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Workhouse   Listen
noun
Workhouse  n.  (pl. workhouses)  
1.
A house where any manufacture is carried on; a workshop.
2.
A house in which idle and vicious persons are confined to labor.
3.
A house where the town poor are maintained at public expense, and provided with labor; a poorhouse.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Workhouse" Quotes from Famous Books



... commandment to the modern woman is now not simply "Thou shalt bear," but rather, "Thou shalt not bear in excess of thy power to rear and train satisfactorily;" and the woman who should today appear at the door of a workhouse or the tribunal of the poor-law guardians followed by her twelve infants, demanding honourable sustenance for them and herself in return for the labour she had undergone in producing them, would meet ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... palaces compared with our great bare attic, where nothing was allowed that could gather dust. One bit of drugget by the fireside, where stood a round table at which the maids talked and darned stockings, was all that hid the bare boards; the walls were as plain as those of a workhouse, and when the London sun did shine, it glared into my eyes through the great unshaded windows. There was a deal table for the meals (and very plain meals they were), and two or three big presses painted white for our clothes, and one cupboard for our toys. I must say that ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... you are a fool," his partner would rejoin for the hundredth time. "Will you never understand that, if we get a little more than the customary profit upon one thing, we get less upon another? You must make the thing even, or come to the workhouse." Thereto, for the hundredth time also, William Marston would reply: "That might hold, I daresay, Mr. Turnbull—I am not sure—if every customer always bought an article of each of the two sorts together; but I can't make it straight with ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... Board-room of the workhouse of St. Margaret's, Westminster, is a portrait of Margaret Patten, which corresponds with the picture just described, and bears the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various

... a shell in the burial-place of Shoe-Lane Workhouse. He was aged seventeen years nine months and a few ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... "From the workhouse and the prison, Where, pale as corpses newly risen, Women, children, young and old, Groan for pain, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... firmly her shabby little purse which contained, beyond the silver she carried to meet any natural expense, a golden sovereign, the artist's parting gift. Her sky was now serene; but she was still mindful of the days when the jaws of the workhouse had yawned for her and the Lump, and she lost no chance of adding to her hoard in the Post Office Savings Bank. Immediately on her arrival at the Temple she went to the post office and added ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... the letter with a deep-drawn sigh. "Sey, my boy," he mused aloud, "no fortune on earth—not even mine—can go on standing it. These perpetual drains begin really to terrify me. I foresee the end. I shall die in a workhouse. What with the money he robs me of when he is Colonel Clay, and the money I waste upon him when he isn't Colonel Clay, the man is beginning to tell upon my nervous system. I shall withdraw altogether from this worrying life. I shall retire from a scheming and polluted world to ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... royal palace in Oxford, built by Henry First, who styled it le Beau Mont; it stood in Stockwell Street, nearly on the site of the present workhouse. It had not been visited by royalty since 1157, when a baby was born in it, destined to become a mighty man of valour, and to be known to all ages as King Richard Coeur-de-Lion. In 1317 King Edward Second bestowed it on the White Friars, and all that now remains of it ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... the workhouse, Polly?" he inquired of the little lodging-house servant who came to ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... I must say it's high time there was a change made in the service. It never can have been intended by Providence for all the obedience to be on the wife's side, or God Almighty wouldn't have made husbands such fools. If Topman hadn't obeyed me he'd have died in a workhouse; and if I'd obeyed his I shouldn't have a stick of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... feeding in the open park, close to the other side of the fence, were, to a great extent, lost upon her eyes. She was thinking that nothing seemed worth while; that it was possible she might die in a workhouse; and what did it matter? The petty, vulgar details of servitude that she had just passed through, her dependence upon the whims of a strange woman, the necessity of quenching all individuality of character in herself, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... and he died content. And now the pauper's funeral had set forth, And the bell toll'd—not many strokes, nor long— Pauper's allowance. He was coming home. But while the train was yet a good way off— The workhouse burial train—I stopp'd to look Upon the scene before me; and methought Oh! that some gifted painter could behold And give duration to that living picture, So rich in moral and pictorial beauty, If seen arightly by the spiritual eye As with the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... (fifteenth century) is to be seen in the eighth, ninth, and tenth windows of the aisle. The font, a modern one, stands at the east end of this aisle. It took the place in 1853 of a marble one, now in the workhouse chapel. There was once a brazen one brought as spoil from Dunkeld in Scotland, together with the lectern now in St. Stephen's Church; but this font disappeared during the civil wars. The continuation of the screen across the north aisle is due to ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... no Christ to convince anybody today that our system of distribution is wildly and monstrously wrong. We have million-dollar babies side by side with paupers worn out by a long life of unremitted drudgery. One person in every five dies in a workhouse, a public hospital, or a madhouse. In cities like London the proportion is very nearly one in two. Naturally so outrageous a distribution has to be effected by violence pure and simple. If you demur, you are sold up. If you resist the ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... I shall certainly tell the master of your workhouse. To think that there should be a ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... up with the remark that "they lived happily ever after." And his opinion of me will, I fear, be considerably lowered when he finds that instead of Reginald dying in the smallpox hospital, and Mrs Cruden and Horace ending their days in the workhouse, things looked up a little for them towards the finish, and promised a rather more comfortable future than one ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... a beadle and a workhouse—the scenes may be the same, but the whole flavour of vice will be lost, and the boy will turn out a perfect pattern.—Strongly recommended ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various

