tituting, during a time not greater than forty-eight hours, for his or her dinner, as prescribed by the dietary, a meal consisting of eight ounces of bread, or one pound of cooked potatoes, and also by withholding from him during the same period, all butter, cheese, tea, sugar, or broth…Any it shall be lawful for the Board of Guardians … to order any refractory pauper to be punished by confinement to a separate room, with or without an alteration of the diet, … for … (no longer than) twenty-four hours …’The new Poor Law Act in its attempt to deal with the able-bodied unemployed, failed to discriminate between what are termed the 'deserved poor' and the 'undeserved poor', it failed to make exceptions between the aged, the blind, the deaf and dumb, the sick, and the insane. This is expressed as one of the criticisms of the new Poor Law Act in ‘Das Self-government’ etc., by Rudolph von Gneist, 1871.… ‘the combination of such mutually inconsistent purposes renders the administration defective as regards each one of them; subjects to shame and indignity whole classes of persons who never ought to be brought into such companionship; and in particular makes the institution as a place for children absolutely ruinous.'In the whole of Europe no other country placed the differing needs of its ‘Special Needs’ citizens in a communal abode. This is confirmed by Robert Paisley ‘Pauperism and Poor Laws’, 1852, ‘… It is at once equally shocking to every principle of reason and every feeling of humanity that all these varied forms of wretchedness should be thus crowded together into one common abode…’PovertyThe new Poor Law adopted a severe attitude to the poor, assuming all poverty was caused by laziness. This simplistic approach overlooked the profound problems which industrialisation had brought. Population growth, the decline of domestic i...
