Workhouse Characters Part 11

"'Igh living does it, sir," replied the old man, as he took his food tickets for the week, amounting to 3s. 1d. One old lady of eighty-two runs a private school, and, in spite of the compet.i.tion of free education and palatial school buildings, she has six pupils, whose parents value individual attention and "manners" at sixpence per head a week. She is fully qualified and certificated, and is a person of strong views and much force of character, and not only holds Solomon's opinions upon corporal punishment in theory, but still puts them into practice. I wonder which of us will have the conviction and energy to cane boys at eighty-two?

We are a very clean Board, and every half-year the relieving officer brings a report as to the condition of the homes; but some of the old people are so withered and shrunken, and their span of remaining life is so short, that there seems little left both of time and s.p.a.ce in which dirt can collect, and I always hope death will free them before they are brought into the bleak cleanliness of the House.

Lately in the workhouse one old man took such an affectionate leave of me that I asked him if he felt ill. "Not yet, ma'am, but I have got to have a bath to-night, and the last one I took turned me so queer I was laid up ten weeks in the infirmary. It does you no 'arm, ma'am, very likely--I've 'eard say as the gentry is born and bred to it--but when they starts a-bathing of us poor people for the first time at eighty in them great long coffins full of water, no wonder our rheumatics comes on worse than ever. And then, ma'am, you forget as you ladies and gentlemen 'ave a drop of something hot to keep the cold out afterwards, and I don't blame you for it, but that we never gets."

On the whole, the old ladies keep themselves wonderfully clean and smart, and the cheap drapery stores in the vicinity of the workhouse do a great trade twice a year in violets and rosebuds at 1d. a dozen for the adornment of bonnets; feminine instinct is not atrophied by age, and the applicants know the value of a good appearance before "the gentlemen." The old men are not so clever, and when deprived of the ministrations of a wife they seem to have no idea of "mackling" for themselves, and too often lapse into a fatal condition of dirt and hugger-mugger. Sometimes the reports are brought by daughters, nieces, or neighbours, or sometimes "only the landlady"--that abused cla.s.s showing often much Christian charity and generosity.

Some of the old people have led such blameless lives that members of the C.O.S. offer to take them up and save them from the Poor Law, a privilege they do not always fully appreciate.

"No, thank you, sir, I don't want to go there. I've 'eard of the Charity Organization, and the questions as they ask--Mrs. Smith told me they sifted and sifted her case and give her nothing in the end. I'd rather have a few ha'pence from you, sir."

"But you will be a pauper!" said one of the Guardians, in a sepulchral voice of horror.

"Oh! I don't mind that a bit, sir. My mother was left a widow and on the parish at forty. I'm sixty-seven, and I'd work if I could, but they turned me off at the laundry because the rheumatics has stiffened up my fingers, and I can't wash any more, and I don't see why I shouldn't come on the parish now."

Having no vote, and being accustomed to be cla.s.sed in the category of "lunatics, criminals, and idiots," no wonder the term "pauper" conveys little opprobrium to women.

"Bother the House!" says another spirited old laundress, who complains that "a parcel of girls" are preferred before her. "I'm too young to come in there. I'm only seventy, and I'll wait till I'm eighty."

One poor old man has his relief stopped because his wife is reported as "a drinking woman," though he is told he may still draw the money if his wife enters the House. "Thank you, sir, my wife does not come into the workhouse. She has a gla.s.s sometimes, but she is never the worse for liquor, and she's been a good wife to me. Spiteful gossip, sir. Good morning!" and he walks out, an honourable and loyal gentleman fallen on evil days.

Sometimes cold and starvation is worse than they thought, and they do come in; sometimes they die. The body of an old man was lately fished out of the pond, and at the inquest it was stated that he had lost his employment after thirty years at one place. The firm had changed hands, and the new manager had told him, brutally, "he wanted no old iron about." At seventy-five one is a drag in the labour market, and the poor old fellow, feeling acutely that he would only be a burden on his sons and his daughters, asked neither for out-relief nor indoor-relief, but stood his mates a drink with his last shilling, and took the old Roman method.

However, light seems dawning through the darkness, and I think many Poor Law Guardians will rest better in their beds knowing that old-age pensions seem to have come into the sphere of practical politics.

