H.J. Tennant in the Eastbourne Workhouse Casual Ward - Part V

THE EASTBOURNE CASUAL WARD.

A NIGHT AND DAY IN THE WORKHOUSE.

A FRUGAL DINNER.

[By an Amateur Casual.]

PART V.
FROM THE WARD TO THE PRISON.

Coming into the yard we found the master again expostulating with the man who called himself delicate, and as the casual still persisted that he preferred to go to prison to breaking stones, or picking the oakum, on bread and water, the master went off to get a policeman. Not long after a policeman appeared and the man was marched off in custody. On the following Monday he was summoned before the Magistrates, and making no defence, was sent to Lewes for seven days.

A FRUGAL DINNER.

After breaking the stones for another half-an-hour, the porter appeared with the dinner, being a similar quantity of bread to that we had had previously, and a modicum of cheese. For drink there was the water tap as before. I don't complain of the bread — certainly breaking stones as I had been all the morning it ate very sweet, and I relished it in a manner that I never had previously done. As to the cheese, there wasn't enough of it, though in justice to the authorities, I must say I am ignorant as to the amount supplied in other workhouses, but considering that there was dry bread the preceding night, and dry bread in the morning, we broke stones enough to entitle us to a larger quantity of cheese.

However, I ate what there was of it with the greatest relish, and returned to my task. The afternoon was wearing on, and I expected that I should be unable to finish as my muscles were giving out. My back, too, was strained with stooping, while my hands were, so blistered that it was painful to grasp the bar. At about three o'clock, as well as I can judge, an old man came in from the workhouse to wheel away what I had broken.

WASTE NOT, WANT NOT!

He was a sturdy looking man, of 65 to 70 years of age, and when he had filled his barrow I found him communicative. I was almost fainting with fatigue, and was glad enough to chat.

"Have you been in the House long?"

"No, I only cause in this winter; but the truth is I ought not to have come in at all. If I'd been a bit saving I should have done very. well. When I was eighteen I went to London as coachman to Colonel Griffiths, in Bayswater, and stayed with him for five years. He gave me £35 a year, and board and lodgings. After that I lived a long time with a gentleman at East Grinstead. They paid me well, and then I got a situation with Colonel Crawford. He used to drive a dashing pair of horses. He was ordered off to the Crimean War, and I went with him. We had a dreadful passage out, and it was cold when we got there, and it rained nearly all the time. Lots of the men died of fever, and I saw some terrible sights after the battles of Inkerman. Col. Crawford was killed at the battle of Alma, and I had to come home. I got a situation in Eastbourne afterwards, and lived with one family nearly twenty years. If they hadn't died I should have been with them now, but master and missus both died, and I went in for driving a hackney carriage. This, however, I had to give up, as after a year or two's exposure, I used to find myself. powerless to hold the reins, which would slip out of my hands. The little money I had saved soon went, but if I had saved more when I might have, I shouldn't be in the Union now," sighed the old man, as he marched off with his barrow.

FRIENDS IN NEED.

Half-an-hour afterwards, when I began to despair of accomplishing my task, and to feel thoroughly exhausted, another inmate came with a barrow. He was younger than the other, and more powerful.

"Let me give you a turn," he said, as he watched me at work.

I was only too willing, and setting vigorously to work, in a quarter of an hour or so he had so far lessened the pile as to make the remainder an easy task.

"Accustomed to it?"

"Yes," he replied; "I can break the lot in five hours."

Some time after, the porter coming in, he gave me a little help just to show me how to do it, and before long the odious task was completed. My satisfaction was intense when I had swept up the stones and litter; and on going into the bath-room had a good wash. Never was I so glad to complete a task — never was a wash so refreshing.

UNFAIRNESS OF THE SYSTEM.

The defect of the system is obvious. To able-bodied men, who go from ward to ward, the task maybe comparatively light, but even with them it is five hours hard work. To an unfortunate, just entering for one night, unaccustomed, may, to manual labour at all, the work is almost an impossibility, though there is none of that irritation from the officials which exists in some places. The Eastbourne officers, both master and porter, were willing to treat the men as leniently as the regulations could possibly allow.

But the regulations are unnecessarily severe. The notice says that casuals who stay in for more than one day shall break 12 cwt. of flints per day, or 10 cwt. if the stones are unusually hard. Now I say that for nine persons out of ten the 12 cwt. is an impossibility. The quantity I had to break was three cwt. It took me pretty well all day. I could not have broken 12 cwt. in less than three days — and, without being herculean, I am fairly muscular. What an elderly man, weak through want of food, would do I can't guess. The most practised hands could not have completed the 12 cwts. in less than 16 consecutive hours, even granting that they could keep at their best so long.

The twilight was closing in, and the men were grouped about talking, the shoemaker pulled out his testament and began to read, and the tailor sat near.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

Presently the latter, who had been cogitating for some time, broke the silence.

"The parson was quite right," he said, "about the drink. I know I've suffered enough from it." "Yes," he went on, glancing at me as he spoke, "take my advice, mate, don't drink. If I were you, and couldn't get good employment, I'd enlist — you're just the height and build. It's a bad thing to be on the road so young." I laughed, and thanked him as roughly as I could.

"Look here, mate," he continued, "you think I'm a bad'un. I am as leary a cove as you'll meet; but I might hare been a very different man if I'd only married."

I grew interested, and the man went on after a little while:—

"What the parson said has made me think of old times, and dash it —

Here the tailor drew his dirty cuff across his eyes.

"If I ain't blubbering like a baby."

"No 't aint my mother. Bless her she died before I turn'd bad. I don't often talk, but I don't mind telling you all about it. When I was a lad I wished to be a tailor, and I was prenticed. When I came of age, my father gave me a little money and I started business in West Street, Shoreditch. After a year or so I got a sting trade. I was going on all right until I met Jane Williams, — "I'm telling the truth," he added, glancing at me, "if I am in rags — and we agreed to be married. I was always very jealous and one day I saw her stop in the street and kiss somebody. I was mad, and rushed at her, the man kept me off, and she began to explain, I wouldn't listen to explanations and rushed off. I went to the Pavilion, and meeting some fellows I knew we went and had some drink, and I got into a row and got locked up. When I came out I wouldn't see Jane,and I went from bad to worse, until my business was gone. Since then I have been in all sorts of places. I've have been all over England, and been to Paris, and I never seemed to come to no good. I went back to Shoreditch after a couple of years, and found that Jane had married, and I heard from a pal of mine that the man I hit was her brother who had come home from America unexpectedly. If I hadn't been so rash I should have been a respectable men, with a comfortable home and family," and the man relapsed into his accustomed silence.

FREEDOM.

The porter appeared again with his basket and dealt out the quantity of bread, and stated that I could leave, with the master's permission.

The tailor heard that I was going to leave, and knowing from the search the evening before how empty my pockets were, asked me in an undertone, "going to crack a crib?'

I re-assured him on this point, and shortly after I was liberated.

The delight on getting once more into the street was indescribable, though I was soon recalled to the fact that my clothes were ragged, by the way people avoided me, and I vowed that come what may I would never again enter a casual ward.

Before closing, one cannot help referring to the lack of accommodation in the yard for casuals during wet weather. All the cells are closed, and the bathroom would only accommodate a very few. Could not a shed of some sort be erected?

THE END.