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Charles Shaw
entered Chell Workhouse circa 1840.
We went by the
field road to Chell, so as to escape as much
observation as possible. One child had to be
carried as she was too young to walk. The
morning was dull and cheerless. I had been
through those fields in sunshine, and
when the singing of the birds made the whole
scene very pleasant. Now, when the silence was
broken, it was only by deep agonising sobs. If
we could have seen what was driving us so
relentlessly up that hill to the workhouse
('Bastille' as it was bitterly called then),
we should have seen two stern and terrible
figures - Tyranny and Starvation. No other
powers could have so relentlessly hounded us
along. None of us wanted to go, but we must
go, and so we came to our big home for the
first time. The very vastness of it chilled
us. Our reception was more chilling still.
Everybody we saw and spoke to looked metallic,
as if worked from within by a hidden
machinery. Their voices were metallic, and
sounded harsh and imperative. The younger ones
huddled more closely to their parents, as if
from fear of these stern officials. Doors were
unlocked by keys belonging to bunches, and the
sound of keys and locks and bars, and doors
banging, froze the blood within us. It was all
so unusual and strange, and so unhomelike. We
finally landed in a cellar, clean and bare,
and as grim as I have since seen in prison
cells. We were told that this was the place
where we should have to be washed and put on
our workhouse attire. Nobody asked us if we
were tired, or if we had had breakfast. We
might have committed some unnamable crime, or
carried some dreaded infection. 'No softening
gleam' fell upon us, from any quarter. We were
a part of Malthus's 'superfluous population',
and our existence only tended to increase the
poverty from which we suffered. 'Benevolence'
he said, 'in a being so shortsighted as man,
would lead to the grossest error, and soon
transform the fair and cultivated soil of
civilised society into a dreary scene of want
and confusion'.
This truly was
a 'nice derangement of epitaphs' to come from
the pen of a clergyman in a Christian country.
I have wondered if the pen with which he wrote
was 'a steel' pen. In this spirit Carlyle's
'Poor Law Bastilles' were not made 'pleasant
places'. The place was as innocent-looking as
to hospitality as if it had been built in
flinty rock, and never had a human being in
it. We youngsters were roughly disrobed,
roughly and coldly washed, and roughly attired
in rough clothes, our under garments being all
covered up by a rough linen pinafore. Then we
parted amid bitter cries, the young ones being
taken one way and the parents (separated too)
taken as well to different regions in that
merciful establishment which the statesmanship
of England had provided for those who were
driven there by its gross selfishness and
unspeakable crassness.
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