Page:Workhouses and women's work.djvu/49

 eighty was deprived of flannel, and when his old mistress supplied him with new, that was taken away. One dying woman sat up in bed constantly, with no covering on her shoulders, and when something was given her for this purpose, it was taken away by the matron.

It would be endless to give all the cases of harshness and injustice that have come before me. One of the most pernicious consequences of all this is the preference of the prison to the workhouse. There is generally better diet and better treatment there, the officials being of a superior class. The present Lady Mayoress says, that she was first led to think about the management of workhouses, from being one of a committee for visiting prisons, when she frequently was told by the women and young girls, that they would rather be there than in the workhouse. Probably even such degraded characters feel what it is to be treated with justice and dignity.

Surely this is the strongest argument of all for some amendment in the management; either our workhouses must be made more comfortable, or our prisons less so. The chaplain of a prison says, "It is almost heart-breaking to witness the number of poor creatures who come to prison in preference to the union, or because the obtaining what they require from the latter place is beset with so much difficulty and delay. It is not only an anomalous state of things, but highly discreditable to a Christian country, that a poor man should be led, as is frequently the case, to seek necessary food and shelter in a prison. We have frequently men and women suffering under diseases, who come to prison for the express purpose of getting that relief, in the way of medicine and nourishing food, which they have sought in vain from the workhouse, their own parish being, perhaps, miles away, and which they cannot themselves afford.

Superintendence of a responsible kind is needed, not only in the infirmary, but in every department of the house; in the kitchen more especially. I have just seen a proof of this in an account of proceedings in one of our large London workhouses, which ended in the dismissal of the cook. The broth for the sick was found to be hot water with oatmeal floating on it, and the soup was declared by the guardians to be unfit for use; the bones and meat were nowhere to be found, and had doubtless gone to make soup for others than the inmates for whom it was intended.

Without any increase of expenditure how much might be done in the cooking department, by one who really understood the matter of cheap and good cookery, for the comfort of thousands who now loathe their daily food, and consequently often subsist for days solely upon the tea and bread. The patience with