THE PAUPER AND THE OLD-AGE PENSION[2]

On January 1st the receipt of Poor Law relief ceases to be a disqualification for old-age pensions, and some interesting statistics have been compiled by the _Daily Mail_ which show that only about 17 per cent. of old people in the workhouses are applying for their 5s. per week. These are the figures for England and Wales. In the Metropolitan area, where rents are high, and the smallest room cannot be had under two shillings or half a crown a week, the proportion will be lower still.

At first sight these figures are very disappointing, and it seems to some of us who have counted so much on this reform as if we cannot escape from the evils of the workhouse system. But a little thought will show how impossible it is for this generation of old folk to take advantage of the change; the wished-for has come too late; they have burnt their ships, or rather their beds, sold up "the little 'ome"; they have neither bag nor baggage, bed nor clothing. They are like snails with broken sh.e.l.ls. There is no protection against the rude world, and once having made the sacrifice, few people over seventy have the pluck to start life afresh. It is hardly worth while; for them the bitterness of death is past.

A committee of our Board has held three special sessions for the purpose of interviewing these old people, and the answer has come with wearying monotony, "No, thank you, five shillings would be no good to me. I have nowhere to go." Some have sons and daughters, but "heavy families" and crowded rooms dry up filial piety. There is no place for the aged father or mother in our rack-rented city, and the old people accept their fate with the quiet philosophy of the poor. The long string of human wreckage files past us, some bowed and bent with the weight of years, others upright and active, some with the h.o.a.ry heads of the traditional prophets, others black-haired and keen-eyed still, for the "high living"

of the workhouse, as is often remarked, preserves youth in a miraculous way. Some are crippled and half-blind, others suffer with deafness--an ailment of poverty, which very naturally grows worse under inquisitive questioning--and nearly all have rheumatism. A curate once told me that he was summoned to a sick parishioner who was "troubled in mind," and wanted to make his peace with Heaven, but the only sin he could remember was "the rheumatics." The disease seems to be a national sin.

One hears the country accents of the United Kingdom--the burr of Northumbria, the correct English of East Anglia, the rough homeliness of Yorkshire and the Midlands, the soft accents of Devonshire and the West, the precision of the foreign English of the Welsh mountains, the pleasant ring of the Scottish tongue, the brogue of old Ireland. Few seem Londoners. Take any group of people, and see how few of her children London seems to bring to maturity.

It is our last meeting to-day, and we go to visit those who cannot attend, the sick and bed-ridden in the infirmary--a mere form, for these are vessels which will sail no more, sea-battered, half-derelict, nearing port, and for them the dawn will break in the New Jerusalem.

Some are palsied and paralysed and half-senile, but now and again keen old eyes look at us from the whiteness of the ratepayers' sheets and regret they are "too old to apply."

Very ancient folk live in these wards, and their birthdays go back to the tens and twenties of last century, one old lady being born in the historic year of 1815. An old man, jealous of her greater glory, says he is 109, but our register of age gives the comparatively recent date of 1830. Few of them seem to have any friends or visitors. Children are dead, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have forgotten them; but they do not complain, age mercifully deadens the faculties, though their terrible loneliness was once graphically written on my brain by the speech of an old Irishwoman: "I am quite alone, lady; I have no friends but you and the Almighty G.o.d."

We have interviewed 103, and only eleven have applied for the pension.

The wished-for, as I have said, has come too late; but another generation will be saved from "the House" and will be able "to die outside," so often the last wish of the aged.

The merciful alteration in the law will save this generation of "outdoor poor." Old people in the late sixties have no longer been dying of starvation in the terror of losing the pension through accepting poor relief, and the greater independence of the State pensioner is heartening many. "On the Imperial taxes," said an old gentleman with a somewhat low standard of cleanliness, "I can be as dirty as ever I like."

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Act amended 1911.

THE EVACUATION OF THE WORKHOUSE

(1915)

The workhouse is being evacuated; the whole premises, infirmary and House, have been taken over by the War Office as a military hospital; after weeks of waiting final orders have come, and to-day motor-omnibuses and ambulances are carrying off the inmates to a neighbouring parish.

One feels how widespread and far-reaching are the sufferings caused by war, and spite of this bright May sunshine one realizes that the whole earth is full of darkness and cruel habitations, the white blossoms of the spring seem like funeral flowers, and the red tulips glow like a field of blood.

