ON a certain Sunday, I formed one of the congregation assembled in the
chapel of a large metropolitan Workhouse. With the exception of the
clergyman and clerk, and a very few officials, there were none but
paupers present. The children sat in the galleries; the women in the
body of the chapel, and in one of the side aisles; the men in the
remaining aisle. The service was decorously performed, though the sermon
might have been much better adapted to the comprehension and to the
circumstances of the hearers. The usual supplications were offered, with
more than the usual significancy in such a place, for the fatherless
children and widows, for all sick persons and young children, for all
that were desolate and oppressed, for the comforting and helping of the
weak-hearted, for the raising-up of them that had fallen; for all that
were in danger, necessity, and tribulation. The prayers of the
congregation were desired ‘for several persons in the various wards
dangerously ill;’ and others who were recovering returned their thanks to
Heaven.
Among this congregation, were some evil-looking young women, and
beetle-browed young men; but not many—perhaps that kind of characters
kept away. Generally, the faces (those of the children excepted) were
depressed and subdued, and wanted colour. Aged people were there, in
every variety. Mumbling, blear-eyed, spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame;
vacantly winking in the gleams of sun that now and then crept in through
the open doors, from the paved yard; shading their listening ears, or
blinking eyes, with their withered hands; poring over their books,
leering at nothing, going to sleep, crouching and drooping in corners.
There were weird old women, all skeleton within, all bonnet and cloak
without, continually wiping their eyes with dirty dusters of
pocket-handkerchiefs; and there were ugly old crones, both male and
female, with a ghastly kind of contentment upon them which was not at all
comforting to see. Upon the whole, it was the dragon, Pauperism, in a
very weak and impotent condition; toothless, fangless, drawing his breath
heavily enough, and hardly worth chaining up.
When the service was over, I walked with the humane and conscientious
gentleman whose duty it was to take that walk, that Sunday morning,
through the little world of poverty enclosed within the workhouse walls.
It was inhabited by a population of some fifteen hundred or two thousand
paupers, ranging from the infant newly born or not yet come into the
pauper world, to the old man dying on his bed.
In a room opening from a squalid yard, where a number of listless women
were lounging to and fro, trying to get warm in the ineffectual sunshine
of the tardy May morning—in the ‘Itch Ward,’ not to compromise the
truth—a woman such as HOGARTH has often drawn, was hurriedly getting on
her gown before a dusty fire. She was the nurse, or wardswoman, of that
insalubrious department—herself a pauper—flabby, raw-boned,
untidy—unpromising and coarse of aspect as need be. But, on being spoken
to about the patients whom she had in charge, she turned round, with her
shabby gown half on, half off, and fell a crying with all her might. Not
for show, not querulously, not in any mawkish sentiment, but in the deep
grief and affliction of her heart; turning away her dishevelled head:
sobbing most bitterly, wringing her hands, and letting fall abundance of
great tears, that choked her utterance. What was the matter with the
nurse of the itch-ward? Oh, ‘the dropped child’ was dead! Oh, the child
that was found in the street, and she had brought up ever since, had died
an hour ago, and see where the little creature lay, beneath this cloth!
The dear, the pretty dear!
The dropped child seemed too small and poor a thing for Death to be in
earnest with, but Death had taken it; and already its diminutive form was
neatly washed, composed, and stretched as if in sleep upon a box. I
thought I heard a voice from Heaven saying, It shall be well for thee, O
nurse of the itch-ward, when some less gentle pauper does those offices
to thy cold form, that such as the dropped child are the angels who
behold my Father’s face!
In another room, were several ugly old women crouching, witch-like, round
a hearth, and chattering and nodding, after the manner of the monkeys.
‘All well here? And enough to eat?’ A general chattering and chuckling;
at last an answer from a volunteer. ‘Oh yes, gentleman! Bless you,
gentleman! Lord bless the Parish of St. So-and-So! It feed the hungry,
sir, and give drink to the thusty, and it warm them which is cold, so it
do, and good luck to the parish of St. So-and-So, and thankee,
gentleman!’ Elsewhere, a party of pauper nurses were at dinner. ‘How do
you get on?’ ‘Oh pretty well, sir! We works hard, and we lives
hard—like the sodgers!’
