Page:Workhouses and women's work.djvu/12

 and girls thus committed, the magistrates speak as follows:—"Your committee cannot but believe, if more attention were paid in workhouses to classification and other important arrangements of a reformatory character, there would be much less necessity for sending so many of the inmates to prison; and the visiting justices are strengthened in this belief from the fact of the very great difference in the numbers that are sent from some of the workhouses in comparison with others." They believe that "an increase in the criminal population must arise from familiarizing so many destitute persons with the interior of the prison;" and they further suggest, "that offences against workhouse rules should be punished by other means than imprisonment in a criminal prison; and that greater facilities should be offered to the poor and destitute, as well as to discharged prisoners, to prevent their committing offences in order to obtain an asylum." Surely if there is no other argument in favour of an amended administration of our workhouses, this alone would be sufficient. Either our prisons for criminals must be made less comfortable and attractive, or our workhouses for the non-criminal poor more so. The progress from the workhouse to the prison is a very easy and natural one. A girl who has lost her place and has no home, enters the union, and is placed with many other women, old as well as young, some of whom are far worse than herself, and is put to the usual employment of oakum picking. There is no one to give kindly advice or counsel to her; the matron is far too busy with her various household occupations; the chaplain confesses that she and her companions are beyond his reach. Such elements thrown together can hardly do otherwise than ferment, and ultimately explode. The "taskmaster" is appointed to be superintendent over this department of labour, and is virtually the only person who exercises any sort of supervision there. The treatment received from him, as may be imagined, not unfrequently leads to rebellion and abusive language; then comes the black hole," this being the authorized means of punishment committed to masters of workhouses. If during the confinement there riotous conduct is indulged in (even singing or making noises are sometimes sufficient causes of offence), an increase of punishment is resorted to by a removal to prison, which, being found to be a more comfortable abode than the workhouse (for the reasons above stated), it is no longer an object of terror and dread, but rather of desire, to those members of our youthful population who have thus made trial of it. A more mischievous result than this, either from our misplaced philanthropy or impolitic harshness, can hardly be imagined, yet it is one that is of constant, almost weekly, occurrence.

One of the most important branches of this subject is