The Down and Out King - 2

  WILLIAM

Queer, boys, Queer, is the house we live in;

Queer, boys, Queer, they grub us every day;

Queer, boys, Queer is the advice they’re giving;

From such a stunning crib I should like to run away.

I was really annoyed at being called into Master’s dining room today. He showed me off as if I were a pet dog - his own personal assistant. But I did what he asked me, and said more or less what is true. I have heard of far worse places, and I do feel lucky that I have this particular roof over my head. The alternative for me would have been a hole in the ground.

But, before my interruption, I had just opened this wonderful notebook, and with the pencil provided for me by my friend Sam (not his own name, but he wants to remain anonymous, as if I knew his real name, I would know all about him). We came here together and he helped me through those first awful days. I do thank Providence for giving me Sam, just when I needed him most.

He has been writing his experiences down ever since we arrived. He even sits up in bed at night and scribbles away. He says he is writing a book about what it is like inside the workhouse. Various people have written about what is like being in the tramp wards for a day or two - but he said nobody has ever written the whole story. He says he has contacts who will make sure his book gets published, and from the royalties, he will be able to get out of here, and live like a human being again.

My writing needs are much more humble. I just want to write, in order to prove that I exist and that
my life is continuing. I’m only writing for myself, and although I shall pretend that I am writing for my children, Alfred and Mary and Florence, it really does not matter at all if they ever see these
scribblings. Just putting words on paper has been such a wonderful gift for me, and I intend to write as much as I can, at least each Sunday afternoon, as I have already reached the limits of the
occupations offered for my amusement at this place. They have 10 books, but most have many pages torn out. They have chess sets - but without half the pieces. Most of my fellow inmates sit and tell stories - and my friend Sam encourages them. Little do they know they are fodder for his book. I expect he will use me in his book as well, and I don’t mind. Good luck to him, I say.

I am not yet ready to write about the years before I came here. Perhaps in time, I will be able
to do so, but not yet. But I can write about my first impressions. It makes me laugh, those people wanting my opinion about the food and the lifestyle of a pauper. They looked nice people. I wonder whether they will be able to make more of the job than most have. Well, I expect I shall never know.

But now back to the story of my first day here. I had been given a letter from the constabulary of my home town, Guildford, saying that I was homeless and depressed, and should be allowed into a workhouse facility. I didn’t want to go to the workhouse in Guildford - and perhaps they would not even have had me. I didn’t want my condition known to my neighbours and friends. I knew that I had hit rock bottom, but I still had enough pride that I didn’t relish seeing my previous customers point me out as I walked in my regulation uniform to church, in step with my brothers in suffering. So I walked the 20 miles or so required, begging food as necessary, and when I arrived, it was too early, so I was made to sit outside on a stone bench, with the cold wind and rain buffeting me. And as I sat in abject misery, a young man came and sat beside me, and grinned and made a joke - and
suddenly the world did not seem quite so awful.

“You look as bad as I feel,” he said. “I had a hard time making up my mind to come here, but I
decided I had three alternatives. They were - to walk the streets till I dropped, which was sheer insanity; to become a casual ward inmate, as I have done for the past month, but permanently, and the people I came into contact with showed me that that sort of life would spoil a man utterly for anything else. It would deprive him of all the nobler instincts and ambitions, and reduce him to the
condition of the beasts of prey. Or, my third choice, to take refuge in the workhouse at once.

“As to coming here, to the workhouse, it is literally burying one's self alive. There was a fourth alternative, which I need not name, and which too many wanderers in the like desperate straits have embraced. But that never for a single moment crossed my mind. My strongest defence against the idea was, I admit, not of the highest quality. I have enemies whom I believe to be unscrupulous; and in order to circumvent them, I determined to live, remembering the old adage, ‘While there is life there is hope.’ But, as for me, there is no means of living and retaining my native powers outside the walls of the workhouse. So I mastered my repugnance to the place at length, and here I am. Sam, I am, at your service,” and at that he shook my hand and bowed.

I still couldn’t begin to advance the conversation but he didn’t even seem to notice, and carried on regardless.

“It took me a whole night to make up my mind. When this was accomplished I was five or six miles
distant from here which was bound to receive me. I spent quite three hours in covering the distance. My legs could hardly carry me along. I was obliged to pause frequently, and take a seat wherever one was to be had. But the rising again was something to think of - a slow and painful operation, seldom to be completed without the aid of a passer-by to help me to my feet. Then the first few steps were made in misery; feet, legs, my whole body, in fact, aching.”

It was about this time that the door was opened and we were let in. Sam told me later that we were very lucky as the relieving officer was kindly disposed and did not ask any superfluous questions. We each provided him with our papers, showing that we had been recommended to come here, all this happening while we were just inside the gate. Then we were ushered into the receiving ward, a
detached building of two floors, in the charge of a pauper. Here males, who present their order after the departure of the doctor, spend the rest of the day and the following night, nobody being passed over to the body of the house until examined by the medical man and pronounced free from skin-disease.

