A Real Casual on Casual Wards - Clerkenwell (1866).

Clerkenwell.—This workhouse asks the same questions as the others, and receives the same lying answers. The night I was there the doorkeeper was very drunk and, not to mince it, made an ass of himself. First, against one side of the door, and then bouncing against the others, he told us to deliver up our pipes: if not, we were searched. The history of this is soon told. We went through a passage into a yard, and at the end of the yard, or further side of it rather, were pushed into a little place in the dark. This place, I understood from my companions, had formerly been a dead-house, but was lately converted into a casual ward. It held six men; and however correct the madhouse "business" might be, I am perfectly sure no place could be darker or more miserable. Not the slightest light — all dark: in the expressive words of one of my companions, it was "dark as [blank]." A little piece of bread was our supper, and a ricketty bed, that would scarcely hold us, to lie upon. One of the beds fell down, a victim to weakness, and the occupier of it had to lay on the floor. The others, wonderfully enough, managed to keep up. The night at this workhouse passed quietly, and you go out at six o'clock in the morning on receiving about a spoonful of gruel and a small piece of bread without doing any work.