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tin of coarse
Indian meal stirabout (skilly), and at half-past five it gets a piece of dry
bread and a tin of water for its supper. This diet in the case of a strong
grown man is always productive of illness of some kind, chiefly of course
diarrhoea, with its attendant weakness. In fact, in a big prison astringent
medicines are served out regularly by the warders as a matter of course. In
the case of a child, the child is, as a rule, incapable of eating the food at
all. Any one who knows anything about children knows how easily a child's
digestion is upset by a fit of crying, or trouble and mental distress of any
kind. A child who has been crying all day long, and perhaps half the night, in
a lonely dim-lit cell, and is preyed upon by terror, simply cannot eat food of
this coarse, horrible kind. In the case of the little child to whom warden
Martin gave the biscuits, the child was crying with hunger on Tuesday morning,
and utterly unable to eat the bread and water served to it for its breakfast.
Martin went out after the breakfasts had been served and bought the few sweet
biscuits for the child rather than see it starving. It was a beautiful action
on his part, and was so recognized by the child, who, utterly unconscious of
the regulations of the Prison Board, told one of the senior wardens how kind
this junior warden had been to him. The result was, of course, a report and a
dismissal.'
Robert Blatchford compares the workhouse pauper's daily diet with the
soldier's, which, when he was a soldier, was not considered liberal enough,
and yet is twice as liberal as the pauper's.
PAUPER DIET SOLDIER
3 1/4 oz. Meat 12 oz.
15 1/2 oz. Bread 24 oz.
6.... oz. Vegetables 8 oz.
The adult male pauper gets meat (outside of soup) but once a week, and the
paupers 'have nearly all that pallid, pasty complexion which
is the sure mark of starvation.'
Here is a table, comparing the workhouse pauper's weekly allowance with the
workhouse officer's weekly allowance.
OFFICER DIET PAUPER
7 lb. Bread 6 3/4 lb.
5 lb. Meat 1 lb. 2 oz.
12 oz. Bacon 2 1/2 oz.
8 oz. Cheese 2 oz.
7 lb. Potatoes 1 1/2 lb.
6 lb. Vegetables none
1 lb. Flour none
2 oz. Lard none
12 oz. Butter 7 oz.
none Rice pudding 1 lb.
And as the same writer remarks: 'The officer's diet is still more liberal than
the pauper's; but evidently it is not considered liberal enough, for a
footnote is added to the officer's table saying that 'a cash payment of two
shillings sixpence a week is also made to each resident officer and servant.'
If the pauper has ample food, why does the officer have more? And if the
officer has not too much, can the pauper be properly fed on less than half the
amount?'
But it is not alone the Ghetto-dweller, the prisoner, and the pauper that
starve. Hodge, of the country, does not know what it is always to have a full
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belly. In truth, it is his empty belly which has driven him to the city in
such great numbers. Let us investigate the way of living of a laborer from a
parish in the Bradfield Poor Law Union, Berks. Supposing him to have two
children, steady work, a rent-free cottage, and an average weekly wage of
thirteen shillings, which is equivalent to $3.25, then here is his weekly
budget:
(shillings) (pence)
Bread (5 quarterns) ............................. 1 10
Flour (1/2 gallon) .............................. 0 4
Tea (1/4 lb.) ................................... 0 6
Butter (1 lb.) .................................. 1 3
Lard (1 lb.) .................................... 0 6
Sugar (6 lb.) ................................... 1 0
Bacon or other meat (about 4 lb.) ............... 2 8
Cheese (1 lb.) .................................. 0 8
Milk (half-tin condensed) ....................... 0 3 1/4
Oil, candles, blue, soap, salt, pepper, etc. .... 1 0
Coal ............................................ 1 6
Beer ............................................ none
Tobacco ......................................... none
Insurance ('Prudential') ........................ 0 3
Laborer's Union ................................. 0 1
Wood, tools, dispensary, etc. ................... 0 6
Insurance ('Foresters') and margin for clothes .. 1 1 3/4
Total ............................. 13s. 0d.
The guardians of the workhouse in the above Union pride themselves on their
rigid economy. It costs per pauper per week:
s. d.
Men ............................................. 6 1 1/2
Women ........................................... 5 6 1/2
Children ........................................ 5 1 1/4
If the laborer whose budget has been described, should quit his toil and go
into the workhouse, he would cost the guardians for
s. d.
Himself ......................................... 6 1 1/2
Wife ............................................ 5 6 1/2
Two children ................................... 10 2 1/2
Total ............................. 21s. 10 1/2d.
Or, roughly, $5.46
It would require $5.46 for the workhouse to care for him and his family, which
he, somehow, manages to do on $3.25. And in addition, it is an understood fact
that it is cheaper to cater for a large number of people- buying, cooking, and
serving wholesale- than it is to cater for a small number of people, say a
family.
Nevertheless, at the time this budget was compiled, there was in that parish
another family, not of four, but eleven persons, who had to live on an income,
not of thirteen shillings, but of twelve
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shillings per week (eleven shillings in winter), and which had, not a
rent-free cottage, but a cottage for which it paid three shillings per week.
This must be understood, and understood clearly: Whatever is true of
London in the way of poverty and degradation, is true of all
England. While Paris is not by any means France, the city of London is
England. The frightful conditions which mark London an inferno likewise mark
the United Kingdom an inferno. The argument that the decentralization of
London would ameliorate conditions is a vain thing and false. If the 6,000,000
people of London were separated into one hundred cities each with a population
of 60,000, misery would be decentralized but not diminished. The sum of it
would remain as large.
In this instance, Mr. B. S. Rowntree, by an exhaustive analysis, has proved
for the country town what Mr. Charles Booth has proved for the metropolis,
that fully one-fourth of the dwellers are condemned to a poverty which
destroys them physically and spiritually; that fully one-fourth of the
dwellers do not have enough to eat, are inadequately clothed, sheltered, and
warmed in a rigorous climate, and are doomed to a moral degeneracy which puts
them lower than the savage in cleanliness and decency.
After listening to the wail of an old Irish peasant in Kerry, Robert
Blatchford asked him what he wanted. 'The old man leaned upon his spade and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]