For what is a General Mixed Workhouse? It is an institution that has been officially condemned since the Commissioners of 1834 went their rounds and made their report. Crowded together in the workhouses of that day they found a number of paupers of different type and character, neglected children under the care of any sort of pauper who would undertake the task, bastard children, prostitutes, blind persons, one or two idiots, and an occasional neglected lunatic. There was enough humanity among the Commissioners of eighty years ago to see that what was urgently necessary was classification; the aged and the really impotent wanted care, peace, and comfort, the children wanted nursing, supervision, and education, hard working men and women in misfortune did not want to live in close proximity to the "work shy" and the "ins and outs." "Each class," says the Report, "should receive an appropriate treatment; the old might enjoy their indulgences without torment from the boisterous; the children be educated and the able-bodied subjected to such courses of labour and discipline as will repel the indolent and the vicious." This was reported of the workhouse in 1834, this is again reported of the workhouse in 1909; there seems every reason to believe that it will be once more reported of the workhouse in 2000. Of course, many things are better to-day than they were eighty years ago. A different standard of sanitation and hygiene has arisen throughout the country and some of it has found is way into the workhouse. We have Poor Law schools and Poor Law infirmaries that were unthought of in those days and, as a whole, our buildings are clean and healthy; there is no ill-treatment in them as there was in the days of Bumble; food, clothing and warmth are at least sufficient; and in communities where there is an exceptional Board and a superior master and matron much is done to hinder the obvious evils of promiscuity. Nevertheless, the evil overshadows the good, for it is the institution itself--the workhouse--that is as radically unwholesome and unfit to-day as it was in 1834.