| Breakfasts | Bread | 2⅝ lbs. |
| Butter | 3½ ozs. | |
| Coffee | 7 pints. | |
| Dinners | Mutton | 12 ozs. |
| Beef | 4 ozs. | |
| Bacon | 3 ozs. | |
| Irish stew | 1 pint. | |
| Boiled pork | 4 ozs. | |
| Bread | 1¾ lbs. | |
| Potatoes and greens | 3 lbs. | |
| Suppers | Bread | 2⅝ lbs. |
| Butter | 3½ ozs. | |
| Tea | 7 pints. |
When you read down that list and think of the scare headlines that appeared in London daily papers during the Inquiry—"Splendid Paupers," "Luxuries for Paupers," "A Pauper's Paradise"—you may well ask, Are we living in bountiful England? Or have we fallen upon an England of meagre diet and mean men, an England that whines like a miser when called upon to feed on homely fare its broken-down veterans of industry?
Dickens is dead, else would he have shown us Bumble reincarnated in the editors of certain London newspapers.
CHAPTER XV TURNING WORKHOUSE CHILDREN INTO USEFUL CITIZENS
A Home for Little "Ins-and-Outs"—Technical Education for Workhouse Children—A Good Report for the Forest Gate Schools—Trophies won by Scholars—The Children's Pat-a-Cakes.
After he had fed the old people and clothed the old people, and in other ways brought into their darkened lives a little good cheer, Crooks turned his care upon the workhouse children.
The Guardians' school at Forest Gate lay four miles from the Union buildings at Poplar. With five or six hundred children always under training in the school there still remained varying batches of neglected little people in the workhouse. The greater number of these belonged to parents who came into the House for short periods only.
These little "ins-and-outs" were getting no schooling and no training save the training that fitted them for pauperism. What to do with them had long been a perplexing problem. If they were sent to Forest Gate one day their parents in the workhouse could demand them back the next day and take their discharge, even though they and their children turned up at the gates for re-admission within the next twenty-four hours.