Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces

round a hearth, and chattering and nodding, after the manner of the

monkeys. ‘All well here? And enough to eat?’ A general

chattering and chuckling; at last an answer from a volunteer. ‘Oh

yes, gentleman! Bless you, gentleman! Lord bless the Parish of

St. So-and-So! It feed the hungry, sir, and give drink to the

thusty, and it warm them which is cold, so it do, and good luck to

the parish of St. So-and-So, and thankee, gentleman!’ Elsewhere, a

party of pauper nurses were at dinner. ‘How do YOU get on?’ ‘Oh

pretty well, sir! We works hard, and we lives hard – like the

sodgers!’

In another room, a kind of purgatory or place of transition, six or

eight noisy madwomen were gathered together, under the

superintendence of one sane attendant. Among them was a girl of

two or three and twenty, very prettily dressed, of most respectable

appearance and good manners, who had been brought in from the house

where she had lived as domestic servant (having, I suppose, no

friends), on account of being subject to epileptic fits, and

requiring to be removed under the influence of a very bad one. She

was by no means of the same stuff, or the same breeding, or the

same experience, or in the same state of mind, as those by whom she

was surrounded; and she pathetically complained that the daily

association and the nightly noise made her worse, and was driving

her mad – which was perfectly evident. The case was noted for

inquiry and redress, but she said she had already been there for

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some weeks.

If this girl had stolen her mistress’s watch, I do not hesitate to

say she would have been infinitely better off. We have come to

this absurd, this dangerous, this monstrous pass, that the

dishonest felon is, in respect of cleanliness, order, diet, and

accommodation, better provided for, and taken care of, than the

honest pauper.

And this conveys no special imputation on the workhouse of the

parish of St. So-and-So, where, on the contrary, I saw many things

to commend. It was very agreeable, recollecting that most infamous

and atrocious enormity committed at Tooting – an enormity which, a

hundred years hence, will still be vividly remembered in the byeways

of English life, and which has done more to engender a gloomy

discontent and suspicion among many thousands of the people than

all the Chartist leaders could have done in all their lives – to

find the pauper children in this workhouse looking robust and well,

and apparently the objects of very great care. In the Infant

School – a large, light, airy room at the top of the building – the

little creatures, being at dinner, and eating their potatoes

heartily, were not cowed by the presence of strange visitors, but

stretched out their small hands to be shaken, with a very pleasant

confidence. And it was comfortable to see two mangy pauper

rocking-horses rampant in a corner. In the girls’ school, where

the dinner was also in progress, everything bore a cheerful and

healthy aspect. The meal was over, in the boys’ school, by the

time of our arrival there, and the room was not yet quite

rearranged; but the boys were roaming unrestrained about a large

and airy yard, as any other schoolboys might have done. Some of

them had been drawing large ships upon the schoolroom wall; and if

they had a mast with shrouds and stays set up for practice (as they

have in the Middlesex House of Correction), it would be so much the

better. At present, if a boy should feel a strong impulse upon him

to learn the art of going aloft, he could only gratify it, I

presume, as the men and women paupers gratify their aspirations

after better board and lodging, by smashing as many workhouse

windows as possible, and being promoted to prison.

In one place, the Newgate of the Workhouse, a company of boys and

youths were locked up in a yard alone; their day-room being a kind

of kennel where the casual poor used formerly to be littered down

at night. Divers of them had been there some long time. ‘Are they