... could no longer complete even a short day's work, and suffered from the cold in winter, he decided to go to the workhouse for a time, but he was out again before the cuckoo was singing, and we found him light jobs "by the piece," so that he could work for as long or as short a time as suited him. He was most grateful for any assistance, and told me that "A little ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... contrary, within the measure of our capacity, to force a gleam of light from the vast unknown; let us examine and question and, here and there, wrest a few shreds of truth. We shall sink under the task; in the present ill ordered state of society, we shall end, perhaps, in the workhouse. Let us go ahead for all that: our consolation shall be that we have increased by one atom the general mass of knowledge, the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... junior partner in the eminent loan-jobbing firm of Catchflat and Company. Here, in the days of paper prosperity, he applied his science-illumined genius to the blowing of bubbles, the bursting of which sent many a poor devil to the gaol, the workhouse, or the bottom of the river, but left young Crotchet ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... redeeming point of the people of Goyaz was that they were extremely charitable. They had erected a huge building as a workhouse. It was entirely supported by charity. A small library had also ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... to be blamed upon the tardiness of the newspapers; it was occasioned by the fact that the person referred to was for the moment well out of touch with the active currents of world affairs, he being confined in a workhouse ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... fellows. There is no room in my life for avarice or anxiety; I who serve at the altar live of the altar: I lack nothing but have nothing over; and when the winter of life comes I shall join the company of weary old men who sit on the sunny side of the workhouse wall and wait for the tender ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... the mother on our reaching the Workhouse gate. "Ring modestly, as becomes the poor ringing at the gate of Charity." ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... watch on the plants, and be prepared to strike quickly. It should be a matter of pride to a gardener to have in his workhouse a supply of the common insecticides and fungicides (Paris green or arsenate of lead, some of the tobacco preparations, white hellebore, whale-oil soap, bordeaux mixture, flowers of sulfur, carbonate of Copper for solution in ammonia), and also ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... Liverpool Workhouse on Brownlow Hill might be lost in wonder at its vastness, as he looked at its streets of large buildings and was told of its more than four thousand inhabitants. He would scarcely imagine that those bare-looking groups of buildings possess an historic interest. Yet to the Christian ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... it can best be considered as an exception or a solitary excursus in his work. Perhaps it can best be considered as the extension of one of his old sketches, of some sketch that happened to be about a visit to a workhouse or a gaol. In the Sketches by Boz he might well have visited a workhouse where he saw Bumble; in the Sketches by Boz he might well have visited a prison where he saw Fagin. We are still in the realm of sketches and sketchiness. The Pickwick Papers may be called an extension of one of his ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... this finely-made fellow, who was so full of fear and misery that if even a girl so much as touched him he must flood himself with tears; and the only way out of his misery was the rope. What a disgrace it was, that he should have earned his daily bread and yet have been kept in the workhouse, as though they did him a kindness in allowing him a hole to creep into there, when with his capacity for work he could have got on anywhere! And it became quite unendurable as he grew up and was still misused ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... one another. You hear of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother—well, it shows they're excellent sons, but it's no excuse for bad work. They're only tradesmen. An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse. There's a writer I know over here who told me that his wife died in childbirth. He was in love with her and he was mad with grief, but as he sat at the bedside watching her die he found himself making mental notes of ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... you into the workhouse," said Scaife. "Thanks. Give you your revenge any time. I dare say between now and the end of the term you'll have most ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... there were such an one, verily it would ill become me to tell him so. HAN. Nay, dear one, where true love is, there is little need of prim formality. ROSE. Hush, dear aunt, for thy words pain me sorely. Hung in a plated dish-cover to the knocker of the workhouse door, with naught that I could call mine own, save a change of baby-linen and a book of etiquette, little wonder if I have always regarded that work as a voice from a parent's tomb. This hallowed volume (producing ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... humorous journal in this country. His work, which for many years averaged a column and a half each week, included nearly every sort of contribution known to Punch, including, in 1845, his striking "Pauper Song"—the wail of the poor man who prefers the prison to the workhouse, the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... this time that I first became acquainted with an orphan boy, an inmate of the workhouse, who had been left to the care of the parish, by the sudden death of his parents, a German clockmaker and his wife, from a malignant fever which had visited the neighbourhood, and taken off a considerable portion ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... wife was a good woman and was willing to keep the child until the new proprietor came; but when once affairs were settled, she would certainly go and make a declaration to the mayor, and take her to the workhouse. Madame Desvarennes listened in silence. One word only had struck her while the woman was speaking. The child was without support, without ties, and abandoned like a poor lost dog. The little one was pretty too; and when she fixed her large deep eyes on ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... for the capital invested. He does not want more than two and a half per cent.; but to ask that means a rise of perhaps a shilling a week. That is enough; the labourer seeks another tumbledown place where he can live for tenpence a week, and the poor and infirm have to go to the workhouse. So, rather than be annoyed with the endless complaints and troubles, to say nothing of the inevitable loss of money, the landlord allows things to go on as ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... out; it was the same scene—forest on either side, with now and then a small lake, or pond, or creek. Jack was at his horses' heads, whistling away, as if he had nothing in the world to care for. He hadn't either. He had been a workhouse-boy in the old country, and would have ended his days as a labourer, and now he was laying by a good bit of money every trip, and expected to be able to buy a comfortable farm before long. So he did, and has brought up a numerous family, all well-to-do in the world, and ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston

... Sir Charles Deacon," interposed Job, "a man so devotedly fond of good eating and drinking as he is, and yet to be compelled to live on less than even workhouse allowance for fear of the gout—and then that silly Lord Muddeford, who's fretting himself to death because ministers wouldn't make him an earl—Mrs Bundy, with her two thousand a-year, making herself miserable because the Grandisons, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... little severely. 'She were crazed, and my aunt couldn't keep her on, could she? She did keep her a long weary time, thinking as she would, may-be, come to hersel', and, anyhow, she were a motherless wench. But at length she had for t' go where she came fro'—back to Keswick workhouse: and when last I heerd on her she were chained to th' great kitchen dresser i' t' workhouse; they'd beaten her till she were taught to be silent and quiet i' th' daytime, but at night, when she were left alone, she would take up th' oud cry, till it wrung their heart, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

... and shorters, or a set of authors. How touching is this debasement of words in the course of time; it puts me in mind of the decay of old houses and names. I have known a Mortimer who was a hedger and ditcher, a Berners who was born in a workhouse, and a descendant of the De Burghs, who bore the falcon, mending old kettles, and making horse and pony shoes ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

