Metropolitan workhouses and their inmates.

Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    sit the whole day idle. The idleness of course leads to gossip and quarrelling, as it would natu¬ rally do everywhere. With regard to the inmates themselves, let us endeavour to see them as they really are, neither better nor worse than others of their class with whom we have to deal. Experience will teach us that in a Workhouse, as elsewhere, there is much good to be encouraged, much evil to be overcome, and then we shall not raise false expectations of success, or be disheartened by many failures and discouragements. To have made a beginning is a great gain, and we cannot doubt the good results that will follow, even amidst the difficulties that ever attend hitherto untried work. Success in a few instances will induce many to attempt it, how¬ ever at present opposed to the introduction of a new principle into an old system and routine. A failure will inevitably retard the cause for a time, even though it may ultimately succeed. It must do so, if, as I believe, it is one branch of the work to which God has especially called us of this time and generation, one corner of the wide field, hitherto unoccupied, which He has reserved for us to cultivate. May the Spirit of Wisdom help us all to do our part in it, believing that it is His work, and if so it must prevail, whoever may oppose it! London: Printed by Spottiswoode & Co., New-street Square.