The Sun.
London, England, 1866-01-27 00:00:00

The Houseless Poor in Stepney.

An official inspection made by 11. B. Farnall,
C. 8., the Poor-law Board Commissioner on Thurs-
day, of the casual wards of the Stepney Union dis-
closed a most debasing and inhuman treatment of
the houseless. It will be remembered that the
" Amateur Casual," in his concluding letter gave
Mr. Farnall a hint that, in the opinion of the work-
house frequenters, the Poplar and Tottenham
casual wards were the worst in London ; but there
are no Tottenham wards, and the Poplar wards, as
was proved by the report in the papers of the visit of
Sir George Grey, Sir Richard Mayne, and other
gentlemen, were good and sufficient, while in other
wards, not mentioned, the people were found hud-
dled together in the most disgraceful manner.
These " other" wards, and, doubtless the wards
meant by the homeless critics in Lambeth, may be
supposed to be identical with those of the Stepney
Union. These are the old Ratcliffe Workhouse, and
form the wards from the parishes of Stepney, Shad-
well, Limehouse, and Ratcliffe. An inquiry of the
officials proved that they were visited about a fort-
nig
ht since by Sir George Grey and his party on the
"Midnight Ministerial Inspection." A description
of these wards from personal inspection and an ac-
count of the mode in which the poor are treated
will give the public another insight into the
manner in which the Poor-law is administered by
the so-called " Guardians of the poor."
In the yard of the old workhouse is a row of
worksheds with a loft overhead, and this loft, which
has a sloping roof, is about nine or ten feet high in
the best part, and is reached by a ladder. All round
the floor, on the floor, as closely packed as possible,
and without any division whatever, are the beds of
the men, made of mere hay-bags and stuffed with a
handful of hay or straw—just enough, in fact, to
keep the sleeper off the ground. Incredible and in-
human, debasing and demorali;ing as it may, ap-
pear, it is a fact that the men have to lie upon these
hay-bags stark naked, for all their clothes are taken
away, and no shirts are supplied to the men or night
gowns of any sort to the women, and all the cover-
ing the wretches have is a rug and a worn out
blanket, and this in a place not built for human
habitation, and unlighted and unwarmed. The
women's " beds" are not made up so close together
as the men's, but each is doubled, and misfortune
thus makes the unpitied, houseless women—most
of whom, it was stated by the official, were of a
somewhat decent class—acquainted with strange
bedfellows, the old being thus " pigged" with the
young, the fever-smitten London tramp with the
healthy girl from the country, and the clean way-
farer with the parasite-covered denizen of the street.
This is no overdrawn picture. The ordeal which
the recipients of relief have to undergo is as revolt-
ing as the sleeping arrangements. The casual is
admitted at the gate by a porter, a pauper, and in-
troduced to the paid official, who fills the office of
clerk as well as superintendent, and whose wife
looks to the female casuals. The casual is searched,
and then handed over to a pauper, who has charge
of the lower shed, where he is kept until it is his
turn to be bathed. If he is the first in order, he goes
into an apartment the floor of which is paved, and
which is in charge of a pauper, only one degree re-
moved from being an imbecile. In this apartment
is a large copper, and a bath, the latter fitted with
taps for hot and cold water. The casual having
stripped and bathed, passes into another apartment,
where be leaves his clothes and receives a blanket,
wrapped in which he goal into the shed where the
other waiting casuals are, and having mounted
the ladder leading to the loft he drops the
blanket to the next candidate for a bath, and
skips off to bed coverless. The old man in

charge of the bath-room was asked how many
people he bathed in the same water. lle looked
vacantly into the face of his interrogator, and,
after touching his forehead with his forefinger for a
few moments, as though he felt the thinking appa-
ratus to be out of order, replied, " Oh, six on 'em."
He was asked if he did not mean " ten on 'cm," and
after shaking himself hopelessly, he announced that
he thought the number was six. It must be under-
stood that in this loft, so overcrowded with beds,
there is no supervision during the night, and the
quiet and helpless, the young and the old, are leftto
the mercy of the ruffians who, thrust from the neigh-
bouring wards of Poplar by the supervision of the
police there, crowd to Ratcliffe, where, if they have
had beds and a place to sleep in which when full
must be pestilential, they have what all the ruffian
class highly appreciate—the liberty to indulge un-
checked in whatever brutal and vicious sports they
think proper.

There was a meeting of the Stepney guardians in
the afternoon, and the Commissioner attended the
meeting, which was held, be it remarked,' in a room
luxuriously furnished, and the fittings and ornamen-
tation of which were of the most elaborate charac-
ter, showing that the administrators of the Poor-
law in this part of the town have a proper regard
for their own comfort. On the entry of the Commis-
sioner, one of the guardians jocularly observed to
to him, " You don't like our wards, I hear," or
words to that effect, to which the Commissioner re-
plied, " They are shocking, shocking, indeed." The
Commissioner proceeded to read his minute, founded
upon the observation he had made while going over
the wards, and just as this was finished the chair-
man, pointing to the writer, who was seated at the
opposite-end of the room, requested to be informed
who that gentleman was. The reply that he
was a reporter, who had attended in the ordinary
course to report the proceedings, had an effect not
easily to be described, and he was at once informed
they had a minute on their books excluding all re-
presentatives of the press from their delibera-
tions, but it was hinted that if he made a written
request to be present this would be taken into
consideration. On leaving the room for this purpose
he was soon informed by the clerk that the applica-
tion would not be acceded to if made, and he was
requested to consider the business he had heard dis-
cussed while his object was unknown--he having
taken it for granted that the " Board," like nearly
all meetings of London guardians, was an open one
—should be considered as private. Under these cir-
cumstances the Commissioner's minute cannot be
made public, but conclusions may be drawn as to
what its contents were when these other facts are
stated. The original wards certified by Mr. Farnall
were in the lower shed, and the beds were then all
separate, men and women having proper sleeping
places. Without consulting the Commissioner, and
without informing him of what they were doing, the
Guardians pulled down all the sleeping places, thus
inflicting not only a wrong on the poor, but a wrong
on the metropolis generally, for this lodging of the
houseless is paid for out of the general rate, and
when a certificate is once given to a ward no change
whatever should be made in that ward without the
Commissioner's sanction. One thing may be stated,
and that is, that the certificate of the Guardians for
these wards has been withdrawn, and the expense
incurred by the four parishes of the " union" for
housing the poor will not be refunded out of the
general rate, which it would have been had not this
discovery been made by the Commissioner. It may
be added that all the casuals are treated in the man-
ner here described, and that the only effect the visit
of Sir G. Grey had upon the Guardians has been to
make them study what powers they have with re-
spect to keeping out of their doors all who arc likely
to " inquire too curiously."

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE.