Metropolitan workhouses and their inmates.

Date:: 1857

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Metropolitan workhouses and their inmates. Source: Wellcome Collection.

72/80 (page 68)

for the situations which they filled. In some eases the Guardians exercised a power which did not legally belong to them by giving orders to the Porter of the workhouse to refuse relief, while in others they did not enforce the test imposed by law of making every pauper who had a night’s lodging and a breakfast perform four hours’ work. Therefore they broke the law at both extremes. Another matter which required alteration was the system of employing paupers as nurses in the sick wards. He was informed that in the parish of St. Pancras this practice had been discontinued, but in other Workhouses it still prevailed. In most of these Workhouses, too, the wards were overcrowded, and no proper measures were taken for their ventilation. The result of this was the production of a great amount of disease and death. There are alterations required in the constitution of the Boards of Guardians. At present the only object looked to in the selection of Guardians was the reduction of expenditure, but it would be of great advantage if clergymen and other persons of respectable position in the district were made Guardians, as a matter of course. There ought, too, to be more efficient control over the officers of the Unions in the discharge of their duties. There had been several cases lately of suicides and deaths caused by the neglect of the medical officers.” Several speakers supported the motion, amongst whom Mr. Drummond alluded to the treatment of