Holloway, I made an effort to bring influence from many quarters to bear
on him to induce him to change its destination at that early stage, and
make it the much-needed Home for Incurables. Many ladies and gentlemen
whose names I hoped would carry weight with him, were kindly willing to
write to him on the subject. Among them was the Hon. Mrs. Monsell, then
Lady Superior of Clewer. Her letter to me on the subject was so wise
that I have preserved it. Mr. Holloway, however, was inexorable. Would
to Heaven that some other millionaire, instead of spending tens of
thousands on Palaces of Delight and places of public amusement, would
take to heart the case of those most wretched of human beings, the
Destitute Incurables, who are still sent every year by thousands to die
in the workhouses of England and Ireland with scarcely one of the
comforts which their miserable condition demands.
“House of Mercy,
“Clewer,
“Windsor.
“Madam,
“I have read your letter with much interest, and have at once
forwarded it to Mrs. Wellesley, asking her to show it to Princess
Christian, and also to speak to Mrs. Gladstone.
“I have no doubt that a large sum of money would be better expended on
an _Incurable_ than on a _Convalescent_ Hospital. It would be wiser
not to congregate so many Convalescents. For _Incurables_, under good
management and liberal Christian teaching, it would not signify how
many were gathered together, provided the space were large enough for
the work.
“By ‘liberal Christian teaching’ I mean, that, while I presume Mr.
Holloway would make it a Church of England Institution, Roman
Catholics ought to have the comfort of free access from their own
teachers.
“An Incurable Hospital without the religious element fairly
represented, and the blessing which Religion brings to each
individually, would be a miserable desolation. But there should be the
most entire freedom of conscience allowed to each, in what, if that
great sum were expended, must become a National Institution.
“I earnestly hope Mr. Holloway will take the subject of the needs of
Incurables into consideration. In our own Hospital, at St. Andrew’s,
and St. Raphael’s, Torquay, we shrink from turning out our dying
cases, and yet it does not do to let them die in the wards with
convalescent patients. Few can estimate the misery of the incurable
cases; and the expense connected with the nursing is so great, it is
not easy for private benevolence to provide Incurable Hospitals on a
small scale. Besides, they need room for classification. The truth is,
an Incurable Hospital is a far more difficult machine to work than a
Convalescent; and so the work, if well done, would be far nobler.
“Believe me, Madam,
“Yours faithfully,
“H. MONSELL.
“June 23rd, 1874.”
In concluding these observations generally on the _Sick in Workhouses_ I
should like to offer to humane visitors one definite result of my own
experience. “Do not imagine that what will best cheer the poor souls
will be _your_ conversation, however well designed to entertain or
instruct them. That which will really brighten their dreary lives is, to
be _made to talk themselves_, and to enjoy the privilege of a good
listener. Draw them out about their old homes in ‘the beautiful
country,’ as they always call it; or in whatever town sheltered them in
childhood. Ask about their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters,
everything connected with their early lives, and tell them if possible
any late news about the place and people connected therewith by ever so
slight a thread. But before all things make THEM talk; and show yourself
interested in what they say.”
CHAPTER
XII.
_BRISTOL._
_WORKHOUSE GIRLS._
Beside the poor sick and aged people in the Workhouse, the attention of
Miss Elliot and myself was much drawn to the girls who were sent out
from thence to service on attaining (about) their sixteenth year. On all
hands, and notably from Miss Twining and from some excellent Irish
philanthropists, we heard the most deplorable reports of the
incompetence of the poor children to perform the simplest duties of
domestic life, and their consequent dismissal from one place after
another till they ended in ruin. It was stated at the time (1862), on
good authority, that, on tracing the subsequent history of 80 girls who
had been brought up in a single London Workhouse, _every one_ was found
to be on the streets! In short these hapless “children of the State,” as
my friend Miss Florence Davenport Hill most properly named them, seemed
at that time as if they were being trained on purpose to fall into a
life of sin; having nothing to keep them out of it,—no friends, no
affections, no homes, no training for any kind of useful labour, no
habits of self-control or self-guidance.
