"About My Father's Business": Work Amidst the Sick, the Sad, and the SorrowingArcher, Thomas
Religion
"About My Father's Business": Work Amidst the Sick, the Sad, and the Sorrowing
Archer, Thomas
Pastoral theology
At ten o'clock the ward-men, who are appointed in rotation,
go to clean wards and make all tidy, each inmate
being, however, responsible for the neatness of his own
cabin, in which nobody is allowed to drive nails in bulkheads
or walls, and no cutting or carving of woodwork is
permitted. The men not for the time employed in tidying
up or airing bedding, &c., can, if they choose, go into
the industrial ward, where they can work at several occupations
for their own profit, as they are only charged
for cost of materials. Dinner is served in the several
messes by the appointed messmen at one o'clock, and
consists on Sundays of roast beef, vegetables, and plum-pudding,
and on week-days of roast or boiled meat, soup,
vegetables, with one day a week salt fish, onions, potatoes,
and plain suet-pudding, and in summer an occasional
salad. A pint of beer is allowed for each man.
The afternoon may be devoted either to work, or to recreation
in the reading and smoking rooms, or in the
grounds. Tea and bread-and-butter are served at half-past
five in summer and at six in winter, and there is
often a supper of bread-and-cheese and watercresses or
radishes. The evening is devoted to recreation, and at
half-past nine in winter, and ten in summer, after prayers,
lights are put out, and every one retires for the night.
None of the inmates are expected to work in the industrial
wards, and of course there are various servants and
attendants, all of whom are chosen by preference from
the families of sailors, or have themselves been at sea.
The whole place is kept so orderly, and everything is so
ship-shape, that there is neither waste nor confusion,
and yet every man there is at liberty to go in and out
{82}
when he pleases, on condition of being in at meal-times,
and at the time for evening prayers, any one desiring to
remain away being required to ask permission of the
manager. It must be mentioned, too, that there is an
allowance of ninepence a week spending money for each
inmate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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