Margaret Wynne Nevinson

“ Yes, my lady, I know as they calls theirselves nusses, but when you're ninety you won't like to be ordered about by a parcel of girls. Oh, my lady, if you would only put me in the 'bus that goes to Kensington and give me a sixpence here in my poor old hand, then may the Blessed Mother keep you for ever, you and your good children, and may the crown of glory that is waiting for you before the Great White Throne be studded with di'monds and rubies brighter than the stars! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One man worked furiously at rug-making, his knotted fingers dragging the hanks of wool through the canvas as if his life depended on speed. By the side of the ward open to the fog lay a young man so wasted and shrunken that he looked almost like a child. When the nurse brought him his breakfast he raised his head eagerly: "Has mother come?"
"Why, Teddy, you're dreaming! Your mother has only just gone; it's morning, my dear, and she had to get back to the factory; but she'll be here again this evening, never fear. You have a mother in ten thousand, lucky boy! ”

“ She lay in bed, in the long, clean Sick Ward—a fine-grown and well-favoured young woman with masses of black hair tossed over the whiteness of the ratepayers' sheets. Such a sight is rare in a workhouse infirmary, where one needs the infinite compassion of Christian charity or the hardness of habit to bear the pitiful sights of disease and imbecility. ”

“ Every first Monday of the month a trainload of shabby, half-starved women moves southwards from London to one of our great Poor Law schools; and perhaps in the whole world, spite of poverty, hunger, and rags, there is no more joyous band. For two blessed hours they meet their children again, and though later they return weary, hungry, and heart-sore, nothing is allowed to mar the joy of the present, for the poor are great philosophers, and hold in practice as well as in theory that "an ounce of pleasure is worth a peck of pain." ”

“ There are not even cabs near our workhouse, and so, under the escort of a mighty policeman, the forlorn little procession set forth to brave the humorous glances of the heartless street-boys until the walls of the police-court hid us, along with other human wreckage, from mocking eyes. ”

“ THE VOW Better thou shouldest not vow than thou shouldest vow and not pay.
The heavy machines in the steam-laundry clanked and groaned, and the smell of soap and soda, cleansing the unspeakable foulness of the infirmary linen, rose up strong and pungent, as the women carried out the purified heaps to blow dry in the wind and sunshine.
The inmates worked hard and steadily under the keen eye of the matron; many of them knew by bitter experience that inattention or gossip might cost them the loss of fingers at the calenders and wringing machines. ”

“ 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 hoary 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. ”

“ Well, England's a nice land for women, a cruel step-dame to her daughters; seems as if English girls 'ad better get theirselves born in another planet, where people can behave decent-like to them, and not make it a crime and a sin at seventy for marrying nice young men who court them at eighteen. I pray as God will send a plague of boys in the land and never a girl amongst them, so that the English people shall die out by their own wickedness, or have to mate only with furriners. ”

“ Annie Smith, her honest face beaming with joy, arrived again at the workhouse, followed by a small servant with a big bundle. The attiring of the infant was long and careful, and many came to help, and then Daphne Daventry was whirled away in a flutter of purple and fine linen, and the burden of the rates was lightened. ”

“ Folks used to laugh at me and tell me I looked as if I were getting ready for a funeral instead of a wedding. There's many a true word spoken in jest; and that was how I felt all the time—a great, black cloud of horror over everything.
"You should have seen my Mabel on her wedding-day. She looked just beautiful in her plain white dress and long veil. The two bridesmaids wore white muslin, with blue sashes; and Mrs. Allen—my first-floor lodger—said as they might have been three angels of heaven. I drove in the cab to give my girl away. God only knows how I felt. ”

“ When we were children we had a cruel, drunken father, and I seem to remember mother always crying, and at night we would be wakened with screams, and we used to rush in and try and stop father beating her to death, and the cruel blows used to half shatter our poor little bodies. ”

