poorer classes themselves are beginning to make use of it as a kind of homestead law to protect their goods from execution.
Much as I am in favour of seeing the poor man’s home protected to a larger degree than it is at present I do not care to see it achieved at the expense of the character of the occupants. Any law that is a constant temptation to dishonesty is an evil, and there is no doubt that when the day comes for legal reform on a large scale, the various questions relating to the position of the married woman in the eye of the law will have to be considered. ”

“ In relation to the grave crimes against society we may fairly boast that rich and poor are treated much alike. But the police court in matters within its own jurisdiction is a machine for teaching better manners to the poor. It is a somewhat harsh machine, perhaps, but in the main just and necessary at the present state of our evolution.
When folk are naughty and violent and ill-mannered and ultra-selfish, and become a nuisance to their neighbours, the police, if they are poor, take them in hand, but if they are rich they are dealt with differently. ”

“ But you must not go away with the impression that there is one law for the poor and another for the rich here. It is not on account of your appearance of poverty that I shall deal leniently with you. I believe that you have committed this gross offence against a distinguished man out of mere youthful folly and bravado, and you may consider yourself fortunate that I have decided not to send you to prison for it. You have been confined for the night in surroundings that have probably caused you considerable distress, and I have taken that into account. ”

“ In these cases there is no pretence of proving a man’s means and sending him to gaol because he can pay and won’t. No such evidence is necessary. The man goes to prison because he is poor and has not the money to pay. If the State thinks fit to put a man’s child in a reformatory, one would think it might stand the expense of it, without ruining the home by imprisoning the father because he cannot subscribe towards his keep. ”