It was never realized by the _men_ (who, in those days, alone managed
our pauper system) that girls cannot be trained _en masse_ to be general
servants, nurses, cooks, or anything else. The strict routine, the vast
half-furnished wards, the huge utensils and furnaces of a large
workhouse, have too little in common with the ways of family life and
the furniture of a common kitchen, to furnish any sort of practising
ground for household service. The Report of the Royal Commission on
Education, issued about that time, concluded that Workhouse Schools
leave the pauper taint on the children, _but_ “that District and
separate schools give an education to the children contained in them
which effectually tends to emancipate them from pauperism.” Accordingly,
the vast District schools, containing each the children from many
Unions, was then in full blast, and the girls were taught extremely well
to read, write and cipher; but were neither taught to cook for any
ordinary household, or to scour, or sweep, or nurse, or serve the
humblest table. What was far more deplorable, they were not, and could
not be, taught to love or trust any human being, since no one loved or
cared for them; or to exercise even so much self-control as should help
them to forbear from stealing lumps of sugar out of the first bowl left
in their way. “But,” we may be told, “they received excellent religious
instruction!” Let any one try to realize the idea of God which any child
can possibly reach _who has never been loved_; and he will then perhaps
rightly estimate the value of such “religious instruction” in a dreary
pauper school. I have never quite seen the force of the argument “If a
man love not his neighbour whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom
he hath not seen?” But the converse is very clear. “If a man _hath not
been beloved_ by his neighbour or his parents, how shall he believe in
the Love of the invisible God?” Religion is a plant which grows and
flourishes in an atmosphere of a certain degree of warmth and softness,
but not in the Frozen Zone of lovelessness, wherein is no sweetness, no
beauty, no tenderness.
How to prevent the girls who left Bristol workhouse from falling into
the same gulf as the unhappy ones in London, occupied very much the
thoughts of Miss Elliot and her sister (afterwards Mrs. Montague
Blackett) and myself, in 1851 and 1860–61. Our friend, Miss Sarah
Stephen (daughter of Sergeant Stephen, niece of Sir James), then
residing in Clifton, had for some time been working successfully a
Preventive Mission for the poorer class of girls in Bristol; with a good
motherly old woman as her agent to look after them. This naturally
helped us to an idea which developed itself into the following plan—
Miss Elliot and her sister, as I have said, resided at that time with
their father at the old Bristol Deanery, close to the Cathedral in
College Green. This house was known to every one in the city, which was
a great advantage at starting. A Sunday afternoon School for workhouse
girls only, was opened by the two kind and wise sisters; and soon
frequented by a happy little class. The first step in each case (which
eventually fell chiefly to my share of the business) was to receive
notice from the Workhouse of the address of every girl when sent out to
her first service, and thereupon to go at once and call on her new
mistress, and ask her permission for the little servant’s attendance at
the Deanery Class. As Miss Eliott wrote most truly, in speaking of the
need of haste in this preliminary visit—
“There are few times in a girl’s life when kindness is more valued by
her, or more necessary to her, than when she is taken from the shelter
and routine of school life and plunged suddenly and alone into a new
struggling world full of temptations and trials. That this is the
turning point in the life of many I feel confident, and I think delay
in beginning friendly intercourse most dangerous; they, like other
human beings, will seek friends of some kind. We found them very ready
to take good ones if the chance were offered, and, as it seemed,
grateful for such chance. But good friends failing them, they will
most assuredly find bad ones.”—(_Workhouse Girls. Notes by M. Elliot_,
p. 7.)
As a rule the mistresses, who were all of the humbler sort and of course
persons of good reputation, seemed to welcome my rather intrusive visit
and questions, which were, of course, made with every possible courtesy.
A little by-play about the insufficient outfit given by the Workhouse,
and an offer of small additional adornments for Sundays, was generally
well received; and the happy fact of having such an ostensibly and
unmistakeably respectable address for the Sunday school, secured many
assents which might otherwise have been denied. The mistresses were
generally in a state of chronic vexation at their little servants’
stupidity and incompetence; and on this head I could produce great
effect by inveighing against the useless Workhouse education. There was
often difficulty in getting leave of absence for the girls on Sunday
afternoon, but with the patience and good humour of the teachers (who
gave their lessons to as many or as few as came to them), there was
always something of a class, and the poor girls themselves were most
eager to lose no chance of attending.
