Great Britain. Royal Commission on Poor Laws and Relief of Distress; Poor -- Great Britain; Poor laws -- Great Britain
be allowed, within reasonable limits,[772] to go out for walks, to visit
their friends, and to attend their own places of worship on Sunday. The
rules were to be relaxed to allow them to receive visits in the
workhouse from their friends. There was to be no distinctive dress.
Those of them who were of good conduct, and who had "previously led
moral and respectable lives" were to be separated from the rest, who
"are likely to cause them discomfort," and were to have the enjoyment of
a separate day-room. The whole note of the administration of the old
people's wards of the workhouses was, in fact, to be changed, so far as
the Central Authority could change it. In the words of the 1834 Report,
the old were to "enjoy their indulgences." Four years later another
Circular was issued in stronger terms, reiterating the suggestions of
privileges that the guardians ought to allow to the deserving inmates
over sixty-five--freedom to rise and go to bed and have their meals when
they liked, to have their own locked cupboards for their little
treasures, in all cases to have their tobacco and dry tea, to be free to
go out when they chose, and to be allowed to receive the visits of their
friends. They were to be given separate cubicles to sleep in, and
special day-rooms, "which might, if thought desirable, be available for
members of both sexes ... and in which their meals, other than dinner,
might be served at hours fixed by the guardians."[773] "It is hoped that,
where there is room, the guardians will not hesitate to take steps to
bring about improvements of the kind indicated in the arrangements for
the aged deserving poor."[774] Four or five months later the guardians
were stirred up by letter, and asked what they had done towards creating
the specially privileged class of deserving aged inmates that had been
so strongly pressed on them.[775]
[764] It is not clear from the published documents at what date,
or in what unions, the Central Authority had first allowed
tobacco. In 1880, it decided that it could not legally be given to
workhouse inmates (not being sick), if it had not been specially
ordered by the medical officer under arts. 107 and 108 of the
General Consolidated Order of 1847 (_Selections from the
Correspondence of the Local Government Board_, vol. ii. pp. 3,
72). Yet, by 1885, at any rate, the allowance of tobacco or snuff
to non-able-bodied paupers, or to such as were "employed upon work
of a hazardous or specially disagreeable character," with
permission to smoke in such room as the guardians might determine,
had been exceptionally granted in particular cases; _see_, for
instance, Special Order to Carlisle of 22nd June 1885, not
published in the Annual Report.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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