Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London Life

by Daniel Joseph Kirwan

"Now, Sir," said he to me, "you, of course, can see something of which you speak, for yourself. Here is one of the busy wards of the Union. Each of these old women is allowed an ounce of dry tea per day, and enough sugar to moderately sweeten four cups of tea, which they make in their own tea-caddies, or, sometimes they mess together—three or four in a mess—and those who do not care for sugar will trade their surplus sugar for the surplus dry tea with some other paupers."

All the women arose from their low seats or benches, some of them being clustered around a grate in which were a moderate stock of burning coals, and bowed to the Master, who waved his hand and told them to sit down again, which they did with courtesies and many feeble expressions of thanks.

"That old woman over there in the corner," said the Master, pointing to a female of sixty years of age, who sat alone rubbing her bare arms, and chatting to herself senselessly, "has lost her wits. She is here forty-five years, and will die here in all probability. We have about 400 in-door paupers in this workhouse, and perhaps twice as many out-door poor, whom the parochial authorities assist as well as they can. Every pauper whom we support in this house costs the rate-payers of this parish about seventeen pounds six and ten-pence per head, which does not include charge for rent, taking the interest of the value of the property. For the children we have a school, and they get the rudiments and that's all. It is an idea with some, and I am afraid, with many poor people, "once a pauper always a pauper." The children who are born in this place, would never become independent of the parish if it were not that as soon as they grow up we send them to schools of an industrial kind outside of London, where they learn a trade, or are taught some occupation, such as gardening, blacksmithing, carpentering, or, in fact, anything that will enable them to make a living. The feeding and schooling of the children, with the nursing, &c., costs more per head for them, strange to say, than it does for a grown person's subsistence and clothing in London.

WORKHOUSE RATIONS.

"In this parish alone we have to take care of 478 children, and in some of the London parishes in Bethnal Green, and Hackney, or Stepney, they sometimes have to provide for from 1,500 to 2,000 children, of both sexes. Of course, in the very large parishes they cannot afford to educate the children, but have to content themselves with feeding and clothing as many as they can inside the workhouse, while the majority receive, with their parents, out-door relief, but the large and heavy parishes could not afford to have such fine schools as we have in the suburbs, with grounds attached, and sometimes goodish pieces of land, where farming and gardening can be taught the children. It costs the rate-payers of this parish twenty pounds a year to support and educate the parish children, and, along with all the rest of the taxes, it is no wonder that the people are grumbling and asking why we do not send the beggars to America or Australia."

"And why do you not?" said I to him, "if the sustenance of a pauper, together with his clothing, costs the parish £21 annually."

"Because, the people of London have an idea somehow or other, that the Americans will not receive paupers, and then again, if £21 was given to a pauper to go to America, they would raise a row in Parliament that too much money was going out of the country. Why," said he, "down at Birkenhead, near Liverpool, schools were built for paupers at a cost of £15,000, with bath-rooms and fine dining-rooms, and the people there raised an awful row because the cost to the rate-payers came to ten shillings per head per annum to every inhabitant in the place. They didn't want to give them bath-rooms or fine dining-rooms. They turned a man away there who was frozen, and he had to lose all of his toes on account of their neglect. In some of the work-houses, in the North of England, they are beginning to let the children out to board by the week, with farmers and families who can afford to take them, the parish authorities allowing, for each child, three shillings per week for board, with an outfit on leaving the workhouse, and six shillings and sixpence a quarter for mending and repairing their clothes, an offer which has been very cheerfully accepted by many families who are in decent circumstances."

"A 'Casual,'" said the Master, "is a pauper who is house-less and destitute in a different parish from which he has lived. When he finds himself in a strange place, as in London, he has to apply at the Police Station for a ticket, which is given him as a reference to ask for one night's lodging at the workhouse in the district. The ticket is shown to the Master, who receives him, and I will send him down here, but before he is sent down he gets a loaf of bread, weighing a pound and a quarter. He must apply to the House for lodgings before ten o'clock at night, or we will not let him in. Then he takes the loaf of bread and eats half of it for his supper, and the other half he saves for his breakfast. We give him, with the remaining half loaf of bread in the morning, a half pint of coffee or tea. But before he goes he has got to earn the breakfast which we give him, and is compelled to pick oakum from six o'clock in the morning until nine, when he leaves the House."

Before I left the workhouse the Master allowed me to inspect the beef, bread, butter, and beer, which are served out daily to the paupers. Each grown man and woman receives a twelve ounce loaf of bread, a pint of the best beer, an ounce of butter, daily, and five days in the week they receive six ounces of fresh meat, the other days being especially devoted to beans, and a liquid compound known to seafaring men as "skillagelee."