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

Marylebone Workhouse, in Marylebone Road, is a very decent place. The porter will take you in at any time without the slightest grumbling, and without having to wait. Having taken your name, &c., he gives you in charge of a pauper inmate, who leads you through yards without end, until you come to the right one, which leads into the casual ward, or the casual ward into it, perhaps I should say. At the ward he delivers you into a man's hands who has charge of the place. The ward is a long place, with an immense fire in the centre of it. This fire is always kept in, and the consequence is that it warms the place thoroughly. The beds are a mattress, bolster, and one rag, on an iron bedstead. Two sleep together, but still you are not inconveniently crowded, as the beds are a good size. The man in charge, a pauper inmate, who is called Daddy, tells you to strip and got into one of two baths at the further end of the room, where there is some clean water, and a half-a-dozen perfectly clean towels! Having bathed, you can get into bed (they don't give you a shirt) and enjoy your pipe — a luxury denied at every other place in London — and be as warm as possible, even if there be but one rug. "Daddy," if he sees you smoking, will come up and ask if you have got any "hard-up?" On answering affirmatively, he will, without the least shyness, ask for some, at the same time telling you, with many adjectives beginning with B, that you are the best man alive, with a great deal else to the same purport. He also gets quite communicative, and tells you he was a blacksmith, but having received an accident he was obliged to come in the "house" and continuing, "I never rued but once, and that's ever since." At eight o'clock the porter comes round with a small loaf of bread, and after that's demolished, and a few pipes smoked amid the general conversation all fall asleep. Awake at seven, perfectly warm, and not shivering as at some places, you commence picking one and a half pounds of oakum, and at eight have breakfast — pint of gruel and a small loaf of bread. If the oakum is not picked you stay till half-past eleven.