The Down and Out King - 4

WILLIAM

Oh where shall we wander, or where shall we roam, sirs.

As we walk through the streets folks won’t let us alone, sirs,

Kickedout of the workhouse in Marylebone sirs,

For flogging the sweet little girls.

Now it is Sunday again, an eagerly awaited time, and me with my notebook and pencil, will spend a few happy hours. I want to describe our uniforms and the place we sleep today. Sam and I are very lucky that we, who are now such friends, are in the same room, and next to each other. He immediately claimed the bed nearest the biggest window - as he said it would give him light to write in the early mornings and late evenings of sunshine. Mine is not quite as well situated.

Our beds are made of metal and are two feet wide and six feet long. We have a pot under each bed for us to use in the night time, but our usual place for doing those sorts of things is an earth closet just outside each men’s sleep room - which contains, if fully occupied, 12 men. There is no space for us to hang spare clothing, and we have only our sleep shirts to leave behind when we put on our working clothes. All our clothing is changed each Saturday, after our required bath and shave. The bath water is changed after three uses, and sometimes we are lucky to get in first and have a proper hot and clean bath. There are three tubs in the bath room, so any idea of modesty went out the window straight away. And there is an official watching over the proceedings anyway.

We each have a mattress which is filled with straw - and a pillow, likewise straw filled. We get four blankets in winter and two in summer - but most of us use at least one of these as extra padding on
the mattress to make it somewhat less uncomfortable. The blankets are supposedly washed each week too - but sometimes we fear that is not the case, as they often appear smelly or dirty. There is a rule that blankets should at least be stoved between occupants - as we do not, of course, get the same blankets back after the week’s round up.

All our clothing is grey. For the men this consists of jackets of strong 'Fernought' cloth, trousers, striped cotton shirts, cloth caps, thick socks and hobnailed boots.

For women and girls, there are strong 'grogram' gowns, calico shifts, petticoats of linsey-woolsey material, gingham dresses, day caps, worsted stockings and woven slippers. The women’s dresses are grey and white striped material. Some wear white aprons and some do not. The ones who work wear caps, and the grannies, who do not work, wear bonnets. They all have woollen material shawls to wear, and shoes or boots.

As I am involved in purchasing, I was interested in the origins of the fabrics. 'Fernought' is a stout woollen cloth, mainly used on ships as outside clothing for bad weather. Linsey-Woolsey is a fabric with a linen, or sometimes cotton, warp and a wool weft - its name came from the village of Linsey in Sussex. Grogram is a coarse fabric of silk, or of mohair and wool, or of a mixture of all these,
often stiffened with gum.

Originally, I am told, the Poor Law Commissioners expected that workhouse inmates would make their own clothes and shoes, providing a useful work task and a cost saving. However, they probably failed to realise the level of skill required to perform this and uniforms are now bought-in. Uniforms are chosen to be hard-wearing rather than comfortable. We do have cobblers however to make the shoes.

Once inside the workhouse, an inmate's only possessions are their uniform and the bed they have in the large dormitory. The daily routine is as follows: rising: 25 March to 29 September, 6 o'clock; and from 29 September to 25 March, 7 o'clock. Breakfast at 6, Start work at 6.30, Break from 12-1, Stop work at 6 p.m., dinner at 7. In the winter, breakfast and starting work are an hour later.

Half an hour after the workhouse bell is rung for rising, the Master or Matron performs a roll-call in each section of the workhouse. The bell also announces meal breaks during which the rules require that “order and decorum shall be maintained.”

There are separate men’s and women’s dining halls, and we sit in rows all facing the same way.

The halls are equipped with scales so that inmates can get their food weighed if they think it is
below the regulation weight. It is one of my jobs to make sure the portions are correct.

As far as the jobs we do, besides the kitchen jobs that I have already mentioned, on the men's
side there are a joiner, a bricklayer, a painter, two blacksmith, two cobblers, three assisting the porter with tramps, six men attendingthe boilers, three attending the oakum picking men, four
white-washers, four attending the pigs, two shepherds, two cowmen, two looking after sanitary matters, one regulating the coal supply, eighteen potato peelers, one messenger, one groom, two doorkeepers.

The jobs for the women are mainly to do with the kitchen, the laundry and needlework, and they also help care for the infirmary and the idiots - of whom we have seven, plus one man who is deaf and dumb. We usually get about 25 tramps a night. We have 83 children of school age, and seven babies and younger children.

Oakum-picking, which Sam does, involves teasing out the fibers from old hemp ropes - the resulting
material is sold to the navy or other ship-builders. It is mixed with tar and used to seal the lining of wooden ships.

There is, apparently, an allowance of books, newspapers and snuff for the elderly, toys for
the children, and tea-brewing facilities for deserving inmates. I must admit that I see very little of any of that.