Domestic Encyclopædia (1802)/Poor-House

POOR-HOUSE, an asylum appropriated to the accommodation of those aged, sick, or helpless poor, who are unable to support themselves: but, as such design is generally combined with work-houses, or buildings, in which the indigent, vagrant, or idle, are employed, and supplied with food and clothing, we shall communicate a few hints relative to their management.

In such places, the strictest regard ought to be paid to cleanliness; and, if the inhabitants be disorderly, a proper system of coercion should be adopted. The unruly must be confined in separate apartments; where they perform labour for their own support, being left to solitary meditations: these may be farther directed by the exhortations of a pious, well-informed clergyman, who is able to adapt his instruction to the peculiar circumstances, or case of the individual. We are aware that houses of correction have been established with this view; but, we conceive, that more salutary consequences would result from their general combination with the common poor, or work-houses.

There is, however, a strange system prevailing in several parishes of the metropolis, namely, that of farming out the poor; or contracting with speculative persons to support them at a certain price per head. This practice is carried on chiefly in the precincts of the city, where no work-houses can be conveniently erected, and in consequence whereof the poor are sent to a small distance.—Some of these farms are certainly conducted on the most humane plan, while the management of others deserve the severest censure. Surrounded with filth; confined in close situations; ill clad; and worse fed; the wretched tenants of such habitations, present the most haggard countenances; and the children reared in such places, instead of becoming healthy and vigorous, are weak, puny, and frequently fall early victims of disease!—The loud complaints of the poor have lately excited general attention; we have, therefore, mentioned these few circumstances, to induce the benevolent to bestow serious considerations on the subject, so that some measures may be devised for preventing such accumulated misery.