ABSTRACT
Parliament had ceased to be interested in the Poor Law, and furnished for many years practically neither independent criticism nor initiative. “The Poor Law Board,” observed Sir George Corne wall Lewis in 1851, “has become purely administrative and has no character or policy of its own.” The instructions given by Mr. Charles Buller, the first President of the Poor Law Board, adumbrated in the guise of a policy what were really two distinct and inherently incompatible lines of action. The London workhouses had become congested “by the flocking into them of the lowest and most difficult to manage classes of poor.” Women, of whom there were always between 80,000 and 100,000 on outdoor relief, were almost wholly ignored in the Poor Law Legislation of 1847-1871, as in the Orders of the Central Authority. The number of persons emigrated at the expense of the poor rate suddenly declines, falling from 3271 in 1852 to 488 in 1853.
