In Miss Stone, the matron, he had a worthy coadjutrix. The lady felt
herself very much "degraded" by the coroner's jury. They asked her
some most inconvenient questions, to which she gave awkwardly ready
answers. She confined to the shed a girl who returned from place,
though she admitted the work of the place was too much for her. She
confessed she might have punished Jones (the suicide) by putting her
in the black-hole; but it was a mere trifle—"only a few hours" in an
underground cell, "perhaps from morning till night, for refusing to
do some domestic service." Jones was helpless; her mistress brought
her back to the workhouse. Jones cried, and begged to be taken back
to service, offering to work for nothing. Her recollections of the
workhouse do not seem to have been pleasant. Hard work, unpaid;
suicide; any thing rather than the shed.
A precious testimony to the St. Pancras system of "classification!"
These paupers in the shed are clearly a refractory set. "They complain
of being shut up so long." "They say they would like more bread and
more meat." Audacious as Oliver Twist! They even complain of the damp
and bad smell. Ungrateful, dainty wretches! On the whole, as Mr.
Howarth says, it is evidently "unjust to suppose that the system of
separation adopted in the house is regarded as a mode of punishment."
The directors issued a solemn summons to the members of the parochial
medical board. District surgeons and consulting surgeons assembled,
inspected the shed, and pronounced it a very pleasant place if the roof
were higher, and if the ventilation were better, and if the damp were
removed, and if fewer slept in a bed, and six instead of twenty-four in
the room. They then examined the dietary, and pronounced it sufficient
if the allowances were of full weight, if the meat were of the best
quality, if there were plenty of milk in the porridge, and if the broth
were better. Great virtue in an "if!" Unhappily, in the present case,
the allowances were not full weight; the meat not of the best quality;
there is not milk enough in the porridge; and the broth might be very
much better, and yet not good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account