Hitchin Workhouse Casual Ward (1904).

THE SPIKE.

I went and looked through the bars of the great iron gate of the workhouse in Hitchin. It was the night of the 27th of October, and a light was burning in the ledge. I had walked twenty-six miles that day.

A man came forward as I rattled at the gate.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"I want to get in for the night."

"You'll have to pick four pounds of oakum in the morning if you come in here."

He looked sharply at me as he gave me this information.

"All right," I said. And I was let in through the gate.

In the lodge I was asked my name and my age and my trade, and where I had come from and where I was going" to. And then I was searched, just as one would be in a police-station.

When all this was over I was given a piece of dry bread, supposed, to be half a pound in weight, and I was told to go along down the workhouse yard till I came to the second door on my left, through which I was to turn.

IN THE SPIKE.

I went slowly on through the darkness and turned through the door as directed. I was in the spike.

It was an oblong, cell-like room, partitioned off, into two parts. The part to the left—about four-fifths of the length of the whole room—was where the casuals slept. The smaller part of the room, into which I had entered from the workhouse yard, was half filled with smoke coming from a worn looking stove in which an old man was trying to make up a good fire. Against the wall to the right of this room was a bath of the ordinary size, which was half full of filthy water. The water might well be filthy, for thirteen men had washed their bodies in it without its being changed. In the room was the curious, lowering, sickening smell of the low lodging-house.

Nothing was said to me about the taking of a bath, and I sat down on a form near the stove with the bread that had been given me at the lodge in my hand. It was now about half-past seven, and I was wishing that I could lie down somewhere. I was tired with my tramp.

But a surprise was in store for me. The old man at the stove — who seamed to be in charge of the casual ward — told me that there was no hammock for me. I would have to lie on the floor. It was a stone floor, but I would have to lie on it.

To lie on a stone floor is worse than to lie on wet earth, and I would have made my way out then and there, police or no police, only that I was determined to see how far organised charity would really go with a destitute man. I was determined to have it tested upon my own body. It would be well if the well-fed and well-housed magistrates were forced to do the same thing*. It might put a little humanity into them.

DODGING AND EVASION.

By right of law, the workhouse — when it allowed me in — should have provided me with accommodation, even if it had to go to the length of putting me up at a lodging-house in the town. But the workhouse dodges and evades even the mean law that England has made for its destitute people. It is as well for me to go fully into what happened in this casual ward, for I feel sure that if the working men of England only knew how they would be treated when misfortune came upon them they would never rest till the present workhouse system was swept into this hell to which it belongs. The trouble is that the true nature of these abominable casual wards is not generally known to the public.

I went into the place where the destitute men were lying in the hammocks. There were nine hammocks, with a man in each of them. And there were two men lying on the stone floor beneath, the hammocks. It turned, out that I was not the only man who had to lie on the floor. I was told that two other men had been accommodated, but they had been given hammocks in another place. Counting myself, fourteen' men had come in that night.

I went back to the old man, and he gave me two small, rough blankets, which turned out to be infested with vermin.

I was still thinking about my having to sleep upon the stone floor. I did not like the idea at all, and I asked the old man if there were no way out of it. But there was no way, he told me shortly. I pressed him, however, for sleeping on such a floor in the winter time was enough to kill a man — Couldn't he get me some planks to lie on? Or couldn't he get me some straw to put on the floor? His answer to my question was that I would have to do as the other two men were doing.

And then a thought came to me. My eye fell upon the drain-board that lay by the side of the bath. It was about five feet long, and it was wet from the men standing upon it after getting out of the bath. But wet wood wouldn't strike so cold into the body as stone. I would take the drain-board in where the casuals were sleeping and lie upon it! I picked it up and stood it on end.

THE MAN FBOM MAJUBA.

"I'll take this," I said to the old man. He made no objection, and I took it inside along with an empty zinc bucket. And I laid the board down between two hammocks — spread one of the blankets upon it — put the zinc bucket on its side between the top end of it and the wall to act as a pillow and stretched myself down. I was tired enough to lie anywhere.

While I was doing all this I was complimented by various voices from the hammocks upon my idea in thinking of the drain-board. Some were joking, some were ironical. I could hear the voices round me, but I could not make out the faces of the casuals. It was too-dark. The only light that was in the place was a feeble, dim light which came through the open door from the smaller compartment where the old man was at the stove. The place where the casuals were lying was a place of shadows and blackness.

