followed up until the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1900. [565] Local Government Board to Chairman of Central Poor Law Conference, 12th May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, 1877-8, pp. 55-6. We find the policy of reducing "the widow's six months" suggested by Mr. Corbett in 1869. At the Conference of East End Guardians summoned by him, it was agreed "that the widows without children should, as a rule, after a period not exceeding three months from the commencement of their widowhood, be relieved only in the workhouse" (Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871; as reprinted by the Central Authority for official circulation, February 1873). [566] _Ibid._ [567] Twenty-third Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1870-1, p. 374. [568] Third Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1873-4, p. 588; Twenty-first Annual Report, 1891-2, p. 365. After 1885, though some of the inspectors continued to recommend, with regard to women, the strict policy of 1871,[569] the Local Government Board itself, so far as we can discover, reverted to silence on the point, and gave no advice. [569] It is, however, to be noted that in the model rules which the most zealous inspectors were pressing on Boards of Guardians in 1902--herein differing from the much commended Manchester rules of 1875--the widow with only one child is recognised as a fit case for outdoor relief (Mr. Preston-Thomas's Report, in Thirty-Second Annual Report, 1902-3, p. 100). _D._--CHILDREN (i.) _On Outdoor Relief_ There seems to have been, so far as regards children, no explicit change in policy in 1871. To take first the 336,870 children under sixteen who were on outdoor relief on 1st January 1871[570]--almost exactly one-third of the aggregate pauperism--we see continued the same ignoring of their general condition. We do not find that the inspectors ever investigated what was happening to these children or that the Central Authority ever made any official inquiry, still less issued any order, on the subject. The general policy of restricting outdoor relief, which we have sufficiently described, had incidentally the effect, in the course of twenty years, of reducing the number of children on outdoor relief by nearly one-half.[571] [570] Twenty-third Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1870-71, p. 378. [571] On 1st January 1892, the 336,870 children of 1871 had fallen to 177,245, probably the lowest figure of the whole seventy years (Twenty-first Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1891-2, p. 365).