Poverty & Society

1. Poverty & Society The World of Dickens – Selected Extracts

2. Dickens, on ‘Wapping Workhouse’, Selected Journalism, 1850-1870 I made bold to ring at the workhouse gate, where I was wholly unexpected and quite unknown. A very bright and nimble matron, with a bunch of keys in her hand, responded to my request to se the House... The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the worst first. He was welcome to see everything. Such as it was, there it all was. This was the only preparation for our entering ‘the Foul Wards’. They were in an old building squeezed away in a corner of a paved yard, quite detached from the more modern and spacious main body of the workhouse... A-bed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, there (for a change as I understood it) on the floor, were women in every stage of distress and disease... No one appeared to care to live, but no one complained; all who could speak, said that as much was done for them as could be done there, that the attendance was kind and patient, that their suffering was very heavy, but they had nothing to ask for...

3. The Refractories were picking oakum, in a small room giving on a yard. They sat in line on a form, with their backs to a window; before them, a table, and their work. The oldest refractory was, say twenty; youngest refractory, say sixteen... ‘Five pound indeed! I hain’t a going fur to pick five pound,’ said the Chief of the Refractories, keeping time to herself with her head and her chin. ‘More than enough to pick what we picks now, in sich a place as this, and on wot we gets here!’ (This was in acknowledgement of a delicate intimation that the amount of work was likely to be increased. It certainly was not heavy then, for one refractory had already done her day’s task – it was barely two o’clock – and was sitting behind it, with a head exactly matching it.)

4. ‘A pretty Ouse this is, matron ain’t it?’ said Refractory two, ‘where a pleeseman’s called in, if a gal says a word!’ ‘And wen you’re sent to prison for nothink or less!’ said the Chief, tugging at her oakum as if it were the matorn’s hair. ‘But any place is better than this; that’s one thing, and be thankful!’ A laugh of Refractories led by Oakhum Head with folded arms – who originated nothing but who was in command of the skirmishers outside the conversation. ‘if any place is better than this,’ said my brisk guide, in the calmest manner, ‘it is a pity you left a good place when you had one.’ ‘Ho, no, I didn’t matron,’ returned the Chief with another pull at her oakum, and a very expressive look at the enemy's forehead. ‘Don’t say that matron cos it’s lies!’

5. Charles Dickens, Household Words, 25th May, 1850 A few Sundays ago, I formed one of the congregation assembled in the chapel of a large metropolitan Workhouse. With the exception of the clergyman and clerk, and a very few officials, there were none but paupers present. The children sat in the galleries; the women in the body of the chapel, and in one of the side aisles; the men in the remaining aisle... • Among this congregation, were some evil-looking young women, and beetle-browed young men; but not many - perhaps that kind of characters kept away. Generally, the faces (those of the children excepted) were depressed and subdued, and wanted colour. Aged people were there, in every variety.

6. Mumbling, blear-eyed, spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame; vacantly winking in the gleams of sun that now and then crept in through the open doors, from the paved yard; shading their listening ears, or blinking eyes, with their withered hands, poring over their books, leering at nothing, going to sleep, crouching and drooping in corners. There were weird old women, all skeleton within, all bonnet and cloak without, continually wiping their eyes with dirty dusters of pocket-handkerchiefs; and there were ugly old crones, both male and female, with a ghastly kind of contentment upon them which was not at all comforting to see. Upon the whole, it was the dragon, Pauperism, in a very weak and impotent condition; toothless, fangless, drawing his breath heavily enough, and hardly worth chaining tip.