"Workhouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Important Element.—The actual fact, as we may venture to affirm, is that the standards of living which need to be maintained in the future are the all-important element in the case. To the laboring man it is necessary to avoid starvation or the workhouse; to the well-paid artisan it seems necessary to do this and to make for his children a provision which will keep them in the same class with himself. To the capitalist who by successful business has raised himself above the artisan class it seems necessary ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... spoke of a good wife sending out ships and dealing in merchandise. Women entered stores and became not only clerks but merchants, and some of the best stores she knew to-day were owned by women, who do not look to the time when they are to go to the workhouse or some worse place even, but were laying by some means to give them comfortable maintenance in their old age. Fathers who had daughters looked forward with more courage, because there were more avenues for woman's industry and better ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... some pride, and a horror of accepting parochial relief—that surest safeguard to the sturdy independence of the English character. So when her father talked of giving up their comfortable cottage and removing to the workhouse, while she and her brothers must move to service, Hannah formed a bold resolution, and proceeded to act at once on ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... these cognoscenti, at being asked to contemplate, deliberately, and to the last rent of her ragged gown, and for principal object in a finished picture, a vagrant who ought at once to have been sent to the workhouse; and some really green grass and blue flowers, as they actually may any day be ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the letter with a deep-drawn sigh. "Sey, my boy," he mused aloud, "no fortune on earth—not even mine—can go on standing it. These perpetual drains begin really to terrify me. I foresee the end. I shall die in a workhouse. What with the money he robs me of when he is Colonel Clay, and the money I waste upon him when he isn't Colonel Clay, the man is beginning to tell upon my nervous system. I shall withdraw altogether from this worrying ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... darky rag-tag most of my time. But, Andy, it makes me blaze house-high to see the way he hands the law out to 'em. They can cut and fight as long as it is in a whisky dive and no indictment returned; but let one of 'em sidestep an inch in any other ignorant pitiful way and it's the workhouse and the ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a large sum, I know," he said in a low voice. "I am very sorry to ask you to do this. It is not for myself; I never asked a penny for myself in my life, and never will, till I go to the workhouse. Don't answer at once, if you don't see your way. Think it over. Take time to think it over; but do try, Westray, to help in the matter, if you can. It would be a sad pity to let the picture go out of ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... both races, to study problems made acute in Cleveland by the recent incoming of probably 10,000 negroes from the South. At the first meeting of this committee, August 3, 1917, the city welfare department announced that 61 per cent of the men in the workhouse at Warrensville were negroes and that of 100 women 66 were negroes. The normal proportion of negroes in the workhouse before the migration began was about 10 per cent, he said. This had mounted rapidly in the last year. It was brought out that the cause of this increase lay in housing congestion, ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... pond!" (Here she pointed to two old monsters of carp that had been in a pond in Castlewood gardens for centuries, according to tradition, and had their backs all covered with a hideous grey mould.) "Lockwood must pack off; the workhouse is the place for him; and I shall have a smart, good-looking, tall fellow in the lodge that will ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... now chiefly assailed by those who have never known it, or by those who have failed to fulfil it. Numberless modern women have rebelled against domesticity in theory because they have never known it in practice. Hosts of the poor are driven to the workhouse without ever having known the house. Generally speaking, the cultured class is shrieking to be let out of the decent home, just as the working class is shouting to be let ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... But I warn you, your brain won't stand that. You know the taint in the family as well as I do, it has shewn itself in your actions. Well, go on drinking and you will end in Bedlam instead of the workhouse. They call you 'Mad Rochester'; you know that." She choked. "I have blushed to be known as your sister—I have tried to keep my place here and save you. It's ended." ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... the want of it or from some other cause, never make any proficiency as performers on an instrument. Blindness, too, is often accompanied with some other disability, which disqualifies its victims for learning such trades as they might otherwise be taught. Hence many, rather than remain in the workhouse, take to grinding music in the streets. Here we are struck with one remarkable fact: the Irishman, the Frenchman, the Italian, or the Savoyard, at least so soon as he is a man, and able to lug it about, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... I was attempting was not so simple as I had imagined. To begin with, Bohemians diffuse their brains in every direction except that where bread-and-butter comes from. I found, too, that unless one earns bread-and-butter, one has to sprint very fast to the workhouse door to prevent oneself starving before one gets there; so I dropped Bohemia and I dropped many other pleasant fictions as well. I took to examining pavements, saw how hard they were, had a look at the gutters, and saw how broad they were. I noticed the accumulation ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... well six months after admission to the hospital. Soon after that, she left the husband, once had him arrested in 1908 and sent to the workhouse. She was again examined in 1913, and was found to be perfectly well, and she stated she had been ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... poor scholar for the respect of the people. It matters not how poor or how miserable he may be; so long as they see him struggling with poverty in the prosecution of a purpose so laudable, they will treat him with attention and kindness. Here there is no danger of his being sent to the workhouse, committed as a vagrant, or passed from parish to parish until he reaches his own settlement. Here the humble lad is not met by the sneer of purse-proud insolence, or his simple tale answered only in the frown of heartless contempt. No—no—no. The best ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... are committed for assault and battery or larceny, for terms varying from one month to four years and a half; those committed for graver offences are confined at Sing Sing; all drunkards, vagrants, and disorderly characters at the workhouse. During the past year two thousand three hundred and fifteen persons were incarcerated for different periods—two thousand one hundred and thirty-nine whites, one hundred and seventy-six blacks. Of these about one third were native Americans, one third Irish, one tenth German, and the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... low that the lowest floor is uninhabitable, and therefore without windows or doors. Here the background embraces the pauper burial-ground, the station of the Liverpool and Leeds railway, and, in the rear of this, the Workhouse, the "Poor-Law Bastille" of Manchester, which, like a citadel, looks threateningly down from behind its high walls and parapets on the hilltop, upon the working-people's ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... sent out to nurse in private families, and in 1839 two more were sent to superintend the workhouse in Frankfort. As the institution became known there was a constant demand for superintendents, and matrons for public reformatories, prisons, and charitable establishments. Between 1846 and 1850 more than ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... into tears, "my poor mother and sisters must go to the workhouse or starve if I did not stay and work for them, and I could not be happy if I lived in a fine house, and knew they were in want of a bit of ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... assemblage at the first mass is thin; at the second it is good— better than at any other time; at eleven it is pretty numerous; and in the evening it is fair. Adults and children from the union workhouse, of the Catholic persuasion, attend the eleven o'clock service; and they come in tolerable ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... told was that the Volunteers had taken the South Dublin Union Workhouse, occupied it, and trenched the grounds. They were heavily attacked by the military, who, at a loss of 150 men, took the place. The tale went that towards the close the officer in command offered them terms of surrender, but the Volunteers replied that they were not there to surrender. They were there ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... was thus gradually broken up, and, as iron ships superseded wooden ones, ultimately the shipbuilding trade almost vanished from Liverpool. The ship carpenters, for the most part, found their occupation gone, and many of them ended their days in the workhouse. ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... more in the fiery soul hidden within. But the mocking voice would not be stifled, showing him how absurd and ridiculous it was "to become a vagabond," so the voice said, and finally to die in the workhouse. So the eternal spirit in him, God's essence, conscious of its past brotherhood, with the morning stars, the White Aeons, in its prisonhouse writhed with the meanness, till at last he cried, "I will struggle no longer; it is only agony of spirit to aspire here at all; I will sit and wait till ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... shop, or knew Naples from brown Windsor. Did you not make over your house, your furniture, your emporium of perfumery, and nine-and-twenty shaving customers, to me? Are these trifles? Is Jemimarann a trifle? if she would allow me to call her so. Oh, Jemimarann, your Pa found me in the workhouse, and made me what I am. Conduct me to my grave, and I never, never shall be different!" When he had said this, Orlando was so much affected, that he rushed suddenly on his hat and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was something of a mystery to the Island people. Long ago in comparative youth she had disappeared for a half-dozen years. Then she had turned up one day in a coarse dress of blue and white check, which looked suspiciously like workhouse or asylum garb, and had greeted such of the neighbours as she knew with a nod, for all the world as if she had seen them yesterday. It happened that the henwife at the Hall had been buried a day or two earlier, and when Margret ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... with the partial recovery of the stunned or stupefied man, his inability to speak plainly, the unsuccessful search in his pockets for something to identify him, and the final decision to put him in a cab and take him to the workhouse infirmary, pending discovery of his identity. The end of her story has a ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... A Country Assembly Vice of Balloting Plan for rendering Society social Characteristics of Novels —— Villages round London Condition of Poverty Poverty and Wealth contrasted Inadequate Remuneration of Labour Visit to Wandsworth Workhouse Philosophy of Roads Cruelty to Horses Value of good Foot-paths Citizen's Villas Axioms of Political Economy Putney Heath The Smoke of London Earl Spencer's Park Hartley's Fire-House Means of Preventing Fires in Houses, and on Female Dress The ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... me smile, sir, to think where the like o' poor folks is to get such things. Lucky to be able to get a bit o' bread and a drain o' tea without sugar, them as is off their work, just to rub on and keep theirselves out o' the workhouse. I know I'm thankful to do it. Jim, he have got ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... so they will; the populace have no idea of being grateful for benefits. Talk of starvation! Pooh!—I've studied political economy in a workhouse, and I know what it means. They've got a fine plan in those workhouses for feeding the poor devils. They do it on the homoeopathic system, by administering to them oatmeal porridge in infinitessimal doses; but some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... years old, I fancy— he might even have been more, but he was a simple-minded, quiet-mannered lad, and from the expression of his countenance, independent of his size, he looked much younger. He had no friends, having been sent on board the ship from the workhouse when she was first fitted out. He had belonged to her ever since, having remained to assist the ship keeper in sweeping her out, and looking after her when he had to leave her. He had never, I believe, set foot on shore since the first ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Rampart Street side of the house there are several sheds, commanding an excellent range of the upper story. Detective Littleton, Andrew Van Kuren of the Workhouse force and several others climbed upon one of these and opened fire on the upper windows, shooting whenever they could catch a glimpse of the assassin. Charles responded with his rifle, and presently Van Kuren climbed down to find ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... to the house I was born in, which was the workhouse. You were educated at Eton and Christchurch, and all ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... in Oxford, built by Henry First, who styled it le Beau Mont; it stood in Stockwell Street, nearly on the site of the present workhouse. It had not been visited by royalty since 1157, when a baby was born in it, destined to become a mighty man of valour, and to be known to all ages as King Richard Coeur-de-Lion. In 1317 King Edward Second bestowed it on the White Friars, and all that ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... impossible as it is now imminent. In such a state, again, sermons on the text, "Our country right or wrong," would neither find preachers to deliver them nor audiences to listen to them. When the New Jerusalem is built in England, the slum, the gin palace, the workhouse, and the gaol will be things of the past. "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts; there shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... Crabbe, in his journal for 1817, "had better have rested as a shoemaker, or even a farmer's boy; for he would have been a farmer perhaps in time, and now he is an unfortunate poet." Poor John Clare, it will be recollected, died in a workhouse.-E. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... makes guileful tongue and lips. It is the workhouse where is the forge of deceits and slanders, and other evil speakings; and the tongue is only the outer shop where they are vended, and the lips the door of it. So then such ware as is made within, such and no other can be ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... seemingly with a dash of the Celt in him that made him vivacious and peppery; Mr. Rake polished his wits quite as much as he polished the tops, and considered himself a philosopher. Of whose son he was he had not the remotest idea; his earliest recollections were of the tender mercies of the workhouse; but even that chill foster-mother, the parish, had not damaged the liveliness of his temper or the independence of his opinions, and as soon as he was fifteen Rake had run away and joined a circus; distinguishing himself there by his genius for standing on his head and tying his limbs ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... astounding problem to solve which at all satisfactorily requires no little research and thought. I know that there are good workhouses; but I happen to know that there are also bad ones. In many a ship and fishing-vessel fine fellows may be met with who were sent out early from workhouse-schools and wrought their way onward until they became brave and useful seamen; there are also many industrious well-conducted girls who came originally from the great Union schools. But, when I take another side of the picture, I am inclined to say ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... dead—ran out screaming, and that the frightened neighbors called a doctor and a policeman. She made the tale as favorable to 'pa' as she could. She went on to say that, having broken the pledge, he was sent to the workhouse for sixty days and she was left without money, with seven ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... suppose the battle over; the Frenchman says, "You scoundrel! why did you not take a part with me? and why did you stand like a double-faced traitor looking on? I should have won the battle but for you. And I hereby confiscate the farm you stand on, and you and your family may go to the workhouse." ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... seething wave. And as for me, I railed at him and at ingratitude, While rifling of the basket he had slung Across his shoulders; then with right good will We fell to work, and feasted like the gods, Like laborers, or like eager workhouse folk At Yuletide dinner; or, to say the whole At once, like tired, hungry, healthy youth, Until the meal being o'er, the tilted flask Drained of its latest drop, the meat and bread And ruddy cherries eaten, and the dogs Mumbling the bones, this ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... became apparent. From all parts came reports of the evil quality of the immigrants. The Immigration Minister, writing to the Agent-General in June, 1874, says: "I have already called your attention to the fact that the shipment by the ... included a number of girls out of the Cork Workhouse, and I took the opportunity of remarking on the very undesirable character of such immigration. A perusal of the report of the Immigration Officer at Dunedin will, I think, convince you how very disastrous it is likely to prove to the cause of immigration if such modes of selection ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... loyal champion of all boys, and underlying his pen pictures of them was an earnest desire to remedy evils which he had found existing in London and its suburbs. Poor Jo, who was always being "moved on," David Copperfield, whose early life was a picture of Dickens' own childhood, workhouse-reared Oliver, and the miserable wretches at Dotheboy Hall were no mere creations of an author's vivid imagination. They were descriptions of living boys, the victims of tyranny and oppression which Dickens felt he must in some way alleviate. And so he wrote his novels with the histories in them ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... get all our furniture; he is our store-house and treasure, our place of strength and pleasure, a city of refuge, a strong tower and a pleasant river to refresh us. We again are his habitation where he dwelleth by his Spirit; we are his workhouse, where he works all his curious pieces of the new creature, forming it unto the day of his espousals, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... public works. In 1719 I find it was employed to build barracks. "Parishes are to send their best workmen," said the ordinance, "and all other works are to give way to this." The same forced service was used to escort convicts to the galleys and beggars to the workhouse; it had to cart the baggage of troops as often as they changed their quarters—a burthen which was very onerous at a time when each regiment carried heavy baggage after it. Many carts and oxen had to be ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... Honor, not the workhouse. Oh, God, not the workhouse," and she is borne out screaming and fighting and invoking Christ to her aid. The judge turns and says in explanation, "an old case, an example of what ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... magistrates and could do it. So at last the fellow growled out that he wasn't going to be troubled with another man's brat, and just before embarking, he had laid it down asleep at the door of Liverpool Workhouse! So no doubt poor little Michael is there! I would have telegraphed at once; but I don't know where my uncle is, or whether he knows about it, but you can find out and send him this letter at once. I have asked him to ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... raised $7500 bail for the ringleader, Tannenbaum loyally refused to accept it as long as any of his "army" remained in jail. Squads of his men entered restaurants, ate their fill, refused to pay, and then found their way to the workhouse. So for several months a handful of unemployed, some of them professional unemployed, held the headlines of the metropolitan papers, rallied to their defense sentimental social sympathizers, and succeeded in calling the attention of the public to a ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... [near Fort George]. E, [Not Shown]. F, Soldiers' Barracks [at extreme right]. G, Ship Yards [lower right hand corner]. H, City Hall [Broad and Wall streets, site of present Sub-Treasury building]. I, Exchange. J, K, Jail and Workhouse [both situated on the "intended square or common," now City Hall Square]. L, College [Church and Murray streets; this was King's College, now Columbia University]. M, Trinity Church [the present Trinity was ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... dying out. The incident of the theft and recovery of the pigeons is a true one, and happened to a flock at the old Hall farm near our home, which also once possessed a luxuriant garden, wherein Phoebe might have found all the requisites for her Sunday posy. A "tea" for the workhouse children used to be Madam Liberality's annual birthday feast; and the spot where the gaffers sat and watched the "new graft" strolling home across the fields was so faithfully described by Julie ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... that in these remote islands of Scotland Christmas is not forgotten. But a writer in a well-known Scotch journal says the surest sign of the general joy is "Christmas in the Workhouse":— ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... gloomy, it is so much all in one atmosphere, that it can best be considered as an exception or a solitary excursus in his work. Perhaps it can best be considered as the extension of one of his old sketches, of some sketch that happened to be about a visit to a workhouse or a gaol. In the Sketches by Boz he might well have visited a workhouse where he saw Bumble; in the Sketches by Boz he might well have visited a prison where he saw Fagin. We are still in the realm of sketches and sketchiness. The Pickwick Papers may ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... leap at night from any of the bridges of the metropolis? He was built of stouter stuff. He collected together his manuscripts, a book or two, which had happily for him been unsaleable, his ink-bottle and an iron pen, and marched straight—to the parish workhouse. There was no refusing his claim here. Poverty and famine were legible in every garment, and on every feature. In that asylum he ended his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... married, rich or poor,—every person in our commonwealth should equitably, it may well be conceded, have his or her single vote in the government of the country. Poverty is no crime, therefore the Workhouse should not disfranchise; sex is no just disqualification, therefore the woman should have her vote as freely as the man, for surely marriage ought not to suffer derogation and disgrace by denial of the common right of citizenship as its penalty; the soldier, sailor, policeman, government-official, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... was a point entirely for the shepherd and his wife to decide. If they chose to send it to the workhouse, no one could blame them for doing so. He doubted exceedingly anyone ever claiming it, but he advised Mrs. Shelley to lock up all its clothes and things in case of their being needed for identification at any future period. He also ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... portrait pieces with many figures are famous. An 'Archery Festival,' commemorating the Peace of Westphalia, includes twenty-four figures full of individuality and finely drawn and coloured. One of his best works is 'In the Workhouse,' at Amsterdam. Two women and two men are conversing together in the foreground. There is a man with a book, and a preacher delivering a ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... wife was a good woman and was willing to keep the child until the new proprietor came; but when once affairs were settled, she would certainly go and make a declaration to the mayor, and take her to the workhouse. Madame Desvarennes listened in silence. One word only had struck her while the woman was speaking. The child was without support, without ties, and abandoned like a poor lost dog. The little one was pretty too; and when she fixed her large deep eyes on that improvised mother, ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... records give a fragment of her life when the heyday of her youth and life has fled, and the man with whom she has eloped has taken to beating her in order to get up an appetite for breakfast. Here and there the workhouse or charitable home opens its doors to receive her, when she wearies of the life she gladly assumed, and is too proud to ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... became intolerable. Return to activity was a very gradual process, and, if one had ever "despised the day of small things," one now learned to value it. When I came up to London, two or three of us, who had been undergraduate friends at Oxford, formed a little party for workhouse-visiting. One of the party has since been a Conservative Minister, one a Liberal Minister, and one a