Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 2 of 4.—1857-1874. Graves Charles Larcom

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СКАЧАТЬ of Barnstaple cannot have known that, or he would not have called the belief in witchcraft ignorance and superstition. If spiritualism is true, sorcery is possible, and, as there is no legal remedy against it, old Burch may be considered to have been justified in taking the law into his own hands for self-protection. Accordingly, since he was fined 2s. 6d. and costs, and, as he couldn't pay the money, sent to prison, perhaps a subscription to get him out of gaol, and make him amends for the trouble he has got into, will be raised among affluent and superior "spirit circles." For if one medium can float about a room, why may not another ride upon a broomstick?

      Suffolk Farmer: "Two shill'ns a week more? Never! That'll never do! Out of the question!"

      Suffolk Ploughman: "You're right there, Mas'r Wuzzles, sart'n sure! It 'on't dew. Our Sal sahy there'll be eight shillin' and threepence for bread, three and sixpence for rent and coal, and half-a-crown for club, clothes, boots and shoes for the owd 'oman, five kids, and me. No, that 'on't dew – that, that 'on't, b'um by. But it'll be enow to begin with!"

      The Old Man and the New Rich

      Though no friend of feudalism, it is curious to note that in the vehement protest against enclosures, the closing of rights of way, etc., which he published in 1869, Punch is careful to distinguish between the old and the new rich. The closing of Nightingale Wood, between Southampton and Romsey, which "from time immemorial had been open by gracious permission to rural ramblers," was the occasion for an outburst culminating in the statement that "the brutes now fast closing the sylvan scenery of England to Englishmen, are, with the exception of an ignoble duke or two, rich rogues of speculators and financiers, who have ousted the old territorial aristocrats and squires, having bought fields and forests with the reward of their rascality."

      In the selfishness of the "profiteer," as we now call him, Punch sees a sure provocative of Communism. He would clearly have applauded the distinguished but eccentric judge who in a later day erected on his country estate boards with the notice "Trespassers will not be prosecuted."

      It remains to be added that the grievances of tenants and farm labourers, though far less frequently mentioned than in earlier years, did not altogether escape the vigilance of Punch. In 1861 he printed an ironic petition from a tenant to his landlord asking to be as comfortably housed as his horses. In 1868 he alludes to the scandalous housing conditions on the estate of a noble landlord in Essex – an estate which of recent years has been noted for its humane and liberal management.

      Prison v. Workhouse

      Far more space, however, is devoted to the administration of the Poor Law, the economics and evils of Industrialism in the manufacturing centres, and the efforts of practical philanthropy. Throughout the 'sixties and right on into the early 'seventies Punch never wearies of insisting on the folly of making life in prison more comfortable than that in the workhouse. His campaign begins with an onslaught on the guardians of the Durham Union, who appeared to think that there "ought to be a correspondence between the spiritual nutriment of paupers and their material diet": —

      Under this impression it evidently was that they advertised the other day for a chaplain, offering the salary of £20 a year. Their advertisement was answered by a tender from one John Smart, who turned out to have been a clergyman's footman, and conceived that he had learned to exercise the functions of a parson from his master. He had, he said, "had a good deal of private practice, but not public."

      It is painful to find a respectable man-servant reduced to apply for employment in the capacity of a Workhouse chaplain. Cannot an inferior class of clergyman be ordained on purpose to administer to paupers a coarser kind of spiritual food? Deep indeed must be the humiliation experienced by a footman in exchanging plush and gold lace for the canonicals of a chaplain whose salary is £20 a year.

      It was the time of the garrotting scare. Hence the point of Punch's comment: —

      The frying pan as compared with the fire is much less comfortable than the Model Prison in proportion to the Union-Workhouse.

      The former of those two establishments relatively to the latter is considerably milder than Purgatory may be imagined to be, in contrast with the other place which the prisoners mentioned. Quod, in comparison with the Abode of Want, is quite a tolerable sort of Limbo. What is the moral of this arrangement, in the apprehension of the classes who have to live by their own exertions? Whatever you do, keep out of the Workhouse. Garrotte anybody rather than apply to the Union.

      Punch still disapproved of the gallows; the strongest argument in its favour was the manifest truth that the cheapest thing you could do with a worthless rascal was to hang him. But he saw a better way in rendering penal servitude exemplary: —

      At any rate, for the prevention of garrotte robberies and all other crimes, one step might be taken somewhat analogous to the treatment proverbially recommended for that other complaint, the influenza, which is just now likewise so prevalent. "Stuff a cold," says the popular adage, "and starve a cough." At present the moral reverse of this rule is observed in penal economy. You stuff a convict and starve a pauper. Wouldn't it probably answer better to allow paupers sufficient food and put criminals on low diet? Thus you may be enabled to get on without the gallows.

      It was stated, and accepted by Punch in 1860, that since 1856 there had been a decrease in crime of 25 per cent. owing to the establishment of Reformatories. But the series of papers in the Morning Post in 1863 on the Middlesex Industrial School at Feltham – where the boys were subjected to a devotional drill, made to lift and lower their hands in prayer and sing grace "to the sharp order of a master," and mercilessly caned and birched by a tall, muscular drill master for acts of insubordination – gave Punch furiously to think: —

      The Middlesex Model School at Feltham is an institution for the reformation of young thieves, but its arrangements for developing the religious sentiment in the youthful mind appear to be such as may be conceived to have been devised for mutual edification by the inmates of an asylum for idiots.

      Flogging is a fine thing; but how strange that its application is limited to boys and soldiers and sailors: to children of tender age and members of an honourable profession! Wouldn't it be at least as suitable to garrotters, and even to cruel swindlers, whose exemplary torture, in comparison with the misery caused by their crimes, would be the lesser evil of the two?

      The painful disclosures resulting from inquiries into workhouse conditions are repeatedly referred to and make strange reading in a comic journal. At a meeting held in Willis's Rooms by the Earl of Carnarvon and the Archbishop of York early in 1866, the brutalities to which the sick poor were subject in the infirmaries of most of the London workhouses were illustrated in such hideous detail, that Punch declared "it would be cheaper to put paupers out of their misery than it was to let them die in misery, and it would at least be just as moral."

      The parsimony, the self-indulgence and the barbarous procrastination of the guardians of St. Pancras are castigated a few months later, when a motion to postpone the consideration of the appointment of an extra paid nurse for three months was carried by six votes to five. There were forty guardians; but most of them were absent at the quarterly dinner of the Burial Board. Punch, therefore, had good excuse for saying that "these nine-and-twenty parochial humbugs, instead of minding their business, were engaged in stuffing their most ungodly digestive organs with funeral baked meats."

      Ignorant Guardians

      The Derby-Disraeli administration had come into power in the previous month. So when Mr. Gathorne Hardy had succeeded Mr. C. P. Villiers as President of the Poor Law Board, the alteration in the methods of procedure in regard to investigating workhouse abuses provoked a well-timed and damaging attack on the attempt to whitewash Bumbledom. It is a dreary subject, but the principles СКАЧАТЬ