Shadows Of The Workhouse: The Drama Of Life In Postwar London Page 29

  Mr Collett felt his way along fourteen beds, and then went to the locker beside the fifteenth. I watched him, and noticed that he was walking with difficulty again. I thought, with alarm, about his leg ulcers – so much better, but only because of regular treatment. Was he still getting it? I looked around at the general neglect, and had misgivings. Perhaps he was treating the ulcers himself. I resolved to ask him before leaving that day.

  He found his pipe and chuckled as he cradled his old friend in the palm of his hand. We made our way, first to the table where he had been sitting, and then to the balcony, counting the number of tables, and the direction he would have to take. I wanted to be sure he knew how to get there by himself. The door was big and heavy, with a metal safety bar, but he could manage to open it.

  The fresh air was lovely, though cold, and the balcony was pleasant, but there was nowhere to sit down. I had to hold Mr Collett’s pipe and matches whilst he cut up the tobacco. He filled the pipe and lit it, and, with a satisfied sigh, exhaled clouds of thick smoke. “Luxury,” he murmured, “sheer luxury.”

  I noticed the way he was standing. It was not good. He was shuffling from one leg to the other, and taking a few steps backwards and forwards. I didn’t like the signs. People with leg ulcers can usually walk, but standing still in one place is nearly impossible for them. I asked him how his legs were, and who was treating them.

  “Well, I can do it myself.”

  “Yes, but do you?”

  “Now and again, lass, now and again.”

  “How often? Every day?”

  “Well, not quite every day; but enough, quite enough.”

  “Do the staff renew the dressings?”

  “They looked at them when I first came here, but I don’t recall since.”

  I was silent. Two months, no trained person dressing the ulcers or supervising his treatment. It was not good enough. I said, “I would like to have a look at them.”

  “Another time. Another time. I’m enjoying the fresh air, and the pipe, and, above all, your company. I know you’ll have to go soon and I don’t want to spoil it. You can look at my legs another day.”

  He was right. The time was drawing near to 4 p.m., and my evening visits. I could not linger, so I kissed him tenderly, and left him with his pipe, and a rare smile on his face.

  THE LAST POST

  Something told me that Mr Collett did not have long to live. I was anxious about his legs, but apart from that I could see that he would never adapt to the communal life of St Mark’s. Sister Julienne had been quite right, I discovered. The unpleasant surroundings meant nothing to him at all. The tiny bed in a dormitory with about seventy other men was quite acceptable. In fact, he described himself as “Very comfortable. Doing nicely. They are very good to us here.” So if he had no complaints about the conditions, I realised that I should not. His trouble was chronic loneliness, and the inability to adjust to change.

  On two occasions when I visited I asked to see his legs, but he prevaricated, making different excuses each time, and I didn’t think I could force the issue. The next occasion when I called he was not at his usual table. The man who generally sat opposite him pointed to the dormitory and said, “He ain’t got up today.”

  I went to the dormitory, and in the fifteenth bed on the right Mr Collett lay motionless. I looked at him for a long time from the doorway, hating myself for hating the smell, and for not wanting to approach the bed. A sort of dread had entered my heart, and I wanted to turn and run.

  He moved and coughed slightly, and this set me in action. I went up to his bed, kissed him, and whispered, “It’s me. Are you all right? It’s not like you to stop in bed.”

  He took my hands and kissed them, and murmured that he would be all right by and by.

  I sat beside him, not talking, squeezing his hand from time to time, thinking, If he stays here, not moving, for several days he will get pneumonia, and that will be it. Pneumonia is the old man’s friend, they say. A quiet and peaceful end. I hope he goes that way in his sleep. What greater blessing can we ask at the end of life?

  Then it occurred to me that, whilst he was lying in bed, it would be easy to look at his legs, so I asked him if I could. He neither agreed nor disagreed, but seemed indifferent.

