In January 1866, on a bitterly cold night, a man dressed in ragged clothes begged for a night's lodging in the male casual ward of Lambeth workhouse. On entering, he was made to strip and plunge into bathwater so polluted with use that it looked 'disgustingly like weak mutton broth'; he was then issued with a towel and a regulation striped cotton shirt, and shown into a freezing, cavernous shed where some forty semi-naked paupers shared a smaller number of straw-tick mattresses laid on the stone floor. In the morning, after a breakfast of bread and oatmeal gruel, and a mandatory stint of labour (turning the crank for a miller's wheel), he was allowed on his way. This 'Amateur Casual', who was in reality the journalist James Greenwood, then went home for a second, more restorative, hot bath. On 12 January, the first of three articles detailing his experience appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette under the title 'A Night in a Workhouse'.

LRB 31 March 2005 | PDF Download