Workhouse Characters

The workhouse inspired many novels, the most famous is Oliver Twist. This collection of short stories is about the horrors Margaret saw, chiefly about things women had to endure. A married woman collected money and found a house for her and her children, but could not leave the workhouse as she was, by law, "the property of her husband." This particular story was adapted from her one-act play "In The Workhouse" which helped change that law only two years later. In another story, a smart lady who studied at the University Of Cambridge sinks into depression after the death of her husband and finds herself drunk at the workhouse. In 26 tales, Nevinson details the horrors of the system, one after the other, in an engaging and elegant style which appealed to the public. This book is perfect for fans of Charles Dickens, and for all those who love feminism and social history.

By : Margaret Nevinson (1858 - 1932)

00 - Preface 01 - Eunice Smith—drunk 02 - Detained By Marital Authority 03 - A Welsh Sailor 04 - The Vow 05 - Blind And Deaf 06 - And, Behold, The Babe Wept 07 - Mary, Mary, Pity Women! 08 - The Suicide 09 - Publicans And Harlots 10 - Old Inky 11 - A Daughter Of The State 12 - In The Phthisis Ward 13 - An Irish Catholic 14 - An Obscure Conversationist 15 - Mothers 16 - Your Son's Your Son 17 - Too Old At Forty 18 - In The Lunatic Asylum 19 - The Sweep's Legacy 20 - An Alien 21 - Widows Indeed! 22 - The Runaway 23 - A Girl! God Help Her! 24 - On The Permanent List 25 - The Pauper And The Old-age Pension 26 - The Evacuation Of The Workhouse

These sketches have been published in various papers during the last thirteen years. Many of the characters are life portraits, and the wit and wisdom of the common people have been faithfully recorded in a true Boswellian spirit; others are Wahrheit und Dichtung (if one may still quote Goethe), but all have been suggested by actual fact and experience.

During the last ten years great reforms have been taking place in the country. In 1908 the Old Age Pensions Act came into force, and the weekly miracle of 5s. a week (now 7s. 6d.) changed the world for the aged, giving them the liberty and independence, which ought to be the right of every decent citizen in the evening of life.

The order by which a pauper husband had the right to detain his wife in the workhouse by "his marital authority" is now repealed. A case some years ago of this abominable breach of the law of Habeas Corpus startled the country, especially the ratepayers, and even the House of Commons were amazed at their own laws. The order was withdrawn in 1913 on the precedent of the judgment given in the case of the Queen v. Jackson (1891), when it was decided "that the husband has no right, where his wife refuses to live with him, to take her person by force and restrain her of her liberty" (60 L. J. Q. B. 346).

Many humane reforms and regulations for the classification of inmates were made in 1913, and the obnoxious words "pauper" and "workhouse" have been abolished; but before the authorities rightly grasped the changes the war was upon us, the workhouses were commandeered as military hospitals, the inmates sent into other institutions, and all reforms lapsed in overcrowded and understaffed buildings.

Once again the Poor Law is in the melting-pot, and it seems as if now it will pass into the limbo of the past with other old, unhappy far-off things.