It may be observed here that the Royal Commissioners who inquired into the working of the Irish Poor Law in 1833 recommended, in their Report of 1836, that the able-bodied paupers should be employed in the reclamation of waste land, in works of drainage and fencing, and in the building of improved dwellings. They also recommended the establishment of penitentiaries for vagrants, and the deportation of suitable persons as free labourers to a non-penal Colony. Substantially this was the method of treating loafers practised in Holland at that time. The Vice-Regal Commission enumerated the following classes of people as suited to detention in Labour Houses:-- (1) Rural vagrants over fifteen years of age. (2) Urban loafers over fifteen years of age. (3) Mothers of two or more illegitimate children except when nursing infants. (4) All parents who are unfit to be entrusted with the charge of their children, except mothers nursing infants. (5) Any able-bodied soldiers or ex-solders who are not self-supporting or are not supported by the Military Authorities. (6) Any able-bodied adult persons who may, at the instance of the police or the local Poor Law Authority, be considered by a Court of Justice as proper cases, owing to their failure to support themselves. (7) Destitute able-bodied adults who may voluntarily desire to be admitted as inmates; and (8) Any destitute able-bodied adults who may be offered an order of admission to a Labour House by Poor Law Authorities or their officials in the prescribed manner, _i.e._, as a test of destitution.[70] [Footnote 70: _Ibid._, Vol. I., p. 58.] As to the character of the Labour Houses proposed, the Report of the Commission states:-- "We should be sorry to see in them anything suggestive of more comfort than can be derived from very hard work, enough of simple food, clean healthy buildings, fittings and surroundings, but everything of the plainest, roughest kind. After the first starting and equipment of the Labour House we think that the inmates, all of whom would be able-bodied, ought to be obliged to rely, as far as possible, on their own labours for their support, and as a stimulus they should be individually made to feel the necessity for personal exertion."[71] [Footnote 71: _Ibid._, Vol. I., p. 55.] The Commission further proposed that these Houses of Detention should be provided and administered by the General Prisons Board and their cost be defrayed by the National Treasury. The English Committee on Vagrancy was the immediate outcome of the more active interest taken in Poor Law circles in the question of vagrant regulation during the years 1901 to 1904, and of the great increase in vagrancy which took place during the trade depression of three of those years. It must be remembered that the Vagrancy Committee were called upon to inquire into the case of wayfarers exclusively; nevertheless, some of their recommendations are equally applicable to loafers of other classes.