The income of charitable London
institutions engaged in promoting the physical well-being of the people
amounted in 1902-3 to about four and a half millions. The relief
afforded by Friendly Societies and Trade Unions to sick and out-of-work
members, furnishes a more satisfactory evidence of the growth of
providence and independence among all but the lowest classes of workers.
The improvement exhibited in figures of pauperism is entirely confined
to outdoor relief. The number of workers who, by reason of old age or
other infirmity, are compelled to take refuge in the poorhouses, bears a
larger proportion to the total population than it did a generation ago.
In 1876-7 the mean number of indoor paupers for England and Wales was
130,337, or 5.4 per 1000 of the population; in 1902-3 the number had
risen to 203,604, or 6.2 per 1000 of the population. This rise of indoor
pauperism has indeed been coincident with a larger decline of outdoor
pauperism through this same period. But the growth of thrift in the
working-classes, the increase of the machinery of charity, the rise of
the average of wages--these causes have been wholly inoperative to check
the growth of indoor pauperism. Nor, if one may trust so competent an
authority as Mr Fowle, is this explained by any tendency of increased
strictness in the administration of outdoor relief, to drive would-be
recipients of outdoor relief into the workhouse.
The figures of London pauperism yield still more strange results.
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