Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 373, November 1846Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 373, November 1846
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
In each of these Unions, the management of the relief fund is confided
to a Board, consisting of resident rate-payers, and resident country
magistrates. The former are guardians by election, and the latter
ex-officio. The Board is completed by the addition of the churchwardens
and overseers. The chairman is generally the most distinguished, and the
vice-chairman the most active man in the Union. The chairman regulates
the proceedings of the Board, and ascertains its resolutions. The clerk
records them. The relief which applicants are to receive, is determined
by the Board; except that which is given by certain officers in cases of
"sudden and urgent necessity." The management of the Union-house is
invested in the master--a paid officer. His duties are ascertained and
fixed. He is liable to dismissal by the joint resolution of the Poor-Law
Commissioners and the Guardians, or by the order of the Commissioners
alone. It is also the duty of the master to attend to such cases of
destitution as may be presented at the Union-House gate; and, if their
necessities be of a sudden and urgent character, to admit them into the
house. It may be remarked here, that information is wanted upon this
point. The question is not, by what general term may the cases be
designated, whether sudden or urgent, but what the circumstances of the
cases really are, which are so relieved. The answers to the question
would throw light upon the relation subsisting between a strict
work-house system and the increase of vagrancy. To continue. The sick
poor are confided to the care of the medical officer; and the out-door
relief is chiefly administered by the relieving-officer. His duties in
rural Unions are as follows:--To pay or deliver such amounts of money or
food as the Board may have ordered the poor to receive, at the villages,
hamlets, and cottages where they may reside. He must visit the poor at
their homes. He receives applications for relief; and when the necessity
is sudden and urgent, he relieves the case promptly with food. He must
report upon the circumstances of each case, and keep accounts. For
neglect of duty, he is liable to penal consequences, and to dismissal,
in the same way as the master. The average number of parishes,
townships, and hamlets committed to the care of the relieving-officer
may be about twenty. The reader may be able, from his local knowledge,
to picture this Union, and give it a name.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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