... having none of the ordinary symptomata of a funerall, those locularii which bare the body having on diversely coloured coats, and none black: (one of these reported the deceased to have been an almsman seven yeares, a pauper, harboured and fed in the workhouse of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, to whose proper burying-ground he was now going for interment.) All which when I behelde, hardly I refrained from weeping, and incontinently I fell to musing: "If this man had been rich, a Croesus, a Crassus, or ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... died; and her name is Imogen, and she's nine come next November. And now her mother's dead, and she's to stay tonight with Mrs Shrobsall—that's a landlady that's been kind—and tomorrow the Relieving Officer is coming for her, and she's going into the Union; that means the Workhouse. It's too ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit

... his workmen the customary amount of labor, but that customary labor may be of any degree of inefficiency. Even the laborer who loses his employment by idleness or negligence has nothing worse to suffer, in the most unfavorable case, than the discipline of a workhouse, and if the desire to avoid this be a sufficient motive in the one system, it would be sufficient in the other. I am not undervaluing the strength of the incitement given to labor when the whole or a large share of the benefit ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... and fields, with here and there a cabin gleaming, began by degrees to be traced dimly as if a fragment of the countryside were reflected on a dark thunder-cloud. But she was now thinking more about her journey's end than about anything she saw on the way thither—the bleak many-windowed workhouse at Moynalone that she well knew must be presently her fate. Since she had thrown herself on her own resources, three ha'pence was all she could command for ransom from the durance into which self-preservation ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... was appointed one of a committee to inquire into the state of the workhouse; where we found that a charity was bestowed by a great person for a certain time, which in its consequences operated very much to the detriment of the house: for, when the time was elapsed, all those who were supported by that charity, continued on the same foot with the rest of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... seriously ill, and grew worse and worse. For some days they were not much alarmed, for the child had often been ailing—oftener of late since they had not been faring so well; and even when they were they dared not get a doctor to him for fear of being turned out, and having to go to the workhouse. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... "You, who hurried, who forced me into a marriage with a man I detested! You, who gave me to understand, when I resisted, that I had no place on this big earth except a pauper's place—a place in a workhouse!" ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... this difficulty about him. I am unwilling to place him in a hospital, even if I could procure him immediate admission, because I foresee that he would not stay there many hours if he could be so much as got there. The same objection applies to a workhouse, supposing I had the patience to be evaded and shirked, and handed about from post to pillar in trying to get him into one, which is a system that I don't ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... people who made it all for him! That little, awful town! I simply couldn't be reminded. Don't talk about it, please. I'm quite all right as I am." They had threatened her with lurid pictures of the workhouse and a destitute old age. To no purpose, she would not take the money. She had been forty when she refused that aid from heaven—forty, and already past any hope of marriage. For though Scudamore had never known for certain that she had ever ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... with a melodramatic story running through it about a poor fellow going to a house and sitting on the door-step wan and weary, and seeing on the doorplate the name of Jasper. Soon Jasper comes out, and though the poverty-stricken one pleads for a bit of bread he's told to go to the workhouse. 'I pays my taxes,' says the heartless Jasper, 'and to the workhouse you must go.' 'And who would have thought it,' goes the chorus, 'for we were ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... lost all faith of life being other than it is and has been. As in Africa, it is all trees trees, trees with no other world conceivable; so is it here—it is all vice and poverty and crime. To many the world is all slum, with the Workhouse as an intermediate purgatory before the grave. And just as Mr. Stanley's Zanzibaris lost faith, and could only be induced to plod on in brooding sullenness of dull despair, so the most of our social reformers, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... Secretary's Office [near Fort George]. E, [Not Shown]. F, Soldiers' Barracks [at extreme right]. G, Ship Yards [lower right hand corner]. H, City Hall [Broad and Wall streets, site of present Sub-Treasury building]. I, Exchange. J, K, Jail and Workhouse [both situated on the "intended square or common," now City Hall Square]. L, College [Church and Murray streets; this was King's College, now Columbia University]. M, Trinity Church [the present Trinity was built ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... been capable of doing penance in Uttoxeter market years after their father's death for a long-passed act of disobedience? Most of us, again, would have a temporary emotion of pity for an outcast lying helplessly in the street. We should call the police, or send her in a cab to the workhouse, or, at least, write to the Times to denounce the defective arrangements of public charity. But it is perhaps better not to ask how many good Samaritans would take her on their shoulders to their own homes, care for her wants, and ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... of putting her in a foundling hospital or a workhouse, nephew, as you proposed last night?" said Mrs. Margaret, with ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]

... the south arm of the transept as the "old Galilee" and the north arm as the "new Galilee." In the plan in Willis's "Survey of Cathedrals," 1727, the south part is described as the "South galilee, now the church workhouse," while on the north side we read, "Ruined part of Galilee." No doubt the character of the architecture is not inconsistent with the theory that the northern part may have been built or finished by Bishop Eustace, soon after he was appointed, in intentional imitation of the pronounced Norman ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting

... through the broad street with the restored houses, the bank and others, the inhabitants of which ought to wear coifs and pinners, knickerbockers and doublets, and where tall black hats should be unknown; then into the main street, past the Workhouse, which has a letter-box soliciting books and newspapers for the amusement of the paupers, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... bursting into tears, "my poor mother and sisters must go to the workhouse or starve if I did not stay and work for them, and I could not be happy if I lived in a fine house, and knew they were in want of a bit of ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... or others besides herself,—that a very large proportion are urged on of necessity in their work by the dependence on them of whole families, in many cases of their own aged parents,—that many hundreds are keeping broken-down relatives, fathers, and brothers, out of the workhouse, and that many are widows supporting their own children. A few examples, taken at random from the lists of governesses applying to the Institution in Sackville Street, London, would illustrate this point. And let it be remembered that such cases are the rule, ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley

... people, books were to be suited to popular tastes, and then that trade was opened that leads to the workhouse. A new race sprang up, that, like Ascham, "spoke as the common people;" but would not, like Ascham, "think as wise men." The founders of "Authors by Profession" appear as far back as in the Elizabethan age. Then there were some roguish wits, who, taking advantage of the public humour, and ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... for his age and his children. There is something to work for and hope for here: independence, contentment, and competence. It is not a stern struggle from year's end to year's end, with naught at the finish but a paltry pension, dependence on others, or the workhouse. The gentleman-colonist we are talking of is working for a home, and, long before his term of life draws to its close, he will find himself, if not rich, at any rate, in the possession of more comfort and happiness than he could hope for in the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... entertain a stranger longer than a day and a night, unless he undertook to answer for his guest's behaviour, and he was left in no uncertainty as to the course of conduct he was expected to pursue towards the always undesirable alien. In many respects his position resembled that of a master of a workhouse rather than a speculative tradesman. Thus, at times when it was forbidden to carry arms in the City, it became his duty to take possession of his guests' arms and retain them until the strangers departed. If the latter did not comply with his demand, ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... respect myself and control myself. Why is Liz looked up to in a cathedral town? The same reason. Where would we be now if we'd minded the clergyman's foolishness? Scrubbing floors for one and sixpence a day and nothing to look forward to but the workhouse infirmary. Don't you be led astray by people who don't know the world, my girl. The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... still payable to me from some parts of the town which were not sold when I parted with the rest of my estate. For this I pay him L200 a year. I could, I suppose, dismiss him if I chose; but the plain fact is that if I dismissed Godfrey he would immediately starve or go to the workhouse. He is quite unfit to earn his living in any way. Once, after great exertions, I secured for him a kind of minor clerkship in a government office. His duties, so far as I was able to learn, were to put stamps on envelopes, and ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... accepted the sanctified lie of social inequality. And this assumption was religiously acquiesced in by the lower animal himself—who doubtless glorified God for the distinctly unsearchable wisdom and loving-kindness manifested in those workhouse regulations which separated his own toil-worn age from the equal feebleness of the wife whose human rights he should have died fighting for when he was young. And, as might be expected, this strictly gentlemanly principle ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... employer—maintain a minimum wage which will cover the cost of a decent life. The State will stand at the back of the economic struggle as the reserve employer of labour. This most excellent idea does, as a matter of fact, underlie the British institution of the workhouse, but it is jumbled up with the relief of old age and infirmity, it is administered parochially and on the supposition that all population is static and localised whereas every year it becomes more migratory; it is administered without any regard to the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... the workhouse folk in Ireland, was moved by the strange contrast between the poverty of the tellers and the splendors ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... constitution, as in the present instance, will produce a similar effect, remains to be decided. This would mow have been effected, but the boy was rendered unit for inoculation from having felt the effects of a contagious fever in a workhouse soon ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... and sisters (excepting Fanny in the Royal Academy of Music) were still encamped, with a young servant-girl from Chatham workhouse, in the two parlors in the emptied house in Gower Street north. It was a long way to go and return within the dinner-hour, and usually I either carried my dinner with me, or went and bought it at some ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... chose to have the marmalade alone; if she could not buy meat and pickles at the same time, she would have pickles and go without meat. Marmalade and pickles she deemed the indispensables of life; if you could not get those—well, it was no uncommon thing for poor creatures to be driven to the workhouse. And the strange thing was that she looked so well on such diet. Since the age of fifteen, when, in truth, she had been a little peaked and terribly tenuous at the waist, her personal appearance had steadily improved. Her spirits had, by degrees, reached their present point ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... them in from the farm of six hundred and fifty acres, nearly all of which is under cultivation. How can any sane person say that this kind of education does not benefit the race? We will warrant that very few, if any, of Mr. Washington's students will ever be found in jail, the workhouse, the penitentiary, or on the chain gang. All this industry and activity is controlled by Mr. Washington and his eighty-one assistants, which makes him and his school an aggressive and conquering force in ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various

... Crabbe, in his journal for 1817, "had better have rested as a shoemaker, or even a farmer's boy; for he would have been a farmer perhaps in time, and now he is an unfortunate poet." Poor John Clare, it will be recollected, died in a workhouse.-E. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... meeting this morning, I saw before me a colored woman who in much distress was vindicating herself to two white boys, one about eighteen, the other fifteen, who walked on each side of her. The dreadful apprehension that they were leading her to the workhouse crossed my mind, and I would have avoided her if I could. As I approached, the younger said to her, 'I will have you tied up.' My knees smote together, and my heart sank within me. As I passed them, she exclaimed, 'Missis!' But I felt all I had to do ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... the truth must have come to him soon. But it never did: for when he was just five, the woman took a chill and died in a week. She had left a little money; and the Vicar, rather than let Kit go to the workhouse, spent it to buy the child admission to an Orphanage in the Midlands, a hundred ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of anatomy, and, when the bodies are buried, a proper religious service, according to the creed professed during life, is provided. The great majority of bodies are those of unclaimed poor in the workhouse infirmaries, but a few are obtained each year from the general hospitals. Occasionally a well-to-do person, following the example of Jeremy Bentham, leaves his body for the advancement of science, but even then, if his relatives object, it is not ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... The workhouse commitments for Philadelphia, Washington, Cincinnati, Louisville, Chicago and St. Louis "show a similar tendency to decrease." Penitentiary commitments[27] for Baltimore and Chicago show, on the whole, a decreasing trend. "The rate of annual commitments to the state ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes

