THE DISTRESS IN LONDON.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1615, 24 April 1879, Page 4

THE DISTRESS IN LONDON.

The increase of pauperism in London, though steady and continuous of late, does not (says the “Times ” of February 14th) at present give any cause for alarm or show that depression in trade has affected the classes who in times of distress may be expected to seek relief at the hands of poor law guardians. The rise in pauperism in London has been at the rate of nearly 1000 a week for some time past —from 82,614 in the week before Christmas to 90,844 last week, and last year at this time there were 4000 less paupers chargeable to the rates. That the largo numbers at present in the workhouses and on the lists of relieving officers is not causing uneasiness to those who have the duty of legally relieving the poor is to be seen from the fact that, with an enormously increasing population, the metropolis has, even at the present time of undoubted depression of trade, far fewer paupers than it had in times of great prosperity. The year 1871 is looked back upon as a year of great commercial activity, but in that year there were 142,371 paupers on the rates, exclusive of pauper lunatics in asylums and vagrants in the casual wards, or 52,000 more than at the present time. As London increases at the rate of 60,000 a year, the population must have been nearly 500,000 less at the period when there was this enormous pressure of pauperism, and earlier records will show that oven 142,000 at one period was not the highest number of paupers on the London rates. Even should the pressure of pauperism rise still higher than at the present time, it will not bo felt so severely in the poorer districts as it was formerly ; for by the operation of the metropolis common poor fund the poorer parishes are relieved at the expense of the richer. The sum of 5d a day is allowed on each indoor pauper out of the fund, to which all parishes have to pay according to thoir rateable value ; and as the richer parishes have less pauperism than the eastern, south-eastern, and southern parishes, there is a more equal distribution of the burden of pauperism over the metropolis than used to be the case before the passing of the first Casual Act in 1863, when the principle of the common fund was first recognised by Parliament. The effect of the allowance out of the common fund has been to discourage outdoor relief and to abolish altogether the custom of legal dole-giving to able-bodied people. Outdoor relief is now principally given to widows with families, and then is not “adequate,” being only Is a week for three children, a loaf for each, and a pound of meat for each.