“That’s when they’re ill, Mrs. Mann,” said the beadle. “We put sick paupers in carts in rainy weather, to prevent their taking cold.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Mann.
“The opposition coach contracts for these two; and takes them cheap,” said Mr. Bumble. “They are both in a very low state, and we find it would come two pounds cheaper to move ’em than to bury them—that is, if we can throw ’em upon another parish, which I think we shall be able to do, if they don’t die upon the road to spite us. Ha! Ha! Ha!” When Mr. Bumble had laughed a little his eyes again encountered the cocked hat; and he became grave.[29]
Here is fiction: let us turn to facts as we find them in a history of the England of the period:
The parish had the right to apprentice the children of poor parents to any trade.... Children under this law might be sent to any part of the Kingdom. “It is a very common practice,” wrote Romilly in 1811, “with the great populous parishes in London to bind children in large numbers to the proprietors of cotton mills ... at a distance of 200 miles.... The children, who are sent off by waggon loads at a time, are as much lost for ever to their parents as if they were shipped off for the West Indies. The parishes that bind them get rid of them for ever, and the poor children have not a human being in the world to whom they can look up for redress ... from these wholesale dealers whose object it is to get everything that they can wring from their excessive labours and fatigue.... Instances (and not very few) have occurred in our criminal tribunals of wretches who have murdered their parish apprentices that they might get fresh premiums with new apprentices.” Some manufacturers, it is shocking to state, agreed to take one idiot for every nineteen sane children.
Even naturally humane men were found to defend these dreadful abuses in the House of Commons. Here is an extract from a speech: “Although in the higher ranks of society it was true that to cultivate the affections of children for their family was the source of every virtue, yet it was not so among the lower orders.... It would be highly injurious to the public to put a stop to the binding of so many apprentices to the cotton manufacturers, as it must necessarily raise the price of labour and enhance the price of cotton manufactured goods!”
We turn next to the debtor’s prison which is so prominent in the “Pickwick Papers.” So resolute was Mr. Pickwick not to submit to the judgment against him in the famous trial that he allowed himself to be imprisoned in the Fleet. He was first put into the Warden’s room with several other prisoners. When he entered the room, the others were absent. “So he sat down on the foot of his little iron bedstead, and began to wonder how much a year the warden made out of the dirty room. Having satisfied himself, by mathematical calculation, that the apartment was about equal in annual value to a freehold in a small street in the suburbs of London,” etc., etc.
Here we have one of the great abuses of the horrible “debtor’s prisons” in London. They were jobbed by the officials, and the bare decencies of life could only be obtained by a heavy payment. The warders charged £1.1.0. on entrance for “garnish,” which was supposed to provide coals, candles, brooms, etc., and exorbitant fees were demanded for rooms. The state of those who could not pay was deplorable. In the prison of the Court of Requests at Birmingham, according to the Parliamentary papers of 1844, eight years after “Pickwick” was written, the male prisoners slept in an attic eleven feet long by sixteen broad on platforms littered with loose straw. For exercise, at Kidderminster they walked in a yard thirteen yards square; and their room was without even a fireplace. For food they were allowed one quarter of a loaf of bread and were allowed two jugfuls of water for drinking and washing.
In 1827 nearly 6000 persons in London were imprisoned for debt. We read constantly in Dickens of Chancery prisoners, especially in “Little Dorrit”; men who had been thrown into gaol to rot there for years because they could not pay for suits in which they had been quite unwillingly involved. The absurdity of the system was enhanced by the fact that they were deprived of any chance of working to pay their debts. Many were forgotten and left literally to rot. They were not even allowed to escape by bankruptcy; for unless a man failed in trade he could not claim that relief, nor could his property be divided among his creditors. The law thus gave no means of escape to the debtor nor of payment to the creditor.
Imprisonment for debt was not abolished in England till 1869; and it is now only allowed by order of the court in the case of small debts which people can but will not pay.