From about 1865 onwards we note a new spirit in all the circulars and letters relating to the workhouse. The public scandal caused by the _Lancet_ inquiry into the conditions of the sick poor in the workhouses, and the official reports and Parliamentary discussions that ensued, seem to have enabled the Central Authority to take up a new attitude with regard both to workhouse construction and workhouse regimen. From this time forth the workhouse is recognised as being, not merely a "test of destitution" for the able-bodied, which they were not expected long to endure, but also the continuing home of large classes of helpless and not otherwise than innocent persons. "Able-bodied people," reported the Medical Officer in 1867, "are now scarcely at all found in them during the greater part of the year.... Those who enjoy the advantages of these institutions are almost solely such as may fittingly receive them, viz. the aged and infirm, the destitute sick and children. Workhouses are now asylums and infirmaries."[442] [442] Dr. E. Smith, Medical Officer to Poor Law Board, in Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, p. 43. From now onwards we see the Central Authority always striving to improve the workhouse. In the Circulars of 1868 much attention was paid to the sufficiency of space and ventilation. It was required that parallel blocks of building should be so far apart as to allow free access to light and air; blocks connected at a right or acute angle were to be avoided. Ordinary wards were to be at least ten feet high and eighteen feet wide, the length depending on the number of inmates; 300 cubic feet of space were required for each healthy person in a dormitory, 500 for infirm persons able to leave the dormitory during the day, and 700 in a day and night room.[443] The Visiting Committee was to "ascertain not merely whether the total number for which the workhouse is certified has been exceeded, but whether the number of any one class exceeds the accommodation available for it."[444] No wards were to be placed side by side without a corridor between them; the corridors were to be six feet wide, and ordinary dormitories were to have windows into them. Windows and fanlights into internal spaces were to be made to open to be used as ventilators, and ventilation was also to be "effected by special means, apart from the usual means of doors, windows, and fire-places," air-bricks being recommended as a simple method.[445] No rooms occupied by the inmates as sleeping-rooms were to be on the boundary of the workhouse site. Hot and cold water was to be distributed to the bath-rooms and sick wards. Airing yards for the inmates were to be "of sufficient size"--with a rider that "if partially or wholly paved with stone or brick or asphalted or gas-tarred they are often better than if covered with gravel."[446] Yards for the children, sick, and aged were to be enclosed with dwarf walls and palisades where practicable,