THE PROSPEROUS PAUPER.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 158, 4 July 1906, Page 5

THE PROSPEROUS PAUPER.

MORE POPLAR LUXURIES.

EXTRAORDINARY REVELATIONS. '"' ■ ■■■'■'' ■ ' ' • ' • ' '■■■■ > '• (Received 7.46 a.m.) LONDON, July 3. The inquiry with regard to the alleged extravagance of the Poplar (London S.E.) workhouse guardians showed that the paupers at the farm colony at Laindon, in Essex, are allowed three meat raeals a day, and are given much more expensive tea than that used in the House of Commons. They are also given a week-end trip to London, with their fare paid and pocket money, which they are allowed to spend at hotels. c [Mr. F. A. McKenzie gives in the 'Daily Mail" some amazing facts as tc the luxury in which the London paupei lives. After 'pointing out that the inmates of London workhouses have more than doubled in number in twenty-five years, lie declares that to-day a lara proportion are housed in buildings more expensive per head, than the homes of the middle class, while their children are taken from the streets and fed and cared for at a cost which few men who work could bear for their own families. In 1871 the cost of each inmate was a little over £10, in 1904 it was nearly £29~ The modern workhouse is a palatial stone structure with wide carriage drives, and lawns, and shrubberies. The St. Olave's "Home of Rest"—note the name—cost £234,000, or nearly £300 per inmate, and Mr. MeKenzie asks how many ratepayer? of the working classes live in houses built on this scale. Of course, not one does. Great ideas also prevail within these palaces. The workhouse bath is oi porcelain, the hand-basins have , elaborate hot and cold water services. At the new workhouse in Hammersmith, the sick accommodation "surpasses that oi most of the leading voluntary hospitals. Its silvered hot-water heaters would not disgrace the halls of the Carlton or the Savoy. Its kitchens are the finest 1 have ever seen, rivalling those of th« Wal-dorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Its tessellated halls would adorn West End mansions." And this maenificent place, costing £234.000, for its S3B inmates, will be inhabited for the most part by unskilled labourers, and the splendid maternity home will be mainly used by unmarried women. In one workhouse Mr. McKenzie knows for a fact that the drains became clogged with the food which the inmates took from the table and could not eat.],