I gave the piece of bread I had been given at the lodge to a man who was in the hammock nearest me. I was unable to eat it. It turned out that this man was a soldier who had been in the fight at Majuba Hill.

And then the old man at the stove slammed and bolted the door at the end of the compartment and we were in utter pitch-black darkness.

Our voices rose. Everyone seemed to talk at once. Voice answered voice through the ward. The effect of a number of men talking through the darkness was strange. We singled each other out by the character and peculiarity of our voices. The hearing became intensified. I could understand now how the hearing of blind people became subtle and. quickened and more alive.

THE TALK IN THE DARKNESS.

Men spoke of the happenings of the day. They told of how they had looked for work and how far they had tramped. They spoke of where they were going when they would be let out of the spike.

They would not be let out till the morning but one following. They would have to work picking oakum through the whole of the next day.

The conversation shifted curiously in the. darkness. But it was as controlled and related as if it were day-time and the men were able to see one another. A deep-voiced man had been in many spikes. He was a navvy who followed public works. And he had also been a soldier. He cursed England, and said that its Government cared nothing for a man when it had had its whack out of him. This man was a violent man, who had often been in prisons. He told of how he got nine, months' hard labour for assaulting a workhouse master who had tried to bully him. And as I lay on the wet drain-board I must confess that all my sympathies were with the deep-voiced navvy. I would have rejoiced had he killed a dozen workhouse masters. They were an unworthy breed.

How different being in gaol was to being in the spike, said the navvy. The gaol was a palace compared with it. But it was difficult for a man who was hungry and out of work to get into gaol now! A man had to have two or three good characters. And one of them ought to be from a parson! The navvy had a certain sense of iron humour.

In fact, a spit of iron humour pervaded the whole conversation. When men are in the last ditch the mockery of life appeals to them.

A CURIOUS CROWD.

How the long night passed I cannot tell. The conversation in the darkness kept up for hours and hours. And then it gradually died away.

I never slept through the whole night.

Here at last was dawn! I saw it coming through chink above in the roof. And soon the men began to talk again. And in time the workhouse bell rang. And the door of the ward was opened and the old man I had seen the night before came and told us to get up.

We got up from the filthy blankets and put on what clothes we had taken off.

Now it was full daylight in the long cell-like room. And there was the man with the deep voice — the navvy. He was a powerful man not much over thirty, and his face was strong and hard. He was a navvy with the bearing of a soldier. His trousers were gathered up with legstraps at the knees after the fashion of navvies.

There was a poor and miserable looking old man with a beard. And there was a still more miserable looking lad of eighteen. There was the man who fought at Majuba. And there was a tall, silent man who spoke not a word. It turned out that he had come into the workhouse the night before with his wife and children. They had been separated.

It was a curious crowd. Twelve all told! A miserable crowd that had fallen into the merciless cluteh of organised charity.

Breakfast. Here it was. A piece of dry bread for each man, and a drink of water out of a bucket. For dinner it would be a piece of dry bread again and an ounce and a half of cheese. For supper it would again be a piece of dry bread and a drink of water

BBEAKFAST AND OAKUM.

Workhouse charity. It was enough to put black murder into the heart of any man who was a man. And for this charity England paid millions of money a year. Thinking of this "charity " was enough to make a man curse his country.

In came the oakum. Four pounds of it for every man. Unbeaten oakum. It would take a man who was unused to the work more than a week to pick it. This unbeaten oakum was in the shape of short pieces of rope from six to nine incheslong. It was hard and black through being soaked in tar.

The navvy and the man from Majuba began to talk about soldiering. Both of them had been in the Artillery.

The porter now came in and told me and the other two men who had had to sleep on the floor that in consideration of this we would be let out at half-past ten that morning. The rest of the men would have to pick oakum through the whole of the day. They would be let out on the following morning — if they did their task to the satisfaction of the workhouse master. This was the rule of the casual ward. Men were kept there two nights and one day. But the actual time of their getting out really depended on the whim of the workhouse master, for the work meted out was more than any man could do in one day.

At half-past ten I was let out. I had had enough picking oakum. It was trying and detestable work. I would far sooner have broken stones. The porter took the three of us down the yard and let us out by the great iron workhouse gate. And as I walked down the road it seemed to me that it would be far better for a destitute man to sleep out in the snow and the rain than to avail himself of the hospitality of the spike.