"The inmates were badly clothed as well as badly fed. Not one of them had a change of clothing. Their under-clothes were worn to rags. If they washed them they had to borrow from each other in the interval.
"The inmates' clothes were not only scanty, they were filthy. On one occasion the whole of the workhouse linen was returned by the laundry people because it was so over-run with vermin that they would not wash it.
"One of the inmates—a woman—who was doing hard work at scrubbing every day, asked me whether she couldn't have a pair of boots.
"'Surely,' I said, putting her off for the time, 'nobody here goes without boots?'
"A second and a third time when I came across her scrubbing the floors she pleaded for boots. She raised her skirt from the wet stone floor, and showed two sloppy pieces of canvas on her feet, and that was all she had in the way of boots."
Crooks went on to relate that he walked along the corridor and saw a female officer. "There's a woman over there who has asked me three times to get her a pair of boots," he said.
She drew her skirt round her and said, "Oh, why do you worry about these people; they are not our class."
"Worry about them!" Crooks rejoined. "What do you mean by our class? We are here to see these people properly clothed. I do not want to quarrel, but that woman must have a pair of boots to-day."