A little reading of _Pilgrim’s Progress_ and other good books: more
explanations and talk; much hymn singing and repeating of hymns learned
during the week; and a penny banking account,—such were some of the
devices of the kind teachers to reach the hearts of their little pupils.
And very effectually they did so, as the 30 letters which they wrote
between them to Miss Elliot when she, or they, left Bristol, amply
testified. Here is one of these epistles; surely a model of prudence and
candour on the occasion of the approaching marriage of the writer! The
back-handed compliment to the looks of her betrothed is specially
delightful.
“You pointed out one thing in your kind letter, that to be sure that
the young man was steady. I have been with him now two years, and I
hope I know his failings; and I can say I have never known any one so
steady and trustworthy as he is. I might have bettered myself as
regards the outside looks; but, dear Madam, I think of the future, and
what my home would be then; and perhaps if I married a gay man, I
should always be unhappy. But John has a kind heart, and all he thinks
of is to make others happy; and I hope I shall never have a cause to
regret my choice, and I will try and do my best to do my duty, so that
one day you may see me comfortable. Dear Madam, I cannot thank you
enough for your kindness to me.”
The whole experiment was marvellously successful. Nearly all the poor
children seemed to have been improved in various ways as well as
certainly made happier by their Sundays at the Deanery, and not one of
them, I believe, turned out ill afterwards or fell into any serious
trouble. Many of them married respectably. In short it proved to be a
good plan, which we have had no hesitation in recommending ever since.
Eventually it was taken up by humane ladies in London, and there it
slowly developed into the now imposing society with the long name
(commonly abbreviated into M.A.B.Y.S.) the _Metropolitan Association for
Befriending Young Servants_. Two or three years ago when I attended and
spoke at the annual meeting of this large body, with the Lord Mayor of
London in the chair and a Bishop to address us, it seemed very
astonishing and delightful to Miss Elliot and me that our small
beginnings of thirty years before should have swelled to such an
assembly!
My experience of the wrongs and perils of young servant girls, acquired
during my work as _Whipper-in_ to the Deanery class, remains a painful
memory, and supplies strong arguments in favour of extending some such
protection to such girls generally. Some cases of oppression and
injustice on the part of mistresses (themselves, no doubt, poor and
over-strained, and not unnaturally exasperated by their poor little
slave’s incompetence) were very cruel. I heard of one case which had
occurred just before we began our work, wherein the girl had been left
in charge of a small shop. A man came in out of the street, and seeing
only this helpless child of fifteen behind the counter, laid hands on
something (worth sixpence as it proved) and walked off with it without
payment. When the mistress returned the girl told her what had happened,
whereupon she and her husband stormed and scolded; and eventually
_turned the girl out of the house_! This was at nine o’clock at night,
in one of the lowest parts of Bristol, and the unhappy girl had not a
shilling in her possession. A murder would scarcely have been more
wicked.
Sometimes the mistresses sent their servants away without paying them
any wages at all, making up their accounts in a style like this: “I owe
you five and sixpence; but you broke my teapot, which was worth three
shillings; and you burnt a tablecover worth two, and broke two plates
and a saucer, and lost a spoon, and I gave you an old pair of boots,
worth at least eighteen-pence, so _you owe me_ half-a-crown; and if you
don’t go away quietly I’ll call the police and give you in charge!” The
mere name of the police would inevitably terrify the poor little drudge
into submission to her oppressor. That the law could ever _defend_ and
not punish her would be quite outside her comprehension.
The wretched holes under stairs, or in cellars, or garrets, where these
girls were made to sleep, were often most unhealthy; and their exposure
to cold, with only the thin workhouse cotton frock, leaving arms and
neck bare, was cruel in winter. One day I had an example of this, not
easily to be forgotten. I had just received notice that a girl of
sixteen had been sent from the workhouse (Bristol or Clifton, I forget
which) to a place in St. Philip’s, at the far end of Bristol. It was a
snowy day but I walked to the place with the same odd conviction over me
of which I have spoken, that I was bound to go at _once_. When I reached
the house, I found it was one a little above the usual class for
workhouse-girl servants and had an area. The snow was falling fast, and
as I knocked I looked down into the area and saw a girl in her cotton
dress standing out at a wash-tub;—head, neck and arms all bare, and the
snow falling on them with the bitter wind eddying through the area.
