ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the workhouse system in England and Wales. The workhouses between 1890 and 1929 were not declining, but were laying the foundations for the present system of locally controlled institutions. Both need and social convention determine who shall enter these institutions; no system of outdoor care has managed to replace them. From the 1890s there were some new homes for the aged poor, though they housed less than a thousand people by 1908. The Local Government Board in the late 1890s was impressed by the strength of public feeling and political pressure to 'dispauperise' the elderly. They therefore recommended outdoor relief wherever this was suitable – though the Minority Report claimed that few boards of Guardians allowed enough for old people to live on comfortably. The Local Government Board made some reforms in 1913 by handing authority over the sick wards from the untrained workhouse master to the medical staff.
