Wallis Tree

WORKHOUSE CURIOSITIES

At a Conversazione of the Poor Law Commissioners, the following curiosities
were the other evening shown -

Photograph of a Poor-law Inspector, as he appears when 'insprecting' a
workhouse with his eyes shut.

Model of the 'rabbit hutch' which the Farnham guardians considered in cold
blood to be 'quite good enough for tramps'

A pair of damp sheets from a poorhouse infirmary

A bit of one of the hot bricks by which a girl was scorched severely, and was so
weakminded as to die in consequence-

Samples of workhouse wine in various stages of emaciation, showing its
increasing weakness in every hand through which it passes, from the master of
the workhouse down to the pauper nurse, until at length it reaches the poor
patient for whom it is prescribed -

Specimens of an infirmary blanket, warranted not to keep the cold out.

A slice of paurper Christmas pudding, curious as showing how much pudding
can be made with how few plums -

One of the toys broken by the order of a master of a workhouse, in order that
the children might not be too happy there.

Sketch (coloured) of the cesspool into which the epileptic Farnham pauper fell
perversely, and so died.

A specimen of hard, tough beef, administered to toothless paupers, when they
are ordered by the doctor a tender mutton-chop.

A bottle of air taken from a workhouse bedroom. In proof of its impurity, a
light being placed in it immediately goes out.

One of the newspapers removed by the late Master at Farnham, who feared
that the paupers might really be too comfortable.

ODE TO ST.PANCRAS

O SAINT! whose nondescript abode

Adorns that dreary northern road,

Of London, called the New

Whose tutelary care and name

The neighbouring parish dares to claim

Uncheck'd by scruple or by shame,

With liberty undue.

SAINT PANCRAS, sure thou canst not know

How in thy district matters go,

Or thou wouldst he irate;

Thy under-guardians I regret

Exceedingly to say, have let

Their and thy parish-workhouse get

Into a shameful state.

There, steep'd in dirt, thy paupers lie,

Not quite like pigs-for, in a sty

There still is room and air;

But narrow wards those poor confine,

In holes and corners they recline,

Together closer cramm'd than swine:

Pigs would be stifled there.

Then pigs with straw are mostly bles',

But some of these on bare forms rest,

Some on the naked floor.

Thus do the swine of guardians sleep?

Their hogs do any of them keep,

That they may grow their bacon cheap,

ST.PANCRAS as thy poor?

Yes there are beds, too, of a kind,

And children crowded you will find

Their scanty sheets within:

A living mas-yet also rife

With something else than human life,

And finger-nails at constant strife

With raging tetter'd skin.

The little air they have alas

Foul with carbonic acid gas

Is even fouler still,

With gas which surges from beneath,

Where things unutterable seethe,

Gas yet more horrible to breath,

And stronger yet to kill.

That paupers thus, in their own reek,

Plain, if unpleasant, truth I speak,

Lay sweltering cheek by jowl

ST.PANCRAS, was it in they ken?

Wert thou aware thy parish men

Had with thy name combined a den

Worse than Calcutta's hole?

If Saints between effect and cause

Can step, arresting Nature's laws,

Oh! stay the deadly pest;

(For it already counts its dead):

Fell Typhus that it shall not spread,

And let not Cholera be bred

Out of thy "Workhouse Test.