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,