Central Authority from 1834, so far as we can find--now officially discouraged. It was strongly recommended that it should not be given at all to "any able-bodied widow with one child only." Even where there were "more than one child, it may be desirable to take one or more of the children into the workhouse in preference to giving outdoor relief."[563] It is characteristic that this policy was not based on any consideration of what was the appropriate treatment for the child, but was regarded only as a "test," by which it was intended to exclude every widow who could _possibly_ maintain herself and family without poor relief. Six years later we have it observed, as a capital drawback to this policy, not that the children might suffer by being taken into the workhouse, but that "since the passing of the Elementary Education Acts this offer as a test of destitution has not the same effect as previously, inasmuch as the children being required to attend school, the mothers cannot have the benefit of any earnings which otherwise the children might obtain."[564] And though the Central Authority refused, in 1877, to make illegal the grant of outdoor relief to "widows within six months of their widowhood"--declaring, indeed, that "a widow, with or without children, could not, on the death of her husband, in all cases be required to go into the workhouse"--it was not obscurely hinted that "it may be that the period of six months now allowed is too long," and that "the guardians should exercise their discretion in dealing with each case according to its merits."[565] The example of the Bradfield Union, where "the widow's month" had, since about 1873, been substituted for "the widow's six months," was always being commended to boards of guardians by the inspectorate. Moreover, in the Metropolis, at Manchester, at Birmingham, and various other places, it was strongly recommended in these years that outdoor relief to able-bodied independent women should be given only with a labour test; which might be (as at Manchester) "the enforced silence and order of the needle-room," where the women, at any rate, learnt to knit, and sew, and darn a stocking, or, as at Birmingham and Poplar, what Mr. Corbett called "the comparative licence and desultory work of the ordinary oakum room."[566] The task of oakum picking was eventually preferred by the Central Authority, and, down to the last decade of the century, it was this that was recommended to boards of guardians. The effect of this long-continued and persistent pressure for the first twenty years of the Local Government Board, without any alteration in the legal status of women by order or statute, is seen in the statistics of outdoor relief. The able-bodied women getting outdoor relief on 1st January 1871, numbered 116,407.[567] On 1st January 1892, they had been brought down to 53,571, the reduction having been principally in: (_a_) wives of able-bodied men; (_b_) single women without children; and (_c_) wives of