  I pulled the blankets away from the foot of the bed, and the stench of decaying flesh rose to greet me. A rough, fluid-sodden bandage covered each leg, and I unwound them with difficulty. I had no surgical forceps, or scissors, and had to do it with my fingers. The bandages looked as though they had not been changed for a fortnight, and were stuck to the flesh underneath. As I tried to ease them away I thought I might be hurting him, but he did not move, nor show any sign of pain or distress.

  At last the wounds were fully exposed. I had to grip the iron bedstead, and call upon all my nurse’s training of discipline and self-control to avoid crying out. From the knee to the ankle there was no skin at all, just livid, suppurating flesh, oozing pus and blood. Daylight was fading fast, and the dim electric-light bulb hanging from the ceiling was no great help, but I thought I could see traces of black around the edge of the wound. I looked down at his feet. The toes looked greyish and swollen, one or two of them a darker colour than the others.

  “Oh, my God, it can’t be. Oh, please, no. Not him. It’s not fair.”

  There was only one way to tell. I unfastened the brooch I was wearing and dug the pin deep into the centre of the wound on each leg. He didn’t move. Then I dug it really hard into his toes. He didn’t feel a thing. There could not be the slightest doubt: gangrene.

  He said, “They are feeling better today. They’ve been giving me gyp the last few weeks, but they don’t hurt now, and I guess they’re getting better.”

  I had to control myself. Fortunately he could not see my face, but he was sensitive to my voice. “As long as you are comfortable, you just stay there. I’ll go and get someone to put another dressing on, because I’ve taken the bandages off. I won’t be long.”

  I raised the alarm, and later the superintendent and a doctor came to the dormitory, but in the meantime I had to leave for my evening work. After I had finished my visits, I cycled back to St Mark’s and, for the last time, climbed the staircase to the Fifth Floor of Block E. Mr Collett had been transferred to Mile End Hospital.

  I was relieved to hear it, and I cycled the half-mile down the road to the hospital in order to find out which ward he had been admitted to. It was too late to see him, but I was told that he was comfortable and sleeping.

  Immediately after lunch the next day, I cycled up to the hospital and went straight to the ward. The ward sister told me that Mr Collett had been operated on that morning, and had not yet come round from the anaesthetic. The operation had been a mid-thigh amputation of both legs.

  I was taken to the side room where he lay. The calm cleanliness and efficiency of the hospital was reassuring after the shambolic dirt of St Mark’s. Mr Collett lay on spotless white sheets, his face calm and relaxed. A nasal tube was in situ, and a nurse was sucking the mucus from his throat with an aspirator. She then counted his pulse and checked the flow rate of the blood drip that was running into his arm. She smiled at me as she turned to go. Hospital protocol and discipline had the upper hand, and Mr Collett was now a part of it.

  I sat with him for a little while, but he was fast asleep, and looked quite peaceful, so I left, resolving to come back after my evening visits, by which time he might have come round from the anaesthetic and would recognise me.

  It was about 7.30 p.m. when I approached the ward, and the screams assailed me long before I pushed open the door. A harassed-looking staff nurse was on duty, and as I ran towards the side ward a frightened nurse whispered: “I think he’s gone mad.”

  Mr Collett was sitting bolt upright in bed, his blind eyes staring, wide with terror. He was waving his arms and screaming: “Watch out, to your left, a grenade exploding.” He screamed and ducked to escape an invisible missile flying over his head.

 
; I ran to him, and took him in my arms. “It’s me, Jenny. Me, I’m here.”

  He grabbed me with superhuman strength and pushed me down to the floor. “Get down, keep your head down. They’ll blow you to bits. A bloke over there had his head blown off a minute ago. That one over there has lost both his legs. It’s a terrible place to be. Gunfire all around. Down. GET DOWN!” He screamed with all his strength and hurled himself forward. The stumps of his legs twitched violently and he fell out of bed. He seemed impervious to the fall, and grabbed me, pulling me under the bed with him.

