paration for
the work in Liverpool, of which the offer has been already mentioned. In
the spring of 1865 she left for ever the old familiar spot with its
beautiful hills and glens, and its cottages, to many of whose inmates
she had been the means of bringing comfort and peace; Liverpool, with
its needy poor and its many difficult problems, claiming her for the
last three years of her life.

CHAPTER VI.

AMONGST THE PAUPERS.

In the year 1698, William III. stated in a speech that:--"Workhouses,
under a prudent and good management, will answer all the ends of charity
to the poor, in regard to their souls and bodies; they may be made,
properly speaking, nurseries for religion, virtue, and industry." But
could the good king who anticipated so many advantages from workhouses
have only seen our poor law institutions a hundred and fifty or sixty
years later, he would have been pained to learn how far they had fallen
short of his sanguine expectations. The sick and helpless were entrusted
to the care of women who, being paupers themselves, and of a low class,
and being for the most part in the workhouse through loss of character,
were found to be almost incapable of training. Rough they were, and in
many cases brutal as well, while their roughness and brutality were
intensified by the free use of intoxicants. Their language was terrible,
and not only did they quarrel constantly amongst themselves, but fights
were of frequent occurrence.

To endure such treatment and to witness such scenes was the daily lot of
a sick pauper, who knew also that when dead he would have little better
than the burial of a dog, since it was the common custom in many
workhouses to bury corpses naked, with no covering but a few shavings
thrown over the body. Little wonder was it that the poor, when overtaken
by age or disease, shrank from the thought of entering a place which to
them seemed worse than a prison, choosing rather to die without
attention than to be treated in such a barbarous manner.

It seems strange that it was so long after a great reformation had been
wrought in the management of our prisons that any one was found to lift
up a voice in behalf of the much enduring inmates of our workhouses.
There seemed to be no one who could spare a thought for the thousands of
sick and poor in these institutions. But it was the old story of "out of
sight, out of mind," for if only the evil had been apparent our English
nation with its lov