the idiot, the lunatic, the bastard child and the vagrant would similarly be placed each in an appropriate but separate establishment. With us a common _Malebolge_ is provided for them all; and in some parts of the country the confusion is worse confounded by the effect of Prohibitory Orders, which, enforcing the application of the notable workhouse-test, drive into the same common sink of so many kinds of vice and misfortune the poor man whose only crime is his poverty, and whose want of work alone makes him chargeable. Each of the buildings which we so absurdly call a workhouse is, in truth (1) a general hospital; (2) an almshouse; (3) a foundling house; (4) a lying-in hospital; (5) a school house; (6) a lunatic asylum; (7) an idiot house; (8) a blind asylum; (9) a deaf and dumb asylum; (10) a workhouse; but this part of the establishment is generally a _lucus a non lucendo_, omitting to find work even for able-bodied paupers. Such and so varied are the destinations of these common receptacles of sin and misfortune, of sorrow and suffering of the most different kinds, each tending to aggravate the others with which it is unnecessarily and injuriously brought into contact. It is at once equally shocking to every principle of reason and every feeling of humanity, that all these varied forms of wretchedness should be thus crowded together into one common abode, that no attempt should be made by law to classify them, and to provide appropriate places for the relief of each."[438] [435] It must be remembered that, as already mentioned, it was no part of the policy of the Central Authority to relieve in the workhouse any of the aged and infirm or of the sick who preferred to remain outside, and who were (so far as the published documents show) to continue to receive outdoor relief. [436] Second Annual Report, 1849, p. 159. [437] _Life and Times of Thomas Wakley_, by S. Squire Sprigge, 1897. _See_, for a contemporary indictment, _The Russell Predictions on the Working Classes, the National Debt and the New Poor Law Dissected_, by John Bowen, 1850. [438] _Pauperism and Poor Laws_, by Robert Pashley, Q.C., 1852, pp. 364-5.