"Workhouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by eating pork containing a small internal parasite termed trichina spiralis. I have recently met with a case of trichiniasis in the human subject. The body of the unfortunate person—who had been an inmate of the South Dublin Union Workhouse—was found to contain thousands of the trichinae. In Iceland a large proportion of the population suffers from a parasitic disease traceable to the use of the flesh of sheep and cattle in ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... horse through the human constitution, as in the present instance, will produce a similar effect, remains to be decided. This would mow have been effected, but the boy was rendered unit for inoculation from having felt the effects of a contagious fever in a workhouse soon after this experiment ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... sir, they are petty villains, mere pick-pockets. They are a miserable set. Their trade never produces a man of genius; 'tis confined to the whip and workhouse—and at most can lead ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... seamstress, wetting with midnight tears the costly stuff which must be ready to adorn heartless rank and fashion at to-morrow's pageant,—of the pale governess, grudgingly paid her pittance of salary without a kind word to sweeten the bitterness of a lonely lot. He is the friend even of the workhouse juveniles, and, as their champion, castigates with cutting sarcasm and stinging scorn the reverend and honorable guardians, who, just as, full of hope, they had reached the door of the theatre, prohibited ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... history we know extremely little, save what she herself tells us. Her father was an officer who was killed in a naval action before he could fulfil the promise of marriage he had made to her mother, a small milliner, who died in the workhouse at Long Melford within three months of the effort of giving birth to an amazon so large and so fierce and so well able to take her own part as Isopel. At fourteen this fine specimen of workhouse upbringing was placed in service, from which she emancipated herself by knocking down her mistress. ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... the time-honoured joke about the absence of spring-mattresses and feather-beds, with which he was usually wont to regale the other inmates at this hour. As Giles turned down the spotless lavender-scented sheets he thought longingly of the workhouse twill. ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... in Oxford, built by Henry First, who styled it le Beau Mont; it stood in Stockwell Street, nearly on the site of the present workhouse. It had not been visited by royalty since 1157, when a baby was born in it, destined to become a mighty man of valour, and to be known to all ages as King Richard Coeur-de-Lion. In 1317 King Edward Second bestowed it on the White ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... that they have proposed to constitute a third kingdom—the Regnum Protisticum—between the animal and the plant worlds, for the reception of the host of doubtful organisms. This third kingdom would resemble the casual ward of a workhouse, in that it would receive the waifs and strays of life which could not find ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... the plants, and be prepared to strike quickly. It should be a matter of pride to a gardener to have in his workhouse a supply of the common insecticides and fungicides (Paris green or arsenate of lead, some of the tobacco preparations, white hellebore, whale-oil soap, bordeaux mixture, flowers of sulfur, carbonate of Copper for solution in ammonia), and also ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... dips in gall unmix'd his eager pen, And pours his vengeance in the burning line,)— Who christen'd thus Maria's lyre-divine The idiot strum of Vanity bemus'd, And even the abuse of Poesy abus'd?— Who called her verse a Parish Workhouse, made For motley foundling Fancies, stolen ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... at Tulla to the workhouse, and there saw a poor fellow lying in bed, the doctors around him, with a blue light over his face that made me feel that the doctors were not right, when they told me he might get over it. I felt ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... is a very small one: it scarce contains fifty people: but that next to it, Bredfield, has more than four hundred: and some very poor indeed. We hope to be of some use: but the new Poor Laws have begun to be set afoot, and we don't know who is to stop in his cottage, or who is to go to the Workhouse. How much depends upon the issue of this measure! I am no politician: but I fear that no political measure will ever adjust matters well between rich ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... Daniel Scott, and Frederick Ridgley at Watertown on April 3d "by order of the Director-General of the Continental Hospital." Warren swore under oath that on or about March 29 he had gone into the workhouse [almshouse] "lately improved as an hospital by the British troops stationed in said town" and upon examining the state of "a large quantity of Medicine" left in the medicinal storeroom had found about 12 or 14 pounds ...
— Drug Supplies in the American Revolution • George B. Griffenhagen
