Note 37 — Chapter II

The Poor Law Act of 1899, amending an Act of 1889, provides that a child maintained by a Board of Guardians may be taken into the guardians' control until it reaches the age of eighteen years, the guardians acquiring all rights over it meanwhile, if the child has been deserted by its parent, if the guardians think that the parent, by reason of mental deficiency or vicious habits or mode of life, is unfit to have control of the child, if the parent is unable to perform his or her parental duties by reason of being under sentence of penal servitude or of being detained under the Inebriates Act, 1898, or the parent has been sentenced to imprisonment in respect of any offence against any of his or her children, or the parent is permanently bed-ridden or disabled and is an inmate of the workhouse and consents to the guardians so acting, and if both the parents (or in the case of an illegitimate child the mother of the child), are dead.