l, in the
course of his inspection, found two other tattered boys, shrivelled with
cold, who had been spending three days there. In the dog-hole there were
often seven, and in the tramp-room, twenty men huddled together. Women,
also, were placed in the dog-hole, because they refused to go to church;
and one was shut four days into the tramp-room, with God knows what sort
of company, and that while she was ill and receiving medicine! Another
woman was placed in the insane department for punishment, though she was
perfectly sane. In the workhouse at Bacton, in Suffolk, in January,
1844, a similar investigation revealed the fact that a feeble-minded
woman was employed as nurse, and took care of the patients accordingly;
while sufferers, who were often restless at night, or tried to get up,
were tied fast with cords passed over the covering and under the
bedstead, to save the nurses the trouble of sitting up at night. One
patient was found dead, bound in this way. In the St. Pancras workhouse
in London (where the cheap shirts already mentioned are made), an
epileptic died of suffocation during an attack in bed, no one coming to
his relief; in the same house, four to six, sometimes eight children,
slept in one bed. In Shoreditch workhouse a man was placed, together
with a fever patient violently ill, in a bed teeming with vermin. In
Bethnal Green workhouse, London, a woman in the sixth month of pregnancy
was shut up in the reception-room with her two-year-old child, from
February 28th to March 20th, without being admitted into the workhouse
itself, and without a trace of a bed or the means of satisfying the most
natural wants. Her husband, who was brought into the workhouse, begged
to have his wife released from this imprisonment, whereupon he received
twenty-four hours imprisonment, with bread and water, as the penalty of
his insolence. In the workhouse at Slough, near Windsor, a man lay dying
in September, 1844. His wife journeyed to him, arriving at midnight; and
hastening to the workhouse, was refused admission. She was not permitted
to see her husband until the next morning, and then only in the presence
of a female warder, who forced herself upon the wife at every succeeding
visit, sending her away at the end of half-an-hour. In the workhouse at
Middleton, in Lancashire, twelve, and at times eighteen, paupers, of both
sexes, slept in one room. This institution is not embraced by the New
Poor Law, but is adm