The officers could not be dealt with so publicly. Some of the officers in the infirmary, addicted to drunkenness, were able to defy the Guardians for an obvious reason. It was one of their duties to take whisky and champagne into the infirmary for the delectation of some of the Guardians, whom a billiard table often detained into the early hours. Crooks and Lansbury raised such indignation in the district as to make it impossible for this state of things to continue. In 1894 the Master and Matron resigned. Gradually the old school of workhouse officials who had run the place as they liked were weeded out. A more intelligent, more sympathetic, better disciplined staff grew up in their place. Bumbledom was dethroned. The sick were nursed better. The inmates were clothed better. All, both old and young, were fed better. The tell-tale pauper's garb disappeared altogether. When the old people walked out they were no longer branded by their dress. They wore simple, homely garments. They all rejoiced in the change save a few like the old woman Crooks came across one afternoon on her day out. She was looking clean and comfortable, and he asked how she liked the new clothes. "Not at all, Mr. Crooks. Nobody thinks you come from the workhouse now, so they don't give you anything." His greatest reform had reference to the food. "Skilly" went the way of "greasy water." Good plain wholesome meals appeared on the tables. "And became more expensive," say the critics. "Yes," Crooks retorts; "but to economise on the stomachs of the poor is false economy. If it's only cheapness you want, why don't you set up the lethal chamber for the old people? That would be the cheapest thing of all." Let us see what he actually gave these people to eat, since for feeding the poor he was afterwards called to the bar of public opinion. First he developed the system of bread-baking in the workhouse, in order to get better and cheaper bread than was being supplied under contract from outside. Under the direction of one or two skilled bakers, the work provided many of the inmates with pleasant and useful occupation. They made all the bread required in the workhouse for both officers and inmates, all the bread required in the children's schools, all the loaves given away as out-relief. Instead of being likened to india-rubber, as it used to be in the old days, the bread now came to be described by the _Daily Mail_ as equal to what could be obtained in the best restaurants in the West-End. Yet they were making this bread in the workhouse cheaper than it was possible to buy ordinary bread outside.