Summary of the Position in regard to London.
On 1st January 1912 the total number of paupers in London, excluding lunatics and casuals, was 109,481. But to this 109,481 we must now add (say) 60,000 old age pensioners, an indefinite number of able-bodied men receiving relief on that day under the Unemployed Workmen Act, a weekly average of 40,000 children receiving meals under the Provision of Meals Act, an indefinite number of children receiving medical relief under the (Education) Administrative Provisions Act, and an indefinite number of people receiving public relief outside the Poor Law in other ways above indicated. These figures have now to be collected from some half-a-dozen different reports.
We have seen that as the result of the removal of the pauper disqualification there was a large transfer of outdoor paupers to the pension lists and corresponding reduction of pauperism; but that the present tendency is to fill the places of those transferred to the pension list with outdoor paupers under seventy. This tendency became especially marked in the third week of the Lady Day quarter of this year. If it continues we shall before long have as many outdoor paupers as before the disqualification was removed, and the old age pensioners and others into the bargain. It has been shown also that many pensioners are receiving Poor Law relief as well. In one Union it is reported that pensioners have discovered that they can supplement their pensions, which are notoriously inadequate, by continuous outdoor medical relief and nourishment, and that they do so systematically. Many others enter Poor Law infirmaries and receive their pensions as well, so that ratepayers and taxpayers pay for them twice over. Again, last year nearly 5000 able-bodied men received jobs of work from the Central Unemployed Body. But we have to consider the effect of the Act not only upon those who receive work, but also upon those who are encouraged to apply to the Distress
