DECEMBER 425 



Personally, I dislike these fuel doles, which are most trouble- 

 some to distribute, lead to a great deal of bitterness, and come to be 

 regarded, not as a means of relief to the very poor in cold weather, 

 butas an endowment in which everybody has a right to share. '1 hus 

 in past years I have found men in my own employ, who were in 

 every way well-to-do for their station, applying for and receiving 

 an allowance of coal. Surely the pious founders of the charity, who 

 died so many centuries ago that even their names are not known to- 

 day, can never have intended that their gifts should be put to such a 

 purpose. They must have wished to help the poor, and to the 

 poor that portion of the fund which is allocated to them ought to 

 go. Surely, also, the money cannot be better employed than by 

 providing thoroughly competent nurses in time of sickness, and 

 especially in maternity cases, when the labourers' wives are too 

 often left to the tender mercies of a neighbour, or of a well- 

 meaning, but ignorant, Gamp. 



December 14. — Yesterday the weather was almost ideal for the 

 time of year, mild, windless, and sunny, and in it we made good 

 progress with our ploughing and root-carting. 



To-day I went with a friend, who is one of the guardians of the 

 poor for this district, to visit Heckingham Workhouse, where I have 

 not been for about fourteen years. Once I was a guardian there 

 myself, and in that capacity used to sit upon the Board, but after 

 a year or two's experience of it I resigned the office, which I confess 

 I did not find congenial. There are few things more de{)ressing than 

 to listen, fortnight by fortnight, to the tales of utter poverty and 

 woe poured out by the applicants for relief from the rates. 



Heckingham is the workhouse for the Loddon and Clavering 

 Union, in which are included forty-one parishes, v/ith a total 

 population of about thirteen thousand five hundred. The large 

 and rambling red-brick erection, that is of the accustomed 

 ugliness, was built about 1763, when it was called a House of 

 Industry. In 1836 it became the Union Workhouse, with 

 accommodation for five hundred and ten inmates, although the 



