never seen occasion to find fault? My own
opinion is that the Poor Law Board is as
disgusted as we are, and that it will be even with
these troublesome meddlers yet. For the doctor's
last move has been to join what he calls a
Parochial Medical Officers' Association, which meets,
and reports, and insults the guardians, and passes
its opinions upon Poor Law inspection in a way
that would astonish you. But this association,
bless you, is only got up to extort money.
The doctors have got it into their heads that
they're underpaid, and they suppose, by bringing
what they call " moral pressure to bear upon the
guardians," they'll have their salaries increased.
It seems funny, doesn't it, that when they're
crying out about neglect and inhumanity, they
should blame the guardians, who've scarcely
ever interfered except in preventing extravagance,
and shouldn't see that what takes place
in a workhouse can't be known to men who've
their own business to look after, and who
wouldn't be able to attend the weekly board
meeting if it weren't good for business, and
led up to contracts and odds and ends of profit,
very useful to hard-working family men?
If anybody's to blame, you'd think it was
those who's had salaries for looking after
the poor, wouldn't you? Visiting committees
and reporting in writing to the Poor
Law Board? Why, of course we do all
that, and a great nuisance it is. How do
we do it? We take it in turns, two or three at
a time, to walk over the house with the master,
and we write " Yes," or " No," opposite some
questions in a printed book, and come away.
A mere form? Why, of course it is; what's
the use of asking foolish questions like that?
No, I can't say that 1 ever heard of anybody
finding anything wrong, and I've looked through
the visiting - books of other parishes besides
ours, and it was the same there. It's always
looked upon as a form, and nothing else. Our
workhouse holds over a thousand people, and
if you think guardians have time to peep
under every bed and pry into every corner, why
you don't know what business is, and what a
difficult thing it is to give up as many hours a
week as we do to our duty and the parish. This
visiting ain't meant to be anything but a form.
Why, I've heard a Poor Law inspector say
myself, that he never found anything in a visiting-
book, except that all was right and everybody
doing well. Now it stands to reason that, if
more reporting was wanted, we should have
been told so; for the Poor Law Board must have
known by the returns always being favourable,
what guardians thought about it.

But I'm glad to think that what I call the
coddlers are thrown over, and that a healthier
style o' speaking's coming in. There's St.
George's Workhouse, now, down Southwark
way; no name was too bad for it a short
time ago. That nasty prying Lancet said it
was surrounded by "every possible nuisance,
physical and moral." Those were the words.
"Classification there was none," it said, and
"the ventilation was very ineffectual, and the
musty smell of the wards suggested a mischievous
state of things. The grossest carelessness
and neglect in the wards, an absence of decency
and needful cleanliness in the infirmary, drunkenness
among the nurses, all of which were
paupers, and a scale of diet which starved people,
whether sick or well." That's what I find in
the Lancet report, which I've just looked up.
Well, then: when the two inspectors went there
from the Poor Law Board, a short time since,
they found the same sort of faults; and I'm
told, had the impudence to call it the worst
workhouse in London, barring Clerkenwell.
Remembering this, I must say it was gratifying
to find that the Poor Law Board wasn't satisfied
with this sort of nonsense, and had it
inspected again.

When I heard they were goin' to do this,
it showed me that we were to have a different
sort of game to what we'd been treated
to; and, as I told Paunchby, at the Beadle,
the very night I heard of it, the Poor Law
Board don't mean to give way, and quite right
of the Board; for they've made a new inspector,
and brought another up from Lancashire, and,
I've no doubt, told them not to be led away by
the nonsense the other fellows had listened to,
and, above all, not to follow in the footsteps of
him as was sent away. The new inspector
seems a gentleman, and not given to the
unreasonable inconsiderate foolishness about
paupers and feet of air, or paupers and trained
nurses, or paupers and exercise-grounds; for
when he'd been to St. George's he told a very
different story to what those Lancet fellows and
the Whitehall inspectors who'd been there before
him did. Very comfortable and proper and
everything requisite—that's the sort of note he put
in writing before he left; and I'd like to know
who'd have the impudence to ask for a change,
or for hospitals, in the face of that! This gentleman's
a physician, too, and his inspection ought
to satisfy everybody that there's a deal of
nonsense written about air and smells, and
suchlike. There's bone- boilers and grease and
catgut manufactories all round St. George's
Workhouse, and the smell from them all is pretty
strong at times. It's well known that the things
such a fuss was made about, are pretty much as
they were; so it proves to me that the Poor
Law Board ain't going to be led by the nose, but
has just given its new inspectors what we call
"the office" to make the best of things, and not
go washing every bit of dirty linen away from
home. You may depend upon it, Paunchby, I
says, that gentlemen who could say of Clerkenwell
that all the paupers seemed very comfortable,
"under the circumstances," are gentlemen and
no mistake, and that we shan't have any bother
or trouble with them. It was a genteel pleasant
way of putting it, but no more than what
we've a right to expect, considering their
salaries are paid out of the taxes we help to make
up. There's no denying that our own workhouse
ain't quite what it ought to be. It's too crowded,
and there ain't enough accommodation room;
but it's one thing to admit this in a friendly