It never occurred to me before that any one could have any feeling, except repugnance, towards a workhouse, but some one--I think it was the prisoner of Chillon--grew attached to his prison, and evidently it is the same with these old folk. Old faces work painfully, tears stand in bright old eyes, knotted old fingers clutch ours in farewell, and some of the old women break down utterly and sob bitterly. On the journey some of them lose all sense of control, take off their bonnets, and let down their hair, obeying a human instinct of despair which scholars will remember dates back to the siege of Troy. "It's all the home I've known for twenty years, and I be right sorry to go," says an aged man, as he shakes my hand.

Folks live long in the workhouse, and seventy and eighty years are regarded as comparative youth by the older people of ninety and upwards; to the aged any change is upheaval; they have got used to their bed, their particular chair, their daily routine, and to have to leave the accustomed looms in the light of a perilous adventure. Perhaps heaviest of all is the sense of exile; it is a long walk to the adjoining parish, and bus fares will be hard to spare with bread at ninepence a quartern.

"I've been on the danger list and my son came every day to see me," says one old lady, "but he won't be able to get so far now."

Alarming rumours are being spread by a pessimist much travelled in vagrant wards, but they are speedily contradicted by an optimist, also an expert in Poor Law both in theory and practice.

We try to cheer them, but our comfort is not whole-hearted; we can guess how the chafing of the unaccustomed, the new discipline, the crowds of unfamiliar faces will jar upon the aged. We try to impress upon them the joy of self-sacrifice, the needs of our wounded soldiers, the patriotic pride in giving up something for them. Oh, yes, they know all that, the Guardians had been and talked to them "just like a meeting," they understand about the soldiers, they want to do their best for them; but it is hard. The workhouse is nothing if not military in its traditions; heroes of South Africa, of Balaclava, and the Crimea have found asylum in the whitewashed wards; many of the present inmates have been soldiers, and there are few who have not some relatives--grandsons and great-grandsons--fighting in the trenches. One of the oldest of the "grannies," aged ninety-three, went off smiling, proud, as she said, "to do her bit."

The sick are being brought down now into the ambulances--the phthisical, the paralytic, the bed-ridden--blinking in the sunlight from their mattress-tomb, one poor woman stricken with blindness and deafness, who in spite of nervousness looks forward to her first motor-drive. These are less troubled; they are younger, and the sick hope ever for a quick cure, and the majority are only in for temporary illness. Then come the babies, astonishingly smart and well-dressed, including the youngest inmate, aged but eight days.

The costumes are odd and eccentric, and in spite of misery a good deal of good-tempered chaff flies round. All inmates are to leave in their own clothes, and strange garments have been brought to the light of day, whilst much concern is expressed about excellent coats and skirts moth-eaten or mislaid in the course of twenty-five years. The storage of the workhouse often suffers strain, and the wholesome practice of "stoving" all clothes does not improve the colours nor contribute to the preservation of what _modistes_ call _la ligne_. Fortunately, all fashions come round again, and we try to a.s.sure the women that the voluminous skirts and high collars of last century are _le dernier cri_ in Bond Street, but it is difficult for one woman to deceive another over the question of fashion.

For twelve hours the 'buses and ambulances have plied backwards and forwards, and now the last load home has started, and tired nurses and hara.s.sed officials wave their last good-bye, thankful the long day has come at length to an end. In a few days other loads will arrive, all young these and all soldiers, many of them, perhaps, as the advertis.e.m.e.nts say, belonging to the n.o.bility and gentry. The workhouse has ceased to be. From to-day it will be no longer rate-supported; the nurses and the whole staff draw rations and are in the pay and service of the War Office. As soon as possible gilt letters will announce it as a "Military Hospital."

On the table before me lies a copy of the local paper, and I read with surprise the thanks of a public body for our "offer to give up the workhouse as a military hospital, and expressing appreciation of the patriotic action of the Guardians in the matter."

In my opinion we made no offer; we merely obeyed a command, and the people who did a patriotic action were those who turned out of their home, such as it was; but in this world credit is given where it is not due, and thanks are bestowed on the wrong people. We reap where we have not sown and gather where we have not strawed.