The Express.
London, England, 1866-01-15 00:00:00

IN RITHLIAL.ORREN WORKHOUSE.

Accompanied by the Rev. Septimus Hansard, the
rector of Bethnal-green, and another gentleman who
is one of the guardians of its poor, we visited this
workhouse on Saturday. Every facility was given
132. We saw the ward in which Fellowes died, the
bed from which he fell, the labour superintendent
who locks the door at night and opens it in the
morning, and the pauper wardsman who was called
in to pronounce whether the rigid figure on the
door was dying or dead. Oar first task was to
ascertain the constitution of the visiting committee,
our second to inspect the book in which their weekly
certificate should be recorded. In accordance with
the published orders of the Poor-law Board, the
guardians appoint members of their own body to act
as a committee of inspection, taking the duty in
turns, and some two hours and a ball are spent
every Thursday in going through the house. It
should be here mentioned that the Bethnal-greeu
workhouse is one of the best buildings of
the kind in London, that it seems scru-
pulously clean, that its rooms and corridors
are lofty and airy, and its yards and courts
unusually good. There are some 1,300 men,
women, and children living in it, and the wants,
comforts, and necessaries of these are supplied—as
in all workhouses--by the master and his officials,
who are amenable to the guardians and the Poor-
law Board. This weekly visit by a committee is
held to ensure proper treatment of the paupers,
and a codified series of printed questions, to which
4` Yes " or "No" input is writing, should be signed
each week by those who have gone round. It was
saddening to read at Bethnal-green the written
monosyllabic answers, and to find the signatures to
have been given with unbroken regularity. Each
page of the book is filled up in perfect order, the
Yes" and "No" following each other like a column
of figures constantly duplicated. The attendance
of the medical officer, the proper tending of the
sick, and the efficiency of the nurses, are all vouched
for repeatedly, and on paper, and but for our
knowledge of the circumstances of Fellowes' death,
nothing would seem wanting in the treatment of
the sick and suffering poor.
Wards 28 and 29 are two long rooms connected
by a door, fitted up with iron bedsteads which are
well appointed, and, apart from the bareness inse-
parable from hospital, barrack, or workhouse
chambers, are not uncomfortable. Like the rest of
the workhouse they are wonderfully clean, not a
speck being visible on the well-scrubbed floors or
the recently whitewashed walls and ceiling. The
narrow single beds stand so closely to each other
that there seems barely room for a sleeper to fall
between them as Fellowes did. The pauper wards-
man, Bradley, sleeps in the room next the one in
which the death took place, and strange to say con-
tradicts flatly land in two important particulars the
evidence reported to have been given at the in-
quest. He now asserts that he is always supplied
by the labour superintendent with a candle and the
means of procuring a light ; and he only did not
knock because he saw that Fellowes was quite
dead, and "it was uo use disturbing Mr.
Pearce to bring back life to a dead man."
It will be remembered that among the most
shocking facts put forward at the inquest
were that these two rooms full of old paupers were
locked up in darkness, that they only got a light,
when Fellowes tumbled on the floor, through one of
their number having secreted a match, and that no
attempt to procure assistance was made " because
no one could hear, and it would only have been
making a noise for nothing." Assuming, as we are
bound to do, the statements made to us to be
correct, a light was never wanting in case of dire
emergency, and no one was roused because this
pauper wardsman considered himself justified in
pronouncing Fellowes to be dead. On one of our
party pressing him on this point, and asking how
he knew so certainly that life had tied, the answer
was not satisfactory. " Was the body Cold 1" was
repeated. "Yes, it were, his feet ware quite cold !"
a reply which will probably be thought less &brio-
lutely conclusive than the poor old speaker seemed
to think.

But the most painfully suggestive circumstance
is to come. The bells in these rooms are out of
order from white-washing, and no communication !
can be made by them. But there are street
knockers ou each of the doors—one of them at the
head of the bed occupied by Feilowes—by means of
which the labour-superintendent, or the master
himself, could have been easily roused. We went
to the door above and to the fluor below, we stood
on the staircases and in distant corridors while
these knockers were used, and in all places the
sound from them reverberated like cannon. In
other chambers on the same floor the bells were
similarly out of order, and there were no knockers
on the doors, but, wonderful as it may seem, in the
one where Fellowes died the method of zommuni-
eating with the rest of the house is now so noisily
efficient that it is difficult to understand bow the
statement " no one could have heard" found its wa7
into print and has remained uncontradicted until

That a considerable number of the sick paupers
in this workhouse are sent into the regular wards to
sleep, though kept in the infirmary and on sick diet
during the day, and that the nurse Eason sends
sway those whom she considers to be best able
to bear the change, is true and is a serious
stigma on the efficiency of the visiting com-
mittee. The sleeping wards are locked at night,
and kept unlit, as we were told, "by order
of the Poor-law Board," and their inmates are
practically left for some eleven hours out of the
twenty-four to the control of such paupers as
Bradley, who is seventy years of age, and who,
though vouched for as "trustworthy," is, to put it
unequal to the casualties and emergencies
almost certain to arise when a number of old people
are locked up for the night.
. .

„,
We find in the orders of the Poor-law Board
that amon4 the duties of a workhouse master is "to
visit all the wards of male paupers before 9 o'clock
every night in winter, and 10 o'clock in summer,
and see that all the male paupers are in bed : and
that all tires and lights therein are extinguished,
except so far as may be necessary for the sick.”
This is the only justification we can find of the
assertion that total darkness is enforced by the
central authority ; and as it is happily not the rule
In all workhouses, we shall probably learn at the
coming inquiry bow far the central authority sane.
tions what has been professedly done in its name.
For the rest, the visiting committee has complied
with the forms prescribed by law, the tending of
the sick has been periodically certified as proper,
and the hitter comment upon the efficiency pro-
claimed is,lthat the pauper Fellowee tumbled from
his bed and died on the floor without assistance,
because another pauper thought it was " no use
disturbing" anybody, though, as we are now told,
the means of rousing the house were at hand.

ANOTHER DEATH FROM DESTITCTION.—BETH-
NAL•GREEN WORKHOUSE acarg.—On Saturday Mr. HUM.
&toys held as inquest at the Prince of Wales Tavern, Vic.
torisepark.road. on the body of Robert Scully. aged GO.
The deceased, who was a hawker, was admitted to the
Bethnal-green Workhouse on Tuesday evening at seven,
was given a warm bath, and was then left in charge of the
vrardunan, a pauper named Heyward, who saw him to bed.
Next morning, about seven o'clock, he was dead. The
wardsman said he gave the deceased some thin gruel, and
offered him some bread, Lut he could not eat any. He
could not have obtained any beef tee or other nourishing
food without some trouble, as the people in the house
were gone to bed. The witness said he was CZ years of
age, acid was day porter, and sometimes had to be up
during the night. If he bad reported that there was
danger some one would have been sent to look after the
deceased. No one visited his ward between two and seven
o'clock. Dr. E. If. Moore made a t-mortem examination
of the body, and (*mid that the deceased bad died from a
complaint of the heart. There was very :Title food in his
stomach. He could hardly say that death was accelerated
by want of food or cold. Verdict—" That the deceased
was found dead, and that his death arose from disease of the
beast, accelerated by destitutioo, and the jary say that on
the admission of such cues of destitution, better nourish.
=eat should be given. end better superintendence exercised
daring the night time."
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