ENGLAND'S PAUPER ARMY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9638, 2 November 1909, Page 4

ENGLAND'S PAUPER ARMY.

That poverty is plentiful in the Old Country is a fact patent to the most casual observer, hut few people even among residents in England have any real conception of the amount of poverty existing there. The latest figures issue 1 by the Local Government Board define; with pauperisms at Home disclose a terrible state of affaire. It hardly seems credible that in a country wh>ch spends a matter of sixty million pounds a year on armaments and fifty millions per annum on its Civil Service the number of persons in receipt of relief from the Poor Law authorities should total cluse upon a million. The actual number on January Ist last was 959,848. This means that one pe»son in every thirty-five Jiving in Engl-nd and Wales, is a pauper, or, to nut the figures in another way, out of every thousan d of the population twenty nine depend wholly, or in part, on the State for the necessaries of life. ,Of these unfortunates no Idss than 114,869 were insane. Excluding these the total number of heals of families who were paupers was 74,087 men, 50,245 women, and their dependants numbered 76,892 women and 207,684 children. To tais pauper army London contributed nil told 150,572, which means thar one person out of every thirty-two in the metropolis is unable to live without Stite assistance. The proportion out ot London is one in thirtv-seven, nut in some of the chief industrial centres of the North of England, such as Sunderland, South Shields. Leeds and Stoke-on-Trent, tne p;iupr percentage is even higher than H London.