the uniorm by supplying the men with "spiked" helmets, doubtless to please the Major, who liked to see his men look smart, though the military appearance of the force has been greatly improved since by the said spikes being silvered and burnished.
Political Union.—See "Reform Leagues."
Polling Districts.—The sixteen wards of the borough are divided into 131 polling districts.
Polytechnic.—This was one of the many local literary, scientific, and educational institutions which have been replaced by our Midland Institute, Free Libraries, &c. It was founded in April, and opened in October, 1843, and at the close of its first year there were the names of very nearly 500 members on the hooks, the rates of subscription being 6s. per quarter for participation in all the benefits of the institution, including the lectures, library, classes, baths, &c. With the "People's Instruction Society," the "Athenic Institute," the "Carr's Lane Brotherly Society" (said to have been the first Mechanics' Institution in Britain), the Polytechnic in its day, did good work.
Poor Law and Poor Rates.-Local history does not throw much light upon the system adopted by our early progenitors in their dealings with the poor, but if the merciless laws were strictly carried out, the wandering beggars, at all events must have had hard lives of it By an act passed in the reign of Henry VIII., it was ordered that vagrants should be taken to a market town, or other convenient place and there to be tied to the tail of a cart, naked, and beaten with whips until the body should be bloody by reason of the punishment. Queen Elizabeth so far mitigated the punishment that the unfortunates were only to be stripped from the waist upwards to receive their whipping, men and women, maids and mothers, suffering alike in the open street or market-place, the practice being, after so using them, to conduct them to the boundary of the parish and pass them on to the next place for another dose, and it was not until 1791 that flogging of women was forbidden. The resident or native poor were possibly treated a little better, though they were made to work for their bread in every possible case. By the new Poor Act of 1783, which authorised the erection of a Workhouse, it was also provided that the "Guardians of the Poor" should form a Board consisting of 106 members, and the election of the first Board (July 15th, 1783), seems to have been almost as exciting as a modern election. In one sense of the word they were guardians indeed, for they seem to have tried their inventive faculties in all ways to find work for the inmates of the House, even to hiring them out, or setting them to make worsted and thread The Guardians would also seem to have long had great freedom allowed them in the spending of the rates, as we read it was not an uncommon thing for one of them if he met a poor person badly off for clothes to give an order on the Workhouse for a fresh "rig out." In 1873 the Board was reduced to sixty in number (the first election taking place on the 4th of April), with the usual local result that a proper political balance was struck of 40 Liberals to 20 Conservatives. The Workhouse, Parish Offices, Children's Homes, &c., will be noted elsewhere. Poor law management in the borough is greatly complicated from the fact of its comprising two different parishes, and part of a third. The Parish of Birmingham works under a special local Act, while Edgbaston forms part of King's Norton Union, and the Aston portion of the town belongs to the Aston Union, necessitating three different rates and three sets of collectors, &c. If a poor man in Moseley Road needs assistance he must see the relieving officer at the Parish Offices in the centre of the town
