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 ioRH
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.
It was to st. Georges workhouse that
Oliver Twist. aged g. returned from the
baby farm to be educated and taught a
useful trade, a process accomplished by
rising at in the morning to pick oakum.
1t was in S. Georges workhouse that
Oliver appalled, the master and in
furiated Mr.. Bundle and stupefied the
guardians and made himself an ever
lasting name by asking for more"
That is the title to recollection which
st. Georges can defend with most
Americans For the London antiquar-
ian it's 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 delcacy of this process the
surrounding neighborhood arrogated to
itself immunity from the ministry of
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 moi,ths have
as a rule misinterpreted the name OF
he heroic Backyard 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 MAI
Lee and Nahum Tate, who with one
Brady wrote Tate and Bradys metrica
,salms.
What the district was when Jaci
Sheppard rode out to stop q chaise II
was in the early days of Dickens, "mur
|
| Many of it's courts stood just as they
were when Puritan and cavalier in turr
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 o
large, black eyed rats 1t is littl
wonder that when the cholera reached
England in 1882 the first case was In
1.-THE Mint of the Borough
Dickens, learned the district sorrow
| fully and we'll. During the novelisti
boyhood his father was imprisoned 70
debt in the Marshalsea prison near by
He has told of the little low browet
old shops" in which he bought bootlace
of n Saturday night and of the SHOW
wagons at the corners into which h
plunged to see the fat pig. the wilt
Indian and the little lady" He was liv
ing then in Liant street in the house t
which he afterwards assigned Boil
Sawyer. Many of his characters ant
scenes Shrek of the old borough, blu
hnone more loudly through the ages, per
haps, than the unnamed workhouse o
| Oliver Twist, Mr. Bundle and the guar
dams.
Slow or Quick Starvation.
Guardians who, like them, sage, deep
philosophical men, established the rul
that all poor people might choose be
tween gradual starvation in the hom
and quick starvation out of It, hav
happily ceased to figure in the eleemosy
nary schemes of to-day. They. down
there in The Mint, contracted with tn
water works to lay on an unlimited sup
ply of water. and with a corn factor &
supply perio Ideally small quantities o
| Ia ne y =
cruel day. with an onion twice a weel
and half a roll on Sundays"
The first results. it will be remem
bered. we're disappointing owing . TIL
increase in the bill of that undertake
TO whom Oliver was later apprentices
on account OF his criminal appetite
But persistence revealed that "the mum
Der OF workhouse inmates got thin, al