DOI Heft:
June 23, 1866
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16877#0267
June 23, 1866.]
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
259
MATRIMONY ON MODERATE TERMS.
Mr. Punch,
What is a well-educated but penniless girl to do for a living
unless she marries F She cannot well, if she has the feelings of a lady,
tale a place behind the counter of a tobacconist’s shop, or at the bar of
a pubiic-Uouse.
But, whom is such a girl to marry? Not a nobleman—unless he is
one of a million, and she is another. I don’t mean a million of money ;
but no less a sum than that at least, I am sure, is necessary in these
times to make a woman happy, if she is an average one. The sort of
girl I mean, such an one as myself, cannot reasonably expect to marry
anybody better off than a young man, who, in some professional or
mercantile capacity, has to make his way. In the present state of
Society, however, 1 don’t see how such a young man can possibly
marry such a girl; that is, if she must needs follow the fashions, and
dress like the wife of a rich man, as most girls expect to do, and will be
miserable if they can’t.
But, Sir, I know a girl of that description who would be perfectly
content to dress with any degree of moderation suitable to her husband’s
circumstances. She says “ As long as I remain single I will dress as
well as I possibly can, to lay myself out to the best advantage. If 1
ever get married, then I will simply wear the clothes my husband
wishes me to. What can it possibly signify to me what things I have
on, so long as they please him ? Why should a wife want a new bonnet
ofr.ener than her husband does a new hat, unless to gratify his whim ?
If one’s apparel does get a little out of fashion, so as to look rather odd,
what does that matter so long as its oddity does not strike him? I
don’t care a straw how I look in any other eyes than my husband’s.”
Now, Mr. Punch, isn’t that the wife for any man’s money, if he
hasn’t much, and has need to make it go as far as he can ? She would
THE MODEL UNION WORKHOUSE.
PlM i 1 BRE was truth in certain words of Wordsworth’s
V relative to ‘‘The Old Cumberland Beggar.” A
wish expressed by the Poet on behalf of the old
beggar was:—
“ May never House, misnamed of Industry,
Make him a captive !"
The old Poor-house never was a house of indus-
try, nor has the Union Workhouse hitherto deserved
any better to be so called. Oakum-picking,
cracking stones, and bone-crushing, are not in-
dustrial employments but penal tasks, designed
to plague paupers, not to occupy them, to make
them uncomfortable rather than useful, to answer,
in short, the same purpose as that of the general system of discipline which prescribes for the inmates of workhouses a coarser and
scantier diet than that awarded to convicted felons in gaol.
The exertions, however, of Mr. Ernest Hart, and other benevolent persons, have brought about the commencement of a general Work-
house Iteform. Among the members of some Boards of Guardians a few have been inspired in a measure with common humanity, and the
exhortations of the Clergy, especially those of the Archbishor of York, are said to have even had the effect of converting more than one
Guardian to something like a partial belief in the Christian religion. There is reason to suppose that the Guardians of St. George’s,
Hanover Square, St. Pancras, the Strand Union, and other metropolitan Boards, comprise in their whole number as many as two or
three gentlemen who are beginning to think that Dives may possibly have certain duties to discharge towards Lazarus, under penalties.
The time is therefore believed to be at hand when the workhouse diet-scale will be raised to a sufficiency of plain, wholesome food ; when
overcrowding will cease in the sick-wards, and the patients in them will enjoy their due number of cubic feet of air ; when competent
nurses, and not drunken creatures unable to read, and accustomed to steal their beer and other stimulants, will be employed to tend them ;
proper washerwomen to cleanse their linen without extorting gratuities of gin for not returning it to them steeped in filth and verminous;
when further they will receive due medical assistance duly remunerated, and not be suffered to die of neglected bedsores.
The Workhouse of the Future will moreover be so constituted as to merit the name which, as Wordsworth said, was misapplied to the
Workhouse of the Past. It will be a House of Work such as its occupants are equal to; a House of regulated Industry. A gifted
Artist has enabled Mr. Punch to present his parochial readers, and the world at large, with the design of a Model Workhouse, of which the
idea, like all grand ideas, is taken from Nature. Its form is that of a Hive, the very emblem of Industry, the bees, old and young, all work
in their way, the former at whatever they are able to do, the latter chiefly at the three R’s and the other rudiments of learning, by whose
acquisition, when hereafter they shall have left the workhouse, they may be enabled to keep themselves out of it, and that so as never to
have to come back to it again. The drones, who can work and won’t work alone of them all will be restricted to short commons, consisting
chiefly of skilligolee.
The Model Workhouse is appropriately flanked by the figures of two Guardian Angels, one of them represented by a Poor Law Guardian,
the other by the Workhouse Matron; whilst the Beadle’s cocked-hat. crowns the edifice.
