THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE

Evening Star, Issue 14036, 17 April 1909, Page 8

THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE

ITS IMPENDING DOOM. [By Philip Gibbs, in the ‘Daily Chronicle.’] A'message of almost wild hope, and <>f joy restrained only by the sickening thought that it is too good; to be true, must have stirred , many hearts recently in • whom. hope and joy have beem forgotten things.’; Because, to many thousands of people wholive in the mean streets of life, the publication of the Poor Law Report pronouncing the doom of the workhouse has been. like ' the promise of a golden age near at hand. That great report—which in its vast body of text diseases the most- difficult problems of social life—has not reached the people whose wretchedness has fanned the subject of its analysis and recommendation, but from the brief abstracts pubtisbed in the papers one sentence has stood out- hi flaming letters: The workhouse is doomed. And that message has ~ found its way to many miserable homes, to many anxious and tormented souls in the grey and gloomy region which lies between poverty and • destitution, —The Ever-present Terror.— There are some people—the loaf ere and shirkers of civilisation—who have no-fear of the workhouse. To the vast majority of those who live continually mi the borderline of destitution it has been the greai terror. .It has haunted them Hb. a dreadful spectre of despair by day and night. They have struggled, are struggling still, in our mean streets with desperate courage, or with a cowardice which ip almost : the same thing as courage, to Mrap*. from what they believe to be the roost hideous fate. ■ God, and a few others, alone know what people have been willing to suffer to keep outside the gates of “ the House,” and it is impossible to estimate how many thousands there are who have seen themselves drawn closer and ever closer to ihnf. place above which is written those awful words: “ Abandon hope all y© who enter here.” I have met maiiy of those people. I haw met old ladies who once lived in “ genteel * homes, who once, as young girls, wen proud of their pretty frocks and scornful of. admirers, accustomed to the little luxuries of comfortable middle-class society, and who sit, very lonely, very moranful, hr little bed-sitting rooms, working thm( withered fingers to the hone in order to pd off that time when inevitably they must gr to the workhouse, and wear the prison garl ■ of pauperdom. I know one lady, not verj old, but very frail and deHeate, who live# in a single room not bigger than a boa room, from which she hardly stirs. All day long and late into the night she stitches, stitches, stitches at ladies’ garments which require the finest needlework, and for which she hardly gets prid enough to keep the poor tired eon! in her frail body. She has hardly any pleasure in life, but one great terror, which keeps her thus working desperately. It is the terror, of going to the House, of rehnqtushang that “gentility” which is still the one pod© of her life. I have been into many a “home” with a family living in one room, - bare, Unless, utterly wretoied, 'with, ant,, out-of-work husband, ragged and , children, and one over-hmdtared woman; - who, with a darmtless spirit, which hides ; her gnawing anxiety, goes “charing” early and late in order to pay Ike rent and feed her helpless brood, among whom her husband is often most helpless and most troublesome. He, poor wretch, has been in the hospital, and is still too weak to work. However strong he may be work is hard to find when once a man has lost his job. But these people will ecrape and starve and pinch, and sell every stick of furniture, and every little treasure, rather " than, apply for that ticket winch Trill pass them into the place which l they : dread, curiously enough, far worse than prison-: —Hop© Abandoned.—

That is not an exaggeration. There are scores of men and women in every great city who would rather go to prison for a “scrap up” or for petty larceny than into the House, and the reason is that there is hope and liberty when the prison gates open again, but when once the workhouse gates clang behind them there is only the dreadful monotony of a life from which there is seldom a reprieve, and in which all that makes life worth living, even t< the most miserable, is utterly abandoned. .1 have visited many workhouses, and 1 can understand why these people hale them. The dreadful old abuses revealed by Charles Dickens have been abolished ; there is plain, good food here, and the rules have been drawn up with some feelings of humanity. Nevertheless, “ the House” is-always a dreary, comfortless, horrible place for any human being who needs more than animal food.

It goes to one’s heart to see those rows of old men and women sitting on the wooden benches in the clean, bare rooms. Each one of them has been taken away from the little social circle in. which, however squalid and poverty-stricken, there were the'ties and interests of human relationships. Each one of tliem has- been abandoned by family and friends; each one of them looks back upon blighted hopes, ruined homes, and memories which moke their present loneliness more poignant. In every workhouse there are men and women who have known “ better days,” who have enjoyed all the interests and pleasures of comfortable and cultured homes, who have in their time been in good sochd positions. Now they sit here brooding over the past. Going into one of these great barrack rooms of a paupers’ prison, one sees row upon row of people with weary, lack-lustre eyes, with face* on which there is the Hank look of resign nation, in which there is,no consolation. They talk very little to each other. Tbes* old people do not make friends, as a rule, with their companions in misfortune. Somr of those who have fallen low—literary met who have “ gone under,” old soldiers wht have been forgotten since the days wher they were “heroes,” small shopkeepers who have been ruined by the great stores—have little in common with their neighbors on the benches.

There is very little with which they cm occupy thedr minds. Occasionally a paper gets into their hands, and they devour it with greedy eyes, glad to read of tne doings of the great world to which' they nc longer belong. Occasionally a lady guardian comes with a gift of snuff for the men or with tea for the women, and old eyes brighten for a few minutes ar they look upon a gracious, smiling fact and hear- a bright, cheerful, kindly voice so different,from that of the matron, win has to maintain discipline. The old woraei are glad to fondle the hand of one of thes< lady visitors, and call her “my dearie.’ The old men, if they are not too proud, and if they do not prefer to hide theix pauperdom from outside eyes, give a few words of thanks for the gifts. But such an episode tomes rarely in the course of a year, and otherwise all is appalling in its monotony and in its ordered routine, tc the clang of the workhouse bell. —The Tragedy Of It.—

The tragedy is in the herding togethej of these men and women, who, offer through no fault o'f their own, have beer beaten in the struggle to keep outside the gates. With a little help they could ... ve kept their homes together. Without any mart) cost to the ratepayers they could have .remained in their accustomed environment, among their friends and relations, maintaining the little interests and habits without which they are dismal and forlorn. /Now they are sentenced to the penal servitude of the pauper’s prison, and men and women of innate or cultured refinement are put with coarse old ruffians and wicked old women, whose conversation and manners are degrading; and all of them are exiles from life, waiting only for the one excitement, which, lies in the great adventure (as Peter Pan would say) ol death. For these reasons it is good t< know that the workhouse is doomed, and that our Poor Law is to be administered, we hope, with more imagination and humanity.