Miss Rye and the disposal of our pauper children / Rutherford Alcock.

  • Alcock, Rutherford, Sir, 1809-1897.
Date:
[1879]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Miss Rye and the disposal of our pauper children / Rutherford Alcock. 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.

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    MISS RYE AND THE DISPOSAL OF OUR PAUPER CHILDREN. [To THE Editor of the “ Spectator.”] Sir,—Your article on “The Use of Stimulants in the Treatment of the Sick Poor,” and the instructive report of the medical officer of St. George’s Union, recently presented to the Board of Guardians, which appeared in the Spectator of last week, prompts me to bring under the notice of your readers, if you will permit it, a subject of a kindred nature connected with our Poor- law Administration. However important the sanitary condition of the sick and infirm may be, both to the poor inmates them- selves and to the ratepayers who have to find the means, there is another class, constituting a rising generation of paupers, which seem to me to demand more care and attention than it usually receives. Among the average number of 80,000 paupers of both sexes, able-bodied and infirm, in the Metropolis, one-half of which are habitually inmates in the workhouses and infirmaries, while the other half only receives out-door relief, there is a large per- centage of young children. Some of the more infantile (most of whom are born in the workhouse and of unknown fathers) are scattered in the different parish unions, while a large number are collected from the several unions into district schools like Ashford, where some 600, ranging in age from five to fifteen, are placed to be educated. What training they receive in these overgrown insti- tutions of the Poor-law administration, at what cost to the rate- payers, under what sanitary conditions, and with what ultimate result, are questions of the gravest interest to all concerned. It is with this last, however, more especially that I would draw attention at the present moment. In regard to the expense, I will week for maintenance at the Ashford Schools is 4T. 6</., and the establishment expenses, including loans and interest on the build- ings, averages at present about 12^. 6d. per week in addition, making a total cost of 17 j. per week. If we may take the average duration to be ten years, that would give a total expenditure for each pauper child at the rate of ^^44 per annum of some ;;^44o. For such an outlay there should be an adequate result, and nothing less than the redemption of all these unfortunates from -^^vnoN^-