I’ve recently been delving into old copies of The Pall Mall Gazette in search of stories that bring the late 19th and early 20th centuries to life.
The other day my attention was caught by the following article which appeared in the newspaper on Monday the 1st of April, 1912:-
THE WORKHOUSE AS A HOLIDAY
The paragraph was hidden away in an obscure comer of a recent paper; it was obviously what journalists call a “fill-up,” yet it arrested by its tragic contrast. It told how a woman, during some disagreement with her husband, was induced to leave her home to go on a holiday to Margate; instead, she was taken to a ward in Islington Workhouse.
Her view became the well-scrubbed boards of the floor, not the leaping, sunlit waves; her horizon ended with whitewashed walls, instead of illimitable blue sky.
AN ESSAY IN LIFE
It struck me that one in a moralising mood might get an essay on life from the Incident.
But who wants essays on life?
To pull through life takes us all our time, without speculating about it!
THE WORLDLY DAME
So in true modern fashion I made the paragraph tag for conversation with a worldly dame, to draw her away from the litany of her social energies.
I did not expect a very sympathetic reception for human note, but I was hardly prepared for what came.
“Pathetic?” was the exclamation.
“I wish someone would send me to a workhouse for a holiday—it is the only place where I could get a few days’ peace!
And more curious still than the exclamation was the sincerity of the tone. It brought the realisation that the bright Mrs. A—– was an aged and wearied woman.
THE PROMISING POLITICIAN
I next tried my paragraph on a promising politician – it was in the midst of the strike Parliamentary negotiations – and his comment was:- “Would that I could hide myself in a workhouse until Easter was ever. Its whitewashed walls would be heaven compared with these” – and his gesture embraced the arched vistas and softly-lit spaces of the House of Parliament.
What was their beauty to him, laden, as was the atmosphere, with jealousies, animosities, and fears!
THE GIRL STUDENT
To a girl’s high school is a sufficiently long step (at least, at the present moment) from the House of Commons.
Therefore, a girl student deep in the bog of learning which leads to a degree, became the next subject for experiment with the workhouse story.
As she listened, her eyes roamed vaguely over a volume of mathematics, a Greek lexicon, a precis of constitutional history, and I know not what besides.
She sighed.
“I suppose,” she said, “that in a workhouse one could escape from the whole lot. I think I should like to be in your old lady’s place, if it were only to have ease from changing mv glasses.”
NOT BEATEN YET
“Why you do it?” I asked.
“Why?” The interrogation drawled out in wearied intonation left more to be said.
But I was not beaten. I resolved that the pathos which I found in my obscurely chronicled fact should be admitted by somebody.
MRS. BROWN’S OPINION
I tried it on Mrs. Brown, who for years has done for a bachelor barrister relative in chambers.
“I’m not sure,” remarked Mrs. Brown, when she had allowed the relation to soak well in, “as shouldn’t look upon a few days in the workhouse as a holiday myself.”
And seeing a look of dismay on my face, she continued, with a certain viciousness of emphasis:-
“A-running and a-racing from morning to night, with cooking and washing up and visitors and tidying and messages. I’m sure only for the shame of it I long for the day when I can sit down in a place where there be no bells except to call you to your meals or your prayers. There’s many a poor, hard-working soul who’d be glad of a little breathing time, and who’ll never get it if it’s not in a workhouse.”
Mrs. Brown’s vernacular has not been entirely preserved in this reply, as being cockney a Scotch setting, it belongs to the class of things which must be heard to be believed.
However, the intensity of her discontent and the stream of reminiscences of better days set gushing forth by my little recital effectually banished all further desire on my part to capture a sympathetic listener.
THE OLD PEASANT WOMAN
Instead, my thoughts went hack to an old peasant woman that I once saw dying in Ireland. She had lived alone, and her life must have been of the hardest, it meant wresting bare maintenance from strip of boggy land by her own labour.
Yet her words as she neared release were, “God has always been very good to me. I had nothing much ever to complain of, and always knew He’d never let me die in the workhouse.”
IS THERE ANY WRONG?
Here in our cities civilisation has brought all delights to our doors, invention has destroyed distance and minimised human activities; “more pleasure” has become the cry of every class, and “more excitement” the Justification for every breach of social laws.
And with it all a great majority of us see nothing incongruous in a stay in a workhouse being regarded as a holiday.
“Anything for rest!” we say.
But nothing can make us rest.
Hardly, indeed, do we give ourselves time to pause in the twelve months to ask, “Is there any wrong?”