At a meeting of the Bethnal Green Board of Guardians of the Poor (ie the local welfare office), two vicars objected to the harshness of the regime that required unemployed men to break rocks in the parish stoneyard (in the Waterloo Road workhouse, below) in return for financial assistance.
This report of the Guardians’ meeting appeared in the 5 February 1887 edition of The Eastern Argus & Borough of Hackney Times newspaper, and was entitled, The “Geologists” – a wry name for the poor fellers at the blunt end of the Poor Law at a time of rocketing unemployment:

THE “GEOLOGISTS
“The Reverend Mr Finch protested against the cruel employment of men for breaking granite. It was, he said, unproductive labour, and he did not care about accepting the tender for granite now before the Board. Such work was inhuman and brutal. Many of the men accepted it because they had long been out of work and were not half-fed. The Board ought to find some other kind of labour.
“The Reverend Mr Cox said some of these poor men had to do the work without having any dinner, having nothing but a pipe of tobacco to stay their hunger. To expect such men to break hard granite was inhuman.
“It was resolved, however, to accept the tender of Mr Fenning for 250 tons of best blue Guernsey granite at 8 shilling 3 pence per ton.”

With thanks to Stefan Dickers, Archivist, Bishopsgate Institute Library, for the image of the Bethnal Green labour yard at Waterloo Road, above.