Motoring, Arts & LeisureBook & Audiobook Reviews"Shadows of the Workhouse" - a classic in the making "Shadows of the Workhouse" - a classic in the making
By Jayne Warren - 29/08/2008
Jennifer Worth's book "Call the Midwife" was so captivating that I was eager to review her second book, "Shadows Of The Workhouse". I couldn't put it down. The depiction of life for the poor and destitute in 1950s London combined with an historical perspective and extraordinary insights into today's "poor", makes breathtaking reading. Transported into the minutiae of everyday life in the workhouse and beyond, I was left amazed at the legalised brutality condoned within living memory - a memory that still has echoes in some of todays' care homes.
Jennifer Worth, nurse, midwife, ward sister and night sister from 1953 until 1973, working mainly in London, told the Mature Times about the book and her experiences: "Workhouses have now disappeared, and the memory of them all but faded. Many young people have not even heard of them, and very few personal records exist, so the little we do know makes the stories all the more compelling.
"People forget nowadays that the simple act of being poor was seen as a moral defect back then. The death of children was taken for granted. These were just the standards of society, accepted by rich and poor alike - and the workhouses merely reflected this."
The origin of workhouses lay in Queen Elizabeth I's Act For The Relief of the Poor, passed in 1601 to make provision for those who could not support themselves because of age or disablity. "The remarkable act of an enlightened Queen" writes Jennifer. But 200 years later, with the Industrial Revolution and a massive population explosion, times had changed.
Those who had flocked to the cities to find work faced overcrowding, poverty, hunger, disease and destitution - and the Poor Law Act was simply inadequate to deal with them. After much deliberation, the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed in 1834, and unions of parishes had to provide large houses designed to accommodate several hundred. Their aim: "The poor shall be set to work, and they shall dwell in working houses."
Jennifer writes: "In reality, these places laid the foundations for our modern welfare state, but the workhouses soon came to be dreaded as places of shame, suffering and despair - a dark and fearsome abyss from which, should they fall, there would be no escape.
"Rules and life were strict and cruel. Children were separated from mothers, husbands from wives, brothers from sisters, heads forcibly shaved, minimal food - and the constant threat of punishment by flogging, birching, or solitary confinement. Infectious diseases spread like wildfire and the 'insane' were also crowded in."
Having set the scene, Jennifer then begins her wonderfully compelling personal stories: Jane, taken to the workhouse as a baby and allegedly the illegitimate daughter of an aristocrat; Peggy and Frank, whose parents both died within six months of each other and were left destitute with no other option but the workhouse: the Nonnatus nuns and Sister Monica Joan, an eccentric ninety-year-old nun, and the heartrending story of Mr Collett, workhouse boy and Boer War veteran - who formed a unique and deep friendship with Jennifer. His "visit" and words to Jennifer many years after his death sends shivers down the spine: "You know the secret of life my dear, because you know how to love."
Said Jennifer: "Workhouse life bred and fostered its own insanity. The 'workhouse howl' was a noise to make your blood run cold. The staff had no training and the workhouses attracted all sorts of petty dictators who enjoyed wielding power - but the worst thing was that they were absolutely legal."
What about illegitimacy?
"The whole attitude to illegitimacy was staggering," says Jennifer. "asks herasks It destroyed the lives of millions of unfortunate women and blighted those of their children. An illigitimate mother and child were like lepers. Society dictated that 'fallen women' should be punished - and punished they were.
"But after the workhouses were officially closed in the 1930s, there were no resources, so people just stayed there. Many were institutionalised, it was the Depression and there was no work in the 'outside world'. So the Government just called them "Public Assistance Institutions" with individual names, and 'paupers' became 'inmates'. The buildings were used for decades, and many became mental hospitals right up until the 1980s. Some are now care homes."
Jennifer's individual stories are set against a rich and colourful depiction of life in London's 1950s docklands: a society destroyed by the Blitz, with chronic overcrowding, no lavatories, no running water, no central heating, no telephone, gaslight, bug infestations, and "basement flats so near the river and so damp you could see the watermark on the wall rise and fall as the tide came in and out. "
Although some passages may make you weep, "Shadows Of the Workshouse" is far from depressing, as Jennifer conveys that generation's very real feelings of hope and expectation, of strong community ties and cockney humour. "Those who had survived terrible hardship were happy to be alive - and no doors were ever locked" said Jennifer. "The shadow of the workhouse always hung over their lives, but there was also a resilience and spirit that enabled ordinary people to overcome their difficulties. My research, especially into the coster barrows in 1910 was incredible. Much I'd heard through my own aunties and uncles, and the names Peggy and Frank in particular, may be ficticious - but their lives were real in the absolute sense of the word.
"You know, when I was working there as a midwife, no-one EVER died alone. It just wasn't done. As a young nurse, we or a relative would sit up all night with people."
Can anything good be said of the workhouses? Jennifer thinks so. "Thousands who would have died were housed and reared. Brutally - but they survived.
"I recall one woman even then over eighty in 2000. She was the illegitimate child of a servant girl and her master. The girl was dismissed and sent to the workhouse - that was in 1915. The old lady said to me 'I am grateful to the workhouse. I learned to read and write. I never knew my mother, but none of us did. But I bettered myself and am very proud of what I have achieved. I don't like to think what might have happened to me had it not been for the workhouse."
With one more book still to write about the work of the Nonnatus nuns during the same period to complete her remarkable trilogy, Jennifer Worth's abilities as a writer are, well ... just read the book!
Shadows of the Workhouse, (The Drama of Life in Postwar London), by Jennifer Worth is published in hardback by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, priced £12.99. Available in all good bookshops or via your usual internet service provider.
A review of "Call the Midwife" is available on the Mature Times website at: the link below.