were few in number. But the
occasional honest mechanic or skilled workman in search of employment
was hard bestead.

I met two journeymen printers, one of whom, having threepence for a
bed outside the workhouse, was able to find employment in the town of
Gloucester; whilst the other, being unable to get away from durance
before eleven, was left out in the cold. I met other men who, in order
to escape this absurd imprisonment, slept in the fields, and so risked
liberty on the other side rather than miss the early labour market; for
to sleep in the fields is a misdemeanour punishable at law: though why
it should be so, if nothing else be provable against a man, Heaven only
knows. In the language of the road, to sleep in the open is to 'skipper'
and to sleep in the workhouse is to go 'on the spike.' It was a common
question in fine weather, 'Skipper or spike to-night?' The habitual
loafer invariably chose the spike. The man who had business and wanted
to get along elected to skipper, though he lost two meals thereby.

The law, which ruins the hands of the skilled workman, and detains
skilled and unskilled alike until the labour market is closed to
them, supplies a dietary which would kill anybody but a professional
fasting-man in a month, and keeps a keen eye on mendicancy. It is like
the sun, with a difference: it looks alike on the just and the unjust
The mischief is, it is made for the comfort of the worthless and is
the plague of the deserving. There are easy-going boards of guardians,
easy-going workhouse masters and labour masters, who do not insist upon
the tale of work which is demanded by others. The old stagers know the
easy places and give them a natural preference.

The one place of terror on the line I took was Gloucester. The guardians
of the Gloucester Union had made up their minds to put down the casual
pauper, and, as the means readiest to hand, they determined to make the
work too hard for him. I was so persistently warned against Gloucester
that I went there to see for myself what it was like. The house itself
was orderly and clean, and the discipline as complete as in a gaol. The
only thing which distinguished it from other places of its kind was the
severity of the labour imposed.

The limits of labour are fixed by law. There is such and such a weight
of oakum to be picked, or such a weight of stone to be broken; but
the good guardians of Gloucester, without in the least infringing the
provisions