perhaps, by voluntary aid, and in part only by
the parish— for those who may afterwards need
temporary shelter. Instead of thrusting them
upon the workhouse, let the friendship at the
school that has supplied the love of father to
the fatherless, find them again and sustain them
in their hour of need. Let there be somebody
there, who does not find the faith and friendship
of the young and poor a burden and vexation;
somebody to whom an old pupil may come at
any turning-point of life, and tell its trouble,
confident of receiving sympathy and counsel.
Mrs. Way, with whose views we are here coinciding,
would like to see, but does not hope to
see, well-managed workhouse nurseries in which
within the workhouse walls children younger
than eight might be prepared for the homes and
district schools. She would have Homes like
her own multiplied by voluntary exertion, and
assurance of law to boards of guardians that
they may legally pay out of the rates for pauper
children maintained in such places as the Brockham
Home. As to the shameful character of
the present workhouse training of the young,
and especially of girls, she thus heaps evidence
together:

"I have evidence here from some of the poorlaw
inspectors. One of them says, ' Children
who enter the workhouse vicious, become worse.'
Another, ' So bad are workhouse children considered
at this moment, that even reformatories
and penitentiaries are in a great measure closed
against them.'

"At Dalston, a rule has been passed that
they will not receive any girls who have ever
been in the workhouse, as they find that they
are hopeless and irreclaimable. A lady, who is
a friend of mine, has been trying to get a girl of
nineteen years of age, who was educated in the
workhouse, and fell into crime, into the Magdalen;
but the treasurer said, ' Of all cases,
those from workhouses are the most hopeless,
so that we have now determined not to receive
any.' That lady had a great deal of trouble to
get this girl admitted. I myself have seen
a letter from the master of the reformatory at
Exeter, who says, ' We find workhouse children
who come to us, almost hopeless; they have never
had any softening influence exercised over them,
and we do not like taking them.' The lady superintendent
at Bussage, which is a large penitentiary,
said that, out of eight workhouse girls,
there was only one that was at all hopeful. The
master of Stafford jail told me that of all
females under his care, the worst were those
that had been trained or educated in workhouses.
The chaplain of Newgate has said that
all the worst cases that came under his notice
were cases of those who had been workhouse
children. Mr. Leyland, the master of a large
boys' reformatory at Wandsworth, said, ' I can
do anything with the street children, but I
cannot manage workhouse children.' My own
experience in a large penitentiary in London
(at Pentonville) is, that if a girl is sent by anybody
there, and they find she has been in the
workhouse, they say, 'We will have none of
those workhouse cases, they are quite irreclaimable.'

"I am only speaking of those who have been
in the workhouse from the time when they were
seven or eight years old. What I have stated
refers only to children who have fallen into
crime simply from having gone into the world as
paupers, and who, from having no friend to look
after them, after leaving the workhouse school,
have fallen into vice. One of these girls I myself
found, and I traced her history. She had been
in the Sutton district school for three years. I
found her in the penitentiary. Her history was
that she got into very bad places; she could not
do the work which she was set to do, which was
much too hard for a young girl of fourteen
years of age. She said, ' My master swore at
me all day. I did what I could, but I could not
do the work, and then I ran away. I met with
companions who tempted me to evil.' She
committed some small offence, and was taken by
the police, and afterwards sent to a penitentiary.
I have taken that girl out, and she has proved a
most respectable servant, and has been now in
service for a year. She said to me, ' Until
you spoke to me, I never felt that any one
cared for me. I have been in the workhouse
school, but I never felt that I had a friend.
When I went wrong, I had no one to go to or
to advise me, and 1 could not help myself.' I
mention that, as one out of at least thirty cases
that have come within my own knowledge."

It is only fair here to observe that the corruption
by example in workhouses is rather
more the ordinary fault of local management
which fails to supply any effectual classification,
than of the regulations of the Poor-law Board,
which distinctly require all practicable classification
according to character, as well as according
to sex and age. Thus, in the first report of the
poor relief committee for the present year, we
find the chairman of a board of guardians,
questioned about an asserted compulsion of innocent
daughters of respectable working men
to associate with girls who are the offscourings
of the streets, thus explaining himself: " I presume
we have to do with them as inmates of the
workhouse, and, if they are orderly there, I do
not know that we dissect their character to that
nicety; at the same time, if they are disorderly
in any respect, we have a refractory ward for
individuals of that sort."

The report of the Royal Commission upon
Education, presented to parliament last year,
declaring workhouses to be places in which
children are brought up in vice and idleness,
saw no remedy but the encouragement of district
and separate schools. Some of its conclusions
were, " that the workhouse schools
are generally so managed that the children contained
in them learn from infancy to regard
the workhouse as their homes, and associate
with grown-up paupers, whose influence destroys
their moral characters, and prevents the
growth of a spirit of independence. That the
arrangements of workhouses are unavoidably
such as to make it extremely difficult to procure