Page:Workhouses and women's work.djvu/25

 "business men, would do well to consider what is here said to them about almshouses.'—Pp. 191—193."

Such a custom is more common in these days amongst societies than individuals; members belonging to various trades thus combine to provide for the poorer members of their craft. This, however, can but afford partial relief, and the only remedy for the state of things which Bishop Armstrong laments, is either to give the deserving poor a more comfortable shelter in our workhouses, or to supply the aged with sufficient out-door relief to enable their relations or friends to maintain them at home. This plan is much more practicable in the country than in London, and we do not see why there it should not be universally adopted. It is there chiefly that the attachment to home makes it desirable to do so. The fireside corner of the old cottage inhabited for the greater part of a life,—the village church in which worship has been offered, and in the churchyard of which rest the relations of the aged persons,—all these things have no parallel in our crowded cities, where homes are contained in one dreary room of a narrow street or court, and where the graves of a family are probably scattered in distant cemeteries. In the midst of such families, too, it is often impossible that the sick and aged can be maintained, where father, mother, and numerous children all share the same room for sleeping and living in. For these, therefore, a more comfortable asylum should be provided. The authoress of Sunshine in the Workhouse gives instances in which she has successfully arranged, by the aid of private assistance, to keep aged persons from the workhouse, and this seems to be a very legitimate mode of applying charity, and a likely means of encouraging persons to exert themselves in maintaining, at least partly, their aged relations. One shilling a week added to the 2s. 6d. allowed by the parish is found to be sufficient to keep them at home. The Bishop's picture of the assemblage of aged persons in the union is not overdrawn. Those who have not visited workhouses cannot believe how many there are in them who have absolutely no friends or relations. It is sad to see such on the "visiting days," and to hear them lament their loneliness. Are there none, therefore, to care for such as these, none to cheer the lonely heart and forlorn spirit, and be a friend to the