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WORKHOUSECHARACTERSAND OTHER SKETCHES OF THE LIFE OF THE POOR BY MARGARET WYNNE NEVINSON
WORKHOUSECHARACTERSAND OTHER SKETCHES OF THE LIFE OF THE POOR BY MARGARET WYNNE NEVINSON
L.L.A. LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1 LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1 Almost the whole of these sketches have appeared in the Westminster Gazette ; the last two were published in the Daily News , and "Widows Indeed" and "The Runaway" in the Herald . It is by the courtesy of the Editors of the above papers that they are reproduced in book form. First published in 1918 (All rights reserved.) TO MY SO
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PREFACE
PREFACE
These sketches have been published in various papers during the last thirteen years. Many of the characters are life portraits, and the wit and wisdom of the common people have been faithfully recorded in a true Boswellian spirit; others are Wahrheit und Dichtung (if one may still quote Goethe), but all have been suggested by actual fact and experience. During the last ten years great reforms have been taking place in the country. In 1908 the Old Age Pensions Act came into force, and the weekly
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EUNICE SMITH—DRUNK
EUNICE SMITH—DRUNK
"Eunice Smith, drunk, brought by the police." The quaint Scriptural name, not heard for years, woke me up from the dull apathy to which even the most energetic Guardian is reduced at the end of a long Board meeting, and I listened intently as the Master of the workhouse went on to explain that the name Smith had been given by the woman, but her clothes and a small book, which the doctor said was Homer, in Greek, were marked Eunice Romaine. Eunice Romaine—the name took me back down long vistas of
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DETAINED BY MARITAL AUTHORITY
DETAINED BY MARITAL AUTHORITY
(By the law of England the mothers of illegitimate children are often in a better position than their married sisters.) An unusual sense of expectancy pervaded the young women's ward; Mrs. Cleaver had gone down "to appear before the Committee," and though the ways of committees are slow, and pauper-time worthless, it was felt that her ordeal was being unduly protracted. "She's having a dose, she is," said a young woman walking up and down, futilely patting the back of a shrieking infant. "I 'ate
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A WELSH SAILOR
A WELSH SAILOR
The Master of the Casual Ward rattled his keys pompously in the lock of the high workhouse gates, and the shivering tramps entered the yard, a battered and footsore procession of this world's failures, the outcast and down-trodden in the fierce struggle for existence. Some of them were young and strong, some old and feeble, all wan and white with hunger and the chill of the November fog which wrapped like a wet blanket round their ill-clothed bodies. Amongst them was an old man with ear-rings, a
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THE VOW
THE VOW
Better thou shouldest not vow than thou shouldest vow and not pay. The heavy machines in the steam-laundry clanked and groaned, and the smell of soap and soda, cleansing the unspeakable foulness of the infirmary linen, rose up strong and pungent, as the women carried out the purified heaps to blow dry in the wind and sunshine. The inmates worked hard and steadily under the keen eye of the matron; many of them knew by bitter experience that inattention or gossip might cost them the loss of finger
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BLIND AND DEAF
BLIND AND DEAF
Mary Grant, pauper, of Sick Ward 42, had been making charges of unkindness against Nurse Smith, and I had been appointed by the House Committee to inquire into the matter. I found a somewhat harassed-looking nurse filling up temperature-charts in a corner of the ward, and she began volubly to deny the charges. "The woman's deaf, so it is no good shouting at her, and I believe she is angry because I can't talk on my fingers; but what with looking after both wards and washing and bathing them all,
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"AND, BEHOLD, THE BABE WEPT"
"AND, BEHOLD, THE BABE WEPT"
And, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion upon him. The night-porter sat in his lodge at 1 a.m., trying hard to keep off the sleep that weighed his eyelids down—that heavy sleep that all night-watchers know when nothing in the world seems worth a longer vigil. But the man before him had been dismissed for sleeping on duty, and our night-porter had had six months out of work, so, with resolute determination, he dragged up his leaden limbs and began to pace the corridors towards the Menta
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"MARY, MARY, PITY WOMEN!"
"MARY, MARY, PITY WOMEN!"
