Poor Relief - Law Commission

(d) appointment of a Chairman, Treasurer and such other officers as the
Guardians think necessary; 12 Guardians to be appointed as Directors;
the annual procedure for appointing Directors; replacement of Directors
on their death or removal (Sections 6 – 7)
(e) Churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor required to call vestry
meetings; penalty for failure to do so (Section 8)
(f) procedure for accepting the position of Director; no Director to serve more
than one term in a 5 year period after ceasing to hold office; Oath for
Directors; Directors to appoint a treasurer, clerk and other officers for
running the house of industry, 70 these officers to be paid an allowance for
their troubles; the Directors to take security from the appointed officers for
the faithful execution of their office (Sections 9 –13)
(g) provision for weekly meetings and special assemblies of the Directors;
Directors empowered to purchase land or buildings with the parish of
Whitchurch and erect buildings for the purposes of this Act; the Directors
responsible for the maintenance of any building erected under this Act;
land purchased and buildings made under this Act to be exempt from any
new Parliamentary taxes imposed after the date of purchase (Sections 14
–16)
(h) Directors to furnish the building with the goods necessary for receiving
and setting the poor to work; Directors vested with the care and
management or the poor of Whitchurch and empowered to set the poor to
work; until the workhouse was complete the poor of the parish were to be
maintained by the Churchwardens and Overseers; power to apprehend
vagrants and dispatch the drunken, idle or disorderly poor to the
workhouse; power to return vagrants and poor persons to their place of
settlement (Sections 17 – 21)
(i) poor children to be maintained in the workhouse until the age of 14 and
apprenticed out for seven years or until the age of 21 (for a boy) or until
the age of 18 or marriage (for a girl); apprentices not to be assigned
without the consent of the Directors; poor children might be farmed out;
punishment of the poor for failure to return from work outside the house of
industry; power to punish the misbehaving poor in the workhouse;
Justices to settle disputes between the Directors and those hiring out the
poor (Sections 22 – 25)
70 Or workhouse.
76