Shadows of the Workhouse

by Jennifer Worth

  The women did all the cooking and laundry for their fellow inmates. “Scrubbing” is a word I have encountered frequently in this context. Hours of scrubbing vast lengths of stone floors, corridors and stairs was a daily requirement. Sewing sails for sailing boats, by hand, and picking oakum for caulking ships were further tasks that fell to the women and children. Oakum was old rope, frequently impregnated with tar or sea salt, which had to be unpicked by hand and tore the skin and nails. The fibres were then used for filling in the cracks between the wooden planks of ships.

  The 1834 Poor Law Act required elementary education (basic numeracy and literacy) for children three hours per day, and a schoolmaster was employed by each Board of Guardians. When the Education Act of 1870 was passed, children were removed from the mixed workhouses and placed in separate establishments and had to attend the local Board School.

  Under the 1834 Act a qualified medical officer was required to attend the sick, but nursing was carried out by untrained female inmates. In large groups of enclosed people who were not allowed out, infectious diseases spread like wildfire. For example, in the 1880s in a workhouse in Kent, it was found that in a child population of one hundred and fifty-four, only three children did not have tuberculosis.

  One hears about “the insane” crowded into workhouses. I think workhouse life bred and fostered its own insanity. I once heard, in the 1950s, what used to be called “the workhouse howl” emitted from the throat of a woman who had been a workhouse inmate for about twenty years in the early twentieth century. It was a noise to make your blood run cold.

  Medical infirmaries were also available for the hospital treatment of the poor who could not afford to pay a doctor or to go to hospital. But the infirmaries came to be feared almost as much as the workhouses themselves, and were regarded as places of disease, insanity, neglect and death. Medical and nursing staff were of the lowest order, and were frequently brutal and ignorant – it was work which no doctor who valued his career would undertake. The attitudes of medical and nursing staff, who were careless of the lives of paupers, reflected the mores of the time.

  The stigma of illegitimacy has destroyed the lives of millions of unfortunate young women and blighted those of their children. If a girl’s lover deserted her, and her parents could not, or would not, support her and the child, the workhouse was often the only form of relief available. The baby would be born in the infirmary. After weaning, the girl would be encouraged to leave the workhouse with her baby to seek employment. But this was usually impossible to find because of the limited labour market for women, further restricted because of the presence of a baby. The girl would also be encouraged to give her baby up for adoption. Many girls were medically certified as “hysterical” or “of unsound mind” or even “morally degenerate”, and the baby would be forcibly removed and brought up in the workhouse. The young mother would be expected to leave, find work outside and contribute to the poor rates to offset the cost of keeping and educating the child. If she could not find work, she would have to return to the women’s section of the workhouse. The system was heartless and stupid, but those were the rules, and they reflected the social attitude that a “fallen woman” should be punished.

  It was one such story that brought Jane to the workhouse when her mother was dismissed for an illicit liaison with her employer.

  JANE

  “We’ll have to watch that one, saucy little madam. Did you hear the way she spoke out of turn at breakfast?”

  “Don’t you worry, my dear. I’ll break her before she leaves here.”

  The Master and Mistress were talking about Jane, who had been in the workhouse since birth. It was rumoured that her father was a high-class gentleman, distinguished in Parliament and at the Bar. When his wife found him in bed with a servant girl, the girl was immediately dismissed and went to the workhouse, where Jane was born.

  The baby stayed with her mother to be breast-fed, but was removed when weaning commenced and was then taken to the infants’ nursery. The mother returned to the women’s section of the workhouse and never saw her baby again. Thus Jane was entirely reared by the institution and knew no other life.

  It was a harsh, repressive existence, but no amount of smacks or punishments could subdue Jane’s bubbling laughter and joie de vivre. In the playground, she chased the other children, or hid and jumped out on them with a delighted “boo”. In the dormitory she crept under the beds and poked the mattresses of sleeping children with a stick. Her behaviour caused uproar and an officer would run in with smacks and orders to be quiet. Jane always got smacked, being the cause of all the trouble. But she cried herself to sleep, then giggled and did it again.

  As she grew, her high spirits got her into endless trouble. Docility and obedience were expected from the children at all times, and if there was any deviation from this, naughty little Jane could generally be found at the centre of it. Who was it that tied Officer Sharp’s shoelaces together as she sat darning socks, so that she fell over when she stood up and took a step? No one knew for certain, but as Jane had been seen in the vicinity, the little girl got a good smacking for it. Who was it that climbed the drainpipe in the playground? Why, Jane, of course. And who mixed up all the boots in the dormitory so that everyone had the wrong sizes? If it wasn’t Jane, it might as well have been, so she got the punishment.

