OFFICER DIET PAUPER
7 lb. Bread 6.75 lb.
5 lb. Meat 1 lb. 2 oz.
12 oz. Bacon 2.5 oz.
8 oz. Cheese 2 oz.
7 lb. Potatoes 1.5 lb.
6 lb. Vegetables none.
1 lb. Flour none.
2 oz. Lard none.
12 oz. Butter 7 oz.
none. Rice Pudding 1 lb.
And as the same writer remarks: “The officer’s diet is still more liberal than the pauper’s; but evidently it is not considered liberal enough, for a footnote is added to the officer’s table saying that ‘a cash payment of two shillings and sixpence a week is also made to each resident officer and servant.’ If the pauper has ample food, why does the officer have more? And if the officer has not too much, can the pauper be properly fed on less than half the amount?”
But it is not alone the Ghetto-dweller, the prisoner, and the pauper that starve. Hodge, of the country, does not know what it is always to have a full belly. In truth, it is his empty belly which has driven him to the city in such great numbers. Let us investigate the way of living of a labourer from a parish in the Bradfield Poor Law Union, Berks. Supposing him to have two children, steady work, a rent-free cottage, and an average weekly wage of thirteen shillings, which is equivalent to $3.25, then here is his weekly budget:—
s. d.
Bread (5 quarterns) 1 10
Flour (0.5 gallon) 0 4
Tea (0.25 lb.) 0 6
Butter (1 lb.) 1 3
Lard (1 lb.) 0 6
Sugar (6 lb.) 1 0
Bacon or other meat (about 0.25 lb.) 2 8
Cheese (1 lb.) 0 8
Milk (half-tin condensed) 0 3.25
Coal 1 6
Beer none
Tobacco none
Insurance (“Prudential”) 0 3
Labourers’ Union 0 1
Wood, tools, dispensary, &c. 0 6
Insurance (“Foresters”) and margin 1 1.75
for clothes
Total 13 0
The guardians of the workhouse in the above Union pride themselves on their rigid economy. It costs per pauper per week:—
s. d.
Men 6 1.5
Women 5 6.5
Children 5 1.25
If the labourer whose budget has been described should quit his toil and go into the workhouse, he would cost the guardians for
s. d.
Himself 6 1.5
Wife 5 6.5
Two children 10 2.5
Total 21 10.5
Or roughly, $5.46
It would require more than a guinea for the workhouse to care for him and his family, which he, somehow, manages to do on thirteen shillings. And in addition, it is an understood fact that it is cheaper to cater for a large number of people—buying, cooking, and serving wholesale—than it is to cater for a small number of people, say a family.
Nevertheless, at the time this budget was compiled, there was in that parish another family, not of four, but eleven persons, who had to live on an income, not of thirteen shillings, but of twelve shillings per week (eleven shillings in winter), and which had, not a rent-free cottage, but a cottage for which it paid three shillings per week.