ABSTRACT
THE intervention of Mr. Davenport Bromley and of the Society for the Relief of Distress in the attack which was made on the Poor Law in 1860-61 has already been mentioned. Their attitude at first appears to have been distinctly hostile to the spirit of the new Poor Law and its administrators. Their evidence, given before Mr. Villiers' committee, shows that they had been misled by the exaggerated language of that too numerous class of philanthropists which always speaks in superlatives. Indirectly, however, their action had many important results. It induced many persons who were not professional philanthropists to give careful consideration to the subject. It took the society a year or two to discover the difficulty of the task on which it had embarked. One of the almoners of the society, Mr. Edward Denison, M.P. for Newark, carried his investigation and study into the very heart of the subject. He became convinced that mere almsgiving was useless. As then carried on, it was a mere
senseless competition with the Poor Law. He resigned his almonship, but continued to live for some time in the poor district of Stepney.1 The same dissatisfaction was felt by other members of the new society, and the opinion was circulated that the vast sums of money given away in charity from endowed funds and subscriptions, distributed without any reference to the relief dispensed by the Poor Law, tended to increase rather than diminish the dependence of the poor.
