have my linen washed to appear
decently, as the virago of a nurse said, when the gentlemen (the
surgeons) came. I cannot give you an adequate idea of the wretchedness of
an hospital; every thing is left to the care of people intent on gain.
The attendants seem to have lost all feeling of compassion in the
bustling discharge of their offices; death is so familiar to them, that
they are not anxious to ward it off. Every thing appeared to be conducted
for the accommodation of the medical men and their pupils, who came to
make experiments on the poor, for the benefit of the rich. One of the
physicians, I must not forget to mention, gave me half-a-crown, and
ordered me some wine, when I was at the lowest ebb. I thought of making
my case known to the lady-like matron; but her forbidding countenance
prevented me. She condescended to look on the patients, and make general
enquiries, two or three times a week; but the nurses knew the hour when
the visit of ceremony would commence, and every thing was as it should
be.

"After my dismission, I was more at a loss than ever for a subsistence,
and, not to weary you with a repetition of the same unavailing attempts,
unable to stand at the washing-tub, I began to consider the rich and poor
as natural enemies, and became a thief from principle. I could not now
cease to reason, but I hated mankind. I despised myself, yet I justified
my conduct. I was taken, tried, and condemned to six months' imprisonment
in a house of correction. My soul recoils with horror from the
remembrance of the insults I had to endure, till, branded with shame, I
was turned loose in the street, pennyless. I wandered from street to
street, till, exhausted by hunger and fatigue, I sunk down senseless at a
door, where I had vainly demanded a morsel of bread. I was sent by the
inhabitant to the work-house, to which he had surlily bid me go, saying,
he 'paid enough in conscience to the poor,' when, with parched tongue, I
implored his charity. If those well-meaning people who exclaim against
beggars, were acquainted with the treatment the poor receive in many of
these wretched asylums, they would not stifle so easily involuntary
sympathy, by saying that they have all parishes to go to, or wonder that
the poor dread to enter the gloomy walls. What are the common run of
work-houses, but prisons, in which many respectable old people, worn out
by immoderate labour, sink into the grave in sorrow, to which they are
carried