... a gin-shop close by. The defendant's plea was that the plaintiff was always drunk, and had not fulfilled his contract. Well, if the Pickwick has been the means of putting a few shillings in the vermin-eaten pockets of so miserable a creature, and has saved him from a workhouse or a jail, let him empty out his little pot of filth and welcome. I am quite content to have been the means of relieving him. Besides, he seems to have ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the paupers in the Workhouse. The radical working men are jealous of their own leaders, and the leaders are jealous of one another. Schopenhauer must have organised a Labour Party in his salad days. And yet one can't help feeling that he committed suicide ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... majority of cases where the deaf and dumb are allowed to grow up uneducated and uncared for they become inmates of Workhouses or Lunatic Asylums. Many years ago L—— K—— was taken from a workhouse in Derbyshire where he had been for a number of years, and educated and apprenticed to a suitable trade; he is now a steady, industrious man, married, and himself a ratepayer. This is only one of many similar ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... part of it may now be said to be common property, nearly 100 acres of it being covered with public buildings for the use of such as need a common home. There is not, however, anything commonplace in the style of these erections for sheltering our common infirmities, as the Workhouse, Gaol, and Asylum combined have cost "the Commons" something like L350,000. The Volunteers in 1798 made use of part of the Heath as a ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... and leave me to take up the thread. Poor dear Jenny, the festival days are no days of rest to her, but I am not sure that she would enjoy repose, or that it would not be the worse possible penance to her. She is gone down now to the workhouse with Valetta to take cards and tea and tobacco to the old people, not sending them, because she says a few personal wishes and the sight of a bright child will be worth something to the old bodies. Then comes tea for the choir-boys, before Evensong and carols, and after that my turn may come ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with Gough and Lawrence, and who had contrived to make a figure in society with very small means. Georgina's sisters had all married well. It was a case of necessity, the Colonel told them; they must either marry or gravitate ultimately to the workhouse. So the Miss Lorimers made the best use of their youth and freshness, and 'no good offer refused' was the guiding rule of their young lives. Lucy married an East India merchant, and set up a fine house in Porchester Terrace. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... there died in a workhouse in Southwark a pedlar who used to sell odds-and-ends on a tray on London Bridge, and who pretended to be deaf and dumb. It is said that, though clothed in rags, he was a Swiss gentleman of means who, stung by remorse, had vowed not to open his lips for ten years, to go bareheaded and barefooted, ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... be a restriction of personal liberty, the judge may order the prisoner to a workhouse, until the proper authorities object, when the remainder of the sentence is carried out in the ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... spelling, and the Catechism, and instruction in writing and arithmetic might be added. The training might also be coupled with that of the "schools of industry" (workhouse schools, as described by Locke [R. 217]) to augment the economic efficiency of the boy. Girls seem to have been provided for almost equally with boys, and, in addition to being taught to read and spell, were taught "to knit their Stockings ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... It doesn't mean, as you might think, the Workhouse, or the White House, or the Station House, or the Bon Marche. It is the name given by people of Lady Cicely's class to the ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... some time in coming. When it came, it told that pauper laborers could not be recommended; but a better sort of laborer might be sent, and his place in the parish would be filled, only too easily, by some of the young men from the workhouse. The proposal was to send the very best man of his class known to the parish officers. He and his wife had money enough in the savings' bank to pay their journey, and they were willing to make the venture. The man's name was Harry Banks. Miss Foote took ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... known to all ages. And our own dear Monticello; where has nature spread so rich a mantle under the eye?—mountains, forests rocks, rivers. With what majesty do we there ride above the storms! How sublime to look down into the workhouse of nature to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet! and the glorious sun when rising as if out of a distant water, lust gilding the tops of the mountains, and giving life to all nature! 1 hope in God, no circumstance ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... assailed by those who have never known it, or by those who have failed to fulfil it. Numberless modern women have rebelled against domesticity in theory because they have never known it in practice. Hosts of the poor are driven to the workhouse without ever having known the house. Generally speaking, the cultured class is shrieking to be let out of the decent home, just as the working class is shouting ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... a shop, warehouse, or workhouse on Sunday is a fifty dollar offense, and it is fifty dollars also for doing "any manner of labor, business or work" on Sunday, unless the judge considers it a matter of necessity or charity; nevertheless, the "making of butter ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... mill-owners." He stopped for a second or two and then continued as if an idea had only just come into his head. "An' it was proper punishment for Hargreaves," he said, "that the English let him die in the workhouse. Proper punishment. What the hell did he want to invent ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... tomorrow it would reach that point again. Speaking of the charity of Quakers, it may not be amiss to state that they keep all their own poor—do not allow any one belonging their society ever to solicit aid from the parish, or migrate in the dark hour of poverty to the workhouse. Reverting to the meeting-house, we may observe that just within its front door particular provision has been made for umbrellas. There is a long, low stand, with a channel below it, and this will afford ample accomodation for about 160 umbrellas. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... prosecuted for violating the midnight closing law.' At this the saloonkeeper and policemen rushed upon me and put me into the street; and one of the policemen, grasping my arm like a vice, hissed in my ear, 'I'll get you a thirty days' sentence in the workhouse, and then we'll see what you think about suing people.' He called a patrol wagon, pushed me in, and drove to jail; and, Judge, you know the rest. All day yesterday I was locked up, my children at home alone, with no fire, no food, ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... mad sometimes,' said Mrs Brindley to me. 