A Morning's Walk from London to Kew

by Sir R. Phillips

Under the influence of such reasoning, I made a variety of enquiries between Battersea and Wandsworth, relative to the condition of the poor. I learnt with grief that the payment of day-labourers varies from 2s. 6d. to 1s. 6d. per day, or on an average is not more than 12s. per week; of women from 1s. 3d. to 1s. or about 6s. per week; and of children from 9d. to 6d. or 4s. per week; though, for the two last classes there is sufficient employment for only half the year. A poor man, who had a wife and three children to maintain on 14s. per week, told me, that for many months he and his family had been strangers to meat, cheese, butter, or beer—that bread, potatoes, nettles, turnips, carrots, and onions, with a little salt, constituted the whole of their food—that during the winter months he was obliged to rely on the parish—that in case of sickness he and his children had no resource besides the workhouse—and that, though it had pleased God to take two of his children, it was better they should go to heaven than continue in this wicked and troublesome world. “But I don’t think,” said he, “the gentlefolk saves much by running down we poor so nation hard, for we are obligated to get it on the parish, which they pay; so it’s all one; though it grieves a poor man, as one may say, to apply to them overseers, and to have no hope but the workhouse at last.”

I agree with this humble Economist that it seems to be as ungenerous as impolitic to throw on the poor’s rates a burthen which ought to be borne by those who profit from the labour thus inadequately remunerated. It could not, and ought not, to be difficult to fix a minimum (not a maximum) on twelve hours’ labour per day, such as should be sufficient to support an average-sized family. Suppose for bread and flour 6s. were allowed; for meat, cheese, butter, milk, and beer, 4s.; for potatoes, &c. 2s. candles, soap, and coals, 2s. cloathing 3s. 6d. house-rent 2s. 6d. sundries 1s.—total 21s. Here is nothing superfluous, nothing but what appertains to the earliest stages of civilization, and what every well-arranged society ought to be able to give in return for manual labour of the lowest kind. With inferior means the labourer must suffer the obloquy of being remunerated from the parish rates, to which all are forced to contribute as fully as though the employer paid the fair value of the labour in the first instance, and the amount were assessed on the price of his commodity, instead of being assessed in the form of poor’s rates.

It being, however, the favourite system to pay the difference between what the labourer receives, and what he ought to receive, through the medium of the workhouse or parish officers, I anxiously directed my way to Wandsworth Workhouse, to examine whether it was an asylum of comfort or a place of punishment? On my entrance I found the hall filled with a crowd of poor persons, then applying to receive a weekly stipend from the overseers, who, with other parish-officers, were assembled in an adjoining apartment. Many women with infants at their breasts, and other children clinging round their knees, presented interesting subjects for poets and painters. Every feeling of the human heart, though in the garb of rags, and bearing the aspect of misery, evidently filled the various individuals composing this groupe. I pressed forward to the room, where I found the overseers were sitting at a table, covered with bank-tokens and other silver for distribution. They received me politely, and, on learning my wish to view the interior, directed the matron to accompany me. The manners and countenances of these overseers flatly contradicted the prejudices which are usually entertained against persons filling the office; and it gratified me to hear several of the poor, whose characteristic is said to be discontent, exclaim, “God bless ’em, they’re noble gentlemen.”

The matron conducted me into a spacious yard, round which are suites of rooms, built in the manner of alms-houses, a plan which cannot be too much commended, because it sufficiently detaches the tenants of each, secures to every set their peculiar comforts, and may be rendered the means of separating virtue from vice. In the middle of the area stand the offices and kitchen, dividing it into two yards, one for the men, and the other for the women. The whole had been recently white-washed, and, but for the name of work-house, and certain restraints on their habits and liberty, it seemed calculated to secure the comfort of its inmates.

The matron took me into several of the men’s rooms, and here I found tottering grey hairs, crippled youth, inveterately diseased of all ages, and artizans destitute of employment. Six or eight were in a room, though I was informed they slept for the most part but one in a bed. A fine young girl about twelve years old, who had slipped out of the women’s yard, was seated by the side of her father, an interesting looking artizan, whose trade had ceased to afford him employment. This, I found, was contrary to the discipline of the house, and the matron chid the girl for coming there; “however,” said she to me in an under-tone, with great good nature—“one can’t blame a child for getting to her father, nor the father for encouraging his child to come over to him.”—“No, madam,” said I, “and no one can blame you for granting such an indulgence, while all must admire the goodness of heart which dictates that sentiment.” Would to God, thought I, that all workhouses were governed by matrons as capable of sympathizing with the feelings of the unfortunate inmates; and that all those who embitter poverty by directing the separation of parents from their children, and husbands from their wives, may themselves become the object of their own law!