  “Stay here. You’ll be safe here, in the shelter. I’ll keep a lookout for any other poor soul. Look out!” He screamed and looked up. “That plane, see, it’s just dropped its load of bombs, they’re coming for us. It’ll be a direct hit.” He screamed louder than ever, “KEEP DOWN!”

  A doctor and two male orderlies rushed into the ward. The staff nurse had a syringe filled and ready. The orderlies crawled under the bed and held Mr Collett, who was fighting and screaming. The doctor injected a powerful anaesthetic and a few minutes later, Mr Collett rolled over onto his side, asleep, but the stumps of his legs twitched violently with involuntary nervous spasms.

  We were all shaken and trembling. The two orderlies picked the old man up and put him back into bed. He looked peaceful again. The hospital staff left, but I sat by his bedside for a long time, crying quietly.

  At nine thirty the night sister asked me to leave, saying he would be kept sedated all night, and telling me to ring in the morning.

  Before breakfast, I rang the hospital, and was told that Mr Collett had died peacefully at 3.30 a.m.

  There was no last post for the old soldier; no solemn drum roll; no final salute; no lowering of the colours. There was just a contract funeral, arranged by the hospital, leaving from a hidden area next to the morgue. A priest and one mourner followed the coffin, and we travelled in the hearse, next to the driver. I had not thought of flowers until nearly at the hospital gate, so I had bought a bunch of Michaelmas daisies from a street flower-seller. We were driven to a cemetery somewhere in North London. I don’t remember where it was. I only remember a cold, bleak November day, as we stood on either side of the open grave, the priest and I, reciting the office for the burial of the dead: “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.” The men shovelled the soil over the coffin, and I laid the purple daisies on the rich brown earth.

  CODA

  It was many years later – perhaps fifteen or twenty years – when Mr Collett visited me. I was happily married, my daughters growing up, my life in full flow. I had not thought of Mr Collett for years.

  I woke in the middle of the night, and he was standing at the side of my bed. He was as real as my husband sleeping beside me. He was tall, and upright, but looked younger than when I had known him, like a handsome man of about sixty or sixty-five. He was smiling, and then he said, “You know the secret of life, my dear, because you know how to love.”

  And then he disappeared.

  THE END

  Epilogue

  In 1930 the workhouses were closed by Act of Parliament – officially, that is. But in practice it was impossible to close them. They housed thousands of people who had nowhere else to live. Such people could not be turned out into the streets. Apart from that, many of them had been in the workhouses for so long, subject to the discipline and routine, that they were completely institutionalised, and could not have adjusted to the outside world. Also, the 1930s were the decade of economic depression, with massive unemployment nationwide. Thousands of workhouse inmates suddenly thrown onto the labour market would only have made matters worse.

  So the workhouses were officially designated “Public Assistance Institutions” and, in order to make them more acceptable, would be locally referred to by such names as “Glebe House”, “Rose House”, and so on. But in practice they carried on much the same as before. The label “pauper” was replaced by “inmate”, and the uniform was scrapped. Comforts, such as heating, a sitting room, easy chairs and better food were introduced. Inmates were allowed out. The inhumane practice of splitting families was stopped. But still it was institutional life. The staff were the same, and the attitudes and mindset of the master and officers were stuck firmly in the nineteenth century. Discipline remained strict, sometimes inflexible, depending on the character of the master, but punishments for transgression of the rules were relaxed, and life was certainly easier for the inmates of the Institution than it had been for the paupers of the workhouse.

  The buildings continued in use for many decades for a variety of purposes. Some were used as mental hospitals right up until the 1980s, when they were finally closed by the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Many were used as old people’s homes, and my description of Mr Collett’s last weeks in such a place in the late 1950s is by no means unique. I was giving a talk to the East London History Society about this book when it was first published, and a lady in the audience stood up and said, “Your description is not exaggerated. In the 1980s I was with a group of people taken round an old people’s home which had formerly been a workhouse and the conditions you describe were exactly the same. This was, as far as I remember, in 1985 or 1986.”

