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WORKHOUSE CHARACTERS

[Illustration: Logo]




_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

IN THE WORKHOUSE

A PLAY IN ONE ACT

The International Suffrage Shop, John St., Strand, W.C.2 (6d.)


Press Notices

"Dull talk none the less offensive because it may have been
life-like."--_Daily Mail._

"The piece though mere talk is strong talk."--_Morning Advertiser._

"The play is clean and cold and humorous. The main value of the piece is
that it is a superb genre picture. One or two of the flashes from this
strange, generally unknown world are positive sparks of
life."--_Sheffield Daily Telegraph._

"I found it interesting and convincing; but then I am prepared to
believe that our laws always will be rotten till lawyers are
disqualified from sitting in Parliament."--_Reynolds'._

"The masculine portion of the audience walked with heads abashed in the
_entr'acte_; such things had been said upon the stage that they were
suffused with blushes."--_Standard._

"Delicate matters were discussed with much knowledge and some
tact."--_Morning Post._

"'In the Workhouse' reminds us forcibly of certain works of M. Brieux,
which plead for reform by painting a terrible, and perhaps overcharged,
picture of things as they are.... The presence of the idiot girl helps
to point another moral in Mrs. Nevinson's arraignment, and is therefore
artistically justifiable; and the more terrible it appears the better
have the author and the actress done their work.... Such is the power of
the dramatic pamphlet, sincerely written and sincerely acted. There is
nothing to approach it in directness and force. It sweeps all mere
prettiness into oblivion."--_Pall Mall Gazette._

"It is one of the strongest indictments of our antiquated laws relating
to married women. A man seated behind the present writer called the play
immoral! and as Mrs. Nevinson says in her preface to the published
edition, the only apology she makes for its realism is that it is
true."--_Christian Commonwealth._

"The whole thing left an unpleasant taste."--_Academy._


NOTE.--Two years after this piece was given by the _Pioneer Players_ the
law was altered.




WORKHOUSE CHARACTERS

AND OTHER SKETCHES OF THE LIFE OF THE POOR

BY

MARGARET WYNNE NEVINSON

L.L.A.


     The depth and dream of my desire,
     The bitter paths wherein I stray.
     Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
     Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.

     One stone the more swings to her place
     In that dread Temple of Thy Worth--
     It is enough that through Thy grace
     I saw naught common on Thy earth.

     RUDYARD KIPLING.


LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1


     Almost the whole of these sketches have appeared in the
     _Westminster Gazette_; the last two were published in the _Daily
     News_, and "Widows Indeed" and "The Runaway" in the _Herald_. It is
     by the courtesy of the Editors of the above papers that they are
     reproduced in book form.

     _First published in 1918_

     _(All rights reserved.)_


TO MY SON

C. R. W. NEVINSON




PREFACE


These sketches have been published in various papers during the last
thirteen years. Many of the characters are life portraits, and the wit
and wisdom of the common people have been faithfully recorded in a true
Boswellian spirit; others are _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ (if one may still
quote Goethe), but all have been suggested by actual fact and
experience.

During the last ten years great reforms have been taking place in the
country. 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
were amazed at their own laws. The order was withdrawn in 1913 on the
precedent of the judgment given in the case of the Queen _v._ Jackson
(1891), when it was decided "that the husband has no right, where his
wife refuses to live with him, to take her person by force and restrain
her of her liberty" (60 L. J. Q. B. 346).

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.