In another room, a kind of purgatory or place of transition, six or eight
noisy madwomen were gathered together, under the superintendence of one
sane attendant. Among them was a girl of two or three and twenty, very
prettily dressed, of most respectable appearance and good manners, who
had been brought in from the house where she had lived as domestic
servant (having, I suppose, no friends), on account of being subject to
epileptic fits, and requiring to be removed under the influence of a very
bad one. She was by no means of the same stuff, or the same breeding, or
the same experience, or in the same state of mind, as those by whom she
was surrounded; and she pathetically complained that the daily
association and the nightly noise made her worse, and was driving her
mad—which was perfectly evident. The case was noted for inquiry and
redress, but she said she had already been there for some weeks.
If this girl had stolen her mistress’s watch, I do not hesitate to say
she would have been infinitely better off. We have come to this absurd,
this dangerous, this monstrous pass, that the dishonest felon is, in
respect of cleanliness, order, diet, and accommodation, better provided
for, and taken care of, than the honest pauper.
And this conveys no special imputation on the workhouse of the parish of
St. So-and-So, where, on the contrary, I saw many things to commend. It
was very agreeable, recollecting that most infamous and atrocious
enormity committed at Tooting—an enormity which, a hundred years hence,
will still be vividly remembered in the bye-ways of English life, and
which has done more to engender a gloomy discontent and suspicion among
many thousands of the people than all the Chartist leaders could have
done in all their lives—to find the pauper children in this workhouse
looking robust and well, and apparently the objects of very great care.
In the Infant School—a large, light, airy room at the top of the
building—the little creatures, being at dinner, and eating their potatoes
heartily, were not cowed by the presence of strange visitors, but
stretched out their small hands to be shaken, with a very pleasant
confidence. And it was comfortable to see two mangy pauper
rocking-horses rampant in a corner. In the girls’ school, where the
dinner was also in progress, everything bore a cheerful and healthy
aspect. The meal was over, in the boys’ school, by the time of our
arrival there, and the room was not yet quite rearranged; but the boys
were roaming unrestrained about a large and airy yard, as any other
schoolboys might have done. Some of them had been drawing large ships
upon the schoolroom wall; and if they had a mast with shrouds and stays
set up for practice (as they have in the Middlesex House of Correction),
it would be so much the better. At present, if a boy should feel a
strong impulse upon him to learn the art of going aloft, he could only
gratify it, I presume, as the men and women paupers gratify their
aspirations after better board and lodging, by smashing as many workhouse
windows as possible, and being promoted to prison.
In one place, the Newgate of the Workhouse, a company of boys and youths
were locked up in a yard alone; their day-room being a kind of kennel
where the casual poor used formerly to be littered down at night. Divers
of them had been there some long time. ‘Are they never going away?’ was
the natural inquiry. ‘Most of them are crippled, in some form or other,’
said the Wardsman, ‘and not fit for anything.’ They slunk about, like
dispirited wolves or hyænas; and made a pounce at their food when it was
served out, much as those animals do. The big-headed idiot shuffling his
feet along the pavement, in the sunlight outside, was a more agreeable
object everyway.
Groves of babies in arms; groves of mothers and other sick women in bed;
groves of lunatics; jungles of men in stone-paved down-stairs day-rooms,
waiting for their dinners; longer and longer groves of old people, in
up-stairs Infirmary wards, wearing out life, God knows how—this was the
scenery through which the walk lay, for two hours. In some of these
latter chambers, there were pictures stuck against the wall, and a neat
display of crockery and pewter on a kind of sideboard; now and then it
was a treat to see a plant or two; in almost every ward there was a cat.
In all of these Long Walks of aged and infirm, some old people were
bedridden, and had been for a long time; some were sitting on their beds
half-naked; some dying in their beds; some out of bed, and sitting at a
table near the fire. A sullen or lethargic indifference to what was
asked, a blunted sensibility to everything but warmth and food, a moody
absence of complaint as being of no use, a dogged silence and resentful
desire to be left alone again, I thought were generally apparent. On our
walking into the midst of one of these dreary perspectives of old men,
nearly the following little dialogue took place, the nurse not being
immediately at hand:
‘All well here?’
No answer. An old man in a Scotch cap sitting among others on a form at
the table, eating out of a tin porringer, pushes back his cap a little to
look at us, claps it down on his forehead again with the palm of his
hand, and goes on eating.
‘All well here?’ (repeated).
No answer. Another old man sitting on his bed, paralytically peeling a
boiled potato, lifts his head and stares.
‘Enough to eat?’
No answer. Another old man, in bed, turns himself and coughs.
‘How are you to-day?’ To the last old man.
That old man says nothing; but another old man, a tall old man of very
good address, speaking with perfect correctness, comes forward from
somewhere, and volunteers an answer. The reply almost always proceeds
from a volunteer, and not from the person looked at or spoken to.
