Pauper Letters

Upon the admission of a person into this house he is placed in the receiving ward till inspected by the medical officer, and then previous to putting on the house clothes he is bathed; but, Sir, you will be surprised when we tell you that by order of the master, no matter how many are in the receiving ward, they are all bathed in the same water, one after another, dirty or clean. And this to a clean person is most disgusting; And woe to the poor unfortunate who enters this house infected with the itch. He is placed in a ward in beds so dirty and between blankets so thick with the ointment with which they are rubbed, that, to use the words of one ex-wardsman, they are so thick and matted together with grease that it was as much as he could do to separate them, and during this winter the accommodation has been so scanty that two men in a state of nudity have been placed in the same bed together; and to show further how cleanliness is studied in this house only three towels per week are allowed for about 150 men to dry upon, therefore it is not to be wondered at that we can pick vermin off them, which we often do, and the wash house is only open about 10 minutes each morning, and in fact no clean person washes himself in the wash-house but on a Sunday morning, when he can use his dirty shirt in the place of the towels to dry himself. But, Sir, the worst of all is the accommodation provided for the sick. For the inmates and the out-door poor there are only about 40 beds, and at the present time we have men lying about in the damp day halls because there is no room for them in the sick wards, and it is only a few nights since one of the inmates was taken ill during the night the attention of the nurse was called to him and she ordered him into the sick ward, and to make room for him a poor old man, 70 years of age, was turned out of his warm bed and hurried across two cold yards into the body of the house, in order that attention might be paid to the man suddenly taken ill, and I leave it to your readers to judge what the effect of this might be upon an old man at this inclement season of the year. Many of our men are suffering from rheumatics, bad legs and bronchitis, are confined in a damp shed used for chopping firewood This place is built upon the edge of a ditch at the back of the Albany-Road and the fearfully damp state is shown by the rust on the choppers in the morning after their use the previous day. It has no flooring but the damp earth 18 inches below the level of the yard and the men are locked in this place daily. So fearfully cold is it in the winter that the men are cramped and almost perish; and in the summer, what with the smell from the ditch outside and the privy in, it is a wonder that some infection has not broken out over this, but this being within the gates, the attention of the sanitary officer is never called to it. Again, Sir, upon the death of every person four young men are selected to bring down the carpet, and to their disgust they have to put the body in the coffin almost in a state of nudity, except a bit of calico about 4 feet long and 12 or 13 inches wide which is put over the front of the body, which often gets displaced in shifting it from the bed to the coffin, so that the whole person of the corpse, male of female, is exposed to view, no matter of what disease they die. And, in order that we may be made to feel where we are, the master has threatened everyone found smoking in any place in the building to punish them, and it is too cold this weather for old men to smoke in the yard, this being the only comfort we poor creatures have here and we little thought in our days of prosperity, when we paid rates, that we should ever be subject to such treatment in our old days, our only crime being poverty; and there is no wonder that many prefer a prison to such a place as this.