How the minority report deals with the sick, the infirm, and the infants / The National Committee to Promote the Break-up of the Poor Law.

  • National Committee to Promote the Break-up of the Poor Law.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: How the minority report deals with the sick, the infirm, and the infants / The National Committee to Promote the Break-up of the Poor Law. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    4/16 (page 4)
    paupers. Only in London, Glasgow, and a score of large towns have separate Poor Law institutions for the sick been provided. These, which have sometimes become virtually general hospitals, are a vast improvement on the work- houses, but they still suffer from (i) insufficiency of medical staff, (2) having far too few nurses, and (3) the “ deterrent ” influence of the Poor Law. Everywhere else the sick are still in the General Mixed Workhouse—the maternity cases, the senile, the cancerous, the venereal, the chronically infirm, and even the infectious all together in one building, often in the same ward—where they cannot be properly treated. For the phthisical, for instance, there is (except in a few places) no proper provision at all. The Outdoor Medical Service of the Poor Law for treatment of the sick poor at home is equally behind the times. The underpaid parish doctor is nearly always made to find medicines, dressings, etc., at his own expense. Practically nowhere do the Poor Law Authorities supply a trained nurse, even where no “ district nurse ” is available. With regard to the sick the failure of the rural districts is even greater than that of the larger urban centres, with their separate infirmaries. But the fundamental failure of the Poor Law with regard to the sick lies not in any of these shortcomings, serious as they are, but in its very nature. It is inherent in any Poor Law that it is confined to the relief of the destitute; until the man stricken with disease has become so ill as to be unable to go to work he is not destitute. But when the disease has gone as far as that, it is usually too late to prevent its ravages. One-third of all the deaths from phthisis take place in Poor Law institutions. Yet the Poor Law doctors testified that they never saw a phthisical case in the stage in which the disease could be arrested and cured. The Poor Law fails with regard to the sick, in town and country alike, because it has to wait until destitution has set in. (c) The Provision under the Poor Law for Childbirth and Infancy. The Poor Law, like everything else, starts from childbirth. The ordinary citizen is unaware that to the Poor Law Authorities are confided our public Maternity Hospital and our State Nursery. Yet every day of the year sees at least forty children actually born in the Workhouse. What does