the system can be otherwise than a harsh and unfeeling one. The total want of sympathy between the relievers and the relieved can produce no other result. The power and authority of masters and matrons may be considered almost unlimited; for, in some cases, they are the sole channels of communication between the poor and the guardians, and have, therefore, the power of giving their own version of everything that happens. How grossly this power is often abused will be gathered from some of the letters in Metropolitan Workhouses. It will hardly be believed, that in one instance the matron never spoke to one poor bed-ridden woman for two years, in revenge for an offence committed by her in simply answering a question of one of the guardians which was supposed to involve the matron in blame. Yet such a woman was thought to be capable of governing several hundred persons, and of inspiring respect at least, if not love.
We may remind our readers of the various and numerous classes of persons who come under the personal control of these officials; and we may here give a description of the first workhouse of London, the aim and intention of which was very much what it is, or rather, perhaps, should be, at the present day. "Bridewell Hospital was founded prior to, and in consequence of the want of, a national provision for the poor. It was intended as a provision for certain and specified classes of the poor, as a house of correction for vagrants and other suspected persons, and as an establishment for the training of children, when of proper age, in good occupation or science profitable to the commonwealth. It was, in fact, the first workhouse, the first house of correction, and the first reformatory in the kingdom; and it was intended as a relief, not only for the city of London, but for the suburbs of the same, and for the whole county of Middlesex." For an undertaking of such magnitude as is here described, some very efficient management is surely demanded. In many respects a supervision superior to that of hospitals is required, for there we have but one class of persons to deal with, viz., the bodily sick; here a variety of minds and characters as great as the
houses must have enlightened the public by this time as to the character of many of them. Bad ones are passed on from one board of guardians to another, just as servants frequently go from one family to another, their true characters concealed by their masters, who are glad to get rid of them. A very general horror is entertained by the poor of burial by "the parish." It seems to be a lingering spirit of reverence for the dead which, though often unreasonable in individual instances, we are unwilling to blame. For who can wonder at it when revelations are occasionally made like those which have recently appeared in the newspapers, of the master of a workhouse trafficking with the bodies of the dead, and changing them at the hospitals, so that friends and relations cannot be sure who it is they are following to the grave? It is a very general belief, or at least suspicion, amongst the poor that the bodies of paupers are placed in their coffins without clothing of any kind. We know that this was done a few years ago, but we cannot speak with certainty of the present time. There may well be a prejudice against pauper funerals!