'It lasts for a week or so, and pretty nearly lands us in the workhouse. This time it's the Hortulus Animoe. Do you know ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... unquestionably on his way to the Gauntlet. Silcox was a chattering foolish creature who had lost his own and his widowed mother's savings in a ridiculous commercial enterprise—a promptly bankrupt theater company over at Rodhaven—and it was thought that the workhouse would be the end for him and Mrs. Silcox. But early this summer people had been startled by hearing that the Courier had appointed Silcox as their reporter; and local critics were of opinion that Silcox had taken very kindly to literature, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... of the charitable institutions in the city, a terror to the professional pauper, but a real friend to the deserving. Her time was much occupied with committees, secretarial duties, district visiting, workhouse inspection and other public interests. She was apt indeed to have more than her share of civic business; her reputation for absolute reliability caused people to get into the habit of saying "Oh, go to Miss Beach!" on every occasion, and as she invariably proved the willing horse, she justified ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... the same way when they slip as Devine did. You can meet them on the roads, in common lodging-houses, in the workhouse. The residuum is constantly recruited from the "comfortable" classes, and, out of thousands of cases, I never knew half-a-dozen in which the cause was not drink. I blame nobody. A drunkard is always selfish—the most ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... after five in the morning I awoke and took the lantern, and went out of the front door and round the verandahs. There was never a spark of dawn in the east, only the stars looked a little pale; and I expected to find them all asleep in the workhouse. But no! the stove was roaring, and Talolo and Fono, who was to lead the party, were standing together talking by the stove, and one of Fono's young men was lying asleep on the sofa in the smoking-room, wrapped ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... garotter, or, indeed, a common thief Is very glad to batten on potatoes and on beef, Or anything, in short, that prison kitchens can afford,— A cut above the diet in a common workhouse ward. ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... and the squalid alley, where the children of many vices are hourly exchanging deeds of kindness; a Light shining into the rooms of dingy warehousemen and thrifty clerks, whose hard labour and hoarded coins are for wife and child and friend; shining into prison and workhouse, where sin and sorrow glimmer with sad eyes through rusty bars into distant homes and mourning hearths; shining through heavy curtains, and round sumptuous tables, where the heart throbs audibly through velvet mantle and silken vest, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... which he gave to the Church of England clergyman to send for him. About two months afterwards he received a letter from the clergyman of the parish in which Polly's mother lived, telling him that the money had reached the old lady in time to save her from the workhouse; a heart-broken letter of thanks from Polly's mother herself accompanied it, calling on God to reward them for their kindness to her and ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... this morning to inquire at the St. George's Workhouse for the unfortunate girl I took out of the hands of the police in the park the other day (her offence was being found asleep at early morning, and suspected of having passed the night there), and found, to my great distress and disappointment, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... is the grand duke of somewhere or other, and we must bolster him up in his kingdom, or else there will be trouble with the powers." Powers—what's powers to me?—or Greenland? when there's Slingsby, a man I've smoked a pipe with every market evening of my life, in the workhouse? And there's hundreds of ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... practical purpose, it is what the people think so[529].'—'I will let the King of France govern me on those conditions, (said he,) for it is to be governed just as I please.' And when Dr. Taylor talked of a girl being sent to a parish workhouse, and asked how much she could be obliged to work, 'Why, (said Johnson,) as much as is reasonable: and what is that? as much as ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... Mr. Rowland Dobie's "History of the United Parishes of St. Giles- in-the-Fields and St. George, Bloomsbury," (8vo. 1829) contains some curious and interesting "historical sketches of pauperism." Speaking of the parish workhouse, the author says, "It contains on an average from 800 to 900 inmates, which is however but a small proportion to the number constantly relieved, at an expense [annually] of nearly forty ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... gentry to live in a decent, hospitable manner; yet still there will remain hands sufficient for trade and manufactures, which do always indeed deserve the best encouragement, but not to a degree of sending every living soul into the warehouse or the workhouse. