12 Sin, Organized Charity and the Poor Law in Victorian England

earlier now favoured solutions featuring elements of simple compassion

and eased away from what were now seen as unnecessarily harsh pseudo-
scientific methodologies. They joined the expanding public chorus
implying that expenditure on COS investigation may have been better
spent in relieving the dejected poor.
When compared with the majority of citizens, COS stalwarts remained
steadfast to their original convictions. They continued to deride others for
being faint-hearted and stuck unflinchingly to the belief that strength of
character would always conquer material disadvantage. For them it
remained immoral for better-off people to lavish charity on individuals
whose poverty the COS judged to have resulted from personal weakness.
Even then it must be recognized that in spite of their disaffection with
COS philosophy, few of those among the middle-class majority ever
contemplated the need for fundamental change in the existing socio-
economic structures. The broader willingness to accept more state
intervention was because it was seen as an essential element in a formula
designed to retain the social status quo. It is therefore argued in Chapter 7
that in spite of the disagreements between the rigid COS and more
flexibly-minded intellectuals as to the interrelationships of morals,
character and environment on the poor, the two sides continued to share
many social and economic fundamentals.
Provincial COSs are shown to have failed against criteria they originally
would have chosen. Although their impeccable social credentials gained
the COS early respect, they failed to capture the hearts, the minds or the
trust of sufficient in the community. This made it impossible for COSs to
rationalize provincial poor relief and provided little opportunity for them
to eliminate the alleged shameful immorality of its wanton indiscrimi-
nation. COS ostracism from other charities meant that long-established
procedures for the distribution of alms continued regardless of the
Societies' efforts to rationalize them. After twenty years of largely
unfulfilled effort the COS found it necessary to complain just as stridently
about the careless profligacy of traditional charities as they had initially.
COS hopes, claims and early predictions are debated in the final chapter
in the new light of their limited practical achievements. Rather perversely
for the COS, that part of their activities remaining of lasting application
has been the methodological assessment of individuals which was so
persistently the target of bitter contemporary hostility. Investigative
techniques based on COS templates fabricated to retain rigid
individualistic principles eventually became essential tools of the welfare
state they had fought so determinedly to suppress.