Presently the door was opened and there stood the girl, in such a
condition of bronchitis as I hardly ever saw in my life. When the
mistress appeared I told her civilly that I was very sorry, but that the
girl was in mortal danger of inflammation of the lungs and _must_ be put
to bed immediately. “O, that was entirely out of the question.” “But it
_must_ be done,” I said. Eventually after much angry altercation, the
woman consented to my fetching a fly, putting the girl into it, driving
with her to the Infirmary (for which I had always tickets) and leaving
her there in charge of a friendly doctor. Next day when I called to
enquire, he told me she could scarcely have lived after another hour of
exposure, and that she could recover only by the most stringent and
immediate treatment. It was another instance of the verification of my
superstition.
Of course we tried to draw attention generally to the need for some
supervision of the poor Workhouse girls throughout the country. I wrote
and read at a Social Science Congress a paper on “_Friendless Girls and
How to Help them_,” giving a full account of Miss Stephen’s admirable
_Preventive Mission_; and this I had reason to hope, aroused some
interest. Several years later Miss Elliot wrote a charming little book
with full details about her girls and their letters; “_Workhouse Girls;
Notes of an attempt to help them_,” published by Nisbet. Also we managed
to get numerous articles and letters into newspapers touching on
Workhouse abuses and needs generally. Miss Elliot having many
influential friends was able to do a great deal in the way of getting
our ideas put before the public. I used to write my papers after coming
home in the evening and often late into the night. Sometimes, when I was
very anxious that something should go off by the early morning mail, I
got out of the side window of my sitting-room at two or three o’clock
and walked the half-mile to the solitary post-office near the _Black
Boy_ (Pillar posts were undreamed of in those days), and then climbed in
at the window again, to sleep soundly!
Some years afterwards I wrote in _Fraser’s Magazine_ and later again
republished in my _Studies: Ethical and Social_, a somewhat elaborate
article on the _Philosophy of the Poor Laws_ as I had come to understand
it after my experience at Bristol. This paper was so fortunate as to
fall in the way of an Australian philanthropic gentleman, President of a
Royal Commission to enquire into the question of Pauper legislation in
New South Wales. He, (Mr. Windeyer,) approved of several of my
suggestions and recommended them in the Report of his Commission, and
eventually procured their embodiment in the laws of the Colony.
The following is one of several letters which I received from him on the
subject.
“Chambers,
“Sydney,
“June 6th, 1874.
“My Dear Madam,
“Though personally unknown to you I take the liberty as a warm admirer
of your writings, to which I owe so much both of intellectual
entertainment and profoundest spiritual comfort, to send you herewith
a copy of a Report upon the Public Charities of New South Wales,
brought up by a Royal Commission of which I was the President. I may
add that the document was written by me; and that my brother
Commissioners did me the honour of adopting it without any alteration.
As the views to which I have endeavoured to give expression have been
so eloquently advocated by you, I have ventured to hope that my
attempt to give practical expression to them in this Colony may not be
without interest to you, as the first effort made in this young
country to promulgate sounder and more philosophic views as to the
training of pauper children.
“In your large heart the feeling _Homo sum_ will, I think, make room
for some kindly sympathy with those who, far off, in a small
provincial way, try to rouse the attention and direct the energies of
men for the benefit of their kind, and if any good comes of this bit
of work, I should like you to know how much I have been sustained
amidst much of the opposition which all new ideas encounter, by the
convictions which you have so materially aided in building up and
confirming. If you care to look further into our inquiry I shall be
sending a copy of the evidence to the Misses Hill, whose acquaintance
I had the great pleasure of making on their visit to this country, and
they doubtless would show it to you if caring to see it, but I have
not presumed to bore you with anything further than the Report.
“Believe me, your faithful servant,
“WILL. C. WINDEYER.”
I have since learned with great pleasure from an official Report sent
from Australia to a Congress held during the World’s Fair of 1893 at
Chicago, that the arrangement has been found perfectly successful, and
has been permanently adopted in the Colony.
