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THE WORKHOUSE VISITING SOCIETY. 388
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
-«»- • What Is There To Be Said Upon Wor...
We will not linger to describe what most of our readers can see for themselvesif they choose to take the trouble to look for it— -the
detailed management , of a "well-ordered workhouse . We will take our readers at once to St . Martin-in-the-Fields . In the Fields I say
our country readers . Doubtless some nice pleasant locality , where the best is made of a bad business ; where povertyand disease ,
, and crime , and helpless orphaned infancy are dealt with as tenderly and as gently as may be , by the rate-payers and guardians of that
ilk That ? Not St . quite Martin so ' s ! was once in the fields , there can be no manner
of doubt ; for we have seen old maps of the reign of Elizabethquaintold thingsornamented with little buildings and little
, queer , trees—in which every sign of London vanished where the Strand of the Thames led up to the Cross of Charing Village , and lanes
branched off all ways from the Church of St . Martin and the stone . cross erected by the unhappy husband of Queen Eleanor , to mark
where her coffin had rested on its way to its destined tomb in the Abbey But of there Westminst is exceeding er . ly little sign of ' fields' now within three
miles of St . Martin's Lane , which has several tallow-candle shops to its shareand leads riht up to the notorious ' Seven Dials' and
* St . Giles , . ' Leicester g Square is no longer even the aristocratic abode of such people as Sir Isaac Newton , Dr . JBurney , or Sir
Joshua Reynolds—being given over to political refugees and Wyld ' s Globe . For the beginning of this change , come back with us
two-hundred years , to the day when the Rev . Dr . Moutie consecrated a certain tract of ground in the immediate neighbourhood of the
church , to the use of the hamlet population worshipping at St . Martin-in-the-Fields . This was in 1606 .
Now , there was every reason in the world why Dr . Moutie should choose his new church-yard by the side of that flowery lane ,
stretching due north up towards ' merrie Islington , ' and why people should gladly choose so fair a locality and for Hi their h last could resting be -place— then for from the
its mile distant sacred to hei Harrow precincts ghts of Hill Hampstead ; and with the onl green y palace prosp ggate or ect farm stretched -house away seen to hinder mile affcer the
, view . But there was every reason why the people of St . Martin's Parish , exactly one-hundred and eighteen years later , a . d . 1724 ,
should not pounce upon this very graveyard , already chock full with new the corpses workhouse of a using century its ' s very growth stones , and for build the thereupon pavements their of their own
, courts , and audaciously sticking up two tablets—one to commemorate the consecration , the other , the rank sacrilege ! There was
human every reason beings wh ri y ht they on the should top of their not lod own ge dead several forefathers hundred , removing living
a certain number g of these very forefathers to make underground dormitories , and areas where they keep their water cisterns !
Reader , do not think we -speak too plainly , too irreverently , of .
The Workhouse Visiting Society. 388
THE WORKHOUSE VISITING SOCIETY . 388
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Aug. 1, 1858, page 383, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01081858/page/23/
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