[514] Mr. Longley's Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis; in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. 49.
[516] Mr. Longley's Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. 43.
[517] _Ibid._ p. 47. We have not verified the statement that the intention of the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867 included the allocation of separate workhouses exclusively for the able-bodied. We see that in January 1868 Mr. Corbett was suggesting it as if it were an idea of his own. "I am more than ever convinced," he says, "that one of the great wants of the Metropolis is the establishment of new, or the appropriation of existing workhouses for the able-bodied classes of _groups_ of unions, in each of which one sex only should be received; a far more complete system of classification maintained than has hitherto been attempted, at least in Metropolitan workhouses; and strict discipline enforced under proper regulations and superintendence" (Mr. Corbett's Report of 4th January 1868, in Twentieth Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1867-8, p. 126). Whether or not this was exactly in the mind of the legislature or of the Central Authority in 1867, it seems true, as Mr. Longley pointed out, that the provisions of the Metropolitan Poor Act were extensive enough to cover, "whether directly or indirectly," not merely an improvement in workhouse sick wards, but "the reception in distinct buildings of separate classes of paupers or ... classification, not in a workhouse, but by workhouses" (Mr. Longley's Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1874-5, p. 42).
Under the influence of the inspectorate, we see half the unions in London gradually agreeing to take advantage of the powers given by the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867, and to make use, for their able-bodied paupers, of the workhouse of the Poplar Union, which now sent its sick to the new "sick asylum," its children to the district school, and its aged and infirm to the workhouse of another union.[518] This establishment of a test workhouse for the able-bodied received at first the warm commendation of the Central Authority.[519] The Poplar workhouse, with its rigid discipline, its absolutely limited diet and its severe task of monotonous toil (oakum-picking and stone-pounding), measured not by time but by a prescribed quantity, became a terror. For the next seven years, we see the guardians offering, sometimes to "troublesome" paupers, sometimes to all able-bodied applicants, male or female--not outdoor relief upon a labour test--but "an order for Poplar." "Notwithstanding the considerable number of unions which have availed themselves of this privilege, the number ... who have accepted the relief, or having accepted it, have remained in the workhouse, has been so small that, although the workhouse will contain 768 persons, there were in it at the close of last year only 166 inmates."[520] In 1878, however, the Metropolitan police magistrates seem to have expressed disapproval of the penal character which the institution had assumed. A woman brought up for refusing to do her task of oakum-picking at Poplar was discharged, with the observation that such work was not a fit task to set to women in receipt of Poor Law relief. On these sentiments becoming known, as the Poplar Guardians informed the Central Authority, "the master of the workhouse has a very considerable amount of trouble in getting any work done now by the inmates." The Central Authority, in reply, sympathised with the difficulty, but could, after six weeks' deliberation, do nothing but express the hope that the Poplar Guardians would be able to convert the magistrates to their views.[521]