We were then taken to the bath-room and treated with, what was to Sam a luxury indeed, a dip in
clean warm water. I found it totally against my grain to undress and bathe in front of others, but I had no choice. Then our own clothes were taken away, folded up and labelled, and we were each given our ticket. We were then supplied with a workhouse suit. Sam tells a good
story about this. He said, “I thought the ward-man had made a merit of supplying me with an extraordinarily good suit, and a still greater merit of letting me have a flannel singlet. He took care to
tell me was a very great favour indeed, and therefore, well worth a bit of tobacco or a copper. And he got a penny - my last - a part of a small sum raised the evening before by the sale of a handkerchief.
But the old fellow lied in every particular. The singlet, as it turned out, was a portion of the ordinary workhouse dress, while the clothes were so bad that the taskmaster ordered them to be changed
for better ones a few days later. Thus my first experience of the place was, to be victimized.”

Immediately after our change of clothing the doctor made his appearance. We both passed the scrutiny successfully, and were immediately transferred to the house, being sent to the stone-yard,
a place where, according to rule, all males must spend their first week. There was no stone-breaking, however. Sam, myself and about ten others were employed for the rest of the week in removing the hemp from a lot of telegraph-wires. There was no hurry over the job - very much the contrary - but plenty of chatter and larking when the taskmaster was out of sight. There was not a little skulking, too, at all times. The last - the skulking - I soon found was common all over
the place, most of the inmates vying with one another as to which of them should do the least possible amount of work, and with much success. 

The following Monday I was transferred to the kitchen, as they knew that with my background in
the grocery business, I would be of use to them there, and Sam was taken to the oakum-shed. I knew little about what it meant to do his job, and so was curious about it. When I asked him about whether it was painfully hard work, he said, “It is boring, but it certainly isn’t going to kill us. The younger men are supposed to pick four pounds of oakum, and the older two pounds. A few of the latter do their work regularly - only a few, however; but no young man that ever I saw completed his four pounds.

My work was soon quite familiar to me. Having spent all of my working time in the grocery business,
doing things like taking inventory, making lists of supplies needed, making sure the right equipment is found and taken to the right person in the right place at the right time was really second nature
to me. I did have a slight problem in that there was already in the workhouse another grocer - although he did not have nearly the credentials for the job as I did. But he certainly felt somewhat
threatened by my new status - and although he was meant to be teaching me the job, it soon became apparent that I knew much more about it than he did. I would say Harry Bavistock, as that is his name, is about fifteen years my junior, but he has lived here for sometime now, and he has two sons here with him, Henry, aged 14, and Walter, aged 12, who are both still scholars. He only sees them on Sunday afternoons, for the most part, but he was hoping that when they finish school, they might be allowed to be trained to do the work with him, so that is why my coming on the scene made him less than pleased. He comes from Egham in Surrey, not many miles away, and I think his advent in this place coincided with his inability to cope after his wife’s death - much as mine did. But, of course, my children were older, and not dependent on me any more, so my situation was not quite the same as his.

There are three women cooks, and we are rather fortunate in being the only area of the workhouse where the sexes freely mix. The dormitories, the dining rooms, and the recreational areas are all strictly for males or females. But as we are delivering foodstuffs to the bake house, the butchers and the cooks each day, we have a more normal lifestyle than most. The cooks are Mary Ann Ryan, about 35, the head cook, and Lucy Hall and Kathleen Hicks who are younger. There is also
a head scullery maid, Esther Beard - although she is a woman at least as old as me, and there is nothing maidenly about her.

I told a lie when I told those people at the Master’s table today that I eat the same as the other paupers. There is no doubt that we in the kitchen get treats. There are always bits of this and that to be tasted - to make sure they are of sufficient quality, and so on. And it is always warm, sometimes too warm, but we certainly know the difference when we go back to our living quarters. While most, like Sam, work in a cold atmosphere the whole day long for much of the year.

I mentioned the baker - James Simpson. He is an old man, but still can manage to do the work. Not
that his bread is anything to brag about - but he gets it done. I will be pleased when he retires and we can get in and train somebody new who might have a bit more feel for the job, and a pride in having bread that is not only palatable but actually tasty.

The butcher is Joseph Green, about my age or slightly older, and he complains at every opportunity about the quality of the meat he has to deal with. He says none of his customers in his previous life
would have accepted the meat that we are given. But of course, the master and his entourage have choice cuts of meat - so he does at least see some of the better stuff, and it is my impression that he manages to squirrel the odd bits of it away, when no one is looking, for his own use.

Well, my hand hurts from holding my pencil, and it is nearly time for our bread and gruel before the
final lights out of the night. But I have now an activity to look forward to over the week - and must make sure my writing materials are some place safe in the meantime.