Читать книгу Glimpses into the Abyss - Mary Higgs - Страница 18

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"I was an interested listener to your address on casual wards and common lodging-houses. Your experience coincides with mine, with the exception of the casual wards. Your description was much too favourable.

"I have been in several. This is an account of the last one I was in. After walking twenty miles with nothing to eat before I started or during the day, I was received, had a bath, and was put to bed. They gave me nothing to eat or drink; out next morning at six o'clock: for breakfast had a drink of water and a tinful of broken crusts, seven pieces in all, and I should say not more than six ounces. I suppose they had been left by the children or at the infirmaries. Same for dinner (six pieces), with a small piece of cheese; for supper, water and five crusts. On going out next morning, water and six crusts. I should put the value at one penny altogether, and that for cheese; the bread was simply waste.

"This is what I did for the value I received, Sweep, wash, and scrub out twelve or fourteen cells; ditto eighty-seven square yards of cement flooring; ditto a flight of stone steps (about fifty), four feet wide with three landings; ditto one bath-room and two lavatories; clean bath and closet pans; and polish sixty-seven sets of brasses. I started at seven o'clock and had done at 4.30, and was then locked up in the cell. I forgot to say that I had twopence when I went in, which the porter annexed, which, as he said, 'would help pay expenses.'

"I was free from vermin when I went in, but was not when I came out; and whatever the chairman may say about coming out of their place clean, I say it is impossible to do so.

"I may say that I get my living on public works, and this as you know may take you across the country."