[273] General Order of 5th February 1842, arts. 32, 33, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 85. Moreover, women after confinement might be "churched," and children were normally to be baptized, in the parish church (Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 117). [274] General Order of 5th February 1842, arts. 32 and 33, in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 85. This was rescinded (but apparently only for 81 unions out of 542) by Order of 7th February 1843, in Ninth Annual Report, 1843, p. 378. [275] Instructional Letter of 5th February 1842; in Eighth Annual Report, 1842, p. 118. (ix.) _Discharge and Detention_ It was an essential part of the policy of the Central Authority that any workhouse inmate over sixteen could leave the house on giving reasonable notice--at first defined as three hours, and then left more vague, but explained to mean sufficient to enable the master to make the necessary entries, return the pauper's own clothes, etc., and to let the discharge take place in working hours. The option was, however, with the head of the family in each case; and if the head was "able-bodied"--it is not clear whether this was to be in the "indoor" or the "outdoor" sense of that term--the whole family had to leave with him (or her), unless the board of guardians chose to allow an exception. In particular an able-bodied man was not to be allowed to leave his wife and children in the workhouse, whilst he sought work. If he insisted on going out, the wife and children were also to be discharged with him.[276] It was, in fact, to be a cardinal feature of the workhouse that so far as any person over sixteen was concerned there should be no power of detention. Even if paupers persisted in repeatedly passing in and out at short intervals--it might be "for improper purposes"; even if "persons of weak intellect" or of "confirmed vagrant habits" made it "a practice to return again after a short absence, generally in a most abject and loathsome state";[277] even if women persisted in returning to the workhouse year after year to be confined of a succession of illegitimate children;[278] or if sick paupers demanded their discharge at a time when to go out would "damage their own health," or even, if they had an infectious disease, "endanger the health of others,"[279] they were still, after a warning, to be permitted freely to leave when they chose. To this total lack of power to detain there were only three exceptions. Children who were doubly orphaned, or deserted by both parents, might be detained if under sixteen; the guardians (though without statutory authority) being assumed to be _in loco parentis_. A person of unsound mind, duly certified as such, could be detained; but this power did not apply to persons of merely defective intellect or feeble-minded. Finally, as we have already mentioned, the practice of four hours'