But it was under the fifth head that the Commissioners had, by 1847, departed most widely from the principles of 1834, viz. in the kind of institutional treatment to be provided for such aged and infirm persons, or children, as the local authority chose to refuse outdoor relief to, and to receive in the workhouse. Following the lead of the Report of 1834, the Poor Law Commissioners took no steps, so far as we can ascertain, either to encourage or to discourage the relief of the aged and infirm, and of the sick, by money allowances in their own homes. But where these classes were admitted into the workhouse, the Commissioners, instead of the separate, specialised institutions recommended in the Report of 1834, prescribed one general workhouse to contain these classes together with the able-bodied and their families, and, we may add, also the orphan and deserted children. This involved, in spite of the elaborate classification nominally imposed, an indiscriminate, common establishment, with a uniform _régime_ for all classes alike. This _régime_ was, with the minimum of exceptions, that devised for the able-bodied adults. The workhouse of 1847 was, above all, to serve as a test of destitution, and as a place which the able-bodied would find less eligible than the worst independent existence. Hence when it was used for all classes--the aged and infirm, the sick, the dependent women, the young children, the defectives of various kinds, and those whom accident or sudden emergency had thrown within its walls--it was necessarily, to all of them alike, an institution which, whilst providing the full requirements of physical health, starved both the will and the intelligence, and forced the pauper into a condition of blank-mindedness.