  Jane’s great misfortune was that she stood out. In a group of children she could not be overlooked. She was a good deal taller than average, and also prettier, with her dark curls and clear blue eyes. Worse than this, which was bad enough, she was a great deal more intelligent than most of the other children, and the Master and Mistress feared an intelligent child. They told the officers to keep an eye on her.

  “Keep in line, don’t straggle. Heads up, now. Don’t slouch.”

  Officer Hawkins would show them how to do it!

  The girls were marching to church one Sunday morning. It was a very long crocodile, consisting of nearly one hundred girls. Jane, halfway along on the outside, watched fat old Officer Hawkins strutting along like a penguin and with an instinctive gift for mimicry she copied the walk, head thrown back, arms flapping, feet splayed. The girls behind started to giggle. A hand shot out and hit Jane on the head with such force that she fell through the column of girls on to the road on the other side. She was hauled up and hit again and then pushed back into line. Her ears were ringing and lights were darting before her eyes, but she had to keep marching. She was six years old.

  “Where did it come from?” demanded the Master, his eyes bulging, his face turning red. “Who is guilty of this piece of insolence?”

  He was looking at a sketch of himself, on a page torn from an exercise book. It was a remarkable drawing for a child, but the Master couldn’t see it that way. All he could see was himself with an exaggerated moustache, a square head, small eyes, and an exceedingly large stomach. The picture had been circulating among the girls for three days, causing endless amusement, which only added to the Master’s fury.

  He assembled all the girls in the hall and addressed them from the pulpit. He reminded them that they were paupers who must respect and obey their betters. No act of disobedience, disrespect or insubordination would be tolerated. He held up the pencil drawing.

  “Who did this?” he demanded, menacingly.

  No one moved.

  “Very well. Every single girl in this room will be beaten, starting now, with the first row.”

  Jane stood up. “I did it, sir,” she whispered.

  She was taken to the discipline room – a small, square room with no windows and no furniture except for one stool. Several canes were hanging on the wall. Jane was beaten severely on her bare bottom. She could not sit down for several days. She was only seven years old.

  That should be enough to break her spirit, thought the Master to himself with satisfaction. But it wasn’t. He couldn’t understand it. Why the very next morning, he had seen her, with his own eyes, dancing across the playground, as
though she hadn’t a care in the world.

  The reason why Jane’s spirit was not broken was that she had a secret. It was her own special secret and she had told no one else except Peggy. She locked it in her heart and hugged it to herself. It was this glorious secret that filled her with such irrepressible joy and exhilaration. But it was also to be the cause of her greatest disaster, and her life-long grief.

  The rumour that her father was a high-born gentleman in Parliament must have reached Jane’s ears when she was a little girl. Perhaps she had heard the officers talking about it, or perhaps another child had heard the adults talking and told her. Perhaps Jane’s mother had told another workhouse inmate, who had passed it on. One can never tell how rumours start.

  To Jane, it was not a rumour. It was an absolute fact. Her daddy was a high-born gentleman, who one day would come and take her away. She fantasised endlessly about her daddy. She talked to him, and he talked to her. She brushed her hair, and cast a flirtatious eye at him, as he looked over her shoulder, admiring her curls. She ran down the playground as fast as she could, because he was standing at the other end, admiring her strength and speed. He was always with her. He was everywhere.

  She had a very clear picture of him in her mind. He was not like any other man she had seen at the workhouse, not like the coal man, nor the baker, nor the boiler man. They were ugly and short, and wore rough working men’s clothing and cloth caps. He was not like the Master or any of the officers. Jane’s little nose wrinkled with disgust at the thought. Her daddy was quite different. He was tall and slim with fine features and pale skin. He had long fingers; she looked at her own slender hands and knew that she had inherited her daddy’s fingers. He had lots of hair – she didn’t like bald men – and it was a soft, grey colour, always clean and nicely brushed. His clothes were nothing like the awful stuff worn by the workmen she saw, and her daddy didn’t smell of sweat the way they did. He always wore beautiful suits smelling of lavender, and he wore a top hat and carried a walking-cane with a gold crest on top.

  She knew just what his voice sounded like also – after all, he was constantly talking to her – it was not rough and grating like other men’s voices; it was musical and deep, full of laughter. She knew this because he was always laughing with her and making fun of the Master and the officers. His eyes had twinkled with amusement, and he had called her ‘his clever girl’ when she had drawn a funny picture of the Master.

  So how could Jane be unhappy? The more they beat her, the closer she drew to her daddy. He comforted her when she cried at night. He dried her tears and told her to be a brave girl. She swallowed her tears quickly, because she knew that he liked to see her smiling and happy, and she made up a funny story to amuse him, because she knew that he liked her funny stories.

  She had also invented his house. It was a beautiful house with a long drive and fine trees in the grounds. There were steps up to the front door and, inside, the rooms smelled of beeswax and lavender. There were pictures on the walls and fine rugs on the floors. Her daddy took her by the hand and led her through the rooms, one by one. He told her that one day he would come and take her away from the workhouse, and they would live together in the beautiful home with the long drive and fine trees.

