The general breakfast throughout the year is wholesome gruel mixed with
milk, and two ounces of bread. The supper is seven ounces of bread and
two of butter.
The dinner varies every day, and is as follows:
Sunday.--Seven ounces of bread, corned beef half a pound, and
vegetables in season.
Monday.--Half allowance of bread and butter, rice pudding baked, and
broth.
Tuesday.--Seven ounces of bread, mutton roast and boiled alternately,
or veal, in the season.
Wednesday.--Excellent pease soup, and seven ounces of bread.
Thursday.--Seven ounces of bread, with roast or boiled mutton, or veal,
and vegetables.
Friday.--Baked batter pudding, and half allowance of bread and butter.
Saturday.--Rich rice milk, with seven ounces of bread and two ounces of
butter.
And in summer rice milk on Wednesday instead of pease soup.
Excellent table-beer is served, without any stint of allowance; some
drink more, some less: but the average quantity does not exceed two
pints each patient per day.
The knives and forks used here are of bone, just sharp enough to divide
the meat. But a keeper attends the patients at their meals, and cuts
for them what they cannot manage with the bone knives; wooden trenchers
and spoons, with bowls for their gruel and beer of the same material;
also night bowls. All dangerous articles used in cleansing about the
establishment are always locked up, except at the time of using them.
Clothing is given regularly once a year to the incurable patients;
but oftener, if they stand in need. The curable patients are never
supplied with clothing, unless their friends are unable to provide
them: in that case, the securities pay the expense; or, if paupers, the
clothing is paid for by their parish.
When patients become bodily ill, they are placed on the sick list, and
are allowed a different diet; such as batter-puddings, pies, fish,
fowl, soups, jellies, tarts, or whatever they fancy, that is not
improper for them.
To weakly patients, who are not too much excited, port wine or porter
is allowed, according to their respective states of health: but no
patient, whose health does not require it, is permitted to have wine or
porter on any account.
Patients who, perhaps, have been accustomed all their lives to use
tea, are permitted, when they cannot take gruel for breakfast, to have
it with the keepers, for which they are allowed to receive from the
patient’s friends two shillings per week. Generally, however, they take
the gruel with good appetite, the best proof of which is, that very
little is left after breakfast.