The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924, 1920-11-14
RAZING WORKHOUSE
DICKENS PICTURED
Fate of st. Georges Recalls
the Immortal Mr.. Bundle
and Oliver TWIST.
REEKED WITH ANTIQUITY
Region of 'MurderOus, Melan-
choly and Miserable Folk
Undergoes Change.

Special Correspondence TO THE New YORK.
Herald
LONDON, Nov. 3.-News of the closing
of a workhouse is not likely to excite any
other emotion than mild satisfaction.
But the closing and demolition of st.
Georges workhouse in The Mint marks
a severance OF particular poignance with
Dickensian London, and in fact with
London older even than Dickens. OF
course 1t is the workhouse sacred to the
immortal memory of Mr.. Bundle.
1t was to st. Georges workhouse that
Oliver Twist. aged 8, returned from the
baby farm to be educated and taught
useful trade, a process accomplished by
rising at in the morning to pick oakum.
1t was in St. Georges workhouse that
Oliver appalled, the master and in
furiated Mr.. Bundle and stupeied the
guardians and made himself an ever
lasting name by asking for more"
That is the title to recollection which
Americans. For the London antiquar.
ian its interest is more ancient still.
The Mint, a name still preserved in the
label of the street in which the work.
house stands, was established by Henry
VIII. for the production of his coinage.
Despite the delicacy of this process the
surrounding neighborhood arrogated to
itself immunity from the ministry or
bailiffs and tipstaffs and highwaymen
made it their headquarters
MAT Of the Mint" an Outcast.
Playgoers who have revelled in the
antique delicacies and indelicacies of
The Beggars' Opera" at the Hammer
smith Lyric in the last six moths have
as a rule misinterpreted the name Of
he heroic blackguard Captain Mac
Deaths snivelling friend. Mat Of the
Mint. HHe was not an operative within
but among the purlieus of that institu-
ton. He was a convivial spirit with
Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild and
of the hungry poets of the school the
'Beggars' Opera" immortalized. of Nat
Lee and Nahum Tate, who with one
Brady wrote Tate and Brady's metrical
psalms.
What the district was when Jack
Sheppard rode out to stop chaise 1t
was in the early days of Dickens muir
Many of it's courts stood just as they
were when Puritan and cavalier in turn
searched them for traitors, with great,
desolate houses broken and open, inhabit-
ed only on the lower floor, whence totter-
ing sta.rcases led crafty to ruinous rooms
busy with the 'shrieking and running Of
large, black eyed rats 1t is little
wonder that when the cholera reached
England in 1892 the first case was in
'The Mint of the Borough"
Dickens, learned the district SORROW
FULLY and Well. During the novelist's
boyhood his father was imprisoned for
debt in the Marshalsea prison near by.
He has told of the little low browed
old shops in which he bought bootlaces
of n Saturday night and of the show
wagons at the corners into which he
plunged to see the fat pig. the wild
Indian and the little lady" He was liv-
ing then in Liant street in the house to
which he afterwards assigned Bob
Sawyer. Many of his characters and
scenes Shrek Of the old borough, but
none more loudly through the ages. per-
haps than the unnamed workhouse OF
Oliver Twist. Mr.. Bundle and the guar
dams.
Slow or Quick Starvation.
Guardians who. like them, sage, deep.
philosophical men, established the rule
that all poor people might choose be-
tween gradual starvation in the home
and quick starvation out of II. have
happily ceased to figure in the eleemosy-
nary schemes of to-day. They. down
there in The Mint, contracted with the
water works to lay on an unlimited sup
ply of water. and with a corn factor to
supply periodically small quantities of
oatmeal, and issued three meals of thin
Cruel a day. with an onion twice a week
and half a roll on Sundays"
The first results. II will be remem-
bered. were disappointing owing TO the
increase in the bill of that undertaken
TO whom Oliver was later apprenticed
on account OF his criminal appetite.
But persistence revealed that "ths num-
Der OF worIxhouse inmates got thin, as