Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/497

Rh POOR LAWS 477 guardians are required to give such further relief (if any) as may be necessary for that purpose. Such relief cannot be granted on condition of the child attending any public elementary school other than such as may be selected by the parent, nor refused because the child attends or does not attend any particular public elementary school. More over the guardians have no power under this provision to give any relief to a parent in order to enable such parent to pay more than the ordinary fee payable at the school which he selects, or more than the fee which under the provisions of the Act they can enable a parent to pay in any other case. All relief given by the guardians under this provision is deemed to be relief within the meaning of the poor laws and payable out of their common fund (39 & 40 Viet. c. 79, 40 ; see also 34). A child can not, as a condition of the continuance of relief out of the workhouse under the above provision, be required to attend school further or otherwise than is obligatory by any bye-law of a school board (43 &, 44 Viet. c. 23, 5). Money given for the payment of school fees for any child of a parent who is not a pauper and is resident in any parish is charged by the guardians having jurisdiction to that parish with other parochial charges (39 & 40 Viet. 35). The education of poor children is closely connected with the system of &quot;boarding out,&quot; as it is termed. The guardians of certain unions are empowered to board out pauper children in homes beyond the limits of the union, provided the guardians have entered into approved arrangements which include education (boarding-out order 1870) ; and by a statute of 1862 (still unrepealed, except so far as by implication provisions are superseded) the guardians of any parish or union may send any poor child to any school certified to the board as fit for their reception and charge the expenses in the same manner as other relief. Unless an orphan or deserted or having the consent of a parent, a child cannot be sent under this statute, and no child can be kept against its will if above fourteen. Such school is open to inspection (25 & 26 Viet. c. 43). Under the last-mentioned statute, the amount which might be paid by a board of guardians for the maintenance of a child in an institution certified under that statute was limited to the cost of the maintenance of the child in the workhouse ; but by the Divided Parishes and Poor-Law Amendment Act, 1882, the guardians may pay the reasonable expenses incurred in the maintenance, cloth ing, and education of the child to an amount sanctioned by the local government board. The board has accordingly sanctioned rates of payment, and in practice, when issuing a certificate, specifies the maximum amount which may be paid by the guardians as a reasonable allowance towards the maintenance of any pauper child sent to the institution. It is to be observed that the provisions of the Elementary Educa tion Acts as to the employment of children by employers in school districts not within the jurisdiction of a school board, consisting of a parish and not a borough, must be enforced by the school com mittee of guardians of the union (39 & 40 Viet. c. 79, 7). The daily average number of children of both sexes attending the schools of the union workhouses, &c., in England and Wales during the half-year ended at Lady Day 1883 was 26,170. Added to this total there is the average daily attendance at district schools, 7488, and 488 in the metropolitan asylum district, making a total of 34,146. The amount paid to boards of guardians and managers out of the parliamentary grant in respect of the salaries of work house and district school teachers for the year ending Lady Day 1883 was 38, 629, 11s. Various provisions relating to the apprenticeship of poor imtice- children have been noticed in tracing the progress of legisla tion. Guardians are not restricted from binding as appren tices children who are not actually in the receipt of relief or whose parents may not be in the receipt of relief as paupers at the time of the binding. Such children as may ordinarily be considered &quot; poor children &quot; are within the scope of the provisions respecting the apprenticeship of pauper children. But apprenticeship under the poor laws is a species of relief which can only be given subject to the general or special regulations on the subject. The general orders direct that no child under the age of nine years and no child (other than a deaf and dumb child) who cannot read and write his own name shall be bound apprentice by the guardians, and no child is bound to a person who is under twenty- p one or who is a married woman, or to a person who is not a house keeper or assessed to the poor rate in his own name, or who is a journeyman or a person not carrying on trade or business on his own account. And no child can be bound, unless in particular cases, to a master whose place of business is more than 30 miles from the residence of the child at the time of binding. The term of apprenticeship is discretionary with the guardians, but no apprentice can be bound for more than eight years, and if the child is above fourteen his own consent is required. If under sixteen his father s consent (or, if his father is dead, his mother s if living) is necessary. Various preliminaries to the binding are requisite, affecting the health and strength of the child and all attendant circumstances. When any premium is given it must in part consist of clothes supplied to the apprentice and in part of money to the master. The duties of the master of a pauper apprentice are specially provided for both by statute and by the regulations adopted by the local government board. In the administration of medical relief to the sick, the Medical objects kept in view are (1) to provide medical aid for relief, persons who are really destitute, and (2) to prevent medi cal relief from generating or encouraging pauperism, and with this view to withdraw from the labouring classes, as well as from the administrators of relief and the medical officers, all motives for applying for or administering medical relief, unless where the circumstances render it absolutely necessary. Unions are formed into medical districts limited in area and population, to which a paid medical officer is appointed, who is furnished with a list of all such aged and infirm persons and persons permanently sick or disabled as are actually receiving relief and residing within the medical officer s district. Every person named in the list receives a ticket, and on exhibiting it to the medical officer is entitled to advice, attendance, and medicine as his case may require. Medical outdoor relief in connexion with dispen saries is regulated in asylum districts of the metropolis by the Metropolitan Poor Act, 1867 (30 & 31 Viet. c. 6). A lunatic asylum is required to be provided by a Pauper county or borough for the reception of pauper lunatics, lunatics with a committee of visitors who, among other duties, fix a weekly sum to be charged for the lodging, maintenance, medicine, and clothing of each pauper lunatic confined in such asylum. Medical officers of unions and parishes, having knowledge that any resident pauper is or is deemed to be a lunatic, give written notice to relieving officers or other officers, and such officers, having knowledge either by such notice or otherwise of the fact, must apply to a justice, who requires the relieving officer to bring the pauper before him, or some other justice, calling to his assistance a duly qualified medical man (physician, surgeon, or apothecary), and upon his certificate, and the justice upon view or examination or other proofs being satisfied that such pauper is a lunatic and a proper person to be taken charge of and detained under care and treatment, a written order is made out directing the pauper to be received into such asylum. That is the ordinary mode, but justices may act on their own knowledge, and police officers have power to apprehend wandering lunatics and take them before justices. The Metropolitan Poor Act, 1867, already noticed, contains many provisions applicable to insane poor, including the right of the commissioners of lunacy to visit the asylums. In some cases Avhen duly authorized a lunatic may be received into a registered hospital or house duly licensed for the reception of lunatics. No lunatics can be kept in a workhouse more than fourteen days except under special circumstances ; minute pro visions are made for the care, visitation, and discharge of the lunatics. The central board has made regulations respecting the detention of harmless idiots and other insane persons. The cost of removal and maintenance is borne by the common fund of the union, and justices sending the pauper, or the visiting justices of an asylum may draw upon the guardians for the amount of the pauper s maintenance in favour of the treasurer, officer, or proprietor of the asylum. Any property of the lunatic is applic able to his maintenance. Special provision is made for inquiry into the settlement and adjudicating it, and for payment of costs of maintenance in accordance with the adjudication (16 & 17 Viet, c. 97, and subsequent Acts). There are also special provisions as to pauper criminal lunatics and sending them to an asylum at the cost of the common fund of the union as in other cases, to which