A woman sat alone with folded hands in a dark fireless room. There was little or no furniture to hold the dust, and one could see that the pitiful process known as "putting away" had been going on, for the cleanly scrubbed boards and polished grate showed the good housewife's struggle after decency. On a small table in the centre of the room stood half a loaf of bread, a jug of water, and a cup of milk. The woman bore traces of good looks, but her face was grey and pinched with hunger, and in he
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THE SUICIDE
THE SUICIDE
She lay in bed, in the long, clean Sick Ward—a fine-grown and well-favoured young woman with masses of black hair tossed over the whiteness of the ratepayers' sheets. Such a sight is rare in a workhouse infirmary, where one needs the infinite compassion of Christian charity or the hardness of habit to bear the pitiful sights of disease and imbecility. "She looks as if she ought not to be here?" I observed interrogatively to the nurse. "Attempted suicide. Brought last night by the police, wrapped
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PUBLICANS AND HARLOTS
PUBLICANS AND HARLOTS
Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. It was 7.30 p.m., and in the Young Women's Ward of the workhouse the inmates were going to bed by the crimson light of the July sunset. Most of the women had babies, and now and then a fretful cry would interrupt a story that was being listened to with much interest and laughter and loud exclamations: "Oh, Daisy, you are a caution!" Had a literary critic been present, he would have classed the tale as be
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OLD INKY
OLD INKY
A cab stood at the door of the workhouse, and a crowd of children and idlers collected at once. A cab there often contained a lunatic or a "d.t." case, or some person maimed or unconscious—generally something sensational. The cabman slashed his whip several times across the window to apprise the fares of his arrival, but there was no movement from within, and an enterprising boy, peering in through the closed windows, announced gleefully: "Why, it's old Inky and his wife, drunk as lords!" A volu
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A DAUGHTER OF THE STATE
A DAUGHTER OF THE STATE
Quis est homo, qui non fleret? "No, ma'am, I've never had no misfortune; I'm a respectable girl, I am. Why am I in the workhouse, then? Well, you see, it was like this: I had a very wicked temper, and I can't control it somehow when the mistresses are aggravating, and I runned from my place. I always do run away. No, there was nothing agen the last mistress—it was just my nasty temper. Then I got wandering about the streets, and a policeman spoke to me and took me to a kind lady, and she put me
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IN THE PHTHISIS WARD
IN THE PHTHISIS WARD
Three days of frost had brought the customary London fog—dense, yellow, and choking. Londoners groped their way about with set, patient faces, breaking out, however, into wild jubilation in the bowels of the earth, where the comparative purity and brightness of the atmosphere of the Tube railway seemed to rush to their heads like cheap champagne. In the Open-air Ward of the workhouse infirmary the sufferers coughed and choked away their last strength in the poisonous atmosphere; the cold was ver
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AN IRISH CATHOLIC
AN IRISH CATHOLIC
Godliness is great riches if a man be content with that which he hath. "God bless all the kind ratepayers for my good dinner and a good cup o' tay to wash it down with, and a nice bit of fire this cold day. You paupers never give thanks unto the Lord, a nasty Protestant lot without a ha'porth of manners between you, a-cursing and swearing, and blaspheming; they have not the grace of God. Say 'Good afternoon' to the lady, Betsy Brown, and don't be so rude; they never do have a word of thanks to t
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AN OBSCURE CONVERSATIONIST
AN OBSCURE CONVERSATIONIST
"Aye, lass, but you ain't been to see me for a long time, and me been that queer and quite a fixture in bed all along of catching cold at that funeral. Been abroad, have you? Oh, well, you're welcome, for I've been a bit upset about not seeing you and because of a dream I 'ad. I dreamt I was up in 'eaven all along of the Great White Throne and the golden gates, with 'oly angels all around a-singing most vigorous. Mrs. Curtis was there, and my blessed mother and my niece Nellie and the Reverent W
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MOTHERS
MOTHERS
For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; ... astonishment hath taken hold on me. Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? Every first Monday of the month a trainload of shabby, half-starved women moves southwards from London to one of our great Poor Law schools; and perhaps in the whole world, spite of poverty, hunger, and rags, there is no more joyous band. For two blessed hours they meet their childr
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"YOUR SON'S YOUR SON"
"YOUR SON'S YOUR SON"
