WORKHOUSE LIFE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1405, 15 December 1884, Page 2

WORKHOUSE LIFE.

(By an Ex-Paupeb.) «■ ; A truthful sketch of any phase of life of Which people generally can bare no experience or personal knowledge, cannot be without public interest to some extent; and many persons must have had their wonder excited as to what sort of life that can be which induces numbers to prefer privations of the severest kind, and even death, rather than avail thomselveiTef it. The following sketch may, perhaps, throw a little light on the priint, arid gratify reasonable curiosity on > The inmates of the workhouse, for con* venience of classification,, are mainly divided into two classes, the young the old—all under the nominal age pot sixty being included under, the fdrlner, and those above that .age : in the latter category. The life, it may premised, generally is one of semi-imprUonmerit for both young and bid, and the labor of the former is of the severest description, eon* slating of stone-breaking andoakum-pick-ing by task work, taxing to the almost the physical strength of the initiated and awakening the daapairof the while the food is barely sufficient for the support of. life with any regard to health. An able-bodied pauper is set to break a bushel of stones or piok.Blb of oakum per day, and no regard ; whatever is paid to what may have previously been his occupation. A pauperised clerk or tiilor jgpts the same appointed task as a tifevvy br laborer, or other classes of men 'who have been inured to rough, hard work all their lives. There are eight working hours per day, exclusive of meal times. diet consists of a pint of oatmeal'gvtfel for breakfast and a pint of a thin kiridrif‘scrip for sapper, all the week through! Sißlisr three days a week consists of a soup and a slice of bread ; a fourth day, - a pound of suet pudding ; a fifth day, a pint of what is -termed Irish stew, in which, by a bare possibility, there may he one ot two pieces of meat; a sixth day, four ounces of meat and tqree,ot font pp|«t£9f > ano on Sunday, five ounces of boued bacon, with a tolerable supply but no potatoes or bread. But .potwitn* standing this hard work' and ’meagre fife, it is amazing that a number of ’able-bodied young men, equalling the numerioaWbrca of a great army, should he wfllioff to resort to it not only temporarily* hy thi force of circumstances, but as a permanent mode of subsistence. - The oldwre put to woolpioking, but not tasked, 7 ; and-'.their diet is the same, with the. exception of breakfast, which consists of a pint of tea and bread and butter instead, of gruel. A. regards the young inmatesatm ÜBtljC, as already remarked,., surprising and melancholy to reflect what a vast arrayof able bodied, healthy won aro Ja waste the most precious years of life,~aad vegetate, as it were, in hi mode of _exfat d ence inferior to that, of the lower 4mj«al«, submitting to an uttar abnegation of “the rational’ enjoyments,' hopes, arid aspirations of intellectual' beings,. b9FWCt meanly endowed. . Nor is.thb non much less surprising in a’ mdralrind social point of view in coming under the denpminatl# men, for a very large proportionj)f are still in the possession of rohrist health, sound and vigorous of limb, and .in every reapset compotont to teka tbdif flhftTd in too ordinary activities of life.' No doubt many have been elbowed out of their respective* fields of labor by younger competitors, by the limited demand for labor inperiodsaf general depression, and by the vancda contingencies which, occasionally produce distress among the working classes) and’ those in a lower scale. Bat it is spectacle of men who, by the vicissitudes of life, to which all are liable, become temporary inmates of the workhouse, that need', occasion surprise. It is thefact of the laigenumbers of men in- full possession of their* physical energies, who, taking'advantage of legal definition as to age, throw themselves permanently upon the rales, that is so perplexing; for the humiliation, indignity,. and other disagreeable accessories of the condition : should constitute; a deterrent influence, arid no doubt doeii; so in those instances where death is preferred to it. • „. . i

This brief sketch contrasts strikingly with that given of a. convict life which, appeared recently in the Standard ; andthe contrast is altogether in favor of the latter—so much so as to be to . excite the envy of the young able-bodied : pauper, who, on reading it, might feel slightly disposed to qualify for - the infin- • itely preferable condition sketched, by .the., convict. The morbid sympathy. with, : ,. crime exhibited by that sketch is-a curtous psychological fact which is difficult to understand or explain. No such, solid-., tude is manifested for the wretched pauper, who is spurned and despised on all hands. For him philanthropy has,no sympathy to spare, and even Christian. feeling hardly condescends to consider or, ". in any way notice his case.. The pauper'a,: greatest deprivation appears to : be the want of tobacco. Many of them are willing to barter a meal for a pipe with * fellow-pauper lucky enough to have each a thing to spare, ald many of them obo*--' :r sionally take their discharge for the »Ih purpose of picking up all the 'onds of cigars they can find in the streets, which they facetiously term Pauperdom is mainly composed of the classes forming the very lowest strata of the social system in town and country—litfSWtW»rhawkers, costermongers, stablemen with an occasional sparse and merely temporary contingent from the mechanic and artisan classes. That the mass of workhouse inmates should not find the quite intolerable need occasion no surprise. Perhaps it Is quite as good a 8 they have been ; accustomed to, with the advantage of * and being regular certain. ’. ■ suffering from any external ..ailment the pauper is sent into the union infirmary, where, again,' the -treatment is vastly . inferior to that given to. the felon, as described by the ex-conviot. — l Globe,