‘We are very old, sir,’ in a mild, distinct voice. ‘We can’t expect to
be well, most of us.’
‘Are you comfortable?’
‘I have no complaint to make, sir.’ With a half shake of his head, a
half shrug of his shoulders, and a kind of apologetic smile.
‘Enough to eat?’
‘Why, sir, I have but a poor appetite,’ with the same air as before; ‘and
yet I get through my allowance very easily.’
‘But,’ showing a porringer with a Sunday dinner in it; ‘here is a portion
of mutton, and three potatoes. You can’t starve on that?’
‘Oh dear no, sir,’ with the same apologetic air. ‘Not starve.’
‘What do you want?’
‘We have very little bread, sir. It’s an exceedingly small quantity of
bread.’
The nurse, who is now rubbing her hands at the questioner’s elbow,
interferes with, ‘It ain’t much raly, sir. You see they’ve only six
ounces a day, and when they’ve took their breakfast, there can only be a
little left for night, sir.’
Another old man, hitherto invisible, rises out of his bed-clothes, as out
of a grave, and looks on.
‘You have tea at night?’ The questioner is still addressing the
well-spoken old man.
‘Yes, sir, we have tea at night.’
‘And you save what bread you can from the morning, to eat with it?’
‘Yes, sir—if we can save any.’
‘And you want more to eat with it?’
‘Yes, sir.’ With a very anxious face.
The questioner, in the kindness of his heart, appears a little
discomposed, and changes the subject.
‘What has become of the old man who used to lie in that bed in the
corner?’
The nurse don’t remember what old man is referred to. There has been
such a many old men. The well-spoken old man is doubtful. The spectral
old man who has come to life in bed, says, ‘Billy Stevens.’ Another old
man who has previously had his head in the fireplace, pipes out,
‘Charley Walters.’
Something like a feeble interest is awakened. I suppose Charley Walters
had conversation in him.
‘He’s dead,’ says the piping old man.
Another old man, with one eye screwed up, hastily displaces the piping
old man, and says.
‘Yes! Charley Walters died in that bed, and—and—’
‘Billy Stevens,’ persists the spectral old man.
‘No, no! and Johnny Rogers died in that bed, and—and—they’re both on ’em
dead—and Sam’l Bowyer;’ this seems very extraordinary to him; ‘he went
out!’
With this he subsides, and all the old men (having had quite enough of
it) subside, and the spectral old man goes into his grave again, and
takes the shade of Billy Stevens with him.
As we turn to go out at the door, another previously invisible old man, a
hoarse old man in a flannel gown, is standing there, as if he had just
come up through the floor.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, could I take the liberty of saying a word?’
‘Yes; what is it?’
‘I am greatly better in my health, sir; but what I want, to get me quite
round,’ with his hand on his throat, ‘is a little fresh air, sir. It has
always done my complaint so much good, sir. The regular leave for going
out, comes round so seldom, that if the gentlemen, next Friday, would
give me leave to go out walking, now and then—for only an hour or so,
sir!—’
Who could wonder, looking through those weary vistas of bed and
infirmity, that it should do him good to meet with some other scenes, and
assure himself that there was something else on earth? Who could help
wondering why the old men lived on as they did; what grasp they had on
life; what crumbs of interest or occupation they could pick up from its
bare board; whether Charley Walters had ever described to them the days
when he kept company with some old pauper woman in the bud, or Billy
Stevens ever told them of the time when he was a dweller in the far-off
foreign land called Home!
The morsel of burnt child, lying in another room, so patiently, in bed,
wrapped in lint, and looking steadfastly at us with his bright quiet eyes
when we spoke to him kindly, looked as if the knowledge of these things,
and of all the tender things there are to think about, might have been in
his mind—as if he thought, with us, that there was a fellow-feeling in
the pauper nurses which appeared to make them more kind to their charges
than the race of common nurses in the hospitals—as if he mused upon the
Future of some older children lying around him in the same place, and
thought it best, perhaps, all things considered, that he should die—as if
he knew, without fear, of those many coffins, made and unmade, piled up
in the store below—and of his unknown friend, ‘the dropped child,’ calm
upon the box-lid covered with a cloth. But there was something wistful
and appealing, too, in his tiny face, as if, in the midst of all the hard
necessities and incongruities he pondered on, he pleaded, in behalf of
the helpless and the aged poor, for a little more liberty—and a little
more bread.