superintendence[1] The subject has been little thought of hitherto, for it has been considered one of the settled facts that the system worked well enough and needed no improvement. Now we have no longer the excuse that its defects are unknown, for at the present day all our social faults and miseries are dragged forth to light; we regard it as a hopeful sign of increasing interest that a sub-committee has been appointed in the Social Economy Department of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, for the special consideration of the subject of workhouse management; and when once we are convinced of an error, and have in due time attempted to apply a remedy, we do not often relapse into it. A step once made is a step gained, and from it we may hope to advance to another. In this instance the first step may be considered to be the appointment of lady visitors in a few instances, which we may hope will gradually become more numerous.
This plan may do much, but nothing but all-pervading influence of a higher kind can fully meet the evils we have been considering. A pamphlet entitled the Duty of Workhouse Visitation, and How to do it,[2] dwells chiefly on the point of lady visitors for the purpose of spiritual instruction and consolation to the inmates, and even this would be a great gain, but it is not all that we would aim at accomplishing in our task of reform. Such gross neglect and abuse of power as are described in the Report of the St. Pancras workhouse, drawn up by Dr. Bence Jones, call more loudly for redress than any such plan alone could offer. A perusal of this paper, or even a glance at it, will convince our readers that we have magnified none of the evils we have stated. It is indeed a disgrace to the history of a Christian country in the nineteenth century to have statements like these displayed to the eyes of the world. Dr. Bence Jones concludes with these words:—"Such a state of things ought not to be tolerated by the Government." The first step to be taken in the correction of evils of such magnitude must be the appointment of guardians who will see and correct abuses; indeed, this seems to be as absolutely necessary to any improvement in the system as the selection of a better class of superintendents. On this point we may direct attention to a suggestion in which the
- ↑ We have hardly left ourselves space to enter on the subject of the employment of inmates of workhouses. The object was treated in a paper sent to the Meeting for Social Science at Birmingham, by Mrs. De Morgan. The plans suggested are partly carried out in some workhouses, where tailors and shoemakers are employed to superintend the work of the inmates, and where the making of bread for the establishment is done in the house; wood-chopping is also provided as an occupation. Mrs. De Morgan also suggests the practicability of slightly remunerative employment, and especially urges industrial training for the young, so that "workhouses, from being the lowest step on the downward ladder, might form the first of an ascending scale, and arrest the idle and vicious in their certain course to prison."
- ↑ Nisbet.