... makes guileful tongue and lips. It is the workhouse where is the forge of deceits and slanders, and other evil speakings; and the tongue is only the outer shop where they are vended, and the lips the door of it. So then such ware as is made within, such and no other can be set out. That which the ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... had to stop and leave me to take up the thread. Poor dear Jenny, the festival days are no days of rest to her, but I am not sure that she would enjoy repose, or that it would not be the worse possible penance to her. She is gone down now to the workhouse with Valetta to take cards and tea and tobacco to the old people, not sending them, because she says a few personal wishes and the sight of a bright child will be worth something to the old bodies. Then comes tea for the choir-boys, before ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Now, Doctor, let's have a glass of brandy-and-water, hot with, and an hour's more sleep; and then kick me out, and into the workhouse. Was anybody else saved from the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... here Saxon work in Roman materials may be seen; notice the fine tomb of Richard Sackville and the representation of the Trinity between the kneeling figures of Richard and his wife. On the left of the road will be seen an old Tudor house which has been converted into a workhouse. The road now enters the ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... learning from them the most minute details of its working. Great is evidently her rejoicing when one of her "Nightingales" proves to be a really fine nurse, such a one, for instance, as Agnes Jones, the reformer of workhouse nursing. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... Went to see a poor woman at the Workhouse; she is full of joy in the hope of heaven, and possession of the present mind of Jesus. I said, "Many wish for it who have it not;" she said, "Perhaps they are not enough in earnest: it costs a few groans, and struggles, and tears, but it is sweet to enjoy it now." Could the stony heart in ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... Rowland Dobie's "History of the United Parishes of St. Giles- in-the-Fields and St. George, Bloomsbury," (8vo. 1829) contains some curious and interesting "historical sketches of pauperism." Speaking of the parish workhouse, the author says, "It contains on an average from 800 to 900 inmates, which is however but a small proportion to the number constantly relieved, at an expense [annually] of nearly forty thousand pounds."-J. ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... scarcely worthy of its name. On the whole, Lettice felt that she had not made a bad selection out of the million or so of human habitations which overflow the province of London; and even Mrs. Campion would occasionally end her lamentations over the past by admitting that Maple Cottage was "not a workhouse, my dear, where I might have expected to ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... 1886, and the enterprising restaurateur had to revert to the local system, and replace all the former waiters, who ran back to London rather than be reduced to the dire necessity of going into the workhouse. Young men, as a rule, are more generous than elderly people, and the fair sex is, in general, very stingy. A gentleman accompanied by a lady, if she is only an acquaintance, is sure to tip generously, pour la galerie, although he may look as if he wanted to accompany ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... sadness, and suffering, which makes him truly the type of Christ, the Man of sorrows; which makes his Psalms to this day the text-book of the afflicted, of tens of thousands who have not a particle of his beauty, courage, genius; but yet can feel, in mean hovels and workhouse sick-beds, that the warrior-poet speaks to their human hearts, and for their human hearts, as none other can speak, save Christ himself, the Son of David and the ...
— David • Charles Kingsley

... burial-ground opposite the Six Bells, and was aware that, sitting there on seats facing the road, in white aprons and caps, with shawls over their shoulders, were five of the saddest old ladies I have ever seen—occupants, I presume, of a neighbouring workhouse. There they sat, saying nothing, and watching without enthusiasm the passers-by and the 'buses and the taxis and all the hurry and scurry of an existence from which they are utterly withdrawn and which they ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas

... speaking quickly, "that I married you for your money, but since you knew that, you were as much to blame as I. Had I known then what sort of man you were, I would sooner have gone into the workhouse. I am quite aware that it is thanks to you that my father is not a ruined man, but I—I protest against being made the price for your benefits. I will never touch another penny of your money myself, ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... transparent muslins. Its peculiarity is its tendency to "crinkle" or crumple in wearing, therefore it does not present a smooth flat surface, except by means of dressing, which unfits it for clinging effects but suits printed patterns. Such stuffs as workhouse sheeting, imitating certain fabrics of the sixteenth century, and which it has been the fashion of late to cover with embroidery, do not repay, by effective beauty, the trouble bestowed ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... that cannot put them under captains, and send them upon enterprises, and in short render life human to them. Our English plan of Poor Laws, which we once piqued ourselves upon as sovereign, is evidently fast breaking down. Ireland, now admitted into the Idle Workhouse, is rapidly bursting it in pieces. That never was a "human" destiny for any honest son of Adam; nowhere but in England could it have lasted at all; and now, with Ireland sharer in it, and the fulness of time come, it is as good ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... go, fast, fast! down the road, across the lea, past the workhouse, along by the great pond, till we slide into the deep narrow lane, whose hedges seem to meet over the water, and win our way to the little farmhouse at the end. "Through the farmyard, Lizzie; over the gate; never mind the cows; they are quiet enough." "I don't mind 'em," said Miss Lizzie, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... on the Friday instead of the Saturday, and there was his wife to receive him reeling drunk. He 'took and gave her a pair o' black eyes,' for which I pardon him, nailed up the cook- shop door, gave up his situation, and resigned himself to a life of poverty, with the workhouse at the end. As the children came to their full age they fled the house, and established themselves in other countries; some did well, some not so well; but the father remained at home alone with his drunken wife, all his sound-hearted pluck ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... task was no light one, even for a stronger man, but he persevered in it with a new-found energy until he had changed the whole aspect of the room. It looked larger, wider, and less crowded; its hard practical, workhouse-like formality had disappeared. He had paused to survey it, panting still with his unusual exertion, when a voice ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... containing volumes in the teeth of folk who could not put a syllable of sense into their books. He lavished promises that he never fulfilled; he made a pillow of his luck and reputation, on which he slept, and ran the risk of waking up to old age in a workhouse. A steadfast friend to the gallows foot, a cynical swaggerer with a child's simplicity, a worker only from ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... shop, warehouse, or workhouse on Sunday is a fifty dollar offense, and it is fifty dollars also for doing "any manner of labor, business or work" on Sunday, unless the judge considers it a matter of necessity or charity; nevertheless, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various

... duke of somewhere or other, and we must bolster him up in his kingdom, or else there will be trouble with the powers." Powers—what's powers to me?—or Greenland? when there's Slingsby, a man I've smoked a pipe with every market evening of my life, in the workhouse? And there's hundreds of ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... It doesn't mean, as you might think, the Workhouse, or the White House, or the Station House, or the Bon Marche. It is the name given by people of Lady Cicely's class to ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock

... weed-mantled rocks, I mildly remarked that workhouses were now very comfortable. Immediately the younger woman stood erect, and with something akin to pride and determination, exclaimed in a voice more than tinctured by the Irish patois, 'Never, sir, will us go to the workhouse while us can get as much as an crust in twenty-four hours.' Hitherto I had seen her only in a stooping attitude, and I was surprised to see how tall a woman she was, and what strength of character was indicated ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... violating the midnight closing law.' At this the saloonkeeper and policemen rushed upon me and put me into the street; and one of the policemen, grasping my arm like a vice, hissed in my ear, 'I'll get you a thirty days' sentence in the workhouse, and then we'll see what you think about suing people.' He called a patrol wagon, pushed me in, and drove to jail; and, Judge, you know the rest. All day yesterday I was locked up, my children at home alone, with no fire, no food, no mother." ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... on words; to do so is low vulgar, smelling of the pothouse, the workhouse. Belle, I insist on your declining an ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... I willingly grant that I owe you much more; but it would be wasting ink to write it down. I cannot pay you that: and if you take my livery from me too, which, by the way, I have not yet earned,—I would rather you had let me die in the workhouse. ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

... sisters were sent out to nurse in private families, and in 1839 two more were sent to superintend the workhouse in Frankfort. As the institution became known there was a constant demand for superintendents, and matrons for public reformatories, prisons, and charitable establishments. Between 1846 and 1850 more than sixty ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... prisoners are committed for assault and battery or larceny, for terms varying from one month to four years and a half; those committed for graver offences are confined at Sing Sing; all drunkards, vagrants, and disorderly characters at the workhouse. During the past year two thousand three hundred and fifteen persons were incarcerated for different periods—two thousand one hundred and thirty-nine whites, one hundred and seventy-six blacks. Of these about one third were ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... or curiosity-shop: every thing has the same posthumous appearance, the same inanimateness and identity of character. If Bloomfield is too much of the Farmer's Boy, Crabbe is too much of the parish beadle, an overseer of the country poor. He has no delight beyond the walls of a workhouse, and his officious zeal would convert the world into a vast infirmary. He is a kind of Ordinary, not of Newgate, but of nature. His poetical morality is taken from Burn's Justice, or the Statutes against Vagrants. He sets his own imagination in the stocks, and his Muse, like ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... hospice or workhouse, near the bridge of Ainay across the Sane, is the church of St. Martin d'Ainay, which, with the monastery, was founded by St. Badulph during the reign of Constantine, on the site of a temple erected ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... London Workhouse, for the poor of the City of London, also stands in this ward, just without Bishopsgate, being a long brick edifice four hundred feet in length, consisting of several work-rooms and lodging rooms for the vagrants and parish children brought thither, who are employed in spinning wool ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales

... weak she do look, don't she?' says Emmy. Before I could say as much as 'Yes,' she stares up at us, and asks in a wild voice, though it wasn't very loud either, if we can tell her the way to Bangbury workhouse. Having pretty sharp eyes of our own, we both of us knew that a workhouse was no fit place for her. Her gown was very dusty, and one of her boots was burst, and her hair was draggled all over her face, and her eyes was sunk in her head, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... that an inmate of a workhouse has received an income-tax form to fill in. This is considered to be but a foretaste of the time when all income-tax papers will have to be addressed to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various

... lying sick, She soon may be alone; He cannot use his spade and pick, As once he could have done. The workhouse door stands open wide, But should he enter there, They'd tear his darling from his side And place her anywhere. They'd call it charitable help, Though breaking both their hearts; But then, when in adversity Folks have to bear ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... when I was at Tulla to the workhouse, and there saw a poor fellow lying in bed, the doctors around him, with a blue light over his face that made me feel that the doctors were not right, when they told me he might get over it. I felt sure that he must die, and I see this morning that he has died. But why did that man die? He was ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... and held the attention, as we remark in the workhouse, was this guy's face. I might say he had the most inconsistent set of features I ever seen off the screen. He ain't a thousand miles from bein' good-looking and his chin is well cut and square, like at one ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer

... champion of all boys, and underlying his pen pictures of them was an earnest desire to remedy evils which he had found existing in London and its suburbs. Poor Jo, who was always being "moved on," David Copperfield, whose early life was a picture of Dickens' own childhood, workhouse-reared Oliver, and the miserable wretches at Dotheboy Hall were no mere creations of an author's vivid imagination. They were descriptions of living boys, the victims of tyranny and oppression which Dickens felt he must in some way alleviate. ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... four o'clock when she trudged through Madron to see the gray church and the little gray houses all sleeping under the gray sky. She plodded on up the hill past the gaunt workhouse which stands at the top of it; and what had seemed soft, sweet repose among the cottage homes, felt like cold death beneath these ashy walls. To Joan, the workhouse was a word of shame unutterable. Those among whom she lived would hurl the word ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... the penalty would be a restriction of personal liberty, the judge may order the prisoner to a workhouse, until the proper authorities object, when the remainder of the sentence is carried out in the ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... kindergarten mistresses to university professors. I began in quite a simple way with a question about the food of an infant. We might, if you had taken the subject up at all warmly, have got on to the endowment of motherhood, nature study, medical examination of schools, the boarding-out of workhouse children, religious education, boy scouts, eugenics, and a lot of other perfectly fascinating topics. But what do you do? You say frankly and shamelessly that you know nothing at ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... what he has done. Did he think I would recommend him, when I know nothing about him? He is a conceited puppy, and, in my opinion, a worthless fellow. One of these days he will be 'an honor and an ornament' to the workhouse, if he ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic

... to From Workhouse to Westminster, a life of Will Crooks, Gilbert expressed a good deal of his own political philosophy. As a democrat he believed in the ideal of direct government by the people. But obviously this was only possible in a world that was also his ideal—a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... towns. There is a railway-station, bleak, gray, and windswept, situated, for the benefit of local car-owners, a mile and a half from the town, and the road which connects the two is execrable. There is a workhouse, in Ballymoy as everywhere else in this lost land the most prominent building. There is a convent, immense and wonderfully white, with rows and rows of staring windows and a far-seen figure of the Blessed Virgin, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... its side, was listening during a part of this same week to a second confession of that poor fellow whose tongue had outmeasured his discretion. It was listening with reviving dread to the wild and incoherent disclosures of this man, whom it had flung into the black hole of the workhouse. There, crazed by misery and fear of death, he raved about a plot among the blacks to massacre the whites and to put the town to fire and pillage. This second installment of William Paul's excited disclosures, while it increased ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke

... opposed to the fundamental principles common to Smith and Eden. The law, too, might be used oppressively by the niggardly and narrow-minded. The overseer, as Burn complained,[80] was often a petty tyrant: his aim was to depopulate his parish; to prevent the poor from obtaining a settlement; to make the workhouse a terror by placing it under the management of a bully; and by all kinds of chicanery to keep down the rates at whatever cost to the comfort and morality of the poor. This explains the view taken by Arthur Young, and ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... at Melford in 1805 and seduced either one or two sisters of the warden of the hospital or almshouse, and had two illegitimate children, one at any rate a girl. The Great House was one used, but not built, for a workhouse: it stood near the vicarage at Melford, but has now disappeared, and apparently its ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... of cases where the deaf and dumb are allowed to grow up uneducated and uncared for they become inmates of Workhouses or Lunatic Asylums. Many years ago L—— K—— was taken from a workhouse in Derbyshire where he had been for a number of years, and educated and apprenticed to a suitable trade; he is now a steady, industrious man, married, and himself a ratepayer. This is only one of many similar instances that ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe

... a state bordering on starvation—actually certain to die of famine, unless relieved by extraordinary exertions. In the woollen districts of Wiltshire, the allowance to the independent laborer was not two-thirds of the minimum in the workhouse, and the large existing population consumed only a fourth of the bread and meat required by the much smaller population of 1820. In Stockport, more than half the master spinners had failed before the close of 1842; dwelling houses to the number of 3,000, were shut up; and ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... either could not or would not work. On behalf of these a deputation(1358) was appointed by the City to present a petition to the king that he would be pleased to grant the disused palace of Bridewell to the municipality for the purpose of turning it into a workhouse. The deputation was introduced by Ridley, who himself wrote in May of this year (1552) to secretary Cecil on the same subject.(1359) The efforts of the bishop and the deputation were rewarded with success. ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... who have never known it, or by those who have failed to fulfil it. Numberless modern women have rebelled against domesticity in theory because they have never known it in practice. Hosts of the poor are driven to the workhouse without ever having known the house. Generally speaking, the cultured class is shrieking to be let out of the decent home, just as the working class is shouting to be ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... afternoon as I sat by the fire in a ward of Gort Workhouse, I listened to two old women arguing about the merits of two rival poets they had seen ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... what suited me from a number of sources, which shows how wide-spread this quaint droll is in England: (i) In Mayhew, London Poor, iii. 391, told by a lad in a workhouse; (ii) several versions in 7 Notes and Queries, ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... and Republicans are certainly very fine fellows, or rather were fine fellows, for the Lord only knows where to find them at the present day—the writer does not. If he did he would at any time go five miles to invite one of them to dinner, even supposing that he had to go to a workhouse in order to find the person he wished to invite. Amongst the real Radicals of England, those who flourished from the year '16 to '20, there were certainly extraordinary characters, men partially insane, perhaps, but honest and brave—they did not make a market of the principles which they professed, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... the muddy pool, in which the mob were ducking her, according to their favourite mode of punishment, the magistrate succeeded in rescuing her from their hands, but in a state of insensibility, owing to the cruel treatment which she had received. He added, that he had seen her carried to the workhouse, and understood that she had been brought to herself, and was expected ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... last to dismiss them. The little oligarchy, however, was too strong to be ousted at any vestry that ever was called. As to the elected officials, the same curate records in a pamphlet which he published in his indignation, that "on Christmas Day, during divine service, the churchwardens entered the workhouse with constables and bailiffs, and a multitude of men equally pious with themselves, and turned the governor and his wife into the snow-covered streets." Another measure of iniquity laid to their charge was their "cruelty to Mr. Foster," the ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... the officers observed, as to the hour and place of interment, increased in a great degree the anxiety of those that were waiting, and it being suspected that the body would have been privately carried away, through the back part of the workhouse (St. George's) into Farm Street Mews, and from thence to its final destination, different parties stationed themselves at the several passages through which it must unavoidably pass, in order to prevent disappointment. All anxiety ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various

... gives the application a sort of percussive effect; The pain is much more acute than with the cowhide; and several instances are known where a master ordered an amount of strokes beyond the endurance of the slave, and it proved fatal at the workhouse. They tell a pretty good story about the old fellow. I don't know if it's true, but the old fellow's rich now, and he does just what he pleases. It was that somebody found one of those little occasional droppings ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... years old, and a respectable old person—a widow, who had reared ten children. The children had all grown up, and scattered, and old Mrs. Welden had nothing whatever to live on. No one knew how she lived, and really she would be better off in the workhouse. She could be sent to Brexley Union, and comfortably taken care of, but she had that singular, obstinate dislike to going, which it was so difficult to manage. She had asked for a shilling a week ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... outlying parishes, promising, however, to be responsible for their maintenance should they become a public charge. Several instances are recorded of children being sent to join their parents. A certain number were confined in the workhouse and in the provincial hospital. But on December 6, 1760, the authorities gave instructions for the hospital to be cleared to make room for the colonial troops who were returning home, many of them suffering ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty

... hand raised to the bell-string, murmured apathetically the names of streets and of public-houses, and then they jerked off again on an outward curve to the impatient double ting of the bell. To the east was a high defile of hospitals, and to the west the Workhouse tower faintly imprinted itself on ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... occupation, such as nails for sofas, cane-bottomed chairs and book-binding. Thence we visited the State prison; the cells constructed in the octagon form; all seen from the centre; a small yard attached to each to walk in for one hour a day; a sentinel placed serving the whole. Then we went to the Alms or Workhouse which is on a magnificent scale; thence to the Hospital, passed over two large bridges. Returned and took tea and spent the evening at ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood

... her daughter now came as the last blow that broke her long-enduring spirit. There had been a time when she would have died rather than have gone into the workhouse, but she had nothing left to live for now, and she became a pauper. The Irish workhouse soon kills what little spirit successive misfortunes have left in its occupants before their entrance, and in a few years there was nothing left of the once ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... ever saw. He was nearly fifteen years old, I fancy— he might even have been more, but he was a simple-minded, quiet-mannered lad, and from the expression of his countenance, independent of his size, he looked much younger. He had no friends, having been sent on board the ship from the workhouse when she was first fitted out. He had belonged to her ever since, having remained to assist the ship keeper in sweeping her out, and looking after her when he had to leave her. He had never, I believe, set foot on shore since ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... real appreciation. He knew that Foyle would do as he said. And in the criminal profession, however big the makings, there is very rarely anything like thrift. For a man who at any time might find himself doing five years, it was something to know that those left outside were in no danger of the workhouse. For even "crooks" have human ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... course ask him if he is a Brother of Pity, but I think he deserves to be, for workhouse burials at any rate; for if you have only the Porter and Silly Billy at your funeral, I don't think you can call that ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... had been rather cross on the journey down to Scotland, and had almost driven the unfortunate Macnulty to think that Lady Linlithgow or the workhouse would be better than this young tyrant; but on her arrival at her own house she was for awhile all smiles and kindness. During the journey she had been angry without thought, but was almost entitled to be excused for her anger. Could Miss ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... wide untidy expanse; once or twice too an osteria, with its bush or its wine-stained tables under the shadow of its northern wall. But scarcely a farmhouse. Once indeed a great building like a factory or a workhouse, in the midst of wide sun-beaten fields. 'Ecco! la fattoria,' said the driver, pointing to it. And once a strange group of underground dwellings, their chimneys level with the surrounding land, whence wild swarms of troglodyte children rushed up from the bowels of the earth ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... we pluck the flower and eat the fruit, and know not that we pass the sower daily in the street; perhaps some humble ill-drest woman, earning painfully her own small sustenance. She who nurses a bedridden mother, instead of sending her to the workhouse. She who spends her heart and her money on a drunken father, a reckless brother, on the orphans of a kinsman or a friend. She who—But why go on with the long list of great little heroisms, with which a clergyman at least ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... intensity of will. As to the other parts of his character, it is difficult to say whether they are to be ascribed to nature, or to the strange training which he underwent. The history of his boyhood is painfully interesting. Oliver Twist in the parish workhouse, Smike at Dotheboys Hall, were petted children when compared with this wretched heir apparent of a crown. The nature of Frederic William was hard and bad, and the habit of exercising arbitrary power had made him frightfully savage. His rage constantly vented ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Selborne), who represented Charles Francis Howard, the other claimant, gave the whole case a new complexion by informing the court that he was in a position to prove that, in the month of August, 1864, Mrs. Howard and another lady visited a workhouse in Liverpool, and procured a newly-born child from its mother, Mary Best, a pauper, then an occupant of one of the lying-in wards of the workhouse hospital. In support of his assertion he was able to produce three witnesses—Mrs. Higginson, the head-nurse, and Mrs. Stuart and ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... after his death; and the infant, whose nourishment from its birth had been mingled with bitterness, followed in a few days. I saw myself seven children crowd round the coffin that was provided by charity; I saw three taken to the workhouse, and the elder four distributed amongst kind-hearted hard-working people, who are trying to inure the young soft hands, accustomed to silken idleness, to the toils of homely industry. I ask you, John Adams, how the husband of that woman, ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... and ugly as those old fish in the pond!" (Here she pointed to two old monsters of carp that had been in a pond in Castlewood gardens for centuries, according to tradition, and had their backs all covered with a hideous grey mould.) "Lockwood must pack off; the workhouse is the place for him; and I shall have a smart, good-looking, tall fellow in the lodge that will do ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to marry her lover with or without leave; and as for Parker Clare, he needed no permission, his mother, dependent for years upon the cold charity of the workhouse, having long ceased to control his doings. Thus it followed that in the autumn of 1792, when Robespierre was ruling France, and William Pitt England, young Parker Clare was married to Ann Stimson of Castor. Seven months after, on the 13th day of July, 1793, Parker ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... Anna, Judge Cornell said:[17] "I find the girls guilty. It would be perfectly futile for me to fine them. Some charitable women would pay their fines or they could get a bond. I am going to commit them to the workhouse under the Cumulative Sentence Act, and there they will have an opportunity of thinking over what ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

... note by his side upon the desk. "When you boys have driven me into the workhouse, you'll be satisfied, perhaps. And now hold your foolish tongue about ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... practice. But Jack saw at once under this rough exterior he had the voice and address of a cultivated gentleman, though he was so broken down by want and long suffering and exposure and illness that he looked like a beggar just let loose from the workhouse. ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... at hand, and he could inspect progress. The furniture was determined upon—neat little iron beds for the dormitories, and all that could serve for comfort and even pleasure, for both Mr. Mauleverer and Rachel were strong against making the place bare and workhouse-like, insulting ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Majesty," he assented, "the hereditary principle must naturally be strong: it is implanted in your blood. I have no such impulse in mine. My father was born in a workhouse." ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... all, if they don't marry before two months are out. I'm a beggar then. I'm ruined. I shan't have a penny. I'm in a workhouse. They are in good homes. They are safe, and thank their old father. Now, then; now. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... others envying the blessed security of a Counting House, all agreeing they had rather have been Taylors, Weavers, what not? rather than the things they were. I have known some starved, some to go mad, one clear friend literally dying in a workhouse. You know not what a rapacious, dishonest set those booksellers are. Ask even Southey, who (a single case almost) has made a fortune by book drudgery, what he has found them. O you know not, may you never know! the miseries of subsisting by authorship. 'Tis a pretty appendage to a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... seen him once or twice. Has he not brought his father to the verge of a workhouse by low dissipation ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various



Words linked to "Workhouse" :   Britain, U.K., pokey, slammer, poky, poorhouse, gaol, UK, United Kingdom



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