“ I love children. Often when the Labour Mistress wasn't about I ran up to the nursery to kiss the babies. Juliet's third misfortune is a lovely boy with curls. I haven't been out of doors for three months—the young women mayn't go out in the workhouse, only the old people—so you can guess I like it: but the air makes me hungry. We had our gruel at seven this morning. We don't have no tea for breakfast, but girls do in situations, I know, and as much sugar as they like—at least, in most places. Thank you, ma'am, I should love a bun. I love cakes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many humane reforms and regulations for the classification of inmates were made in 1913, and the obnoxious words "pauper" and "workhouse" have been abolished; but before the authorities rightly grasped the changes the war was upon us, the workhouses were commandeered as military hospitals, the inmates sent into other institutions, and all reforms lapsed in overcrowded and understaffed buildings.
Once again the Poor Law is in the melting-pot, and it seems as if now it will pass into the limbo of the past with other old, unhappy far-off things. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All sorts of griefs and tragedies are brought up before us, some of them abnormal and Theban in horror, some of them so common that we seem to hear them unmoved: an honest man who cannot find employment, women with unborn babes kicked, starved, and deserted, children neglected or tortured, poor human beings marred in the making, the crippled, the diseased, the defective physically and mentally, too often the pitiful scapegoats for the sins of the race. ”

“ 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 space in which dirt can collect, and I always hope death will free them before they are brought into the bleak cleanliness of the House. ”

“ 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 classed in the category of "lunatics, criminals, and idiots," no wonder the term "pauper" conveys little opprobrium to women. ”

“ Say 'Good afternoon' to the lady, Betsy Brown, and don't be so rude; they never do have a word of thanks to the kind ladies and gentlemen who come a-visiting them, and we don't get many visitors just now; all the dear ladies are away a-paddling in the ocean. The gentleman Guardians come sometimes, but they are not so chatty as the ladies, don't seem to know what to say to us old women. ”

“ Miss Allison belonged to an older generation, when athletics were not a sine qua non; she had never been a cricketer, at hockey her pupils easily outran her, and she had lost her nerve for high-diving—altogether, she had lived past her age. ”

“ In 1908 the Old Age Pensions Act came into force, and the weekly miracle of 5s. a week (now 7s. 6d.) changed the world for the aged, giving them the liberty and independence, which ought to be the right of every decent citizen in the evening of life.
The order by which a pauper husband had the right to detain his wife in the workhouse by "his marital authority" is now repealed. A case some years ago of this abominable breach of the law of Habeas Corpus startled the country, especially the ratepayers, and even the House of Commons [Pg 10] were amazed at their own laws. ”

“ Yes; you've 'ad a rough time, my dear—worse than the rest of us, and we all have our troubles. I remember when you came a twelvemonth ago to engage the room, and you said you was a widow. I passed the remark to Wells that evening: 'The lidy in the top-floor back ain't no widow; mark my words, there's a 'usband knocking about somewhere!' On the faces of them as are widows I have noticed a great peace, as if they were giving of thanks that they are for ever free from the worritings of men, and that look ain't on your face, my dear—not by a long chalk! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I always comes into the House for confinement, liking quiet and skilled medical attendance. I never gets refused—the law daren't refuse such as me. I always leaves the coming in till the last moment; then there are no awkward questions, and when they begin to inquire as to settlement, I'm off. ”

“ I gazed at the men and women outside with a sense of comradeship and security; whatever their private troubles, at least they were "uncertified," free men, not possessed of devils, grievously tormented. One gets used to everything ”

“ Boards and Organization ladies think as men keeps us. Granny says they most always did in her day, and rich people does still, I suppose, but it ain't the fashion down our street, and it falls 'eavy on the woman what with earning short money and being most always confined. My son says as it's the laws as is old, and ought to be swept somewhere into limbo, not as I understands it, being no scholard."
"Here we are at last! Ain't it a joyful sight to see the 'eavens and the earth, and no 'ouses in between; it always feels like Sunday in the country." ”

“ 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. ”

“ When at last we passed out again into the roar and glare of the street, the bag provided for the spoil empty as before, I saw the old man draw his sleeve across his eyes, leaving a long sooty trail. "It's no good, ma'am; the poor have no chance against the rich. ”