INMATES HAPPY AND HALE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVIII, Issue 246, 23 October 1897, Page 3 (Supplement)

INMATES HAPPY AND HALE.

WOEKHOUSK DENIZEN?. WHO TiIPEN GENTLY. (From the London 'Daily Mail.') We read ocasionally of hardened topers creeping into the eighties, but speaking generally, eld age is only to be obtained by the practice of prudence, self-denial, and lemperance, and once reached, why should it not ; be prolonged. The feverishness of | youth, born of brig-ht ■ hopes and bitter disapointments, sad wasters of j tissue, are gone, leaving behind tran- ; quility which only needs a beneficent j environment to ensure, even if a i frosty, still a kindly winter. And

where is this haven of refuge to be found? Why, the workhouse. At a first glance the surrounding's seem hardly favourable for longevity. The

workhouse, as a Jupiter parent, cannot have eyes and voice^ love and sympathy for each. It has to regard its children as a whole, and at first glance the routine she prescribes—the sorting out in dormitories, the rising, the retiring, the meals, the going out and coming in, every day the same as the other, the clothes alike in blue strijje, and bonnets, relics in fashion of a bygone age, fustian coats and caps —would seem better adapted for lessening the population than maintaining it. Shut off from the outside world—where for all its varied hues, its joys, disappointments, successes, and failures, the only bread eaten is that of independence and freedom—

the wreckage of life's ocean ought to die quickly in the workhouse.

Go into any of our London workhouses, for there is hardly one which does not contain some of the very old, and note the calm depicted on their faces.

In the infirmary at Wandsworth there is a lady whose years, though they may appear nothing to her now, must have been long in. passing, for she is 107 years of age. A yellow, bloodless face covered with a network of fine lines like a delicate lace tracing on a sheet of parchment. Vet worn, and wasted as the long years have left her, there is a still strange power lurking in the depth of her dull old eyes, the power which keeps the grisly king at bay. Yet the eyes now so dim once beamed brightly, even when blinded by the glittering mists of fancy. In her youth Jane Blower was probably difficult to satisfy as to the colour of the ribbon for her hair, and hated the cold wind which reddened her nose and whitened her cheeks. But such Idle vanities disturb her not now. Serenely unconscious of the rapidity with which fashions change, she thinks her prescribed garb all that can be desired. Healthiness being a comparative and relative term, the difficulty of deciding which of the forty-three work-

houses and infirmary wards of the metropolis would be most likely to insure longevity is considerable. Certainly no one desirous of a very long1 life would dream of living- in Bethnal-green, and yet in the workhouse of that name there is a very, very old woman, over whose head the snows of 103 winters have passed. She is so feeble now that when she coughs one trembles lest she should fall to pieces. Still, if the springs of her mind are fresher than the sinews of her body, Caroline Woolf must not repine and attribute her feebleness to the air of Benthal-green, for in the same retreat there is one Ann North, who, although creeping- onward to 100, not only shows her contempt for the molly-coddling atmosphere of the infirmary by living in the body of the house, but actually goes out every Sunday on leave of absence. Age has wrinkled and yellowed her skin and denuded the once soft eye of their lashes ; but what does Ann North care ? Proud of her age, proud of her vigour, she can afford to despise the loss of those charms which have brought so many fair ones to ruin. Although, as will be seen, nothing can be said against the air of the east of London as an aid to longevity, still, if we are to judge from the complexion of Mary Curry, who resides in the workhouse of that district, there appears to be something in the atmosphere fatal to a good complexion, at least as far as the very old are concerned. Mr Buckeridge, the worthy master, who has good reason to be proud of his old folk—does not their age testify to his kind treatment ?—says, speaking of Mary Curry, 'she is some-

times called "itNimmy," but whether j that is derived from a child's familiar; term for "mother" or from her resemblance to one of those bodies artifici- j ally preserved in some tropical coun-! tries I cannot tell.' Still, if Mary's j

complexion has faded, which at 10^ is not surprising, her affections have not, for she derives the greatest comfort from the companionship of her daughter, a tender plant of seventy odd.

Fulham was once in the fields, now it is not, but this drawback makes little difference to Elizabeth Plumridge, whose naturally sound constitution and the permanent satisfaction derived from living on the rates of the aristocratic and exclusive parish Sfc George's—not in the East-end —has enabled her to reach the 101 st year.

While admitting1 that .longevity seems to favour the fair sex much more than it floes the other, still people of the male persuasion desirous of: becoming centenarians need not despair. Rotherhithc may have parted with its leafy lanes and hedge-rows, its green field's all waving- in the wind, but she rejoices in one .lames Mahoney, who was born three years before the last century closed. A wonderful man Ihis .lamps Mahoney, literally a man in a hundred. What comes of the nonsense about the unhealthiness of our large towns when Jane Goater lias been able to attain the age of .100 in the depressing atmosphere of Hoi born '? Jane, moreover, is not by any means so decrepit a lady as might be imagined, True, her hair is all ends as the saying is, but as she has grown to despvse the frivolities of youth she would probably not even thank you if. you showed her a new way of doing it up. And she is right, for it is a settled opinion of most of the ladies aforementioned that flue clothes and fashion are only supportable when youth, beauty, and gaiety accompany them. So here we have the. secret of long life. Away from the turmoil and strife of the world outside,, with no thought of the morrow, no envy or regret to poison the past, the wonder is that people who pass the sunset of their lives in workhouses ever die at all.