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$Pretitle{}
$Title{Anthology Of Shorter Works
(A) Walk In A Workhouse}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{old
sir
bed
little
another
pauper
workhouse
kind
upon
women}
$Date{}
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Title:       Anthology Of Shorter Works
Book:        (A) Walk In A Workhouse
Author:      Dickens, Charles

(A) Walk In A Workhouse

     On a certain Sunday, I formed one of the congregation assembled in the
chapel of a large metropolitan Workhouse.  With the exception of the
clergyman and clerk, and a very few officials, here were none but paupers
present.  The children sat in the galleries; the women in the body of the
chapel, and in one of the side-aisles; the men in the remaining aisle.  The
service was decorously performed, though the sermon might have been much
better adapted to the comprehension and to the circumstances of the hearers.
The usual supplications were offered, with more than the usual significancy
in such a place, for the fatherless children and widows, for all sick persons
and young children, for all that were desolate and oppressed, for the
comforting and helping of the weak-hearted, for the raising-up of them that
had fallen; for all that were in danger, necessity, and tribulation.  The
prayers of the congregation were desired "for several persons in the various
wards dangerously ill;" and other who were recovering returned their thanks
to Heaven.

     Among this congregation, were some evil-looking young women, and
bettle-browed young men; but not many - perhaps that kind of characters kept
away.  Generally, the faces (those of the children excepted) were depressed
and subdued, and wanted colour.  Aged people were there, in every variety.
Mumbling, blear-eyed, spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame; vacantly winking in the
gleams of sun that now and then crept in through the open doors, from the
paved yard; shading their listening ears, or blinking eyes with their withered
hands; poring over their books, leering at nothing, going to sleep, crouching
and drooping in corners.  There were weird old women, all skeleton within, all
bonnet and cloak without, continually wiping their eyes with dirty dusters of
pocket-handkerchiefs; and there were ugly old crones, both male and female,
with a ghastly kind of contentment upon them which was not at all comforting
to see.  Upon the whole, it was the dragon, Pauperism, in a very weak and
impotent condition; toothless, fangless, drawing his breath heavily enough,
and hardly worth chaining up.

     When the service was over, I walked with the humane and conscientious
gentleman whose duty it was to take that walk, that Sunday morning, through
the little world of poverty enclosed within the workhouse walls.  It was
inhabited by a population of some fifteen hundred or two thousand paupers,
ranging from the infant newly born or not yet come into the pauper world, to
the old man dying on his bed.

     In a room opening from a squalid yard, where a number of listless women
were lounging to and fro, trying to get warm in the ineffectual sunshine of
the tardy May morning - in the "Itch Ward," not to compromise the truth - a
woman such as Hogarth has often drawn, was hurriedly getting on her gown
before a dusty fire.  She was the nurse, or wardswoman, of that insalubrious
department - herself a pauper - flabby, raw-boned, untidy - unpromising and
coarse of aspect as need be.  But, on being spoken to about the patients whom
she had in charge, she turned round, with her shabby gown half on, half off,
and fell a crying with all her might.  Not for show, not querulously, not in
any mawkish sentiment, but in the deep grief and affliction of her heart;
turning away her dishevelled head: sobbing most bitterly, wringing her hands
and letting fall abundance of great tears, that choked her utterance.  What
was the matter with the nurse of the itch-ward?  Oh, "the dropped child" was
dead!  Oh, the child that was found in the street, and she had brought up
ever since, had died an hour ago, and see where the little creature lay
beneath this cloth!  The dear, the pretty dear!

     The dropped child seemed too small and poor a thing for Death to be in
earnest with, but Death had taken it; and already its diminutive form was
neatly washed, composed, and stretched as if in sleep upon a box.  I thought
I heard a voice from Heaven saying, It shall be well for thee, O nurse of the
itch-ward, when some less gentle pauper does those offices to thy cold form,
that such as the dropped child are the angels who behold my Father's face!

     In another room, were several ugly old women crouching, witch-like,
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
nightly noise made her worse, and was driving her mad - which was perfectly
evident.  The case was noted for enquiry and redress, but she said she had
already been there for 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 bye-ways 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 mangey 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 here, and the
room was not yet quite re-arranged; 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 never going away?" was the natural
enquiry.  "Most of them are crippled, in some form or other," said the
Wardsman, "and not fit for anything." They slunk about, like dispirited
wolves or hyaenas; and made a pounce at their food when it was served out,
much as those animals do.  The big-headed idiot shuffling his feet along
the pavement, in the sunlight outside, was a more agreeable object everyway.

     Groves of babies in arms; groves of mothers and other sick women in bed;
groves of lunatics; jungles of men in stone-paved down-stairs day-rooms,
waiting for their dinners; longer and longer groves of old people, in
up-stairs Infirmary wards, wearing out life, God knows how - this was the
scenery through which the walk lay, for two hours.  In some of these latter
chambers, there were pictures stuck against the wall, and a neat display of
crockery and pewter on a kind of sideboard; now and then it was a treat to
see a plant or two; in almost every ward there was a cat.

     In all of these Long Walks of aged and infirm, some old people were
bed-ridden, and had been for a long time; some were sitting on their beds
half-naked; some dying in their beds; some out of bed, and sitting at a table
near the fire.  A sullen or lethargic indifference to what was asked, a
blunted sensibility to everything but warmth and food, a moody absence of
complaint as being of no use, a dogged silence and resentful desire to be
left alone again, I thought were generally apparent.  On our walking into the
midst of one of these dreary perspectives of old men, nearly the following
little dialogue took place, the nurse not being immediately at hand.

