life, and remembers several cottages having
been pulled down "some on Caversham Hill,
two against the stocks, two in the meadow
and dairy farm." He thinks that there must
have been at least twenty labourers' cottages
pulled down: the house in which he was born
among the number.

George Ground was found with a wife and
five children " huddled together in a kind of
pit formed by a hole in the floor of their apartment
at least two feet down below the door,
and caused by the bricks having been torn up
from the centre. A more deplorable scene, says
the report, "can scarcely be imagined
than this wretched family, literally half-buried
alive in the ground, and taking a scanty meal
in the midst of dirt, damp, and misery."
George Ground had been working, when he
was thus encountered, at a place seven or eight
miles distant from Reading. His place of
work is commonly three or four, and often
seven miles from his domestic den. George
Ground could tell of nineteen or twenty
labourers' cottages that had been pulled
down, at Caversham: but knew only of four
that had been put up.

Inquiry being made at Caversham into the
history of these four cottages, it was found
that they had been built by a deceased gentleman,
to be let at two shillings a week, the
very sum paid for the filthy rooms in town.
Each of these two-shilling cottages had two
very good rooms on the ground-floor and two
above, all light, lofty, and well ventilated.
In each cottage the front room on the ground-
floor had a dresser and cupboards; the back
room a copper and kitchen furniture, while
in every room there was a fire-place. In the
front of each cottage was a garden-plot with
neat iron railings round it, and attached to
each, at the back, was a quarter of an acre of
ground. The founder of these homes would
have built more, but his neighbours found
fault with him for bringing poor into the
parish.

James Toil is an elderly man afflicted with
a disease which makes walking a pain to
him; yet he has to walk to his work four miles
a day and comes home so exhausted that he
goes at once to bed. He can get no house in
his own parish of Caversham. Seventeen or
eighteen years ago, his daughter being on the
point of making him a grandfather, he was
told that he must either turn her out or go
himself, because the birth of a child would
bring another settlement upon the parish.
Rather than turn their child out of doors,
father and mother went to Reading. The
house in which the Toils lived, when at
Caversham, has been pulled down.

Trickery is constantly employed to obtain
the shifting of the burden of the poor
from one parish to another. A man named
Povey, belonging to Earley, lived in Reading:
—"Having had the misfortune to break
his leg, he could not walk so far as Earley,
and he was therefore compelled to go with
his family into the workhouse. After he
had been there some little time, it was
intimated to him that it was not agreeable
to the guardians that he should continue
a burden to his parish; and it was suggested
to him that if he would go and find a house
at Reading, his parish would pay his rent,
and give him some assistance besides. He
accordingly came to Reading, took a house,
the rent of which was paid for him by Mr.
Park, the relieving officer of Povey's parish,
and sixteen pounds of bread with a shilling
a week, were allowed in addition towards his
support. Anxious to test the truth of Povey's
statement as to his rent having been paid for
him by the relieving officer of another Union,
"I ascertained " says Mr. à Beckett, " who had
been the agent for receiving the rent, and
found that the last person who had done so,
was a Mr. Brown, a carpenter and the keeper
of a grocer's or general shop in Silver Street,
Reading. I called there, and saw Mr. and
Mrs. Brown, who testified to the truth of
Povey's statement; and Mr. Brown added,
that when the Five Years' Residence act came
into operation, the relieving officer of his
parish declined paying any more rent for
Povey, on the ground that the new law had
thrown him upon Reading."

Between half-past three and five in the
morning, numbers of country labourers may
be met on any of the roads out of the town of
Reading, going to their farm-work; while in
the adjacent county one instance is mentioned
of a tenant who gave up his farm after the first
seven years, because the landlord would not
allow cottages upon the land for the
accommodation of the labourers. A man living at
Bobbingworth, and belonging to High Ongar,
had a large family. The farm on which he
lived was let, and his cottage was wanted.
He could not get another. He was obliged to
transfer his entire household to the workhouse,
from which he or his wife were continually
going out in search of a roof to lie under. They
could give security for the rent, and they would
have work; but nobody would let a cottage
to them because they had a large family, and
in case of illness, might have become burdensome
upon the parish in which they were
allowed to fix their residence.

Again, the chairman of the Billericay Union
stated at the board that, because five years
residence settles a man irremovably, he had
seen several instances of the poor being
unceremoniously turned out of house and home
after three, four or four and a half year's
occupation. Employers of labour complain of
the loss they suffer from the wasted strength
of labourers who travel sometimes five miles to
and from their work; other parishes complain
of the injustice they endure in having to
provide for men in their distress whose labour
when they are in health profits them nothing.
But it is no question of sense or justice, no
question of reducing poverty, but a question of
tossing about responsibilities which should be