The Down and Out King - 18

WILLIAM

Since I cannot, dear sister, with you hold communion,

I'll give you a sketch of our life in the union.

But how to begin I don't know, I declare:

Let me see: well, the first is our grand bill of fare.

We've skilly for breakfast; at night bread and cheese,

And we eat it and then go to bed if you please.

Two days in the week we have puddings for dinner,

And two, we have broth, so like water but thinner;

Two, meat and potatoes, of this none to spare;

One day, bread and cheese - and this is our fare.

More from the pencil of Sam.

“There are two classes of indoor paupers who are much to be pitied - the very old and the young. The former have to drone away life in dullest monotony, half fed and little cared for. With the exception of a few in such manifest debility that even the most cruel-hearted would scarcely think of demanding labour from them, they are all turned into the workshops, given their task, and kept at it just as long as the men are in full vigour.

“There is a curious rule as to old and young similar to what there is in prisons. Up to the conclusion of his sixtieth year a pauper is a young man. He remains so until he completes the three hundred and sixty-fifth day of the said sixtieth year. Up to that moment he must take his spell at 'hard labour,' But the instant he enters his sixty-first year he becomes 'old,' and his hard labour ceases at a stroke. Although I must admit at some workhouses, this day of becoming old is delayed by up to ten years.

“I should like to know why this is done. I cannot see any special reason. The task-work of the most vigorous is not very profitable. And it is impossible to get more labour out of an old man than his
muscles can accomplish. One species of task-work, which I am involved with - oakum-picking - is either a dead loss, or very little better - so little better, indeed, that the toil of the most skilful and
industrious, one day with another, is never worth more to the guardians than a single penny at most.

“As to other matters, the old man is supposed to receive better food than the young man, and to enjoy a number of little privileges denied to the latter. But does he?

“The food of the indoor pauper differs much according to the locality, and that the difference is in exact proportion to the quality of the guardians. Here, the average cost of feeding and clothing
paupers is three shillings a head, and the cost in neighbouring Unions in most instances ran much higher. In the other districts where the guardians are most aristocratic are about twice as
generous to the pauper prisoner as that in which the guardians were all retail traders as they are around here.

“Now our workhouse is ruled exclusively by retail traders, and persons, as doctors, who may be considered at their mercy. The retail trader, indeed, has it all his own way here; and that way is certainly not a pleasant one for the indoor pauper. I do not know how the items stand in the official balance-sheet, but I am very certain of one thing - that the average cost of keeping a young-man indoor pauper, setting aside, as aforesaid, the necessary expenses of the establishment, does not exceed three shillings a week - if it ever reaches that sum - of which I have my doubts.

“One result of this peculiar economy is actually to swell the rates. When a muscular man comes into the house, he is absolutely tortured by hunger for three weeks or a month. At the end of that time, if he remain so long, the ravenous craving ceases. This is because his stomach has adapted itself to the regimen; and this in its turn comes from the fact that the muscles have contracted as far as contraction is possible, and no longer require their normal supply of nutriment. But mark the consequences.

“The semi-skeleton - for such the man now is - receives a hint from friends outside that times have improved; that there is a demand for hands in his own line; that, in short, employment is awaiting him. He discharges himself and goes out to it accordingly. But, in half an hour or so, he discovers that he is no longer the same man that he used to be, and is not up to his work. His mates discover it too, and, unless he happens to be popular among them, they begin to grumble at having more than their fair share of the labour thrust upon them through he is either discharged; or he gives up the job.

“The young man in the workhouse does not get enough to eat by a great deal, and the old man gets less. He is allowed tea, indeed, butter, and one or two other things denied to his juniors, and meat more frequently - in some houses. But the quantity? That question is best answered by stating the simple fact that I have known old men beg and pray to be restored to the 'young men's' scale of dietary, and to congratulate themselves when the request was granted, and for no other reason than because they had a better chance of filling their stomachs thereby.

