HOW GIRLS CAN HELP WORKHOUSE INMATES (Part One)
by B.C.Saward
The Girl's Own Paper (December 22nd, 1894)
We, whose lives are full of interests, of hurry, care and pleasure, are apt to overlook the fact that surrounding us are many helpless people who are passing away the hours we find so busy in a state of idle and wearisome monotony, laid aside as it were from the turmoil and joy of existence, with nothing to do, and nothing to think about except their own incurable ailments and the fact that the only change they can ever know is in the quiet corner of a crowded churchyard.
In thinking of the inmates of our various workhouses, the general idea is, that they are excellent homes for those whose infirmities and age preclude them from gaining their own living, and who are without relations rich enough to keep them. Theoretically, all this is true; but there is another side to the question, and one that does not present itself to our minds until we have, by visiting in the workhouse, found it out for ourselves.
The able-bodied pauper, be it man or woman, are all employed in work for the good of the community, and their labour is a kind of payment for being housed and fed until brighter days come to them. They come into the workhouse for the winter and leave when they can again earn money. They are employed while taking refuge there, and they have the hope of better times in store, and with them life, however rugged and hard, is still life among their own class with its joys and sorrows.
But there are others in the workhouse for whom there seems no hope, and whose fate has condemned them to live in what is known as the "Idle Rooms" of the place. These are the crippled, the imbecile, the aged. They are incapable of hard work, mentally afflicted, paralysed in limbs, broken down with toil, and in fact are useless, and know themselves to be useless. These unfortunates, whose whole previous life has been one of incessant toil, have now nothing to fill up the weary hours but sleep, and the discussion of the coming or eaten meal, or of the shortcomings of the matron or nurse or their own complaints. They are fed, they are clothed, they are warmed, but no public institution with its multifarious duties can attend to the amusing of such waifs on life's stream, and it is only private kindness and devotion that can help. Forced inactivity to the poor is a much greater deprivation than to the rich. For them, however crippled, there are books, interest in the world's doings, the visits of friends, the home life, and the thinking life.
The home life of the poor is sordid and full of care, the weary hours of toil are many and the joys few; but take it all away, remove them from the familiar cottage whose scanty furniture was acquired by their own toil, cut off from the visits of the gossiping neighbours whose news is food for the mind, and let them feel that they are useless and have no part in life, and can you wonder that the unwonted idleness is no boon, and that their minds, no longer able to work in accustomed grooves, become clouded, that their disease increases, and that deprived of all they cared for they live the lives of the least intelligent of the animals.
That to be idle is not to be happy we very well know, but wedon't believe it, but place ourselves in the same position as these afflicted ones, deprive us of all outdoor interest, cut us off from home life and shut us up with others as ill and as desponding as ourselves and we should soon understand. Work to the poor has always been associated with the bringing in of the daily bread and with the smaller and larger interests of living, and when the hands and feet are too feeble to make the toil repay the effort, still the idea that work can bring them comforts is not gone, and the wish to work has not died away, and the knowledge that by their own labour they can procure such extras as tea, tobacco and sugar, gives them an interest in life, and the mind is stirred to throw off the torpor that is surely stealing over it.
It is to help these old people, and to brighten lives fast fading away, that we draw the attention of our readers to the matter, and wish to show them where private help can come in, and how to set about that help so that it may be successful. We are sure of the sympathy of our readers, and of the ready aid always given when any appeal to their kind hearts is made, but the wish to do good requires guidance, and it is necessary to learn by what means these poor people can be helped so as to be self-supporting as to the materials they require for their work.
The necessary first materials are supplied by a grant of twenty pounds from the Brabazon Society, founded for the special purpose of helping the aged and infirm, but what is wanted more than all, and what can only be supplied from the general public are men and women as teachers filled with an endless pity, and an endless patience who will set apart one day a week to the work, and not take it up hotly for a short period, and abandon it or set in on one side when it interferes with some pleasure. Also they must understand that there is no romantic halo surrounding the task, and must be prepared for a certain amount of failure. It is difficult to teach the aged and the helpless, difficult to make the horny or shaky hand hold the crochet-hook or carving tool; it is wearisome to repeat and repeat the same instructions, or place the hands over and over again in the required position; and pity and patience will both be largely tried, but the clouded mind brightens in the end, and the feeble fingers become supple and the knowledge of the good done repays all the toil.
Under the teaching of several ladies, who weekly visited at various workhouses, a one-armed cripple succeeded in embroidering a serge table-cloth with crewel work, although he had to help out his one arm with his teeth, while a bedridden cripple became skilful in fretwork.
A man of seventy-eight years of age copies decorative paintings onto boxes, while one of eighty-three paints flowers upon screens, and a more ambitious cripple sketches out his own designs and paints them, while others are fully occupied with poker-work, crochet and knitting. All these workers are exempted from manual labour by the guardians by reason of their infirmities, and without the patient outdoor help that has taught them some new employments, would live absolutely useless lives.
There are also endless examples of the humanising effect of the efforts made to interest these people; the guardians acknowledge that it has raised the whole tone of the place; the doctors, that the patients derive the greatest benefit from being occupied, and that they are happier, more contended and more amenable to discipline, and this opinion is shared by the officials who have charge of them; the visits of the ladies to the wards, the present of flowers and plants, the chat upon every day and common events, the interest excited by the work, and the emulation among the workers, brings in a whiff of home life, and brightens the white-washed walls and the bare tables without in anyway increasing the poor-rates, or making anyone capable of living outside anxious to become a burden to the ratepayer. It is this fear, that the workhouse should become too attractive, that has sometimes set the guardians of the poor against any attempt to lighten the sorrow that these walls enclose; but after several years of trial, the system wherever it has taken root, has been found to be an inestimable boon to the infirm, and as only "those who are exempt from work by reason of age or disease" are taught, it is not likely, or feasible that an able-bodied man or woman would enter the workhouse to benefit by a system for which they are not eligible.