Note 521 — Chapter IV

Letters, Poplar Guardians to Local Government Board, 4th November 1878; Local Government Board to Poplar Guardians, 19th December 1887. Even this very strict Board of Guardians had, in 1871, used, as a labour test for women, "a task of work in a needle-room ... provided by the guardians," and this had been recommended even by Mr. Corbett (Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871). But oakum-picking had apparently been substituted for needlework, and the Central Authority, in 1878, did not see its way to any alternative. "With regard to the objection ... to oakum-picking as an employment for women ... very great difficulty was experienced in finding labour which shall not interfere with the market for the work of the independent poor, and ... even oakum-picking is not altogether free from this objection.... Work of this description is in use in workhouses in various parts of the country, not as punishment ... but as one of the most available means of employing the able-bodied indoor paupers.... General experience has shown that it is not physically injurious, and in this particular workhouse it is found that many of the female paupers can pick the prescribed quantity with ease.... It is erroneous to suppose that a particular description of work is necessarily degrading because it happens to be exacted in gaols, since there are but few kinds of menial work in all large institutions to which the same objection may not also be applied; and it should be added that, unless this kind of employment is resorted to, it would not be practicable to find sufficient occupation for the female inmates of the workhouses, and that enforced idleness is more demoralising than even disagreeable work" (Local Government Board to Poplar Union, 19th December 1878, in Local Government Chronicle, 4th January 1879, pp. 8-9). Twenty years later the official view, as we shall see, completely changed.