The Joint Parish Poorhouse
Thomas Gilbert, an MP, first attempted to have this Act passed in 1765. He finally succeeded in 1782. The Act allowed groups of parishes
to form unions and build joint poor-houses for the totally destitute,
in order to share the cost of poor relief through 'poor houses' which
were established for looking after only the old, the sick and the
infirm.
Able-bodied paupers were excluded from these poor-houses:
instead, either they were to be provided with
1. Outdoor relief
2. Employment near their own homes
Land-owners, farmers and other employers were to receive allowances
from the parish rates so they could bring wages up to subsistence
levels. Gilbert's Act is often used to demonstrate the government's
humanitarianism but it was even more important in expanding the scope
of poor relief and attempting to bring the gentry into closer involvement
in poor relief administration.
By 1796 outdoor relief was given without a workhouse test because
it was a period of widespread distress and unrest. Also many paupers
were not able-bodied and parishes were not big enough to cope with
the problems.
In parishes overburdened
with poor we usually find the building called a workhouse occupied by 60 or 80 children (under the care, perhaps, of a pauper), about
20 or 30 able-bodied paupers of both sexes, and probably an equal
number of aged and impotent persons, the proper objects of relief.
Amidst these, the mothers of bastard children and prostitutes live
without shame and associate freely with the youth, who have also
the examples and conversation of the frequent inmates of the county
gaol, the poacher, the vagrant, the decayed beggar, and other characters
of the worst description.
To these may often be added a solitary
blind person, one or two idiots and not infrequently are heard among
the rest, the incessant raving of some neglected lunatic. In such
receptacles the sick poor are often immured.