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... would not well bear recital: enough that the person flogged was a middle-aged man of the Waist—a forlorn, broken-down, miserable object, truly; one of those wretched landsmen sometimes driven into the Navy by their unfitness for all things else, even as others are driven into the workhouse. He was flogged at the complaint of a midshipman; and hereby hangs the drift of the thing. For though this waister was so ignoble a mortal, yet his being scourged on this one occasion indirectly proceeded from the mere wanton spite and unscrupulousness of the midshipman in question—a ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... return to our relations. How many are there who have relations who would take them in? And the lay sisters—what would become of them and our duties towards them—they who have worked for us all these years? Sister Lawrence—would you like to see her on the roadside, or carried to the workhouse? Spiritual considerations come first, of course, but we must have a house to live in and a chapel to pray in. Do you never think ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... greater freedom than he would otherwise have ventured to do when addressing his captain. "If he were to be sent ashore there's no one might own him," he continued; "then what would become of the poor little chap? he might be taken to the workhouse, ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... into tears, "my poor mother and sisters must go to the workhouse or starve if I did not stay and work for them, and I could not be happy if I lived in a fine house, and knew they were in want of a bit of ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... von Bernhardi's or General von der Golt's own, and that is saying a great deal. In all the German political treatises there is an immeasurable dreariness. They lay down rules for life, and if they be asked what makes such a life worth living they are without any hint of an answer. Their world is a workhouse, tyrannically ordered, and full ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... pockets were lined with leather, so that he could take a handful of snuff at a time; he used to ride at full gallop up the staircase of the orangery at Versailles. Authors and artists ended in the workhouse, the natural close to their eccentric careers; they were, every one of them, atheists into the bargain, so that you had to be very careful not to admit anybody of that sort into your house, Joseph Lebas used to advert with horror to the story of his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... a bookseller, started in business on his own account between thirty and forty years ago, his stock-in-trade consisting of four shillings' worth of miscellaneous volumes, which he exposed for sale on a barrow close to the old Whitechapel workhouse, which occupied the ground on which one of Mr. George's shops now stands. Mr. George has built up one of the most remarkable and extensive business connections in existence. His stock may be roughly calculated ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... graciously, The boon was granted, and he died content. And now the pauper's funeral had set forth, And the bell toll'd—not many strokes, nor long— Pauper's allowance. He was coming home. But while the train was yet a good way off— The workhouse burial train—I stopp'd to look Upon the scene before me; and methought Oh! that some gifted painter could behold And give duration to that living picture, So rich in moral and pictorial beauty, If seen arightly by the spiritual eye As ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... founded by the great Henry of Blois in 1133 for the reception, the clothing and the entertainment of thirteen poor men, decayed or past their strength, and the relief of an hundred others; it was a mediaeval workhouse, called a hospital in those days, and in its beauty and its humanity and its success it cannot, of course, compare with the institutions which, since we have not been able to abolish poverty altogether, we have everywhere established for the reception of our ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... struck her and that the children—seeing her fall to the floor as if dead—ran out screaming, and that the frightened neighbors called a doctor and a policeman. She made the tale as favorable to 'pa' as she could. She went on to say that, having broken the pledge, he was sent to the workhouse for sixty days and she was left without money, with seven children ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... in a state of destitution was notified not long ago to the magistrate of the Lambeth police-court, and that unappreciative functionary, while consenting to subscribe, with others, for her relief, openly expressed his conviction that she would be best off in the workhouse. Altogether, the old creature is a bit of a curiosity. She has had three husbands, and the last of them, whom she married in 1852, killed himself only the other day, possibly from finding the twofold burden of domestic predication and a helpmeet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... amused themselves by reading the various scraps. Some of these, they told me, were very pathetic. In one, for instance, a poor old woman had apparently sent her son a packet of chocolate, bought with her last shilling, (she was just going into the Workhouse), and she hoped that it would taste as sweet as if she had paid a sovereign for it. Had they had any mails? No, not since they had been here. They thought all their people must be dead, and "it does cheer one up to get a letter." In Burma ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... Manchester lives a man, paralyzed, unable to leave an old sofa which has been his bed for months. He was in the Royal Infirmary, and there pronounced incurable, but likely to live years with ordinary care. He could have been taken to the workhouse hospital at Crumpsall, where he would have {216} had careful nursing and suitable food. He has no dread of the workhouse hospital, and would gladly go if he had any hope of cure. He speaks most gratefully of his treatment at the Royal Infirmary. But there is no hope of cure, ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... fruitful soil for many powers which now wither uselessly away. Whoever shows a genuine desire to work will be suitably employed. Beggars will not be endured. Whoever refuses to do anything as a free man will be sent to the workhouse. ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... that an inmate of a workhouse has received an income-tax form to fill in. This is considered to be but a foretaste of the time when all income-tax papers will have to be addressed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... "The Workhouse Ward" (1908), reaching from wild farce to sentimental comedy, is hardly more than a dialogue, but it is given body by the truth to Irish life out of which it is written, that quarreling is better ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... I done? Ain't I been on de level wid yez? Say, I ain't never even seen yez for de fourteen months I've been yer gobetween. I've been beat up by de cops, pinched and sent to de workhouse 'cause I wouldn't squeal, and now ye t'reatens me. Did I ever fall down on a trick ontil dis week? You'se ain't goin' ter welch on me, are you'se? I ain't no welcher meself, an' ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... and her name is Imogen, and she's nine come next November. And now her mother's dead, and she's to stay tonight with Mrs Shrobsall—that's a landlady that's been kind—and tomorrow the Relieving Officer is coming for her, and she's going into the Union; that means the Workhouse. It's too ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... unspeakable indolence. He would fling some word containing volumes in the teeth of folk who could not put a syllable of sense into their books. He lavished promises that he never fulfilled; he made a pillow of his luck and reputation, on which he slept, and ran the risk of waking up to old age in a workhouse. A steadfast friend to the gallows foot, a cynical swaggerer with a child's simplicity, a worker only ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... enacted, that the summons left at the houses, or usual place of residence, or with the wife, child, or menial servants of the person so summoned, should be held as legal notice, as well as the leaving such notice at the house, workhouse, warehouse, shop, cellar, vault, or usual place of residence, of such person, directed to him by his right or assumed name; and all dealers in coffee, tea, or chocolate, were subjected to the penalty of twenty pounds, as often as they should neglect to attend the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Cipriani, the engraver, a foundation member of the Royal Academy, is buried here, and there is a monument erected to his memory by his friend and contemporary, Bartolozzi. When the Sydney Street burial-ground was opened in 1810, this was used for interment no more. Chelsea Workhouse stands just behind it, and the old women use the burial-ground for exercise. It is a quaint sight to see them through the tall iron railings wandering about dressed in their bright red-and-black check shawls, blue cotton ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... unable, from age or infirmity, to work. But there was much opposition to the new law; it was considered a grievance that old couples were refused relief at home, and that the sexes must be separated at the workhouse, to which the name of "Bastille" began to be attached. In Devonshire it was even believed that the bread distributed by the relieving officers was mixed with ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... self-respect of the poor was destroyed, and the poor-rate became a burden of millions of pounds annually upon the treasury. The act of 1834 put an end to these abuses by restricting outdoor relief to the aged and destitute, and requiring all other paupers to go to the union workhouse. Within two years the ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... angels in this position," he added, glancing at Rastignac; "there is this about women that is sublime: they understand nothing of money; they do not meddle with it, it is no affair of theirs; they are invited guests at the 'banquet of life,' as some poet or other said that came to an end in the workhouse." ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... now about fourteen, and, had I grown up with these notions and habits, I must have spent my life in wretchedness, and I should probably have ended my days in a workhouse; but fortunately for me, an accident happened, which made as great a change in my ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the least judicious sort of temperance literature, and sometimes heard from temperance orators of the more extreme type—the sort of warning, I mean, that, if you once begin touching anything stronger than water, you are bound to go on till you end by beating your wife and die in a workhouse. But you and I know perfectly well that it is possible to have an occasional glass of beer or glass of wine, or even, low be it spoken, a little whisky, without beating or wanting to beat anybody, and without coming to such a terrible end. The argument against the ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... freshness of its beauty—no serpent's trail, no touch of fallen ruined man to mar its perfectness—"the Lord God took Adam, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it." As an old writer says—"What was man's storehouse was also man's workhouse; his pleasure with his task ... if happiness had consisted in doing nothing, man ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... bound. He had saved one hundred pounds by that time, and being now neither able to work nor to live alone, his friends cast about for a home for his remaining years. He was very spent and feeble, yet he had the fear that he might be still alive when all his money was gone. After that was the workhouse. He covered sheets of paper with calculations about how long the hundred pounds would last if he gave away for board and lodgings ten shillings, nine shillings, seven and sixpence a week. At last, with sore misgivings, he went to live ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... principle that the indigent, by giving up their freedom, have a right to be supported. Society pays the cost, but shuts them up and sets them to work. As this condition is repugnant to them, they avoid the workhouse as much as possible." Similar institutions existed in France before ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... for Mrs. M'Cosh of at least L200 a year. When you think that she once had a house and a husband, and a best room with an overmantel and a Brussels carpet, and lost them all, and is contented to be a servant to us, with no prospect of anything for her old age but the workhouse or the charity of relations, and keeps cheery and never makes a moan and never loses ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... the mother on our reaching the Workhouse gate. "Ring modestly, as becomes the poor ringing at the gate of Charity." ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... soul together after all—often not so much. There was people of pretty well all sorts of trades you could name, all wanting to work, and yet not able to get it. There was old people, after working all their lives, going and being shut up in the workhouse, much worse fed and lodged and treated altogether, than—Mr Plornish said manufacturers, but appeared to mean malefactors. Why, a man didn't know where to turn himself for a crumb of comfort. As to who was to blame for it, Mr Plornish didn't know who was to blame for it. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... this trouble, Sir! and had the child actually into the house! and—gracious me," added she in a half whisper, "hadn't I better call the butler, Sir; hadn't he" (nodding significantly towards the child) "better be taken to the workhouse at once, Sir?" ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... Balloting Plan for rendering Society social Characteristics of Novels —— Villages round London Condition of Poverty Poverty and Wealth contrasted Inadequate Remuneration of Labour Visit to Wandsworth Workhouse Philosophy of Roads Cruelty to Horses Value of good Foot-paths Citizen's Villas Axioms of Political Economy Putney Heath The Smoke of London Earl Spencer's Park Hartley's Fire-House Means of Preventing Fires ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... pluck the flower and eat the fruit, and know not that we pass the sower daily in the street; perhaps some humble, ill- dressed woman, earning painfully her own small sustenance. She who nurses a bedridden mother, instead of sending her to the workhouse. She who spends her heart and her money on a drunken father, a reckless brother, on the orphans of a kinsman or a friend. She who—But why go on with the long list of great little heroisms, with which ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... were bundled wholesale into the streets, and they formed up in a large body, many of them with only a shift and a petticoat on, and with a lot of drunken men and boys with a fife and fiddle they paraded the streets for several days. They marched in a body to the workhouse, but for many reasons they were refused admittance.... These women wandered about for two or three days shelterless, and it was felt that the remedy was very much worse than the disease, and the women were allowed to go back to their ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of farming, and the sooner he went to the wall the better. Now, how would all the grocers and other tradesmen whom he had just enumerated like to be told that if they had not got 10,000l. each they ought to go at once to the workhouse! That would be a fine remedy for the depression ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... thou couldst love? ROSE. And if there were such an one, verily it would ill become me to tell him so. HAN. Nay, dear one, where true love is, there is little need of prim formality. ROSE. Hush, dear aunt, for thy words pain me sorely. Hung in a plated dish-cover to the knocker of the workhouse door, with naught that I could call mine own, save a change of baby-linen and a book of etiquette, little wonder if I have always regarded that work as a voice from a parent's tomb. This hallowed volume (producing a book of etiquette), composed, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... among them than might have been expected. Most of them were men; but the women Ann, Strumpet and Christian Grace made two flights each, and the old pad-mender Abba's Moll stayed out for a year and a quarter. A few of those recovered were returned through the public agency of the workhouse. Some of the rest may have come back of their ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... workhouse than live in a room with only a bed and a washstand! Where would you hang your clothes or keep your linen? Why, it would not be a home ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... restraints upon Free Competition as the penalties for infringing the Postal monopoly, and the withdrawal of workhouse and prison labour from the markets, ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... in hand for the first floor, and that none was likely to be in hand until the lady recovered, or her friends found her. On hearing this, he had mercilessly insisted—well or ill—that the lady should go. There was the hospital to take her to; and if the hospital shut its doors, there was the workhouse to try next. If she was not out of the place in an hour's time, he threatened to come back and take her out himself. His wife knew but too well that he was brute enough to be as good as his word; and no other choice had been left ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... workhouse child out of that village which has now become a great manufacturing town, and which bears his name? Such was the report set about at the last election, when Sir Brian, in the Conservative interest contested the borough; and Mr. Yapp, the out-and-out Liberal ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... discharged perfectly well six months after admission to the hospital. Soon after that, she left the husband, once had him arrested in 1908 and sent to the workhouse. She was again examined in 1913, and was found to be perfectly well, and she stated she had ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... appearance before the magistrate, Elsie was once more brought into court. She had hailed the appearance of her old acquaintance with something approaching delight, for any change was a welcome one from the hard, dreary, monotonous life she had been leading in the wards of the workhouse. ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... me. I saw no more of her; but to my infinite regret, I was informed some years after that she had died, the martyr of a premature decay, brought on by the indulgence of her propensity to intoxication, in the workhouse of Chelsea! ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... cat!" murmured Mr Latter to himself. "She's fishing to get at my banking account, and a lot she'd interfere if 'twas the workhouse with me to-morrow."] ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... The workhouse commitments for Philadelphia, Washington, Cincinnati, Louisville, Chicago and St. Louis "show a similar tendency to decrease." Penitentiary commitments[27] for Baltimore and Chicago show, on the whole, a decreasing trend. ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes
... Mendicancy flies from the workhouse and the stone-yard to entrench itself against Guardians and relieving-officers among the soup-kitchens and the coal-tickets of feminine almsgiving. The parson, after a faint protest of common sense, surrenders at discretion, and flings all experience to the winds. One wife turns her husband into ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... world moves on, and leaves her to her fate. Occasionally the police records give a fragment of her life when the heyday of her youth and life has fled, and the man with whom she has eloped has taken to beating her in order to get up an appetite for breakfast. Here and there the workhouse or charitable home opens its doors to receive her, when she wearies of the life she gladly assumed, and is too proud to beg for forgiveness ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... outdoor pauper. This is doubtless a wise policy, but it supplies no evidence of decrease in poverty. It would be possible by increased strictness of conditions to annihilate outdoor pauperism throughout the country at a single blow, and to reduce the number of indoor paupers by making workhouse life unendurable. But such a course would obviously furnish no satisfactory evidence of the decline of poverty, or even of destitution. Moreover, in regarding the decline of pauperism, we must not forget to take into account the enormous recent ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... brother John express, and in some fright; for he was absolutely warned out of his lodging, and had only a week to provide himself. His brother John was in as bad a case, for he was quite out, and had only begged leave of his master, the biscuit-maker, to lodge in an outhouse belonging to his workhouse, where he only lay upon straw, with some biscuit-sacks, or bread-sacks, as they called them, laid upon it, and some of the same sacks to ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... I was in a holy place, and I looked at the hearthrug, the wallpaper, and the upholstered chairs with a kind of desolate love for things that were nice to see and touch. I suppose that if we had been in a workhouse, a prison, or a lunatic asylum, our aeesthetic environment would have been very much the same as it was at school; and afterwards when I went with the cricket and football teams to other grammar schools they all gave me the same impression of clean ugliness. It ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... which shows but little signs of dying out. Profusion of food at this season is traditional, and has been handed down from generation to generation. A Christmas dinner must, if possible, be every one's portion, down to the pauper in the workhouse, and even the prisoner in the gaol. Tusser, who, though he ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... Gowler lived in an atmosphere of horror and pain. At the same time, the girl had the sense to realise that Mrs Gowler had her use in life, inasmuch as she provided a refuge for the women, which salved their pride (no small matter) by enabling them to forego entering the workhouse infirmary, which otherwise could not have ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... was wrong, but—the clergyman—he has money of his own, or else he's paid; the poet or the musician—just the same; the tramp—he's no different. The tramp goes to the workhouse in the end, and is paid for with other people's money. Miss Schlegel, the real thing's money and all the ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... who died in it three weeks ago was a pauper whom I took out of a workhouse, for in her childhood she had been known to some of my family, and had once been in such good circumstances that she had rented that house of my uncle. She was a woman of superior education and strong mind, and was the only person I could ever induce to remain in the house. ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... of Elizabeth any white servant or servants, slave or slaves, which shall "be brought before the Mayor, &c., by their masters or other inhabitant of the Borough, for any misdemeanor rude or disorderly behavior, may be committed to the workhouse to hard labor and receive correction not exceeding thirty lashes."[479] This Act was purely local in character, and indiscriminate in its application to every class of servants. It was nothing more than a police regulation, and as such was ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... company. Tramps never had any attraction for me, as a sociological problem or otherwise. I was compelled, more than once, to be of and with them, but I shook their company as quickly as I could. As for the "problem" they are supposed to represent, I think the workhouse and the police are quite competent to deal with that, provided it is not a Tammany police. It does not differ appreciably from the problem of human laziness in any other shape or age. We got some light on that, which ought to convince anybody, ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... discovered that what I was attempting was not so simple as I had imagined. To begin with, Bohemians diffuse their brains in every direction except that where bread-and-butter comes from. I found, too, that unless one earns bread-and-butter, one has to sprint very fast to the workhouse door to prevent oneself starving before one gets there; so I dropped Bohemia and I dropped many other pleasant fictions as well. I took to examining pavements, saw how hard they were, had a look at the gutters, and ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... many other things to be done. If you will do these things some one else will be released to perform works of skill; and as these are the most agreeable to the worker, it would please us more to have you labor in the fields than in the workhouse." ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... wife, ain't a bit better; and neither one of them have been worth anything since I sold their two children-which I had to do, or let the dignity of the family suffer. I don't like to do it, but I must. I must send Zeff to the workhouse-have him nicely whipped, I only charge him eighteen dollars a month for himself, and yet he will drink, and won't pay over his wages. Yes!—he shall have it. The extent of the law, well laid on, will learn him a lesson. There's old ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... slipped away, and still Charles Williams remained a patient in the Westlake Hospital at Sydney. At length, after a consultation of the doctors, it was proposed that he should be consigned to the workhouse infirmary. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... that, as during war time the difficulties of communication with foreign countries were so great, he must not entertain much hope of success. "However, you can in the meantime relieve yourself of the care of the child by sending her to the workhouse, or if you choose to take care of her, her friends, when they are found, will undoubtedly repay you, though I warn you they are very likely, after all, not to ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... departments, flavoured with a smell that combined more notably the odours of cooking and plate-polish. The transition as we emerged through the red baize door under the majestic panoply of the staircase, was quite startling. It was like passing from the desolate sanitation of a well-kept workhouse straight into the lighted auditorium of a theatre. That contrast dramatised, for me, the Jervaises' tremendous ideal of the barrier between owner and servant; but it had, also, another effect which may have been due to the fact that it was, now, ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... turned ever to the droll. Once in London I was living with my family at 103 Mount Street. Between 103 and 102 there was the parochial workhouse, quite a long and imposing edifice. One evening, upon coming in from an outing, I found a letter he had written on the sitting-room table. He had left it with his card. He spoke of the shock he had received upon finding that ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... your influence, Lady Calmady," Mr. Cathcart was saying. "Unquestionably the condition of the workhouse is far from satisfactory. And Fallowfeild is too lenient. That laisser-aller policy of his threatens to land us in serious difficulties. The place is insanitary, and the food is unnecessarily poor. I am not an advocate for extravagance, but I cannot ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... an Englishman. He could paint, model in clay, and play three musical instruments, including the organ. His one failing was that he could never earn enough to live on. It seemed as if he was always being drawn by an invisible string towards the workhouse door. Now and then he made half a sovereign extra by deputizing on the organ. In such manner had he been introduced to the Ebag ladies. His romantic and gloomy appearance had attracted them, with the ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... this to have been the ancient building known by the name of The Royal, or The Tower Royal, used for a time as the Queen's Wardrobe. It will be seen that it was occupied in 1650 as a workhouse.] ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... Mauleverer's own lodgings were near at hand, and he could inspect progress. The furniture was determined upon—neat little iron beds for the dormitories, and all that could serve for comfort and even pleasure, for both Mr. Mauleverer and Rachel were strong against making the place bare and workhouse-like, insulting ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and I believe all you're here for is to get some news for your paper. But I will, at any rate tell you this—when Maitland went to prison his child would have been defenceless but for me; he'd have had to go to the workhouse but for me; he hadn't a single relation in the world but me, on either father's or mother's side. And even at my age, old woman as I am, I'd rather beg my bread in the street, I'd rather starve and die, than touch a penny piece that had come ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... think where the like o' poor folks is to get such things. Lucky to be able to get a bit o' bread and a drain o' tea without sugar, them as is off their work, just to rub on and keep theirselves out o' the workhouse. I know I'm thankful to do it. Jim, he have got a ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... found him; and so he will be till God sets all things right. No one could ever get him to sleep under roof-tree more. He wanders from house to house while daylight lasts; and no one cares to lock the harmless creature in the workhouse. And folk would rather not meet him after nightfall, for they think where he is there may be worse ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... She couldn't have understood. She's mad, mad as a hatter about the glory of the Beauleighs. But it did one good thing; it made her cast me off for good and all. She'd toiled for the family: and this was her reward. I might go to the Workhouse my own way. Now you see, she won't interfere to stop my finding the boy. And I'm going to find him if I have to spend ten years on it, and every penny I have. And when I have found him, I'm going to look ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... magistrates and could do it. So at last the fellow growled out that he wasn't going to be troubled with another man's brat, and just before embarking, he had laid it down asleep at the door of Liverpool Workhouse! So no doubt poor little Michael is there! I would have telegraphed at once; but I don't know where my uncle is, or whether he knows about it, but you can find out and send him this letter at once. I have asked him to pay your advance out of my quarter; and as to the ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we once heard a vulgar little boy say to another, that he was "Put out of the workhouse for eating the number off ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop |
