The Express.
London, England, 1867-12-14 00:00:00

LOT LONDON DIEITRZI3B.

ODNTINITED INCREASE OF PAt'PIRISM-LOCAL

RELIEF COMMITTEEa.

The already unwonted amount of distress existing
is the eastern part of the metropolis continues to
exhibit au ominous and disheartening increase—
*, such an extent, that there no longer exists any
numerable doubt as to the desirability of imme-
diately ciaumencing preparatory operations fur the
systematic relief of the deserving poor by means of
funds supplied by the benevolence of the public.
The seriously increasing proportions of East-end
distress may fairly be gauged by the state of affairs
is Poplar, which forms the heart, or core, as it
were, of the great mass of destitution and misery
'which so heavily clouds the winter prospects of the
Nest-London population. On December 7th the
somber of individuals, relieved in Poplar Union
bad risen to 7,885, and during the week
siding December 14 the number will pro-
bably be little short of 9,000. The maxi-
mum number reached during hat winter was
10,03. This was in the week ending Feb. 3,
1887 ; but should the distress maintain its present
rate of increase, the corresponding week in 1868
will find the figures nearer 10,000 or 17,01 r. The
sapidity with which the distress is becoming in-
rosined is best illustrated by, the following figures.
During the week ending Nov. 30 the number of
persons relieved was 7,378 ; during the correspond-
ing week last year it war 5,41'6; in 181 Z it was
only 2,670 ; so that within the last two years the
amount of pauperism in Poplar has nearly trebled
itself. Strangely enough, the rates continue com-
paratively low, being only Ild. in the pound ; but
fa is asserted un good authority that the present
cost of relief will, together with the heavy losses
serried by the abolition of the compound houae-
holder system, have to be made good out of future
rates, so that the evil of excessive rates is only
deferred, not removed. In the other East-end
parishes a similar state of affairs continues to pre-
vail. Bethnal-green, St. George's-in-the-East, Shore-
ditch, Hackney, Mile-end, Stepney, and White-
chapel, ad exhibit an enormous increase of pau-
perism over the admittedly exceptional increase of
last year, but in a less ratio to the amount of popu-
lation than is observable in Poplar. In Mile-end
New-town union the number of persons relieved
during the week ending November 30 was 2,245 ;
during the corresponding week in 1066 it was only
1,625. Thu week ending December 7 exhibited a
yet further increase. In a previous letter we have
alluded to the large number of poor-rate appeals
„in Bethnal-green. In Mile-end Old-town the num-
ber has been even greater. On the very first ap-
peal day no lean than 1,600 appeals were heard.
The applicants mostly put in the plea of poverty
as an excuse for the non-payment of rates. Nothing
is now more common than for the rate collectors in
the various East-end parishes to call on scores of
house occupiers, on the verge of utter destitution,
for payment of poor rates duo by them
under the new regime. In Poplar hundreds
of paupers have been thus summoned. The
whole system appears a cruel farce, and
will certainly force itself upon the atten-
tion of parliament early next year. A very large
proportion of the destitute poor belong to the
regular labouring class, and one of the gravest
features of the distress is the formidable increase
of the debasing pauper spirit. This is convincingly
shown by the comparative readiness with which
parochial relief is now accepted by many of those
who, in former years, would have deemed its ac-
ceptance a degradation. In Lancashire, during
the cotton famine, every effort was made, and
with much success, to prevent the unemployed
operative from becoming merged in the normal
pauper class ; but in East London it is otherwise,
there being in that part of the metropolis scarcely
any efficient means for preventing the poorer class
of labourers from sinking at the least pressure into
utter, irremediable pauperism. Unconsciously, too,
the various well-intentioned but ill-considered
measures of relief which have so repeatedly been
originated by local committees and private indi-
viduals are largely tending to aggravate the
worst and most deplorable features of the
distress. Acting independently of each other,
possessing no proper machinery for the
econ of imposture, and utterly deficient in
proper organization, the whole system of charit-
able assistance at the East-end may, with too much
reason, be regarded as being, with one or two cre-
ditable exception', such as that of the " East-end
Ventral Relief Committee," a gigantic sham and
imposture. At the least cry money flows into cer-
tain districts to the exclusion of the rest, and not
infrequently into wholly irresponsible hands, the
natural consequence being, that instead of a syste-
matic and thoroughly efficient mode of relief, such
'as was adopted in Lannwhire, we have indiscrimi-
nate almsgiving on a wholesale scale. Nothing
can be more hopelessly demoralising, more socially
injurious, than the toleration of such a state of
things. $o far as the relief of the really deserving
poor is concerned much of the assistance thus be-
stowed might be flung into the sea. Last year con-
siderable numbers of persons are asserted to have
fraudulently obtained relief from several commit-
tees, while hundreds of the actually necessitous
could obtain no relief at all. In one or two
eases, the headquarters of the minor relief asso-
ciations were held at public-houses ! In answer to
each public appeal money, food, and clothing
flowed in abundantly for the relief of the destitute;
but it is—as before stated—more than questionable
if these were, generally speaking, distributed with
s sufficient degree of discrimination. The forma-
tion of the Mansion-house East-end Relief Fund
assisted largely in preventing an abuse of the con-
tributions of the charitable, and sufficiently indi-
rates the course which ought to be followed during
the present winter. The Mansion-house committee
should be at once revived, and made the sole
channel for the receipt of all money and articles
from the general public in amelioration i.f the dis-
tress. The various East-end parishes should then
each have its own committee, based on the
model of the East-end Central Relief Committee
(which extends its operations to Limehouse, Poplar,
and Blackwall only), consisting of the leading in-
habitants of each parish, under whose super-
intendence each parish could be properly
divided into manageable districts, for the p
of ascertaining, in concert with the parochial re-
lieving officers, the actual amount of distress and
the amount of assistance required. Proportionate
grants could then be made from the Mansion-house
fund. No attempt should be made with the view
of affording general relief ; that must be left to
the different parishes. The chief object of the
relief committees should be the bestowal of as-
sistance in special cases. Any attempt at dealing
with the distress as a whole will inevitably break
down. All purely individual and irresponsible
systems of relief, however plausible, should be
discouraged as far as possible ; neither should
relief and religious propagandism be allowed to be
mixed up together. The wholesystem of assistance
should be of an entirely unsectarien character, and
its administration confined as far as possible to the
hands of laymen. This advice may seem harsh, but,
in the lung run, it will prove the most merci-
ful. In Bethnal-green nothing has done more
to almost eompletely destrcy the principle of
self-reliance among large numbers of the
artisan population than the frequent appeals made
by ministers and others for almost every possible
object, from the solemnization of marriages
amongst the poor to the giving away of bread and
coals amongst those who scarcely stand in need of
them. It is beg, beg, and beg, until a stranger
would naturally deem that the population of
.the
parish consisted wholly of paupers and beggars.
Unless this begging spirit be firmly discounte-
nanced there is little hope of any permanent
abatement in the amount of East-end pauperism.
The loudest, most clamorous, and least deserving
iliplicante obtain but too often the relief intended
'Er those whose misfortunes are not of their own
creating, and who uncomplainingly pine and starve
in presence of the very assistance which is—
Tantalus like—so cruelly and unmercifully with-
held from them. Not a few of the most miserable
homes at the East-end are the abodes of families
which, in times of prosperity, possessed the largest
means, and which, but for the ruinous attractions
of the public-house, need never have felt even the
minket pressure of the prevailing distress. And