| Soup. | ||||
| Cheese. | Pease porridge. | Potatoes. | ||
| Meat. | Beer. |
Nothing can be more tempting; who would not be a pauper of St. Pancras? Six paupers are called in, and one and all testify that the rations of meat, potatoes, soup, and porridge are better in quality and greater in quantity than the workhouse allowance. There is a slight pause. Birmingham looks blank at Howarth, and Howarth gazes uneasily on Birmingham; but it is only for a minute: ready wits jump:—
"Dr. Birmingham. This is the allowance for Sunday.
"Mr. Marley. I understand there is no difference between the allowance on Sunday and on any other day.
"Mr. Howarth. They have better meat on Sundays."
What follows this glaring exposure? Impeachment of the master, on this clear proof of malversation in the house and dishonesty before the board? So expects Mr. Halton, and very naturally suggests that Mr. Lee be called on for an explanation. Mr. Lee is not called on, and no explanation takes place. The room is cleared, and, after an hour and a half's discussion, a report is unanimously agreed to. Our readers may anticipate its tenour. It finds that there is no place deserving to be called the shed; that the rooms so called are very admirable places of "separation" for refractory paupers; that the diet is excellent; that every thing is as it ought to be. It recommends that reports of punishments be more regularly made to the board, that classification of old and young be improved, and that some little change be made in the ventilation of the refractory wards!
And so concludes this sad farce of the St. Pancras investigation. One more disgraceful to the guardians cannot be found even in the pregnant annals of workhouse mismanagement. [92]
"Farming out" paupers, especially children, is one of the most prolific sources of misery among the English poor who are compelled to appeal to the parish authorities. This practice consists of entering into contracts with individuals to supply the paupers with food, clothing, and lodging. The man who offers to perform the work for the smallest sum commonly gets the contract, and then the poor wretches who look to him for the necessaries of life must submit to all kinds of treatment, and be stinted in every thing. During the last visit of that scourge, the cholera, to England, a large number of farmed pauper children were crowded, by one Mr. Drouet, a contractor, into a close and filthy building, where they nearly all perished. An investigation was subsequently held, but influential persons screened the authors of this tragedy from justice. During the investigation, it was clearly shown that the children confided to the care of Mr. Drouet were kept in a state of filth and semi-starvation.
So much for the boasted charity of the dominant class in Great Britain! By its enormous drain upon the public purse, and its vast monopoly of that soil which was given for the use of all, it creates millions of paupers—wretches without homes, without resources, and almost without hope; and then, to prevent themselves from being hurled from their high and luxurious places, and from being devoured as by ravenous wolves, they take the miserable paupers in hand, separate families, shut them up, as in the worst of prisons, and give them something to keep life in their bodies. Then the lords and ladies ask the world to admire their charitable efforts. What they call charity is the offspring of fear!
A member of the humbler classes in England no sooner begins to exist, than the probability of his becoming a pauper is contemplated by the laws. A writer in Chambers's Journal says, in regard to this point—