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
259
MATRIMONY ON MODERATE TERMS.
Mr. Punch,
What is a well-educated but penniless girl to do for a living
unless she marries F She cannot well, if she has the feelings of a lady,
tale a place behind the counter of a tobacconist’s shop, or at the bar of
a pubiic-Uouse.
But, whom is such a girl to marry? Not a nobleman—unless he is
one of a million, and she is another. I don’t mean a million of money ;
but no less a sum than that at least, I am sure, is necessary in these
times to make a woman happy, if she is an average one. The sort of
girl I mean, such an one as myself, cannot reasonably expect to marry
anybody better off than a young man, who, in some professional or
mercantile capacity, has to make his way. In the present state of
Society, however, 1 don’t see how such a young man can possibly
marry such a girl; that is, if she must needs follow the fashions, and
dress like the wife of a rich man, as most girls expect to do, and will be
miserable if they can’t.
But, Sir, I know a girl of that description who would be perfectly
content to dress with any degree of moderation suitable to her husband’s
circumstances. She says “ As long as I remain single I will dress as
well as I possibly can, to lay myself out to the best advantage. If 1
ever get married, then I will simply wear the clothes my husband
wishes me to. What can it possibly signify to me what things I have
on, so long as they please him ? Why should a wife want a new bonnet
ofr.ener than her husband does a new hat, unless to gratify his whim ?
If one’s apparel does get a little out of fashion, so as to look rather odd,
what does that matter so long as its oddity does not strike him? I
don’t care a straw how I look in any other eyes than my husband’s.”
Now, Mr. Punch, isn’t that the wife for any man’s money, if he
hasn’t much, and has need to make it go as far as he can ? She would
THE MODEL UNION WORKHOUSE.
PlM i 1 BRE was truth in certain words of Wordsworth’s
V relative to ‘‘The Old Cumberland Beggar.” A
wish expressed by the Poet on behalf of the old
beggar was:—
“ May never House, misnamed of Industry,
Make him a captive !"
The old Poor-house never was a house of indus-
try, nor has the Union Workhouse hitherto deserved
any better to be so called. Oakum-picking,
cracking stones, and bone-crushing, are not in-
dustrial employments but penal tasks, designed
to plague paupers, not to occupy them, to make
them uncomfortable rather than useful, to answer,
in short, the same purpose as that of the general system of discipline which prescribes for the inmates of workhouses a coarser and
scantier diet than that awarded to convicted felons in gaol.
The exertions, however, of Mr. Ernest Hart, and other benevolent persons, have brought about the commencement of a general Work-
house Iteform. Among the members of some Boards of Guardians a few have been inspired in a measure with common humanity, and the
exhortations of the Clergy, especially those of the Archbishor of York, are said to have even had the effect of converting more than one
Guardian to something like a partial belief in the Christian religion. There is reason to suppose that the Guardians of St. George’s,
Hanover Square, St. Pancras, the Strand Union, and other metropolitan Boards, comprise in their whole number as many as two or
three gentlemen who are beginning to think that Dives may possibly have certain duties to discharge towards Lazarus, under penalties.
The time is therefore believed to be at hand when the workhouse diet-scale will be raised to a sufficiency of plain, wholesome food ; when
overcrowding will cease in the sick-wards, and the patients in them will enjoy their due number of cubic feet of air ; when competent
nurses, and not drunken creatures unable to read, and accustomed to steal their beer and other stimulants, will be employed to tend them ;
proper washerwomen to cleanse their linen without extorting gratuities of gin for not returning it to them steeped in filth and verminous;
when further they will receive due medical assistance duly remunerated, and not be suffered to die of neglected bedsores.
The Workhouse of the Future will moreover be so constituted as to merit the name which, as Wordsworth said, was misapplied to the
Workhouse of the Past. It will be a House of Work such as its occupants are equal to; a House of regulated Industry. A gifted
Artist has enabled Mr. Punch to present his parochial readers, and the world at large, with the design of a Model Workhouse, of which the
idea, like all grand ideas, is taken from Nature. Its form is that of a Hive, the very emblem of Industry, the bees, old and young, all work
in their way, the former at whatever they are able to do, the latter chiefly at the three R’s and the other rudiments of learning, by whose
acquisition, when hereafter they shall have left the workhouse, they may be enabled to keep themselves out of it, and that so as never to
have to come back to it again. The drones, who can work and won’t work alone of them all will be restricted to short commons, consisting
chiefly of skilligolee.
The Model Workhouse is appropriately flanked by the figures of two Guardian Angels, one of them represented by a Poor Law Guardian,
the other by the Workhouse Matron; whilst the Beadle’s cocked-hat. crowns the edifice.