“As to other matters, an old man cannot enjoy his tea unless he be provided somehow with sugar from the outside. Against this fact I am bound to set another: the scullery-men will always sell a pauper a basin of tea. By such sales, indeed, they contrive to realise sums considerable for paupers. The tea thus sold, it is right to state, is invariably much better than the house tea, and properly sweetened into the bargain. It is one of the 'perquisites' of the scullery-men, though why they should be allowed the privilege of fleecing their fellows - to say nothing of the stores - passes my comprehension.”

I feel I must interject into Sam's dialogue a defence for my friends in the kitchen. It is true some of them make quite considerable bits of money from selling sweetened tea, and other little luxuries. But is that any different from any one else in this position? People in charge do more for those whom they like, or who tip them. I think that is human nature – not greed. We do have an easier life than most inmates. I have admitted as much before. But we do work hard, and in the hot summer days we suffer from being in an overheated environment all day. But now back to Sam's words.

“Old men frequently die in their beds without having been removed to the infirmary, and unnoted of their fellows. They are found dead in the morning; that is all. This brings me to the mention of a curious fact in connection with this particular establishment. It was opened with the fewest possible appliances at the outset. Things absolutely necessary were omitted in order to curtail the cost. Inquest after inquest have compelled the guardians, much against the grain, to supply several of these things. For instance, one inquest on an indoor pauper brought about the introduction of lights of an evening into certain passages. And another inquest, which came off only the other day, compelled the guardians, for the first time, to place night-lamps in the dormitories.

“A number of other essentials are still wanting; and they will be supplied, no doubt, in response to the demands of future coroners and their juries, but not otherwise.

“As regards the young - I mean the very young, the lads between sixteen and twenty - I say that they should never be allowed to mix for even a moment with the more mature. Properly treated, they would be the most hopeful section of the community to which they belong, while, as things go, they are positively the most hopeless. They are trained in all that is degrading - in skulking, in laziness, in lying, in impudence, in the vilest habits. No alternative, indeed, is left them between the life of the pauper and that of the criminal. They must choose between; and generally they elect to become both. It is heart-sickening to see such youths, and that, too, by the score and the hundred, undergoing ruin in every sense of the word, strictly according to the law.

“They learn no craft - I speak of lads in this particular workhouse: they pick oakum and break stones, and can do both skillfully. But neither accomplishment, I submit, can gain them an honest living outside. The only real use of either, indeed, is to deprive the gaol of its principal terrors, so far as the pauper youth is concerned. 'Hard labour,'. pronounced by judge or magistrate, does not trouble him in the least. 'He can do that on his head,' as he seldom fails to inform the Beak who awards his sentence.

“But even this is not the worst of it. There is malingering - a habit once only too well known in the British army. It consisted in self-mutilation by a skulker in order to secure an easy life in hospital, or, if need were, discharge. There are plenty of ex-malingerers in the workhouse; and these fellows never fail to instruct the youths round them in the secrets of their craft, and concerning the times and circumstances when they may be used with striking effects. They are used, too, and the results brought forward, first in the workhouse and then in the prison, to procure immunity from the more trying tasks and the more severe punishments.

“Youth under twenty are, I find, beginning to abound in the metropolitan workhouses, for a reason which is a sign of the times, and a very sad sign. Parents of the lowest class, who have a son among their children too weak in body or mind, or both, to succeed in life as artisan or labourer, are in the habit of turning him out of doors when he attains his sixteenth year. As a rule he is previously made thoroughly well acquainted with his infirmities, and the lot they are certain to entail upon him, and he is taught to look upon the workhouse as his only home, and that, too, a much more comfortable one than he has been accustomed to. A story also is put into his mouth, and precautions are taken to support it, should the relieving officer call to inquire. Then he is represented as a waif, an orphan, turned out of doors by an unfeeling stepfather; and thus he is made
an indoor pauper. A similar course, I need hardly say, is pursued with girls in the like case; but of these I know little.

“I have, however, met with a number of workhouse youths, soon to be workhouse men, whose parents and brothers and sisters are in comfortable circumstances - nay, comparatively affluent.

“This is an age of organized benevolence - of charity done systematically by the medium of paid agents. It seems to me that this charity and these agents could not be better employed than in giving some attention and judicious aid to workhouse youths ere they become too hardened in workhouse ways and vices.”