The Metropolitan Asylums Board, in their report for 1912, had no hesitation in expressing the view that the decline of casual pauperism in London is due to the unification of the Casual Ward Authorities in the treatment of London as a homogeneous whole under an absolutely centralized system. The Report confirms the conclusions arrived at by the Committee of 1904 with regard to classification and treatment. They report as follows:--"First there is the bonâ fide working man in search of work, and we have no reason to doubt the estimates which placed the proportion of this class at under 3 per cent. of the whole. Secondly, come those who undertake casual labour for a short time, but will not or cannot undertake continued work. This type soon degenerates into the habitual vagrant unless deterred, as we hope under present conditions he is being, from the continual frequenting of casual wards. The third class is the 'work-shy' or habitual vagrant who professes to look for work but has no desire to find it. Amongst this number are many who although strong and able-bodied, deliberately embark upon a career of idleness and of alternation between casual ward and prison at such an early age as twenty years. They are often qualified and able to work and have been assisted over and over again until they are given up as hopeless and their papers marked 'prefers to walk the streets.' Further reference is made to this class of habitual vagrants in the section discussing the question of punishments, where it is pointed out that neither casual ward nor prison exercises the slightest punitive or deterrent effect. It is certain that the community need have no compunction about applying to this class so-called severe measures of compulsory detention and work for indefinite periods, and it must be remembered that for vagrants, who will not have households of their own, who have but one object in all their wicked and perverse lives--to exist without work at the expense of their industrious neighbours--we are taxed to provide board and lodging. Lastly, there is the class of old and infirm persons who are unemployable, who cling to the little liberty left to them by going from casual ward to casual ward in preference to entering the workhouse infirmaries. Between the 1st May and the 31st December, 1912, thirty-three men over fifty, including twelve over sixty, were admitted from forty to fifty-four times each in the casual wards, and nine women aged from fifty to seventy years were admitted over forty times each."