Human Physiology. Ji 



gate powers, of the true nature and right use of which they are 

 utterly ignorant, to an ignorant clerk of less education and 

 lower position than themselves, through whose eyes they are 

 content to see, or rather to avoid seeing, the most loathsome 

 abuses." 



And the Times tells us that " it was long before the air of 

 truth and publicity could penetrate into these gloomy prisons ; 

 but since they have been once thrown open, the corruption 

 within has become more and more apparent and appalling." 

 These institutions, the horror of the poor, and the reproach of 

 civilisation and religion, are the sole resource of millions of 

 Englishmen, and cost the people some six millions of pounds 

 a year a considerable portion of which goes as profits into the 

 hands of interested shopkeepers. 



In a postscript to one of his latest works, the late Mr. Charles 

 Dickens wrote : " I believe there has been in England, since 

 the days of the Stuarts, no law so infamously administered no 

 law so openly violated no law habitually so ill supervised, as 

 the Poor Law. In the majority of the shameful cases of dis- 

 ease and death from destitution that shock the public and 

 disgrace the country, the illegality is quite equal to the inhu- 

 manity, and known language could say no more of their 

 lawlessness." 



So people beg or starve rather than go to the House ; some 

 starve while receiving out-door-relief, when it ranges from an 

 average of eightpence to one shilling a week, as it does in 

 sixteen London Unions. Some get into the House only to die; 

 as happened when seventy-two deaths occurred in the two 

 Dublin Workhouses, from Saturday to Monday, among those 

 just admitted, after extreme suffering from cold and hunger. 



But bad as the workhouses may be, the dwellings of the poor 

 are worse. In the great towns, and notably in London, they 

 are, as the Pall Mall Gazette says, " mere filthy lairs and dens 

 of pollution, destitute of all the conditions of health air, 



