Last week’s New York Times science section reported a study from
the British Medical Journal arguing that Oliver Twist had plenty
to eat and Dickens greatly exaggerated the poverty and
inadequacy of poorhouse diets. The BMJ article said poorhouse
diets gave kids a few ounces of oatmeal a day along with “modest
servings of bread, potatoes, meat and cheese.” This diet, the
authors said, provided 1,600 to 1,700 calories a day, “dull and
monotonous, to be sure, but adequate…in a real Victorian
workhouse, Oliver would probably not have had to ask for more.
He would have had just about enough.” Here’s my response,
published in today’s Science Times letters. Enough? Hardly. The
whole point of welfare institutions is to give recipients just
enough to stave off starvation, but not so much that they become
complacent and dependent on state largesse. But children are
dependent, and British poorhouses were for-profit institutions.
Far too much factual evidence demonstrates that poorhouse diets
were barely adequate and st