We will first contrast the dietary of The Model Prison at Pentonville,
with the dietary of what we take to be the nearest workhouse, namely,
that of Saint Pancras. In the prison, every man receives twenty-eight
ounces of meat weekly. In the workhouse, every able-bodied adult
receives eighteen. In the prison, every man receives one hundred and
forty ounces of bread weekly. In the workhouse, every able-bodied adult
receives ninety-six. In the prison, every man receives one hundred and
twelve ounces of potatoes weekly. In the workhouse, every able-bodied
adult receives thirty-six. In the prison, every man receives five pints
and a quarter of liquid cocoa weekly, (made of flaked cocoa or
cocoa-nibs), with fourteen ounces of milk and forty-two drams of
molasses; also seven pints of gruel weekly, sweetened with forty-two
drams of molasses. In the workhouse, every able-bodied adult receives
fourteen pints and a half of milk-porridge weekly, and no cocoa, and no
gruel. In the prison, every man receives three pints and a half of soup
weekly. In the workhouse, every able-bodied adult male receives four
pints and a half, and a pint of Irish stew. This, with seven pints of
table-beer weekly, and six ounces of cheese, is all the man in the
workhouse has to set off against the immensely superior advantages of
the prisoner in all the other respects we have stated. His lodging is
very inferior to the prisoner’s, the costly nature of whose
accommodation we shall presently show.
Let us reflect upon this contrast in another aspect. We beg the reader
to glance once more at The Model Prison dietary, and consider its
frightful disproportion to the dietary of the free labourer in any of
the rural parts of England. What shall we take his wages at? Will twelve
shillings a week do? It cannot be called a low average, at all events.
Twelve shillings a week make thirty-one pounds four a year. The cost, in
1848, for the victualling and management of every prisoner in the Model
Prison was within a little of thirty-six pounds. Consequently, that free
labourer, with young children to support, with cottage-rent to pay, and
clothes to buy, and no advantage of purchasing his food in large amounts
by contract, has, for the whole subsistence of himself and family,
between four and five pounds a year _less_ than the cost of feeding and
overlooking one man in the Model Prison. Surely to his enlightened mind,
and sometimes low morality, this must be an extraordinary good reason
for keeping out of it!
But we will not confine ourselves to the contrast between the labourer’s
scanty fare and the prisoner’s ‘flaked cocoa or cocoa-nibs,’ and daily
dinner of soup, meat, and potatoes. We will rise a little higher in the
scale. Let us see what advertisers in the _Times_ newspaper can board
the middle classes at, and get a profit out of, too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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