While earnestly advocating some such friendly care and guardianship of
these Workhouse Girls as I have described, I would nevertheless enter
here my serious protest against the excessive lengths to which one
Society in particular—devoted to the welfare of the humbler class of
girls generally—has gone of late years in the matter of incessant
pleasure-parties for them. I do not think that encouragement to (what is
to them) dissipation, conduces to their real welfare or happiness. It is
always only too easy for all of us to remove the centre of our interest
from the _Business_ of life to its _Pleasures_. The moment this is done,
whether in the case of poor persons or rich, Duty becomes a weariness.
Success in our proper work is no longer an object of ambition, and the
hours necessarily occupied by it are grudged and curtailed. Amusement
usurps the foreground, instead of being kept in the background, of
thought. This is the kind of moral _dislocation_ which is even now
destroying, in the higher ranks, much of the duty-loving character
bequeathed to our Anglo-Saxon race by our Puritan fathers. Ladies and
gentlemen do not indeed now “live to eat” like the old epicures, but
they live to shoot, to hunt, to play tennis or golf; to give and attend
parties of one sort or another; and the result, I think, is to a great
degree traceable in the prevailing Pessimism. But bad as excessive
Pleasure-seeking and Duty-neglecting is for those who are not compelled
to earn their bread, it is absolutely fatal to those who must needs do
so. The temptations which lie in the way of a young servant who has
acquired a distaste for honest work and a passion for pleasure, require
no words of mine to set forth in their terrible colours. Even too much
and too exciting _reading_, and endless letter-writing may render
wholesome toil obnoxious. A good maid I once possessed simply observed
to me (on hearing that a friend’s servant had read twenty volumes in a
fortnight and neglected meanwhile to mend her mistress’s clothes), “I
never knew anyone who was so fond of books who did not _hate her work_!”
It is surely no kindness to train people to hate the means by which they
can honourably support themselves, and which might, in itself, be
interesting and pleasant to them. But incessant tea-parties and concerts
and excursions are much more calculated to distract and dissipate the
minds of girls than even the most exciting story books, and the good
folks who would be shocked to supply them with an unintermittent series
of novels, do not see the mischief of encouraging the perpetual
entertainments now in vogue all over the country. Let us make the girls,
first _safe_; then as _happy_ as we can. But it is an error to imagine
that overindulgence in dissipation,—even in the shape of the most
respectable tea-parties and excursions,—is the way to make them either
safe or happy.
The following is an account which Miss Florence D. Hill has kindly
written for me, of the details of her own work on behalf of pauper
children which dovetailed with ours for Workhouse girls:—
“March 27th, 1894.
“I well remember the deep interest with which I learnt from your own
lips the simple but effective plan by which you and Miss Elliot and
her sister befriended the elder girls from Bristol Workhouse, and
heard you read your paper, ‘_Friendless Girls, and How to Help Them_,’
at the meeting of the British Association in Dublin in 1861. Gradually
another benevolent scheme was coming into effect, which not only
bestows friends but a home and family affections on the forlorn pauper
child, taking it in hand from infancy. The reference in your
‘_Philosophy of the Poor Laws_’ to Mr. Greig’s Report on Boarding-out
as pursued for many years at Edinburgh, caused my cousin, Miss Clark,
to make the experiment in South Australia, which has developed into a
noble system for dealing under natural conditions with all destitute
and erring children in the great Colonies of the South Seas.
Meanwhile, at home the evidence of success attained by Mrs. Archer in
Wiltshire and her disciples elsewhere, and by other independent
workers, in placing orphan and deserted children in the care of foster
parents, enabled the late Dr. Goodeve, _ex-officio_ Guardian for
Clifton, to obtain the adoption of the plan by his Board; his wife
becoming President of one of the very first Committees formed to find
suitable homes and supervise the children.
After my efforts above detailed on behalf of the little Girl-thieves,
the Ragged street boys, the Incurables and other Sick in Workhouses, and
finally for Befriending young Servants, there was another undertaking in
which both Miss Elliot and I took great interest for some years after we
had ceased to live at Bristol. This was the Housing of the poor in large
Cities.