Great Britain. Royal Commission on Poor Laws and Relief of Distress; Poor -- Great Britain; Poor laws -- Great Britain
In the same spirit we see the Central Authority in these three decades
persistently pressing Boards of Guardians to build new workhouse
infirmaries.[695] The report becomes current in the Poor Law world that
Local Government Board officers, in interviews, went so far as to say
that a certain board of guardians was morally guilty of manslaughter in
refusing to embark on extensive new building operations. The official
architect's criticisms on the Poor Law infirmary plans submitted to him
are all on the lines of making these into up-to-date general hospitals.
The proposals sanctioned by the Central Authority go up to a capital
outlay of £350 per bed. The Central Authority even sanctions special
hospitals established by the guardians at the expense of the poor rate,
for particular classes of patients, such as the "West Derby, Liverpool
and Toxteth Park Hospital, ... for the reception of persons suffering
from tuberculosis," many of whom are so little destitute that they pay
the cost of their treatment and maintenance;[696] or, as at Croydon,
Kingston, and Richmond, "for the reception of epileptic and
feeble-minded persons," who cannot be certified as of unsound mind.[697]
Persons in receipt of medical relief only are no longer disqualified as
paupers from being registered as Parliamentary and Municipal electors,
and it has even been held that admission to a Poor Law hospital, sick
asylum, or infirmary because of ill-health, and for the purpose of being
medically treated, amounts to medical relief only, even though it
incidentally involves also maintenance at the expense of the poor
rate.[698] By 1903 we have the Central Authority laying it down in
general terms, "that it is the guardians' duty to provide for their sick
poor, and no sanction ... is necessary to sending such cases to
institutions for curative treatment ... and ... paying reasonable
expenses involved in so doing."[699] The Central Authority seems,
indeed, to exhaust official ingenuity in securing the best possible
treatment and also the comfort of the patients in the sick wards.[700]
Any reasonable fee may be paid for calling in consultants whenever the
medical officer thinks it "necessary or desirable," without any special
sanction being requisite.[701] We need not recite the constant struggle
to get more nurses and better. As early as 1879 a president could
(perhaps with some ministerial optimism) declare that: "in the new
infirmaries I have succeeded in abolishing pauper help almost
entirely."[702]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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