The Express.
London, England, 1864-11-28 00:00:00

THE HOMELESS POOR.

The casual wards of the various metropolitan
workhouses appear to have been filled nightly
throughout the weok,eld the insufficiency of their
ni aocomodatien prov y the poor creatures to be
seen -helplessly huge g about their doors. We
have either had interviews with the officials, in-
terrogated the people excluded, or inspected the
wards of the workhouses in the western, west
central, north-eastern, and south-western
districts ; and though it is cheering to noirpostal
that
considerable changes are meditated by the several
boards of guardians, it is yet an open question
whether these will be sufficiently sweeping, or fully
meet the case. Between twelve and one on Wed-
nesday morning there were two youths and three
girls crouched on the steps near the workhouse of
St. Martin's, two women and two boys outside that
of St. George's, Hanover-square, in Mount-street,
and s man and three children, the eldest about 12
years of age, in a doorway near that of St. James's,
Westminster, in Poland-street, Oxford-street.
It was raining heavily at the time, all these out-
casts were manifestly wet to the akin, and all, or
nearlylall, told a story which, if untrue, was mar-
vellously like truth, and as singularly free from
discrepancy as it was identical in its details. It is
at least certain that some of them were not lying on
atones, in dripping garments, and with the cold
wind and rain beating in upon them throughout
the night, because they eccentrically preferred to
take their rest with such surroundings, or in the
hope of attracting sympathy from, and mulcting
the pockets of, stray passers by. Such of our
readers as rode from theatre os party at the time we
quote will remember that the pelting rain had
almost emptied the streets, that cabs were in such
request as to be difficult to procure, and that the
ordiniiry midnight strollers had forsaken the shiny
dripping pavements, and were either snugly house
or stood up moist, limp, desolate, and forlorn
under archways and against doors, vainly attempt-
ing to escape the searching pitiless wet. We may
be tolerably sure therefore that the dozen people
we have instanced were thoroughly beaten before
they gave in, and may fairly assume that
their story of having applied at workhouse
after workhouse for shelter without success, and of
nuw being too tired, hopeless, and footsore to make
any further attempt, was substantially true. We
say nothing of the beggars who started up in the
purlieus of Covent-garden half an hour earlier, or
of the ragged people we saw in other more or lees
frequented thoroughfares, and who were all wet
and miserable-looking enough, but shall strictly
confine our remarks to the rejected of the work-
houses as coming, nottm coleus, under the sad cate-
gory of homeless poor. The two lads on the steps
at the back of the National Gallery had been—we
give in each case the stories told to us—looking for
work, had done nothing for more than three weeks
—had never been taught any trade, but " would do
anythim' to earn a bit of bread," and were
not " particlar wot." The three girls on
the steps of Archbishop Tenison's school
were respectively a servant out of place,
a dressmaker and an " unfortunate." They had all
been sleeping in lodging-houses when they had
money, in workhouses when they had none, and to-
night had been refused admission at so many that
•
they were now resting until "it was finer," and
they " might try somewhere else." They were
coiled together so as to form an almost undistin-
guishable heap of moist and tattered clothes ; two
out of the three were asleep until we questioned
the third, and in each case their statement of being
" wet through and through" was unmistakeably the
fact. The women in Mount-street were older, but
told a very similar story, while one of the two boys
had sold fusses to gentlemen until robbed of his
little capital as well as his stock by his brother,
and the other had walked from Brandon.'
that day, and " did not know the town."
The man with the three children in Poland-street
seemed the least deserving of the people we saw.
He was as damp and wretched as the rest, but,
though civil, shuffled and equivocated when asked
the reason of his being there, and told of the re-
fir;e iu Newport Market. Nor did this proceed
from reticence or irritability at being examined. He
was voluble 'enough when inveighing against the
workhouse authorities, and only became silent or
ambiguous when questioned as to his way of life.
In common with all the other people we have con-
versed with, be never gave "full" as the reason
for his not being admitted into the workhouses.
" They won't ,let us in," is the regular formula,
and there seems deeply-rooted conviction amongst
the outcast population that the parish authorities
keep them out, not because the exigencies of space
preclude their housing all comers, but out of a
pleasure in inflicting discomfort, or in the indul-
gence of wanton caprice. It is useless to appeal to
the knowledge the houseleas have of the size of the
wards, or to point out that to overcrowd them
would be unfair to those already in. Exposure,
hunger and cold, have a stern logic of their own,
I " and t wouldn't 'urt 'em to find room in a big
place like that is," cuts short all attempts at ex-
planation.
The evening after the experience we have detailed
we visited the Whitechapel workhouse in Charles-
street, Mile-end. Turning down Baker's-row, a
narrow thoroughfare a few doors to the east of the
Pavilion Theatre, where a staring placard announces
with apparent inconsistency "A Fight with Fate"
as one of the novelties of the evening, and passing
many a window wherein are slabs of cold fried fish
like geological specimens at 2d. each—cheap jewellery
--pudy common lithographs arranged on the bottle
jack principle, and chasing each other round a pre-
scribed circle with unmeaning regularity—where
the steam from the hot potato-shop rushes out in
a compact white mass like the inverted horn
of a monster unicorn—where the street lamps seem
dim after the brilliant jets and stars at
the cheap tailor's you have passed where
fireworks are freely exhibited in a shop window, and
the wish of their maker to supply both England
and the colonies therewith announced on his mon-
ster door-plate—and the stranger after one or two
questions is at the workhouse door, and learns that
he must retrace his stepaas he has passed the place
be has come to see. Up a dark archway out of
the Mile End-road, and two doors to the west
instead of the east of the Pavilion, are the casual
wards of this workhouse. The evil faces of the men
idling about the archway, its unlit condition and
gloomy aspect, make a policeman an almost neces-
sary escort. This secured, and picking your way
among the mud, and passing by a dozen or more of
empty carts ranged in regular order for the night,
and you are at a closed gateway with grated wicket.
The absence of gas makes the narrow street you have
just traversed appear of Oriental brilliance when
compared with tke darkness you are now in, and
when, after a momentary parley with the old
pauper at the gate, you cross its threshold, the light
from the sort of enlarged rabbit-hutch, wherein the
said old pauper sits, sends out a bright and cheer-
ful gleam against a hard background of symmetri-
cally arranged granite blocks. These are for "the
inmates "to break. The casuals have nothing to
do at present, only eat their suppers, and sleep and
be quiet, Aod even as we are learning this, a
knock comes at the gate, and a dirty dishevelled
shrew demands in insolent tones to be conducted to
her bed. nix now about nine o'clock, and the
eight o'clock batch of poor having been some time
housed, there is yet room, and the termagant
is taken in. Not quietly, by any means.
More than half tipsy, and indulging In the peculiar
vein of moralising which pertains to that condition,
she informs the pauper who receives her that " he's
a big wan to-day with his loaves and his slates, but
be might be taken before morning, and then where
would he be." To the policeman she remarks,
" I'm used toyer months, and I'd as soon sleep at
the station every bit, if yer'd like to take me." To
the second old pauper who has come up with the
keys of the ward, that she belongs to the place and
"yer can't refuse me and be —to Ter; to the
stranger present that she " don't matter yer com-
missioners not a snap of her little finger;" and
baying thus politely ingratiated herself with all
present, and received the hunch of bread she has
elected to take now, instead of the morning, she
fires a parting volley of anathemas and is conducted
to her bed. "This is what we have to put
up with, and to admit them at all timee,"