Page:The reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor (IA b21971961 0001).pdf/65

Rh comfortable in their old age; at the period when their labour is over.

And it is certainly true that those in the house are, generally speaking, well lodged, fed, and clothed; but when it is considered that these five hundred people are, or are presumed to be, merely paupers, it will appear that there must remain a large class of industrious poor, who only want assistance occasionally, being generally employed. As to those with large families, the mode is to relieve them, by taking some of their children into the house: but I have known many parents, who, rather than consent to this, have half starved themselves and their children; and sometimes carried it so far, that, by reducing themselves too low, they have been at length obliged to leave their cottage, and to be carried altogether to the house of industry; the man's spirit broken, and he himself (if he has stamina left to recover) becoming a burthen all his life; as he seldom returns out of the house, capable of the same