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" wailed the old lady, burying her face in her pocket-handkerchief; "to think as I've lived to see the day! I've always lived with 'Orace, and I've always prayed that the Lord would take me unto Himself before I was left alone with my grey hairs. A poor, pretty thing she is, too, with a pair of blue eyes and frizzled yellow curls, dressed out beyond her station in cheap indecencies of lace showing her neck and arms, as no proper-minded girl should. And she won't have me to li
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"TOO OLD AT FORTY"
"TOO OLD AT FORTY"
I had no place to flee unto; and no man careth for my soul. Miss Allison sat at her desk in the class-room, where she had sat for over twenty years, and gazed dreamily out of the window into the courtyard below, where the girls of the —— High School were at play. In her hand she held a letter, which had brought the white, rigid look to her face, like that of a soldier who has received his death-wound. Perhaps she ought to have been prepared for the shock; the system of "too old at forty" has lon
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IN THE LUNATIC ASYLUM
IN THE LUNATIC ASYLUM
O Father, we beseech Thee, sustain and comfort Thy servants who have lost the powers of reason and self-control, suffer not the Evil One to vex them, and in Thy mercy deliver them from the darkness of this world....— Prayer for Lunatics. I passed through the spacious grounds of A—— Asylum on my way to visit the patients chargeable to our parish. A group of men were playing Rugby football, but even to the eye of the tyro there was something wrong with the game—there was no unity, no enthusiasm; s
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THE SWEEP'S LEGACY
THE SWEEP'S LEGACY
(1900) Most visitors among the poor have come across the person who believes that he has a large fortune kept back from him by the Queen, aided and abetted by the gentlemen of Somerset House and other public offices. I once knew a sweep in Whitechapel who was firmly persuaded that he had a legacy of five hundred pounds in the Bank of England. "Yes, lady, if I had my rights, I should not be so poor. My aunt, Lady Cable Knight—she married a tip-top nobleman, she did—left me on her dying bed five h
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"WIDOWS INDEED"
"WIDOWS INDEED"
Mrs. Woods had just returned from her search after work, worn and weary after a day of walking and waiting about on an empty stomach; the Educational Committee of Whitelime had informed her that they had decided to take no deserted wives as school-scrubbers, only widows need apply. Outside she heard the voices of her children at play in the fog and mist, and remembered with dull misery that she had neither food nor firing for them, and she shuddered as she heard the language on their youthful li
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THE RUNAWAY
THE RUNAWAY
He sat alone, in a corner of the playing field, a white-faced child of the slums, in a dumb agony of loneliness and despair. He was frightened and appalled at the wide stretches of green woodland around and the great dome of the blue sky above. It made him feel smaller and more deserted than ever, and his head was sore with home-sickness for his mother and Mabel, the sister next him, and the baby, his especial charge, for whose warm weight his little arms ached with longing. He had always been h
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"A GIRL! GOD HELP HER!"
"A GIRL! GOD HELP HER!"
The Lady Catherine Castleton lay dying in the stately bed-chamber of Castleton Hall. Night and day they had sought for my lord in clubs and gambling dens and well-known haunts of vice and pleasure, but they did not know of the rose-grown cottage on the Thames which he had taken for his latest inamorata. When they told my lady the child was a girl she had given a low cry, "God help her!" and had turned her face to the wall. Great obstetricians summoned by telephone had sped in flying motors from
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ON THE PERMANENT LIST
ON THE PERMANENT LIST
(1905) "Spend but a few days in the police-court," says Juvenal, "and then call yourself an unhappy man if you dare." Had he sat on a Board of Guardians, he would doubtless have included that also as a school of personal contentment. All sorts of griefs and tragedies are brought up before us, some of them abnormal and Theban in horror, some of them so common that we seem to hear them unmoved: an honest man who cannot find employment, women with unborn babes kicked, starved, and deserted, childre
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THE EVACUATION OF THE WORKHOUSE
THE EVACUATION OF THE WORKHOUSE
(1915) The workhouse is being evacuated; the whole premises, infirmary and House, have been taken over by the War Office as a military hospital; after weeks of waiting final orders have come, and to-day motor-omnibuses and ambulances are carrying off the inmates to a neighbouring parish. One feels how widespread and far-reaching are the sufferings caused by war, and spite of this bright May sunshine one realizes that the whole earth is full of darkness and cruel habitations, the white blossoms o
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