CONTENTS

                                     PAGE
EUNICE SMITH--DRUNK                    13

DETAINED BY MARITAL AUTHORITY          21

A WELSH SAILOR                         27

THE VOW                                33

BLIND AND DEAF                         39

"AND, BEHOLD, THE BABE WEPT"           47

"MARY, MARY, PITY WOMEN!"              53

THE SUICIDE                            61

PUBLICANS AND HARLOTS                  68

OLD INKY                               75

A DAUGHTER OF THE STATE                80

IN THE PHTHISIS WARD                   85

AN IRISH CATHOLIC                      91

AN OBSCURE CONVERSATIONIST             97

MOTHERS                               104

"YOUR SON'S YOUR SON"                 110

"TOO OLD AT FORTY"                    115

IN THE LUNATIC ASYLUM                 118

THE SWEEP'S LEGACY                    126

AN ALIEN                              130

"WIDOWS INDEED!"                      134

THE RUNAWAY                           138

"A GIRL! GOD HELP HER!"               145

ON THE PERMANENT LIST                 148

THE PAUPER AND THE OLD-AGE PENSION    153

THE EVACUATION OF THE WORKHOUSE       157




WORKHOUSE CHARACTERS




EUNICE SMITH--DRUNK

     The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes,
     But Here and There as strikes the Player goes;
     And He that toss'd you down into the Field,
     _He_ knows about it all--He knows--_He_ knows.


"Eunice Smith, drunk, brought by the police."

The quaint Scriptural name, not heard for years, woke me up from the
dull apathy to which even the most energetic Guardian is reduced at the
end of a long Board meeting, and I listened intently as the Master of
the workhouse went on to explain that the name Smith had been given by
the woman, but her clothes and a small book, which the doctor said was
Homer, in Greek, were marked Eunice Romaine.

Eunice Romaine--the name took me back down long vistas of years to a
convent school at Oxford, to the clanging bells of Tom Tower, to the
vibrant note of boys' voices in college chapels, to the scent of flowers
and incense at early celebrations, to the high devotions and ideals of
youth, to its passionate griefs and joys. Eunice Romaine had been the
genius of our school--one of those gifted students in whom knowledge
seems innate; her name headed every examination list, and every prize in
the form fell to her; other poor plodders had no chance where she was.
From school she had gone with many a scholarship and exhibition to
Cambridge, where she had taken a high place in the Classical Tripos;
later I heard she had gone as Classical Mistress to one of the London
High Schools, then our paths had separated, and I heard no more.

I went down to the Observation Ward after the meeting, where between a
maniacal case lying in a strait-waistcoat, alternately singing hymns and
blaspheming, and a tearful melancholic who begged me to dig up her
husband's body in the north-east corner of the garden, I saw my old
friend and classmate.

She was lying very quiet with closed eyes; her hair had gone grey before
her time, and her face was pinched and scored with the deep
perpendicular lines of grief and disappointment; but I recognized the
school-girl Eunice by the broad, intellectual brow and by the delicate,
high-bred hands.

"She is rather better," said the nurse in answer to my question, "but
she has had a very bad night, screaming the whole time at the rats and
mice she thought she saw, and the doctor fears collapse, as her heart is
weak; but if she can get some sleep she may recover."

Sleep in the crowded Mental Ward, with maniacs shrieking and shouting
around! But exhausted Nature can do a great deal, and when I called some
days later I found my old friend discharged to the General Sick Ward, a
placard above her head setting forth her complaint as "chronic
alcoholism, cirrhosis of the liver, and cardiac disease."

She recognized me at once, but with the apathy of weakness she expressed
neither surprise nor interest at our meeting, and only after some weeks
had passed I found her one evening brighter and better, and anxious to
go out. Over an impromptu banquet of grapes and cakes we fell into one
of those intimate conversations that come so spontaneously but are so
impossible to force, and I heard the short history of a soul's tragedy.

"Just after I left Cambridge mother died. She told me on her death-bed
that I had the taint of drink in the blood, and urged me never to touch
alcohol. My father--a brilliant scholar and successful journalist--had
killed himself with drink whilst we were all quite young; mother had
kept us all away at school, so that we should not know, and had borne
her burden alone. I promised light-heartedly; I was young and strong,
and had not known temptation. After mother died I was very lonely: both
my brothers had gone to Canada. My father's classical and literary
abilities had come only to me: their talents were purely mechanical and
they had never been able to acquire book knowledge. I was not very happy
teaching. Classics had come to me so easily--hereditary question
again--that I never could understand the difficulties of the average
girl, and I had very little patience with dullness and stupidity.
However, very soon I became engaged to be married, and lived for some
time in a fool's paradise of love and joy. My _fiance_ was a literary
man--I will not tell you his name, as he is