ABSTRACT
Less intelligible is the existing diversity of policy of the Central Authority in 1907 with regard to able-bodied women. In all the unions in one of the geographical regions into which the country is divided, an able-bodied woman, whether spinster, wife or widow, can be granted maintenance in her own home. The Principle of “Less Eligibility”—that is, that the condition of the pauper should be “less eligible” than that of the lowest grade of independent labourer—is often regarded as the root principle of the reforms of 1834. The Central Authority in 1907 applies this principle unreservedly to one class only, the wayfarers or vagrants. Exactly to what extent the policy of the Central Authority has avowedly departed from the Principle of Less Eligibility with regard to other sections of the able-bodied class it is difficult, in the absence of explicit statement, to determine.