  The infirmaries continued as general hospitals for many decades. But the stigma of the old association with the workhouses was never eradicated. During my nursing career I saw many times the fear in a patient’s eyes who thought they’d been put in a workhouse, even though they were in a modern hospital. In 2005 I was giving a radio talk and I mentioned this. The interviewer said, “I know exactly what you mean. Only a few years ago, in 1998, my granny was taken to the infirmary. She begged and pleaded not to go because she thought she was being put in the workhouse. She was terrified, and I swear it was that which killed her.” The stigma lingered and most of the old infirmaries in the country have now been demolished, or converted into commercial or residential buildings

  We who live comfortable, affluent lives in the twenty-first century cannot begin to imagine what it must have been like to be a pauper in a workhouse. We cannot picture relentless cold with little heating, no adequate clothing or warm bedding, and insufficient food. We cannot imagine our children being taken away from us because we are too poor to feed them, nor our liberty being curtailed for the simple crime of being poor. There are very few records left to tell us what the lives of workhouse paupers were like. Every workhouse kept meticulous records – but these were official records written by administrators; the paupers themselves kept no records. Similarly there are very few photographs of the paupers. Thousands of archive photographs of the buildings, the guardians, the masters, their wives and officers can be found in council records; but there are virtually none of the paupers themselves. The few that we do have are tragic to behold. There is a blank, hopeless look on all the faces, the same dull eyes, the same death-like despair.

  But before we condemn the workhouses as an example of nineteenth-century exploitation and hypocrisy we must remember that the mores of the time were completely different from the standards of today. For the working class, life was nasty, brutish and short. Hunger and hardship were expected. Men were old at forty, women worn out at thirty-five. The death of children was taken for granted. Poverty was frankly regarded as a moral defect. Social Darwinism (the strong adapt and survive, the weak are crushed) was borrowed and distorted from the Origin of Species (1858) and applied to human organisation. These were the standards of society, accepted by rich and poor alike, and the workhouses merely reflected this.

  Is there anything good that can be said about the old workhouse system? I think there is. Thousands of children who would have died of starvation on the streets were housed and reared – brutally, perhaps, by modern standards, but they survived, and after the 1870 Education Act, they were also educated. Mass illiteracy became history, and within a couple of generations the population of Great Britain could read and write.

  I recall one woman who was over eighty when I met her in the year 2000
. She was an illegitimate child of a servant girl and her master. His wife discovered the girl’s pregnancy and dismissed her. The girl went to the workhouse – that was in 1915. The old lady said to me, “I am grateful to the workhouse. I learned the value of discipline and good behaviour. I learned to read and write. No, I never knew my mother, but none of us did. When I was fourteen I went into service. But I bettered myself, and learned secretarial work in night classes, and became a secretary. I 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.”

  Further Reading

  Mayhew’s London, by Henry Mayhew, edited by Peter Quennell. (Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1969)

  The Scandal of the Andover Workhouse, by Ian Anstruther (Alan Sutton, 1984)

  The Workhouse System 1834-1929, by M. A. Crowther (Batsford, 1981)

  The People of the Abyss, by Jack London (London, 1903)

  The Poor Law, by S. Styles (Macmillan, 1985)

  Outcast London, by G. Jones, edited by G. Steadman (Oxford, 1971)

  In Darkest London, by William Booth (London, 1890)

  The Life and Labour of the Poor (nine vols.), by Charles Booth (London, 1880-1892)

  Pauper Palaces, by Ann Digby (Routledge, 1978)

  The Workhouse, by Norman Longmate (Maurice Temple-Smith, 1974)

  Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell

  The Victorian Workhouse, by Trevor May (Shire Publication, 1997)

  The English Poor Law 1780-1930, by Michael Rose (David and Charles, 1971)

  Into Unknown England 1866-1913, edited by Peter Keating (Fontana/ Collins, 1976)

  ‘The Homeless’ from In Darkest England and the Way Out (William Booth, 1890)