Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. : Appendix Volume XIX. B. Report by Mr. Cyril Jackson on the effects of employment or assistance given to the "unemployed" since 1886 as a means of relieving distress outside the Poor Law in Ireland.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress.
Date:
1909
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. : Appendix Volume XIX. B. Report by Mr. Cyril Jackson on the effects of employment or assistance given to the "unemployed" since 1886 as a means of relieving distress outside the Poor Law in Ireland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    employed applying to the Guardians were referred to the Society for the Relief of Indigent Roomkeepers and not to the Distress Committee,* but it was the opinion of the Clerk of the North Dublin Union and of one of the relieving officers whom we saw that very few- applicants to the Distress Committee had been in receipt of relief. In Galway, Drogheda and Ennis the smallness of the town and the fact that Guardians and Councillors were largely the same persons made it comparatively easy to know the history of all applicants^, and there was apparently little overlapping. We heard, however, at Ennis that there- had been no reference made by the Distress Committee to the Guardians, and that some of the men put on to relief work were in receipt of out-relief which was at once discontinued when the fact was discovered by the Guardians. Part III.—Agencies for dealing with or providing against Unemployment: A—The Unemployed Workmen Act, 1905. The Unemployed Workmen Act was extended without change to Ireland at the time of its passage through the House of Commons, and its administration was placed under the charge of the Irish Local Government Board. The Orders of the Board follow the main lines of those issued by the English office. The principal difference is in the quali- fications required in selected applicants and the amount of inquiry directed to be made,- The English Order lays it down that selected men shall be of good character and shall not have been in receipt of Poor Law relief within the twelve months precedicg application. These clauses do not appear in the Irish Order. Further, the English Distress Committees are directed to make inquiry at the applicant's home and to receive a report from the relieving offifcer for the district. The Irish Committees are directed to cause such inquiry to be made ... as ... to satisfy themselves that the case is one which they may, with due observance of the requirements of the Act, properly entertain. Besides minor differences the only other of importance is that in Ireland the principle was not laid down as in England, that the average weekly wages upon relief works were to be less than those of an unskilled labourer in continuous work. The Act was adopted practically in only four towns—Dublin, Drogheda, Galway and Ennis, and in the first of these alone was- there any large amount of relief work provided. ^ In 1905-6 Distress Committees were formed in Cork and Belfast, but not in Dublin, There seems from the first to have been a very general distrust of the Act. Its main, features—the supplementation of local charitable money out of a central fund, the whole being administered after careful enquiry at the expense of the rates—seem to have repelled the local bodies who would have had to put the Act in force. In a correspondence which passed between the authorities of Cork and the Local Government Board, the number of questions to be answered before the subject of a grant could be reached led the former to the conclusion that the Act was totally inapplicable to the conditions existing in Cork, a conclusion founded upon the somewhat irrelevant consideration that a |-d. rate would not realize more than £350, and that such a sum was inadequate to meet the distress. Eventually the Cork Distress Committee decided to take no active steps and the Act became a dead letter. The Distress Committee in Belfast also failed to put the Act into force, and in the following year did not meet.| The Corporation of Dublin decided on December 13th, 1905, not to adopt the Unemployed Workmen Act, in spite of the pressure brought to bear upon them by the Trades Council and the Philanthropic Reform Association. An account of the efforts of that society and of the committee which they were able to form will be found on pp. 22-23. This committee received a grant of £500 from the portion of the Queen's Fund allotted to Ireland. The rest of this Fund—about £5,000—remained still unspent at the end of the year, and is being used for the relief works in the West of Ireland. During the winter, 1906-7, Distress Committees were formed and actually provided employment in the four places already mentioned, Dublin, Drogheda, Galway and Ennis. * The receipt of Poor Law relief did not in Ireland, as in England, disqualify for relief under the Unemployed Workmen Act. t Distress committees were formed in 1905-6 at Clonmel, Dundalk, Kilkenny, Londonderry and Water- ford, but either did not meet or took no action. At Pembroke and Kathmines—suburbs of Dublin—distress committees were also formed. At the latter place ninety-one men registered, fifty-four cases were investigated, eighteen were found ineligible and seven cance'led. NOTE.—References made in this volume and in the Reports of the Commission to the pages in this volume