Isolated Homes for the Aged Poor V. the Workhouse
A. Saxon Snell
1906
Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute
TTHEN honoured by your Committee with an invitation to open the V (discussion upon this subject, I accepted with pleasure because it is one that has interested me for many years as an architect and as a citizen. But when it became necessary to evolve definite suggestions from abstract principles, difliculties commenced; for one is in some danger of importing into the discussion matters which are subjects of political or social controversy. That is a contingency we should avoid, if we are to
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... unbiassed consideration to the purely practical and economic side of the question, which is, I take it, what we are here to discuss. Nevertheless, it is imhussible to deal with it at all without some reference to the causes which liave led boards of guardians to consider a different method of housing the aged poor under their charge and care. There can be no doubt that in framing the Act of 1834, the legislature made the condition of destitution (not mere por~~~~ty) slightly penal ; and human nature being wliat it was, is, and always will be, we cannot complain. The establishment of worhliouses was an outcome of tliis Commission; the first workhouse in this country was built in this very city. I am not sure, but I think it exists even to this day at Eastville. Ever since, and especially during the last decade, the growing spirit of altruism has moved us to mitigate tlie harshness and anomalies of the system : and few of us can withhold at least sympathetic consideration of the several remedies proposed. Such sympathy, however, may easily land us on the slippery slope of mere sentiment, with all its blindness to the radical defects and weaknesses of human nature. The Commission of 1895 was the outcome of this spirit, but it was unable to recommend any drastic alteration in the law, which indeed has been softened much in administration. With well-constructed buildings and abundance of good food, mere physical destitution is amply relieved in the workhouse, but these do little
doi:10.1177/146642400602700902
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