My guide now led me to a room where lived a man, his wife, and children, a sawyer out of work, whose eyes were so affected by the dust that falls into the pit, as to render him incapable of following his employment. His pride, as well as that of his wife, seemed to be piqued at being exhibited to view in the workhouse, and they took much pains to convince me that it was their misfortune, not their fault or their wish. Two fine children, one of them a chubby happy creature, playing on the floor, added to the groupe an interest that was deeply affecting. Doubtless, thought I, these simple people once entertained many projects of humble ambition, which, if explained, might draw a smile from the great—but here, alas! they seem to be entombed for ever!

I now took a cursory view of the women’s yard, in which I found the same appearances of cleanliness and comfort as on the men’s side. But the most interesting scene was the nursery, where sixteen little cherubs, the oldest about five years, were engaged in their innocent diversions, regardless whether they were in a workhouse or a palace, and unsuspicious of the ills that await them in a world governed by selfishness, where the greatest of all crimes, and the forerunner of all calamities, is poverty! I was pleased to find that the mother of three of them was allowed to fill the office of nurse, and the tears trickled down the poor woman’s face, as I particularly admired one fine boy, who, it happened, was her child. “Ah! Sir, (said she,) he’s so like his poor father!—my poor husband little thought, when he died, that his dear children would so soon be in a workhouse”—here her tears and loud sobs stopt her utterance; but, recovering herself—“if I can’t maintain ’em with the labour of my hands, (said she,) I will do what I can for ’em here; there is no other happiness for me in this world, and I will continue to do for them till God shall please to take me also.” A woman’s and mother’s tears are so contagious, and the scene before me formed so deep a drama of real life, that I hurried from the room!

The good matron now showed her cleanly kitchen, her well-arranged laundry, pantry, bakehouse, &c. &c., with which my feelings were not at that moment in unison; I saw, however, much to admire and nothing to condemn. On inquiry, I found that these excellent regulations were the effect of a late revolution in the establishment. Till a very recent period, it had been the criminal practice of the overseers, and the negligent sufferance of the parish, to FARM or LET OUT the poor to some grim tyrant or task-master, at the average rate of 5s. 6d. per head! This man was to provide for these wretched victims of the public neglect, and of his miscalculation, out of 5s. 6d. per week, rent exclusive; and his remuneration consisted in the difference between their cost and that pitiful allowance. The cries of the poor at length forced their way to the ears of the opulent, the contractor was turned out, and it was then humanely determined that the overseers, aided by a master and matron, should in future superintend the workhouse as trustees for the parish.

I understood that they had hitherto performed this duty with great attention and humanity, giving meat-dinners four days in the week, and soup-dinners on the other days, the cost proving about 6s. 9d. per head, on the one hundred poor in the house, of whom forty were children. In the petty labours with which the aged, crippled, and infant poor are too often harassed in these receptacles, they had, as yet, made no essays. The stipends out of the house amounted, I learned, to nearly as much as the cost within, or to about 30l. per week, which, at 2s. 6d. per head, assists two hundred and forty objects, making a total charge on the parish of from 3 to 4000l. per annum.

How many parishes in the metropolis still, however, persist in the negligent practice of farming their wretched poor at only 4s. or even 3s. 6d. per week! And how few of the opulent, idle, and well-intentioned of the parishioners, concern themselves about their condition or sufferings! When the overseer calls for the rates, they perhaps complain so heavily of the amount, that he fears to increase the allowance, however sensible he may be of its necessity; or, perhaps, when accosted by a beggar in the street, they excuse themselves by quoting their large contributions to the rates, and refer the despairing wretch to the workhouse! How incumbent then to see what that workhouse is!—Whether its arrangements are not more fitted for dogs or pigs, than for rational and heart-broken fellow-creatures, however unequal in fortune, or however differing even in virtue! Let us then neither wonder nor complain, that our streets or highways are filled with objects of misery, preferring the cold ground, the unsparing storm, and the inclemency of seasons, to the provisions legally provided for them; if we have not had the industry to ascertain, the courage to reform, and the benevolence to improve, the condition of their parochial asylums!