IN "Riches and Poverty," edition 1905, I passed at this point to the consideration of the cruellest phase of Poverty, the poverty of the aged. Since 1905 Mr Asquith has given us an Old Age Pension Act, and it is happily unnecessary to repeat in full the pleas which were advanced in these pages in 1905. It is well, however, again to record the known facts with regard to poverty in old age.
If we did not know our country, and had never encountered its poor in the flesh, in what condition could we expect to find the aged labourer in view of the terrible extent of the Error of Distribution? It is not alone that the majority of our people have the slenderest incomes. To narrow wages is in most cases added uncertainty of employment, the greatest enemy of thrift, while the period during which the average workman draws the full rate of wages recognized in his trade has ever been short, and tends with the increased strenuousness of modern industry to grow shorter.
There are about 2,100,000 persons aged 65 and upwards, in the United Kingdom, but these are not divided between rich and poor in the proportions shown in the frontispiece. We have to remember that the poor are slain by their poverty. In the "comfortable" and "rich" classes the span of life is much greater than in the case of the poor. It is impossible to say precisely how the 2,100,000 persons are divided in point of income, but probably, some 1,750,000 of them belong to the classes whose incomes are below the income tax exemption limit. As to a considerable proportion of them we have the clearest evidence of grinding poverty.
In 1890 Mr Thomas Burt, M.P., moved for a parliamentary return showing the number of paupers of 60 years of age and upwards, distinguishing indoor from outdoor relief. It appears from this return that the total number of paupers over 60 years of age in receipt of relief on August 1st, 1890 (excluding lunatics in asylums, vagrants and persons who were only in receipt of relief constructively by reason of relief being given to wives or children), was 286,867.
The number of those persons who were in receipt of indoor relief, the number in receipt of outdoor relief, and their ages as stated, are given in the table on the following page.
The notable fact which emerges is that of 286,867 paupers over 60, as many as 245,687 were over 65. Old age as a cause of pauperism is strikingly illustrated by a comparison of the two numbers. It is clear that death at 64 would mercifully have saved over two hundred thousand poor old men and women from the stigma of pauperism.
According to the census returns, in 1891, the following year, there were 1,372,974 persons (606,960 males and 766,014 females) at and over the age of 65. On August 1st, 1890, the date of Mr Burt's return, therefore, there were 245,687 persons out of about 1,372,000 persons 65 years old and upwards or say 1 in 5½ in receipt of poor relief.
But Mr Burt's return related to the paupers relieved on one day only. What ratio does the number of aged paupers relieved in one day bear to the total number relieved in the course of the year?