Punch (32.1857)

CHRISTMAS IN THE WORKHOUSE.

\ I I>• PUNCH,—"Possibly, for what I am about to observe, many of
_ your readers will set me down as a person of exceeding selfishness,
with both my eyes always turned upon Number One. Por that, Sir, I do
not care a single snowball. You will print my letter, I shall be talked
about, and that is_ the grand thing. A dog with a tin-kettle tied to his
tail has, in my opinion, more than compensation for the inconvenience;
for with every bang of the kettle, and every muscular spasm of his
tail, he has still a greater number of people to stare and shout at him.

" Mr. Punch, I am perfectly sick of the maudlin sympathy and
twaddle that call people men and brothers. It is all humbug, Sir.
There were two brothers at the beginning, and didn't one brother find
the other brother one brother too many ? We shall never get on as we
ought to do, until we make every man, woman, and child, go upon their
own hook. I consider the invention of poor-rates as a bit of howhng cant;
and look upon the collector of that particular tax as very little better
than an unduly licensed ticket-of-leave. Let me explain, Mr. Punch.

"Thursday showed its honest Christmas-head once again to my great
satisfaction. Por I am a person very well-to-do ; can buy my own
Christmas Turkey; draw my own port; and, in a word, don't owe —
and don't intend to owe—any man the value of a Christmas chesnut.
Why, then, for the sake of a maudlin sympathy and cant as hollow as
a showman's drum, why should I be pillaged of my money, to feed and
pamper a lot of paupers, who are only poor and destitute,' because they
have been idle, profligate, or unfortunate, which, be the case as it may,
m no manner ought to concern me ? Men and brothers may be very
well m their way, but a man who begs ceases to be a man; and a
brother hang m a door-way, is, at the best only a shabby sfep-brother !

" Now, Sir, to return to that good old institution, Christmas Day. I
enPyed myself, as I aiways do,—and I may confidently say it, charmed
and delighted a large circle, as I always do, on that day. Sweet is the
consciousness of ready-money; and a man who can lay his head upon
his banker's book, has the best right of all men to pleasant dreams. I
rejoiced my heartiest, and slept my soundest.

" The Priday morning brought me my morning paper. What was
my disgust to see a sickly sentimentality paraded in capital type as
follows—' Christmas Day in the Workhouse !' I read that in
Marylebone the paupers had roast beef ' without bone ' and no end of
plum-pudding. In St. Pancras, besides beef" and pudding, Hanbury's
beer, tobacco and snuff. In Pulham Union, fruit and nuts; in-but

why need I proceed ? The columns of the newspaper steamed like an
alderman's kitchen; and that with Christmas dinners to Christmas
paupers!

" Now, Sir, I have had my larder three times thoroughly burglary -
fied. On the first occasion the burglars carried off the very respectable
remains of a cold shoulder-of-mutton; on the second, a whole
partridge (forwarded to me by an anonymous admirer); and on the
third, the model of a Swiss mouse-trap. Well, to what am I to
attribute these midnight atrocities, but to the pampered tastes of
paupers ? These workhouse people are, from time to time, let out
upon society, and, with a full remembrance of their workhouse beef and.
beer, with their appetites vitiated by morbid humanity and tobacco—
thev will not starve quietly and decently, but-they burglaryfy my
larder ! And when I spoke of the burglary to a policeman, casually
naming the lost mouse-trap, he said—'That's nothing to what it woulu
be: paupers let out of workhouses couldn't do without their glass o:
punch, and I'd better keep a sharp look-out for my sugar-basin and
lemon-squeezer.'

"Now, Sir, I have one remedy for all this. People who can't,
as I say, depend upon their own hook, ought not to be allowed to
hang upon other people's pockets. I would therefore manfully
put down a morbid humanity, and at the same time abolish the
poor's rates. To which end I would have clear work made of all the
unions. I would have all the paupers seized and packed aboard ships
(we have plenty of them) previously condemned. The vessels should
be navigated into deep water (say the middle of the Atlantic) and there
and then with a firm hand, scuttled. (Of course, one sea-worthy vessel

-pauper -

think how he had pulled at my pocket, I should of course complacently
wonder how he liked it.

"Such a scuttling would be a fine, wholesome, corrective sight to
anybody who should have the luck to see it, and at the same time
would be a mortal blow to maudlin humanity. Such is my honest
opinion : and as for the howhng cant of your ' men and brothers' for
that, and that ten times over, I do not care three scrapes of a tin fiddle ;
and so I remain,

"No. I, Self Street, Dec. 27." "Another London Scoundrel.'

Vol. 32.

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