Special Committee: Exceptional Distress

[...] The report opposed the establishment of a central relief fund but favoured public and charitable works if prepared for in advance, entrusted to local 'conjoint' committees (including voluntary societies and local authorities), and managed according to definite rules and paying contract rates of wages.

The most important product of the report was the 'suggestions and suggested rules for dealing with exceptional distress by local committees'. This classified men in deed as (i) thrifty and careful, (ii) men of dirreing grades of responsibility, non-provident, but with a decent home, (iii) the idle, loafing class, and those brought low by drink or vice. Those in class (i) should be assisted by charity, or helped to emigrate, or recommended for employment on the public works; at any rate, should be kept out of the workhouse. Men in class (ii) might be recommended to the public works, or, following the Whitechapel 'modified workhouse test', might be given charitable aid for their families on condition that they themselves entered the workhouse. Those in class (iii) should be left to the Poor Law, unless there were strong reasons for not brealing up the family, in which case the modified-workhouse test might be applied to them also.

[Thus COS was comproising with the idea of relief works started in times of exceptional distress.]

M 133-134.