high official of the Central Conservative Association. Sisters joined their brothers, and we used to jog off together on Saturday afternoons to the Holborn Workhouse, which, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the tenant-farmer and the day-laborer. The farmer in that country could never hope to own his farm, and the wages of the agricultural laborer were so small that it was only by the strictest economy and the best of health that he could hope to escape the workhouse in his old age. In America land could be had for the asking. The continent was simply waiting for the hands of willing workers to make it the happy home of millions. The reaction in trade after the Seven Years' War made the prospect just starting in life gloomier than ever, and many a father ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... could stand no more, and said, 'You ought to be prosecuted for violating the midnight closing law.' At this the saloonkeeper and policemen rushed upon me and put me into the street; and one of the policemen, grasping my arm like a vice, hissed in my ear, 'I'll get you a thirty days' sentence in the workhouse, and then we'll see what you think about suing people.' He called a patrol wagon, pushed me in, and drove to jail; and, Judge, you know the rest. All day yesterday I was locked up, my children at home alone, with no fire, no food, no mother." ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... capital invested. He does not want more than two and a half per cent.; but to ask that means a rise of perhaps a shilling a week. That is enough; the labourer seeks another tumbledown place where he can live for tenpence a week, and the poor and infirm have to go to the workhouse. So, rather than be annoyed with the endless complaints and troubles, to say nothing of the inevitable loss of money, the landlord allows things to go ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... and was the spoilt darling of my parents and of every one round me. After that I was a pupil teacher, taken in literally out of charity, in a second-rate suburban school. I am sure for a time I must have behaved too hatefully for words, and if Miss McDonald had sent me to the workhouse it would have served me right. But she knew that she was the only friend I had, and was awfully good to me. If I had only been older when the crash came I daresay I should have been better provided with ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... of which is under cultivation. How can any sane person say that this kind of education does not benefit the race? We will warrant that very few, if any, of Mr. Washington's students will ever be found in jail, the workhouse, the penitentiary, or on the chain gang. All this industry and activity is controlled by Mr. Washington and his eighty-one assistants, which makes him and his school an aggressive and conquering force in this the black belt of ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... does not pay. It hurts his health, his pocket, his character. He makes himself ill; he cannot get employed; he has ruin staring him in the face, from his wild living. He must mend. If he intends to keep out of the workhouse, the gaol, the grave, he must mortify the deeds of the body. He must bridle his passions, give up lying about, drinking, swearing, cheating, running after bad women: and if he has a strong will, he does it from mere selfish prudence. But is he safe? I think not, as long as he ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... mother disappeared. She had left me a sum of money to continue my studies, but after eight months had passed, and no word had come from her, I decided to go on to England. I have since learned what had happened. My mother had been seized with a stroke and had been conveyed to the workhouse infirmary by Crawley, who had left her there and had taken my sister, who apparently he passed ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... satisfied," said he, "till they strip us of everything we've worked our lives away earning. They'll ride in our motor-cars and we'll sit in their workhouse. That'll be nice, won't it? How'll plain little girls ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Oldinport. I'm going to write to him tomorrow morning, for to tell him the arrangement I've been thinking of about having service in the workhouse while the church is being enlarged. If he agrees to attend service there once or twice, the other people will come. Net the large fish, and you're sure to have ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... and we must bolster him up in his kingdom, or else there will be trouble with the powers." Powers—what's powers to me?—or Greenland? when there's Slingsby, a man I've smoked a pipe with every market evening of my life, in the workhouse? And there's hundreds of Slingsbys all ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... askance, and directed him to Bloomsbury; and after a descent into a grocer's shop, and an adventure which ended in an angry altercation in a servants' registry office, he was driven to a large building which adjoined the parish infirmary and workhouse. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... by fancying her fate? Thomas, too, his own brave boy, whom utter poverty might drive to desperation? And the poor babes, his little playful pets, what on earth would become of them? There was the Union workhouse to be sure, but Acton shuddered at the thought; to be separated from every thing he loved, to give up his little all, and be made both a prisoner and a slave, all for the sake of what?—daily water-gruel, and a pauper's branded livery. Or they might perchance go beyond the seas, if some ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... after five in the morning I awoke and took the lantern, and went out of the front door and round the verandahs. There was never a spark of dawn in the east, only the stars looked a little pale; and I expected to find them all asleep in the workhouse. But no! the stove was roaring, and Talolo and Fono, who was to lead the party, were standing together talking by the stove, and one of Fono's young men was lying asleep on the sofa in the smoking-room, wrapped in his lavalava. I had my breakfast ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... copper. The young fellow worked like a slave—sixteen shillings a week I think he was getting, and he kept the old man on it. Then he lost his job, couldn't get another. The old man had to go to the workhouse, the young man slept on the Embankment, ate free soup, picked up scraps, lived on the garbage heap of life. He pulled himself together, though, got another job, improved it, saved a few shillings, drove up in a cab and took the old man out. Look at them now. He's got a little tailor's ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... yet he, who was generally the haughtiest and most irritable of mankind, who was but too prompt to resent anything which looked like a slight on the part of a purse-proud bookseller, or of a noble and powerful patron, bore patiently from mendicants, who, but for his bounty, must have gone to the workhouse, insults more provoking than those for which he had knocked down Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield. Year after year Mrs Desmoulins, Polly, and Levett, continued to torment him and to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... deterioration. The commandment to the modern woman is now not simply "Thou shalt bear," but rather, "Thou shalt not bear in excess of thy power to rear and train satisfactorily;" and the woman who should today appear at the door of a workhouse or the tribunal of the poor-law guardians followed by her twelve infants, demanding honourable sustenance for them and herself in return for the labour she had undergone in producing them, would meet with but short shrift. And the modern man who on his ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... my confidence all gone. The grey-haired soldier-porter waves me on, And on I crawl, and still my spirits fail: A tragic meanness seems so to environ These corridors and stairs of stone and iron, Cold, naked, clean—half-workhouse and half-jail. ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... she said, drily, "when it comes right I'm to take the place of your sister in the charge of this workhouse and succeed to the keys of that safe in ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... she contemplated the position of Sir Felix married to such a girl as she supposed Marie Melmotte to be, without any means of support for either of them but what she could supply. It would kill her. And for those young people there would be nothing before them, but beggary and the workhouse. As she thought of this she trembled with true maternal instincts. Her beautiful boy,—so glorious with his outward gifts, so fit, as she thought him, for all the graces of the grand world! Though the ambition was vilely ignoble, the mother's love ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... market years after their father's death for a long-passed act of disobedience? Most of us, again, would have a temporary emotion of pity for an outcast lying helplessly in the street. We should call the police, or send her in a cab to the workhouse, or, at least, write to the Times to denounce the defective arrangements of public charity. But it is perhaps better not to ask how many good Samaritans would take her on their shoulders to their own homes, care for her wants, and put her into a ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... he lost his wife, and became insane. He was sent to St. Luke's, and dismissed as cured; but his power was gone and his strength; he could no longer manage a garden, nor submit to the restraint, nor encounter the fatigue of regular employment: so he retreated to the workhouse, the pensioner and factotum of the village, amongst whom he divides his services. His mind often wanders, intent on some fantastic and impracticable plan, and lost to present objects; but he is perfectly harmless, and full of a childlike simplicity, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... and his gang, who struck terror into their neighbours, daringly carried on their trade, and drank deep at the inn when the kegs were safely housed. Only fourteen years ago the last of his gang died in Eastbourne Workhouse. Smuggling is a vanished profession nowadays, a feature of vanished England that no one would seek to revive. Who can tell whether it may not be as prevalent as ever it was, if tariff reform and the imposition of heavy ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... the Man of sorrows; which makes his Psalms to this day the text-book of the afflicted, of tens of thousands who have not a particle of his beauty, courage, genius; but yet can feel, in mean hovels and workhouse sick-beds, that the warrior-poet speaks to their human hearts, and for their human hearts, as none other can speak, save Christ himself, the Son of David and ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... founded by benevolent persons. There are two classes relieved under this system, and which ought to be differently dealt with—the sick and the young. Hospitals for the former and schools for the latter ought to take the place of the workhouse. It is difficult to fancy a worse place for educating the young than the workhouse, and it would tend to lessen the evil were the children of the poor trained and educated in separate establishments from those for ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... of old people who are left to the care of the parish by children who ought to be thankful to be allowed to support them. Secondly, that it is your duty to make provision for the future, so that the workhouse may not even enter into your calculations, as a possible refuge in old age for you and yours. This can be done by regular savings, even though very small, and by insuring your life. Post office and other savings' banks, will ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... I shall certainly tell the master of your workhouse. To think that there should be a thief ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... hourly exchanging deeds of kindness; a Light shining into the rooms of dingy warehousemen and thrifty clerks, whose hard labour and hoarded coins are for wife and child and friend; shining into prison and workhouse, where sin and sorrow glimmer with sad eyes through rusty bars into distant homes and mourning hearths; shining through heavy curtains, and round sumptuous tables, where the heart throbs audibly through velvet mantle and silken ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... even a girl so much as touched him he must flood himself with tears; and the only way out of his misery was the rope. What a disgrace it was, that he should have earned his daily bread and yet have been kept in the workhouse, as though they did him a kindness in allowing him a hole to creep into there, when with his capacity for work he could have got on anywhere! And it became quite unendurable as he grew up and was still misused by all the world, and treated like ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... what the consequence of this would be to Mary made me tremble with fear. Ill as she and Mrs Simmons were, their beds might, notwithstanding, be taken from beneath them. The widow might be carried off to the workhouse, and we should be turned into the street I begged hard for delay, and promised that I would do all I could to raise the money. The landlord replied that he would give us two days more, but would ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... suggest, and afterwards I want you to come with me to see the draughtsman in the lockup. You may be able to shake his confounded obstinacy. Run the pathetic stunt. Say if he keeps silent that you will be arrested, your home broken up, your family driven into the workhouse, and you yourself probably shot. Pitch it strong and rich. He is a bit of a softy from the look of him. That tender-hearted lot are always the most obstinate when asked to give ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... learning from them the most minute details of its working. Great is evidently her rejoicing when one of her "Nightingales" proves to be a really fine nurse, such a one, for instance, as Agnes Jones, the reformer of workhouse nursing. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... nothing more, I think, except—except that Mr. Pedgift will speak for me, if you wish to inquire into my conduct in his service. I'm very much indebted to Mr. Pedgift; he's a little rough with me sometimes, but, if he hadn't taken me into his office, I think I should have gone to the workhouse when I left Sir John, I was so broken down." He picked up his dingy old hat from the floor. "I won't intrude any longer, sir. I shall be happy to call again if you wish to have time to ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... too rash, no object too sacred. It will condescend with equal readiness upon torturing a pauper, fleecing the farmer, robbing a church, or undertaking "the command of the Channel fleet at a moment's notice." With Mr Secretary Chadwick, schooled in police courts, it will metamorphose workhouse asylums for the destitute into parish prisons, with "locks, bolts, and bars," for the safe keeping of unfortunate outcasts found guilty of the felony of pauperism. With Dr Kay Shuttleworth and the privy council, when the masses want bread, it will invite ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... a five-pound note by his side upon the desk. "When you boys have driven me into the workhouse, you'll be satisfied, perhaps. And now hold your foolish ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... is further ordered and enacted, If any Quaker or Quakers shall presume To come henceforth into this Jurisdiction, Every male Quaker for the first offence Shall have one ear cut off; and shall be kept At labor in the Workhouse, till such time As he be sent away at his own charge. And for the repetition of the offence Shall have his other ear cut off, and then Be branded in the palm of his right hand. And every woman Quaker ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... murmured apathetically the names of streets and of public-houses, and then they jerked off again on an outward curve to the impatient double ting of the bell. To the east was a high defile of hospitals, and to the west the Workhouse tower faintly imprinted itself on ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... when she trudged through Madron to see the gray church and the little gray houses all sleeping under the gray sky. She plodded on up the hill past the gaunt workhouse which stands at the top of it; and what had seemed soft, sweet repose among the cottage homes, felt like cold death beneath these ashy walls. To Joan, the workhouse was a word of shame unutterable. Those among whom she lived would hurl the word against enemies as a prophecy of the utmost ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... of an old woman employed at the farm at this period. She had been in the Warminster workhouse for a short time, and had there heard that a daughter of a former mistress in another part of the county had long been married and was now the mistress of Doveton Farm, close by. Old Nance thereupon obtained her release and trudged ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... conjecture: it cannot have amounted to a mighty sum, the main point is that it served. I deal with these details, because at the first glance one is puzzled to know however the family managed to pull through at all and avoid the workhouse. ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... play on words; to do so is low vulgar, smelling of the pothouse, the workhouse. Belle, I insist on ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to their pleasure or instruction by writing books, than there would be in asking us to aid in supporting the hundreds of thousands of day laborers, their wives and children, whom the same system condemns, unpitied, to the workhouse. ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... the 'baccer-box marked with his name; I am afraid he usually got the worst of those transactions, and was frightfully taken in. No, I was going to Wapping, because an Eastern police magistrate had said, through the morning papers, that there was no classification at the Wapping workhouse for women, and that it was a disgrace and a shame, and divers other hard names, and because I wished to see how the fact really stood. For, that Eastern police magistrates are not always the wisest men of the East, may be inferred from their course of procedure respecting the fancy-dressing and ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... sad enough. If you had had a pack of hounds to look after for thirty summers, you wouldn't like to get rid of them in a hurry. I'm like an old nurse who is sending her babies out, or some mother, rather, who is putting her children into the workhouse because she cannot feed them herself. It is sad, though you don't see ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... to convince anybody today that our system of distribution is wildly and monstrously wrong. We have million-dollar babies side by side with paupers worn out by a long life of unremitted drudgery. One person in every five dies in a workhouse, a public hospital, or a madhouse. In cities like London the proportion is very nearly one in two. Naturally so outrageous a distribution has to be effected by violence pure and simple. If you demur, you are sold up. If you resist the selling up ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... for a criminal offence he would be denominated a "laborer." Serjeant Talfourd's sweeping theory, of the term "gentleman" being legally applicable to every man who has nothing to do and is out of the workhouse, cannot be accepted, as it would of necessity include thieves, mendicants and out-door paupers. The American police have been compelled, to defend the border-line of gentility against the encroachments of their vagabond gold-seekers, card-sharpers and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... desperate, and spoke with greater freedom than he would otherwise have ventured to do when addressing his captain. "If he were to be sent ashore there's no one might own him," he continued; "then what would become of the poor little chap? he might be taken to the workhouse, or just ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... Derby, a suburb of Liverpool, in a state of insanity, and, being taken before a magistrate, he proved to be an American. As he seemed to be in a respectable station of life, the magistrate sent the master of the workhouse to me, in order to find out whether I would take the responsibility of his expenses, rather than have him put in the workhouse. My clerk went to investigate the matter, and brought me his papers. His name proves to be —— ———, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... George, whose father, William George, was also a bookseller, started in business on his own account between thirty and forty years ago, his stock-in-trade consisting of four shillings' worth of miscellaneous volumes, which he exposed for sale on a barrow close to the old Whitechapel workhouse, which occupied the ground on which one of Mr. George's shops now stands. Mr. George has built up one of the most remarkable and extensive business connections in existence. His stock may be roughly calculated at about 700,000 or 800,000 volumes or parts, two large houses and warehouses ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... the paupers in the Workhouse. The radical working men are jealous of their own leaders, and the leaders are jealous of one another. Schopenhauer must have organised a Labour Party in his salad days. And yet one can't help feeling ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... social inequality. And this assumption was religiously acquiesced in by the lower animal himself—who doubtless glorified God for the distinctly unsearchable wisdom and loving-kindness manifested in those workhouse regulations which separated his own toil-worn age from the equal feebleness of the wife whose human rights he should have died fighting for when he was young. And, as might be expected, this strictly gentlemanly principle looms larger in your forefathers' prose than in their poetry. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... what suited me from a number of sources, which shows how wide-spread this quaint droll is in England: (i) In Mayhew, London Poor, iii. 391, told by a lad in a workhouse; (ii) several versions in 7 Notes and Queries, ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... they are petty villains, mere pick-pockets. They are a miserable set. Their trade never produces a man of genius; 'tis confined to the whip and workhouse—and at most can ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... means when I rustle the paper. I meant her to know. Why should I? It's the easiest thing on earth for me to respond to what she says. I know perfectly well what she's getting at. I could easily have said that Mrs. Toller would have old Toller in the workhouse one of these days if he didn't watch it. I could have said, 'She'll be keeping three servants next, and she can't keep one as it is.' Mabel would have ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... more," said his wife, "except that she couldn't bear the crowds. I haven't asked her either, John. She's a good girl, you can see that; and penniless as well as homeless. I should hate to send her to the workhouse, or perhaps worse," she half whispered. "If she's got a secret in her heart, we'll let her keep it, dear. Perhaps we all have a little corner in our hearts marked 'Private,'" she added in ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... to the Congress a special message on January 11, 1909, accompanying the report of Commissioners theretofore appointed to investigate the jail, workhouse, etc., in the District of Columbia, in which he directed attention to the report as setting forth vividly, "the really outrageous conditions in the workhouse ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... thing, sir; and though her dress was poor and torn, she looked as if she had not been always so. Some one says, 'Take them to the workhouse.' 'No!' says I—for my heart yearned towards the poor young thing—'bring her in here; mayn't we, John?' says I. Well, sir, John did not say nothing, but he took the baby out of her arms and gave it to me, and then he upped and took the poor young creature—she were no ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... wife to receive him, reeling drunk. He "took and gave her a pair o' black eyes," for which I pardon him, nailed up the cook-shop door, gave up his situation, and resigned himself to a life of poverty, with the workhouse at the end. As the children came to their full age they fled the house, and established themselves in other countries; some did well, some not so well; but the father remained at home alone with his drunken wife, all his sound-hearted pluck and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a penny at all have I, and unless I can sell my watch to buy my ticket with, I'll lose my job, and then my wife and family must go to the workhouse. ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... within the limits of your State of Illinois, 100,000 drunkards. Every woman who dares to lift her hand, cry out with her voice, "Give me the ballot that may offset the votes of these drunkards at the polls and save my children from starvation and myself from being put into the workhouse"—this woman is lifting herself against the laws of God and womanhood. That is not all! Last summer this question of prohibition was being tested in Massachusetts by votes. I went from town to town—my engagements taking me all over the State at that time—and said my say upon this ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... back of High Street, stood the old workhouse, which has been for many years pulled down. At the back of the High Street also was a gaol for female convicts, which has now vanished. The gaol was built about 1854 on the site of Burlington House, which ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... granted, and he died content. And now the pauper's funeral had set forth, And the bell toll'd—not many strokes, nor long— Pauper's allowance. He was coming home. But while the train was yet a good way off— The workhouse burial train—I stopp'd to look Upon the scene before me; and methought Oh! that some gifted painter could behold And give duration to that living picture, So rich in moral and pictorial beauty, If seen arightly by the spiritual eye As with the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... he was absolutely warned out of his lodging, and had only a week to provide himself. His brother John was in as bad a case, for he was quite out, and had only begged leave of his master, the biscuit-maker, to lodge in an outhouse belonging to his workhouse, where he only lay upon straw, with some biscuit-sacks, or bread-sacks, as they called them, laid upon it, and some of the ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... the man or woman who had written this letter he had an enemy who indeed wished him worse off than he was, and not only worse but much worse; who would take from him not only the roof over his head, but even the dreadful refuge of the Workhouse; who would hunt him down even into jail. That talk about his not going to the War was all nonsense. How could all the Coastguard or Custom-house Officers in Christendom force a man to go to the War with a growth under his thigh as big as your fist? Damn the War!—he'd scarcely ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... before I die. And for the rest, I read nothing but "The Edinburgh" and "The Agricultural Gazette." My talk is of bullocks. I just know right from wrong enough to see that the farms are in good order, pay my labourers living wages, keep the old people out of the workhouse, and see that my cottages and schools are all right; for I suppose I was put here for some purpose of that kind-though what it is I can't very clearly define-And there's an end of my ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... the penalty would be a restriction of personal liberty, the judge may order the prisoner to a workhouse, until the proper authorities object, when the remainder of the sentence is carried out ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... wot have I done? Ain't I been on de level wid yez? Say, I ain't never even seen yez for de fourteen months I've been yer gobetween. I've been beat up by de cops, pinched and sent to de workhouse 'cause I wouldn't squeal, and now ye t'reatens me. Did I ever fall down on a trick ontil dis week? You'se ain't goin' ter welch on me, are you'se? I ain't no welcher meself, an' ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... of the Forsytes, with its wealth, its misery; its dirt and noise; its jumbled stone isles of beauty, its grey sea of hideous brick and stucco? That London which had seen Irene's early tragedy, and Jolyon's own hard days; that web; that princely workhouse of the possessive instinct! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fruit and flower culture, the business of the dairy, carpentering, and other trades; being afterwards placed out. I question whether an English Board of Guardians would so readily hand over seventeen workhouse lads to a foreigner, but it is to be hoped that the Niois authorities will have no reason to regret their confidence. The boys do no work on Sundays, and once a year have a ten days' tramp in the country; the buildings are spacious and airy, but I was sorry to see a ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... growing old—that I am nearly helpless—that I am cold and hungry, and nearly naked—that I have no friends within reach, and no prospect whatever. I am, therefore, an object for public charity, and I will ask for what is my due. I am afraid of what I may find in the workhouse;—the vicious people, the dirty people, the diseased people,—and, I suppose, not one among them who can give ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... valuable, and I've got to pay for it, if you please. Why, they should ought to pay me. What's farming coming to, I'd like to know, if we've got to pay for bettering ourselves? The Government ud like to see all farmers in the workhouse—and there we'll soon be, if they go on at this rate. And it's the disrespectfulness to Poor Arthur, too—he left Donkey Street to me—not a bit to me and the rest to them. But there they go, wanting ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... for I wanted to show it to Nancy. And when I got home granny was so angry that she took me by the collar and she locked me into the back kitchen; and mother was out, and I cried, I was so miserable. Granny said I would come to the workhouse; she called me the wickedest, mischievousest boy she'd ever seen, and said she would like to give me a good whipping. And at last I got tired of being miserable, and I looked about, and I saw the window was partly open, so I climbed up, and then I ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... Tom, a fool and his money are soon parted. There's a five-pound note for him, you begging, insinuating dog, and be hanged to you both! I shall die in the workhouse ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... workhouse in Shoe-lane; a circumstance, at which one can hardly help feeling a movement of indignation. Yet what could beadles and parish officers know about such a being? No more than Horace Walpole. In Gray's Inn, lived, and in Gray's Inn Garden meditated, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... nothing before me but the workhouse. Year by year the public grows more impatient of literature dealing merely with the middle- classes. I know nothing about any other class. What am ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... the mobular party—he may be subject to; his family depend on his exertions for their daily bread—a broken limb, or any such accident happening to him, may bring the whole family to deep distress, if not to the workhouse. It appears by the Edinburgh Review of October, 1852, that at a previous general election, 40 per cent, of those possessing the privilege did not poll their votes. A hasty lowering of the franchise would certainly increase that number, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... his awl! Stitch away, thou noble Fox: every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of Slavery, and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, as in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and Ragfair, into lands of true Liberty; were the work done, there is in broad Europe one Free Man, and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... with a melodramatic story running through it about a poor fellow going to a house and sitting on the door-step wan and weary, and seeing on the doorplate the name of Jasper. Soon Jasper comes out, and though the poverty-stricken one pleads for a bit of bread he's told to go to the workhouse. 'I pays my taxes,' says the heartless Jasper, 'and to the workhouse you must go.' 'And who would have thought it,' goes the chorus, 'for we were ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... only a wretched old man—that two beasts of women have put into the workhouse infirmary against his will. I only heard it to-night. I must go and get ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she once had a house and a husband, and a best room with an overmantel and a Brussels carpet, and lost them all, and is contented to be a servant to us, with no prospect of anything for her old age but the workhouse or the charity of relations, and keeps cheery and never makes a moan and never loses her ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... Royal Academy, is buried here, and there is a monument erected to his memory by his friend and contemporary, Bartolozzi. When the Sydney Street burial-ground was opened in 1810, this was used for interment no more. Chelsea Workhouse stands just behind it, and the old women use the burial-ground for exercise. It is a quaint sight to see them through the tall iron railings wandering about dressed in their bright red-and-black check shawls, blue cotton dresses, and white frilled caps. ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... poor because they delighted to honour the brave and good, or to greet one another in the loving cup. Unlike the coldly intellectual reformers and theorists of the present day, they did not consider the gaol and the workhouse as the only asylums for poverty. They were men of feeling and kindly impulse, not of abstract principles. They gave their cheerful alms to the mendicants, and spread a bounteous board for their neighbours. Fools that they were! How ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... deference to her sex] That's the tragedy of it, ma'am. It's easy to say chuck it; but I haven't the nerve. Which one of us has? We're all intimidated. Intimidated, ma'am: that's what we are. What is there for me if I chuck it but the workhouse in my old age? I have to dye my hair already to keep my job as a dustman. If I was one of the deserving poor, and had put by a bit, I could chuck it; but then why should I, acause the deserving poor might as well be millionaires for all the happiness ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... said angrily. "I've told you too much already, and I believe all you're here for is to get some news for your paper. But I will, at any rate tell you this—when Maitland went to prison his child would have been defenceless but for me; he'd have had to go to the workhouse but for me; he hadn't a single relation in the world but me, on either father's or mother's side. And even at my age, old woman as I am, I'd rather beg my bread in the street, I'd rather starve and die, than touch a penny piece that had come from ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... or curiosity-shop: every thing has the same posthumous appearance, the same inanimateness and identity of character. If Bloomfield is too much of the Farmer's Boy, Crabbe is too much of the parish beadle, an overseer of the country poor. He has no delight beyond the walls of a workhouse, and his officious zeal would convert the world into a vast infirmary. He is a kind of Ordinary, not of Newgate, but of nature. His poetical morality is taken from Burn's Justice, or the Statutes against Vagrants. He sets his ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... and they formed up in a large body, many of them with only a shift and a petticoat on, and with a lot of drunken men and boys with a fife and fiddle they paraded the streets for several days. They marched in a body to the workhouse, but for many reasons they were refused admittance.... These women wandered about for two or three days shelterless, and it was felt that the remedy was very much worse than the disease, and the women were allowed to go ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... leave me to take up the thread. Poor dear Jenny, the festival days are no days of rest to her, but I am not sure that she would enjoy repose, or that it would not be the worse possible penance to her. She is gone down now to the workhouse with Valetta to take cards and tea and tobacco to the old people, not sending them, because she says a few personal wishes and the sight of a bright child will be worth something to the old bodies. Then comes tea for the choir-boys, before Evensong and carols, and after ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... In all regions of life the principle holds good: 'To him that hath shall be given.' And it holds eminently in reference to our grasp of Christian principles. Use them and they grow; neglect them and they perish. Sometimes a man dies in a workhouse who has a store of guineas and notes wrapped up in rags somewhere about him; and so they have been of no use to him. If you want your capital to increase, trade with it. As the Lord said when He gave the servants their talents: 'Trade ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... given as a type of these cruel slanders. It was known that Mr. Bradlaugh was separated from his wife, and it was alleged that being an Atheist, and, (therefore!) an opponent of marriage, he had deserted his wife and children, and left them to the workhouse. The cause of the separation was known to very few, for Mr. Bradlaugh was chivalrously honourable to women, and he would not shield his own good name at the cost of that of the wife of his youth and the mother ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... have been well off come to the workhouse, they may be called poor:—but that's neither here nor there; only, if the boy does come to us, we must ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... tobacconist hurried through the lamplight, unquestionably on his way to the Gauntlet. Silcox was a chattering foolish creature who had lost his own and his widowed mother's savings in a ridiculous commercial enterprise—a promptly bankrupt theater company over at Rodhaven—and it was thought that the workhouse would be the end for him and Mrs. Silcox. But early this summer people had been startled by hearing that the Courier had appointed Silcox as their reporter; and local critics were of opinion that Silcox had taken very kindly ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... The workhouse commitments for Philadelphia, Washington, Cincinnati, Louisville, Chicago and St. Louis "show a similar tendency to decrease." Penitentiary commitments[27] for Baltimore and Chicago show, on the whole, a decreasing ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes
... time-honoured joke about the absence of spring-mattresses and feather-beds, with which he was usually wont to regale the other inmates at this hour. As Giles turned down the spotless lavender-scented sheets he thought longingly of the workhouse twill. ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... from a visit from yonder (pointing to workhouse) were three of our most loyal comrades are paying the penalty for their devotion to the cause of the working class. They have come to realize, as many of us have, that it is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech in ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... we got there," said Gallagher, "but at the first go off I took him along the road past the workhouse." ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... the workhouse," retorted Inspector Chippenfield brutally. "We'd have something to do if Scotland Yard undertook to trace all the absconding husbands in London. We can do nothing in the matter, and you'd better tell ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... face became hard; "you were born in a workhouse, and your father would call himself a gentleman, and ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... O'Gara had discovered her after these expeditions, choking with bronchitis, in a fireless room, too weak to light a fire or prepare food for herself. Lady Conyers, a neighbour of Castle Talbot at Mount Esker, had tried to induce Lizzie to go into the workhouse, with many arguments as to the comfort which awaited her there. But Lizzie was about as much inclined for the workhouse as the free bird for the cage, and, rather to Lady Conyers' indignation, Lady O'Gara had abetted the culprit, saying that she ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... without a medical certificate and a warrant from the inspector of anatomy, and, when the bodies are buried, a proper religious service, according to the creed professed during life, is provided. The great majority of bodies are those of unclaimed poor in the workhouse infirmaries, but a few are obtained each year from the general hospitals. Occasionally a well-to-do person, following the example of Jeremy Bentham, leaves his body for the advancement of science, but even then, if his relatives object, it is not ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... given this book its name because it is at my own door, in the Barony of Kiltartan, I have heard a great number of the stories from beggars, pipers, travelling men, and such pleasant company. But others I have heard in the Workhouse, or to the north of Galway Bay, in Connemara, or on its southern coast, in Burren. I might, perhaps, better have called the little book Myths ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... can I keep company with him? I that was partly reared in the workhouse. And he having a star on his hat and a golden apple in his hand. He will maybe be bidding me to scour myself with soapy water all the Sundays and Holy days of the year! I tell you I am getting low hearted. I pray to the ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... parents and relations. In accordance with these principles it was laid down that outdoor relief should be either absolutely refused to the able-bodied or only granted under most exceptional circumstances; that the workhouse test, with its stringent, deterrent discipline, should be steadily maintained; that relaxations and special favours granted out of public funds should be limited, as far as possible, to cases of special calamity which ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... evidence of want, I confess it to my shame—Pride, has helped to bring me where I am—Pride, not resulting from the consciousness of blood, or the possession of dignities and wealth—but pride, founded upon nothing. I am one of three children. I had two sisters—both are dead. My father was a workhouse boy, and his parentage was unknown. I told you that I had little reason to build a self-esteem upon my family descent; yet there was a period in my life when I would have given all I had in the world for an honourable pedigree—to know that I had bounding in my veins a portion of the blood that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various |
