The Early History of English Poor Relief. of Girton College E. M. Leonard
They had also power to search all places in which masterless men were likely to be found, and to punish landlords or tenants who harboured them.
The governors of the whole establishment were subdivided so that some might overlook every department. The rules with regard to the cloth-making establishment will illustrate the kind of supervision they were to exercise. They were first to make an inventory of the raw material and of the looms and other necessary implements. They were then to see that the clothier knew his business, and to order him to return a monthly account of the number of cloths which had been wrought. They were, moreover, to overlook the wool house, yarn house and spinning house and "to comptroll and rebuke" as they "shall see cause." They were to pay the workpeople, the weavers for weaving, the fullers for thicking and the spinners for spinning. The steward was to be allowed to charge for the diet of those that were employed. Every week they were to make a summary of their doings and every month a summary of their accounts.
Other crafts were supervised in the same manner; the nail house was in close connection with the Company of Ironmongers, probably in order to carry out the undertaking that the occupations "should be profitable to all the King's subjects and hurtful to none." The Ironmongers were to give "to this house, as the people of the same may reasonably live"; they were to have the preference with regard to the sale of the manufactured goods and to be allowed a month in which to make payment.
The worst vagrants were apparently sent to the mill and the bakehouse, but men who were fit for better employment were not to stay there. If the governors, we are told, shall "find any there above the ordinary, then shall ye cause the same to be known to the clerk of the work and see he bestow them in some other exercise."
Bridewell does not seem to have effectually reformed the vagrants, for the governors were to "see to the good order of the said mills, that neither the vagabonds do use shameless craving nor begging to the great grief of good men and slander of the house, neither that they obstinately and frowardly shall deny their aid and help towards the lifting up and taking down of such grain as shall be brought into the said mill[74]."
Bridewell, we have seen, was founded for the unemployed, but it is obvious from the language used that the citizens had mainly in their minds beggars who were unemployed, and from the first it seems rather to have been used for confirmed vagrants and untrained children than for labourers out of work. The governors certainly held regular meetings, about once a fortnight, and discussed the various cases that came before them. These nearly all concern petty offenders, thieves or vagrants, but there are one or two cases in which a man is admitted because "the City is charged to find him[75]." Other entries relate to young people who were apprenticed to the House and properly trained to work at some trade. In the later years of the century about two thousand persons passed through the hospital annually. Bridewell was the last of the Royal Hospitals to be established after 1557. Some provision was made for every class of the London poor. The municipal system of relief had begun with the punishment of vagrants; it proceeded to license all beggars entitled to ask for relief, and finally all the poor were nominally provided for and the funds were raised by compulsory taxation.
There was no sudden break with the older system. St. Thomas's, St. Bartholomew's and Bedlam had all been hospitals for centuries. They had been saved from destruction, improved and enlarged, but essentially the same work was done in the same places. There were however important points of difference between the new system and the old even as regards these three hospitals. They were under public management. There were many abuses in this management, but these abuses were now more readily detected and punished and were found out and reformed several times in the course of the next century.
But a more important difference lay in the fact that the hospitals were not now isolated institutions, each dealing with their patients, but were now part of a larger whole and had a definite part to play in the government of the City. Vagrants, who were taken to Bridewell and found to be ill, were sent on to St. Bartholomew's or St. Thomas's, while, on the other hand, a whipping was administered to the idlers after cure at St. Thomas's, and the beadle of St. Bartholomew's had special orders to prevent discharged inmates from begging. All these regulations show that they had become, not merely agencies for the relief of the sick, but also part of a system which aimed at the repression of beggars.
Bridewell was the greatest innovation and the most characteristic institution of the new system. The organisation for the relief of the poor had been called into existence because the crowds of vagrants were a chronic nuisance and danger to society. Bridewell dealt with the most difficult class of these vagrants and gave some of them a chance of training and reform. Moreover, Bridewell as a place of punishment for idlers was the necessary counterpart of the new schemes for universal relief. You could not relieve and find work for every one unless you had some means for coercing and punishing the "sturdy vagabond." Christ's Hospital, like Bridewell, is a new institution, but, unlike Bridewell, it does not altogether strike out a new line. Still, as soon as the relief of the poor becomes a public duty, institutions for the training of the young become increasingly popular, and we shall find that, during the next century, there are other Christ's Hospitals as well as other Bridewells in most of the great towns of the kingdom.
6. Failure of the municipal system in London.
This municipal system however was not successful in London. So far as London was concerned the organisation seemed fairly complete. But even from the local point of view the system was weak in one point. Funds had to be provided. It was not easy suddenly to raise the money necessary for the new organisation; men were not accustomed to be taxed for the poor, and, as soon as the first enthusiasm had subsided, a sufficient sum could not be collected. During the succeeding period we shall find that the rulers of London found great difficulty in this matter, and that this was one of the causes of the want of success of the municipal system of London. But another difficulty was inherent in the system in the very fact that it was municipal, and not national. A few years ago the distribution of the Mansion House Relief Fund caused a considerable immigration from the country. Exactly the same result arose from the first organisation of the poor in the City of London. In March, 1568/9, we are told that "forasmuch as experience late hath shewed that the charitable relief gyuen as well by the quenes maties most noble progenitors as also the charitable almes from tyme to tyme collected within this citie and bestowed by the cittizens, aswell upon the poore and nedy citizens, being sicke, impotent and lambe as the poore orphans and fatherless children … aswell in Chryste Church and Bridwell as in other hospitalles founded for the reliefe of the poore within the said citie, hath drawen into this citie great nombers of vagabondes, roges, masterless men and Idle persons as also poore, lame and sick persons dwellyng in the most partes of the realme[76]." The very measures which were taken to cope with poverty in London thus increased the crowd of beggars, not because they caused more people to become beggars, but because they attracted the poor from all parts. The City organisation broke down because it was confined to the City, but it had already done considerable service in helping the growth of the national organisation which was to follow.
Poor relief in towns other than London.
7. Provision of corn in Bristol and Canterbury.
We have now to examine a few cases in which other towns before 1569 adopted measures similar to those of London. With regard to the provision of corn it is quite possible that the London plan was widely followed. In 1522 we read that in Bristol "this yere whete, corn, and other graynes rose at a dire price, by reason whereof the said Maire, of his gode disposition, inclyning his charitie towardes the comen wele and profite of this Towne," ordered grain to be bought in Worcester, "by reason wherof greate abundance of whete, corn, and other graynes was so provided, that the inhabitauntes of the said towne were greatly releved and comforted in mynysshing of the price of whete, corn and other graynys, sold in the open markett of this said Towne[77]." At Canterbury the funds for this purpose are accounted for in the year 1552. More than £70 was then spent in the purchase of wheat and barley. It was not however altogether raised by the Town Council, more than half was obtained from the sale of the plate of the parish of St. Andrew and from contributions from the parishes of St. George and St. Michael. This corn was bought especially for the benefit of the poor, and about one-fifth part of it was directly sold to them; the rest was sold to large buyers, and could only have benefited the poor by easing the market and so lowering the price