FullReads

In one place, the Newgate of the Workhouse, a company of boys and youths were locked up in a yard alone; their day-room being a kind of kennel where the casual poor used formerly to be littered down at night. Divers of them had been there some long time. ‘Are they never going away?’ was the natural inquiry. ‘Most of them are crippled, in some form or other,’ said the Wardsman, ‘and not fit for anything.’ They slunk about, like dispirited wolves or hyaenas; and made a pounce at their food when it was served out, much as those animals do. The big-headed idiot shuffling his feet along the pavement, in the sunlight outside, was a more agreeable object everyway.

Groves of babies in arms; groves of mothers and other sick women in bed; groves of lunatics; jungles of men in stone-paved down-stairs day-rooms, waiting for their dinners; longer and longer groves of old people, in up-stairs Infirmary wards, wearing out life, God knows how – this was the scenery through which the walk lay, for two hours. In some of these latter chambers, there were pictures stuck against the wall, and a neat display of crockery and pewter on a kind of sideboard; now and then it was a treat to see a plant or two; in almost every ward there was a cat.

In all of these Long Walks of aged and infirm, some old people were bedridden, and had been for a long time; some were sitting on their beds half-naked; some dying in their beds; some out of bed, and sitting at a table near the fire. A sullen or lethargic indifference to what was asked, a blunted sensibility to everything but warmth and food, a moody absence of complaint as being of no use, a dogged silence and resentful desire to be left alone again, I thought were generally apparent. On our walking into the midst of one of these dreary perspectives of old men, nearly the following little dialogue took place, the nurse not being immediately at hand:

‘All well here?’

No answer. An old man in a Scotch cap sitting among others on a form at the table, eating out of a tin porringer, pushes back his cap a little to look at us, claps it down on his forehead again with the palm of his hand, and goes on eating.

‘All well here?’ (repeated).

No answer. Another old man sitting on his bed, paralytically peeling a boiled potato, lifts his head and stares.

‘Enough to eat?’

No answer. Another old man, in bed, turns himself and coughs.

‘How are YOU to-day?’ To the last old man.

That old man says nothing; but another old man, a tall old man of very good address, speaking with perfect correctness, comes forward from somewhere, and volunteers an answer. The reply almost always proceeds from a volunteer, and not from the person looked at or spoken to.

‘We are very old, sir,’ in a mild, distinct voice. ‘We can’t expect to be well, most of us.’

‘Are you comfortable?’

‘I have no complaint to make, sir.’ With a half shake of his head, a half shrug of his shoulders, and a kind of apologetic smile.

‘Enough to eat?’

‘Why, sir, I have but a poor appetite,’ with the same air as before; ‘and yet I get through my allowance very easily.’

‘But,’ showing a porringer with a Sunday dinner in it; ‘here is a portion of mutton, and three potatoes. You can’t starve on that?’

‘Oh dear no, sir,’ with the same apologetic air. ‘Not starve.’

‘What do you want?’

‘We have very little bread, sir. It’s an exceedingly small quantity of bread.’

The nurse, who is now rubbing her hands at the questioner’s elbow, interferes with, ‘It ain’t much raly, sir. You see they’ve only six ounces a day, and when they’ve took their breakfast, there CAN only be a little left for night, sir.’