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THE WORKHOUSE VISITING SOCIETY. 385
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.
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-«»- • What Is There To Be Said Upon Wor...
this old woman was allowed to lie doing absolutely nothing from month to monthWe sat down and began to talk to her . She had been
. lived a household till latel servant y with in an Lad old y husband B e , ' s long famil paral y ; had ytic . married Then , and he died had .
"We asked how they got on , in their age and weakness . "I kep him , " the old womanher blue eyes flashing with a fierce wifely fire ,
says as though she said , " do you suppose I would let him come here ? " Then we heard a long story told with minute garrulity ; how the
old husband died , and she went on living by herself in her little roomdoing such small chars as might _keej ) her few wants supplied ;
till one , evening , after tea , she mounted on a chair , and tried to lift the tray covered with tea things on . to an upper shelf , and
overbalancing , fell , chair , tray , and frail old human body ; and they brought her to the workhouse with a broken bone , and at
seventyseven she would never rise again . Already she had been there spectacle eighteen s months and without , gazing books up ;— at thi the s respectable workhouse household ceiling , without servant
of We Lady asked B if — she e . would like something to read . "Oh ! " said the
old woinan eagerly . " And what books ? " "I was a Catholic , " said the old woman with a contrite pathos quite indescribable . The next
day she had a pair of strong spectacles , and a volume of Father Faber ' s hymns;—and the expression in those old blue eyes will
never be forgotten to the giver's dying day . Since then the workhouse Now cri let pp us le has ask gone ourselves to her " rest what . is the _picrpose of a workhouse ;
what idea lies at the core of , these vast buildings , too often so dreary both within and without ?
A Christian community considers it necessary to provide , as a last resort , that no one of its members actually perish of want .
system matter Society how feels of charit degraded bound crumbled to ; assure and when to thus the , much dust at the in to Reformation Eng every land living the , the creature Poor Catholic Law , no
y , arose upon its ruins , in tacit acknowledgment of the need of a substitute . We may therefore reckon on finding in our Unions a
certain per-centage of the dregs of our population ; people whose idleness or vice have hindered their gaining a living in a respectable
way So . difficult is it to prevent this class settling on the labor of
their fellow-menthat we have been informed that a regular trampliked ni system ght ' s than prevails lodg labor ing and , of walking To a breakfast hinder from thi , s which workhouse is the , constant however to workhouse aim roug of h , all is , official better for a
. of men , who humanity not unnaturall and y come become at leng much th to embittered feel that none in their but views hard
measures pauper are just . , It is on this ground that workhouses are made as rigorously frugal as can be ; that board and lodging , scrupulously
_otattn . in a good workhouse , are reduced to the minimum of comfort
The Workhouse Visiting Society. 385
THE WORKHOUSE VISITING SOCIETY . 385
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Aug. 1, 1858, page 385, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01081858/page/25/
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