428 



A FARMER'S YEAR 



level owing to a collapse of the coffin beneath, and some in process 

 of being trodden flat by the hooves of cattle. There, with never 

 a stone or even a wooden cross to mark their place, rest the bones 

 of those unclaimed paupers who, for the last century, have passed 

 through the portals of Heckingham. On the occasion of my first 

 visit to this dismal spot, the pond at the bottom of the field had 

 been fyed out and its contents strewn about the graves to enrich 

 the grass. History repeats itself, for to-day, after many years, I 

 find the pond again being fyed out and its mud used for the same 

 fertilising purpose. 



Otherwise, however, there is great improvement, for that part' 

 of the field where interments have been made during the last 

 twenty years has been fenced off with posts and barbed wire. I 

 confess it is a question to my mind whether a place that is full of 

 dead even if they be paupei dead should be used at all as a 

 common grazing ground for cattle, although to this it might be 

 answered that it is useless to waste the feed of an acre and a half 

 of land, and that Boards of Guardians are in no position to indulge 

 in sentiment. The improvements notwithstanding, it cannot be said 

 that the spot has become attractive, and personally, although I am 

 neither exclusive nor particular, I should prefer not to lay my bones 

 in the burial-field of Heckingham Workhouse. Indeed, it strikes me 

 that the Crematorium has great advantages over the most sumptu- 

 ous and select of graves. The pity is that those among us who 

 think thus must be carried so far to reach its purgatorial fires. 



In truth, to whatever extent it may be brightened and rendered 

 habitable, one cannot pretend that a workhouse is a cheerful place. 

 The poor girls, with their illegitimate children creeping, dirty-faced, 

 across the floor of brick ; the old, old women lying in bed too 

 feeble to move, or crouching round the fire in their mob-caps, some 

 of them stern-faced with much gazing down the dim vista of the 

 past, peopled for them with dead, with much brooding on 

 the present and the lot which it has brought them ; others vacuous 

 and smiling ' a little gone,' the master whispers ; others quite 

 childish and full of complaints ; all of these are no more cheerful 



