Part 21 (1/2)

I shall never forget the bitter wail of a blind man in a little East End shop at the close of a murky day. He had been the eldest of five children, with a mother and no father. Being the eldest, he had starved and worked as a child to put bread into the mouths of his little brothers and sisters. Not once in three months did he ever taste meat. He never knew what it was to have his hunger thoroughly appeased. And he claimed that this chronic starvation of his childhood had robbed him of his sight. To support the claim, he quoted from the report of the Royal Commission on the Blind, ”Blindness is more prevalent in poor districts, and poverty accelerates this dreadful affliction.”

But he went further, this blind man, and in his voice was the bitterness of an afflicted man to whom society did not give enough to eat. He was one of an enormous army of blind in London, and he said that in the blind homes they did not receive half enough to eat. He gave the diet for a day:-

Breakfast--0.75 pint of skilly and dry bread.

Dinner --3 oz. meat.

1 slice of bread.

0.5 lb. potatoes.

Supper --0.75 pint of skilly and dry bread.

Oscar Wilde, G.o.d rest his soul, voices the cry of the prison child, which, in varying degree, is the cry of the prison man and woman:-

”The second thing from which a child suffers in prison is hunger. The food that is given to it consists of a piece of usually bad-baked prison bread and a tin of water for breakfast at half-past seven. At twelve o'clock it gets dinner, composed of a tin of coa.r.s.e Indian meal stirabout (skilly), and at half-past five it gets a piece of dry bread and a tin of water for its supper. This diet in the case of a strong grown man is always productive of illness of some kind, chiefly of course diarrhoea, with its attendant weakness. In fact, in a big prison astringent medicines are served out regularly by the warders as a matter of course.

In the case of a child, the child is, as a rule, incapable of eating the food at all. Any one who knows anything about children knows how easily a child's digestion is upset by a fit of crying, or trouble and mental distress of any kind. A child who has been crying all day long, and perhaps half the night, in a lonely dim-lit cell, and is preyed upon by terror, simply cannot eat food of this coa.r.s.e, horrible kind. In the case of the little child to whom Warder Martin gave the biscuits, the child was crying with hunger on Tuesday morning, and utterly unable to eat the bread and water served to it for its breakfast. Martin went out after the breakfasts had been served and bought the few sweet biscuits for the child rather than see it starving. It was a beautiful action on his part, and was so recognised by the child, who, utterly unconscious of the regulations of the Prison Board, told one of the senior wardens how kind this junior warden had been to him. The result was, of course, a report and a dismissal.”

Robert Blatchford compares the workhouse pauper's daily diet with the soldier's, which, when he was a soldier, was not considered liberal enough, and yet is twice as liberal as the pauper's.

PAUPER DIET SOLDIER 3.25 oz. Meat 12 oz.

15.5 oz. Bread 24 oz.

6 oz. Vegetables 8 oz.

The adult male pauper gets meat (outside of soup) but once a week, and the paupers ”have nearly all that pallid, pasty complexion which is the sure mark of starvation.”

Here is a table, comparing the workhouse officer's weekly allowance:-

OFFICER DIET PAUPER 7 lb. Bread 6.75 lb.

5 lb. Meat 1 lb. 2 oz.

12 oz. Bacon 2.5 oz.

8 oz. Cheese 2 oz.

7 lb. Potatoes 1.5 lb.

6 lb. Vegetables none.

1 lb. Flour none.

2 oz. Lard none.

12 oz. b.u.t.ter 7 oz.

none. Rice Pudding 1 lb.

And as the same writer remarks: ”The officer's diet is still more liberal than the pauper's; but evidently it is not considered liberal enough, for a footnote is added to the officer's table saying that 'a cash payment of two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence a week is also made to each resident officer and servant.' If the pauper has ample food, why does the officer have more? And if the officer has not too much, can the pauper be properly fed on less than half the amount?”

But it is not alone the Ghetto-dweller, the prisoner, and the pauper that starve. Hodge, of the country, does not know what it is always to have a full belly. In truth, it is his empty belly which has driven him to the city in such great numbers. Let us investigate the way of living of a labourer from a parish in the Bradfield Poor Law Union, Berks. Supposing him to have two children, steady work, a rent-free cottage, and an average weekly wage of thirteen s.h.i.+llings, which is equivalent to $3.25, then here is his weekly budget:-

s. d.

Bread (5 quarterns) 1 10 Flour (0.5 gallon) 0 4 Tea (0.25 lb.) 0 6 b.u.t.ter (1 lb.) 1 3 Lard (1 lb.) 0 6 Sugar (6 lb.) 1 0 Bacon or other meat (about 0.25 lb.) 2 8 Cheese (1 lb.) 0 8 Milk (half-tin condensed) 0 3.25 Coal 1 6 Beer none Tobacco none Insurance (”Prudential”) 0 3 Labourers' Union 0 1 Wood, tools, dispensary, &c. 0 6 Insurance (”Foresters”) and margin 1 1.75 for clothes Total 13 0

The guardians of the workhouse in the above Union pride themselves on their rigid economy. It costs per pauper per week:-