Letter to the Right Honourable William Chambers of Glenormiston, Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh, on the aims and practical working of the Association, more especially in reference to the employment of the poor / by David Curror.

Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to the Right Honourable William Chambers of Glenormiston, Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh, on the aims and practical working of the Association, more especially in reference to the employment of the poor / by David Curror. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    to be agents of production who would have become the idle con- sumers of others industry, and life-burdens on the ratepayers. May I ask your 'Lordship to look for a moment at legal pauperism as it is, and at the objects which it professes to relieve, and those which this Association proposes to take under its protection. The country is at present agi- tated from end to end and side to side with political and social questions. Communities and individual electors deem these questions important or unimportant, according to their particular point of view. May I be permitted, from my twelve years' experience of the Poor Law adminis- tration of the metropolitan parish, to say, that one of the questions least mooted in this agitation—I mean pauperism— is, in my opinion, the most important social question of the day. The year after the passing of the Poor Law Amend- ment Act, 1845, the whole roll of paupers in Scotland num- bered 68,541, and there were in addition 26,894 of casual poor relieved during the year. The whole cost to the nation of relieving them was £303,329. The population of the country was, by the census of 1841, 2,620,000. Last year the roll of paupers and their dependents had increased to 164,404, and in addition there were 91,176 of casual poor and theii- dependents relieved during the year, making the paupers relieved in Scotland for the year to May 1867, 255,580. The cost to the nation of their relief and maintenance was £807,361, 5s. 6|d., and the population at last census was 3,062,294. In a period of peace and great national pros- perity, the rapid increase of pauperism and the cost of its maintenance to the nation—out of all proportion to the in- crease in the population—instructs that the system which thus grows so rankly is radically wrong at the core, and calls loudly for a radical change in its nature and treat- ment. In other thirty years, under the existing system unameliorated, it is fearful to contemplate the conse- quences to the nation—the scourge of pauperism has been felt smartly in the past, but if not ameliorated, will drive the nation and its resources to desperation in the future,