  Jane was seven years old when she began to attend the local council school. She was very proud – it was a big, proper school for big girls and Jane loved it. It brought her into contact with a life outside the workhouse which she had not known existed. It also introduced her to learning, which she loved, and her young mind began to expand. She realised that there were thousands of things that she could learn and she absorbed and retained her lessons quickly. Excellent reports of her progress were sent back to the workhouse. The Master was not impressed. A request from the school’s headmistress for Jane to be allowed to take piano lessons, as she showed an unusually good ear for music, was refused, the Master saying that no workhouse pauper should be singled out for special treatment. A request that Jane should be allowed to take the role of Mary in the school’s nativity play was refused for the same reason.

  Jane was bitterly disappointed at this, chiefly because her daddy would have been so proud to see her playing Mary, and she cried herself to sleep for several nights, until he whispered to her that the silly old school nativity play was not worth crying over. She would have the chance to perform in many more, much nicer plays when she came to live with him in the beautiful house with the long drive.

  The workhouse girls were kept apart, as much as possible, from the other girls at the school. This was because several local mothers had complained that they did not want their daughters mixing with ‘them workhouse bastards’. This segregation was a source of great pain to many of her friends, but not to Jane. She laughed at the rule that workhouse girls should not play in the same playground as the other children, and tossed her dark curls scornfully. Just let them wait. She would show them. All those dreary girls whose fathers were dustmen and street-sweepers and costermongers. They would be sorry one day, when they saw her daddy, a high-born gentleman, drive up to the school in a carriage. She would run up to him, and all those dreary girls would see her. He would pick her up, kiss her, and take her to the waiting carriage, and all the girls would see and be jealous. The teachers would say to each other: “We always knew that Jane was different.”

  Jane was fortunate in her class teacher. Miss Sutton was young, well educated and eager. In fact, to say that she possessed a missionary zeal for teaching the poorest of the poor would not be overstating her dedication and enthusiasm. She saw in the vivacious Jane unusual qualities that she was determined to promote. The child learned to read and write in about a quarter the length of time that it took the other children, so whilst Miss Sutton was engaged with the rest of the class, who were learning the alphabet and painstakingly spelling out words, she asked Jane to write stories for her. Jane did so with great joy and fluency, picking up any subject Miss Sutton suggested and weaving a delightful child’s story around it. Several of these stories were shown to the Headmistress, who commented: “There is an unusual mind at work here,” and she obtained a copy of A Child’s Garden of Verse, which she handed to Miss Sutton for Jane’s use. The child was enraptured by the rhythm of the words and quickly learned many of the poems by heart, which she recited to her daddy when they were alone together.

  Miss Sutton also introduced Jane to history and geography, using a children’s encyclopedia as her textbook. These lessons had to be surreptitious, because Miss Sutton was employed to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. Furthermore, she was canny enough to suspect that if she requested extra lessons for Jane, the request would be refused and that would be the end of history and geography for Jane.

  Miss Sutton took the wise step of introducing one volume at a time, with the words, “I think you will enjoy reading this. When you have done so, write me a story about it, and we will talk about it at lunch time.”

  Jane adored Miss Sutton, and their lunch-time conversations about kings and queens and faraway places were the high point of her day.

  The children’s encyclopedia was her treasure. There were ten large volumes, each beautifully bound in dark blue with gold lettering, and she pored over each one with a hungry mind. She loved the books, their feel and touch and smell, and wanted to keep them, but she knew she couldn’t; they were kept in the classroom cupboard, but she knew that Miss Sutton would let her see them any time she wanted. To Jane these books were sacred. Every word she read was – must be – gospel truth, because it was written in the “’cyclopedia”.

  One day she came across a long word she had not met before. She traced it with her finger and tried to say it to herself: “Par” – that was easy; “lia” – what did that mean? “ment” – that was easy, too; but what was it all put together? Suddenly, like a lightning stroke, it came to her: Parliament. People had said her daddy was in Parliament. She devoured the relevant pages as though her life depended on it. In the background the other chil
dren were reciting C-A-T, D-O-G. Jane heard nothing. She was busy poring over information on Parliament and the British Constitution. She didn’t understand it all, but that didn’t matter, it was about her daddy. Like one possessed she read on. She turned a few pages; and then she saw him. The picture leaped towards her. It was her daddy, as she had always known he would look: tall and slim, with slightly grey hair, a thoughtful face, but kindly. He was wearing a beautiful frock coat with tails, just as she had always known he would, with slender trousers and elegant shoes. He was carrying a top hat and a walking-cane with a gold crest. He had long, slender fingers just like she had. She kissed the page.