     "All well here?"

     No answer. An old man in a Scotch cap sitting among others on a form at
the table, eating out of a tin porringer, pushes back his cap a little to look
at us, claps it down on his forehead again with the palm of his hand, and goes
on eating.

     "All well here?" (repeated.)

     No answer.  Another old man sitting on his bed, paralytically peeling a
boiled potato, lifts his head, and stares.

     "Enough to eat?"

     No answer.  Another old man, in bed, turns himself and coughs.

     "How are you to-day?" To the last old man.

     That old man says nothing; but another old man, a tall old man of very
good address, speaking with perfect correctness, comes forward from somewhere,
and volunteers an answer.  The reply almost always proceeds from a volunteer
and not from the person looked at or spoken to.

     "We are very old, Sir," in a mild, distinct voice.  "We can't expect to
be well, most of us."

     "Are you comfortable?"

     "I have no complaint to make, Sir." With a half shake of his head, a half
shrug of his shoulders, and a kind of apologetic smile.

     "Enough to eat?"

     "Why, Sir, I have but a poor appetite," with the same air as before; "and
yet I get through my allowance very easily."

     "But," showing a porringer with a Sunday dinner in it; "here is a portion
of mutton, and three potatoes.  You can't starve on that?"

     "Oh dear no, Sir," with the same apologetic air.  "Not starve."

     "What do you want?"

     "We have very little bread, Sir.  It's an exceedingly small quantity of
bread."

     The nurse, who is now rubbing her hands at the questioner's elbow,
interferes with, "It ain't much raly, Sir.  You see they've only six ounces a
day, and when they've took their breakfast, there can only be a little left
for night, Sir."

     Another old man, hitherto invisible, rises out of his bed-clothes, as out
of a grave, and looks on.

     "You have tea at night?" The questioner is still addressing the
well-spoken old man.

     "Yes, Sir, we have tea at night."

     "And you save what bread you can from the morning, to eat with it?"

     "Yes, Sir - if we can save any."

     "And you want more to eat with it?"

     "Yes, Sir." With a very anxious face.

     The questioner, in the kindness of his heart, appears a little
discomposed, and changes the subject.

     "What has become of the old man who used to lie in that bed in the
corner?"

     The nurse don't remember what old man is referred to.  There has been
such a many old men.  The well-spoken old man is doubtful.  The spectral old
man who has come to life in bed says, "Billy Stevens." Another old man who
has previously had his head in the fireplace, pipes out,

     "Charley Walters."

     Something like a feeble interest is awakened.  I suppose Charley Walters
had conversation in him.

     "He's dead," says the piping old man.

     Another old man, with one eye screwed up, hastily displaces the piping
old man, and says:

     "Yes!  Charley Walters died in that bed, and - and - "

     "Billy Stevens," persists the spectral old man.

     "No, no!  and Johnny Rogers died in that bed, and - and - they're both
on 'em dead - and Sam'l Bowyer;" this seems very extraordinary to him; "he
went out!"

     With this he subsides, and all the old men (having had quite enough of
it) subside, and the spectral old man goes into his grave again, and takes
the shade of Billy Stevens with him.

     As we turned to go out at the door, another previously invisible old
man, a hoarse old man in a flannel gown, is standing there, as if he had just
come up through the floor.

     "I beg your pardon, Sir, could I take the liberty of saying a word?"

     "Yes; what is it?"

     "I am greatly better in my health, Sir; but what I want, to get me quite
round," with his hand on his throat, "is a little fresh air, Sir.  It has
always done my complaint so much good, Sir.  The regular leave for going out,
comes round so seldom, that if the gentleman next Friday, would give me leave
to go out walking, now and then - for only an hour or so, Sir! - "

     Who could wonder, looking through those weary vistas of bed and
infirmity, that it should do him good to meet with some other scenes, and
assure himself that there was something else on earth?  Who could help
wondering why the old men lived on as they did; what grasp they had on life;
what crumbs of interest or occupation they could pick up from its bare
boards; whether Charley Walters had ever described to them the days when he
kept company with some old pauper woman in the bud, or Billy Stevens ever
told them of the time when he was a dweller in the far-off foreign land
called Home!

     The morsel of burnt child, lying in another room, so patiently, in bed,
wrapped in lint, and looking steadfastly at us with his bright quiet eyes
when we spoke to him kindly, looked as if the knowledge of these things, and
of all the tender things there are to think about, might have been in his
mind - as if he thought, with us, that there was a fellow-feeling in the
pauper nurses which appeared to make them more kind to their charges than
the race of common nurses in the hospitals - as if he mused upon the Future
of some older children lying around him in the same place, and thought it
best, perhaps, all things considered, that he should die - as if he knew,
without fear, of those many coffins, made and unmade, piled up in the store
below - and of his unknown friend, "the dropped child," calm upon the box-lid
covered with a cloth.  But there was something wistful and appealing, too,
in his tiny face, as if, in the midst of all the hard necessities and
incongruities he pondered on, he pleaded, in behalf of the helpless and the
aged poor, for a little more liberty - and a little more bread.