Hope - Lesley Pearse [136]
‘What is it like?’ he asked.
‘Not quite as bad as it looks,’ she grinned.
Bennett smiled. ‘Are you always so stoical?’
‘I am about food, I know what it’s like to be starving,’ she shrugged.
‘You’ve seen the very worst of St Peter’s today,’ Bennett said earnestly. ‘But the cholera ward is not representative of the whole hospital. Dr Peebles, the surgeon, is excellent; they have a good record for midwifery here too. But the building is old, and isn’t really suitable for a hospital.’
‘Why are they still using it then?’ she asked. ‘Surely it is bad to bring people with infectious diseases to a workhouse where there are orphans, old people and the insane?’
‘When the new General Hospital was built it was the intention that all the sick would go there,’ he said with a shrug. ‘But it just isn’t large enough, not when an epidemic like this strikes. And St Peter’s is not a workhouse exactly; it’s more what you might call a refuge.’
‘I thought a refuge meant a place of safety?’ Hope said with a touch of sarcasm.
Bennett half-smiled. ‘You’d better not start me on that subject,’ he said. ‘It is something I tend to rant about.’
‘Tell me,’ she insisted.
‘Well, in the old days, until just before you were born, most of our unfortunates, the poor and old, simple or sick, got what they called outside relief. They stayed in their own homes and got money from the parish to support them. St Peter’s and places like it were for those who had no home or were too sick or old to look after themselves. In the main they were decent places, and St Peter’s was one of the best.
‘But the government wanted to get the ratepayers on their side by saving money, so they brought in a new Poor Law. Outside relief was stopped because they believed it encouraged people to be idle and feckless, and instead they built hundreds of workhouses all over the country, forbidding, prison-like places with no comforts whatsoever, which would deter all but the most desperate.’
Hope nodded. ‘My parents were always afraid of ending up in one,’ she said.
‘It is people just like your parents who suffer the most from the new Poor Law,’ he said with a deep sigh. ‘Imagine your father was laid off work for a few weeks, Hope, or became sick. Under the old law he could fall back on parish relief to tide him over to feed his family until he got well, or went back to work. Old people could stay in their villages, helped in their infirmity by neighbours and family. But suddenly all that was wiped out; not a penny would be handed over.
‘Once these unfortunates have used up their savings, sold their belongings and are starving, they are forced to leave their home and go to the workhouse.’
He stopped his impassioned outburst suddenly and grinned sheepishly. ‘Oh dear, I didn’t mean to go into all the iniquities of that! What I really meant to point out was that the trustees of St Peter’s have tried to keep it as it always was; a home for those who have now here else. It continues to shelter the aged, the feeble-minded, orphans, mothers who cannot have their babies at home, and the sick. It doesn’t have the barbaric regime of the Union work-houses; no one here has ever picked oakum, or broken stones for building work. But like most charities, it is flawed. In emergencies the doors are opened too wide, and right now we have far too many sick. Without the facilities or the staff to nurse them.’
Hope noticed that he was blushing, clearly embarrassed that he had tried to defend St Peter’s.
‘You are something of a rarity,’ Hope said impishly. ‘I didn’t think the gentry cared about anything or anybody but themselves.’
He looked startled. ‘Do you see me as “gentry”?’
‘Well, you are,’ she said.
‘No, I’m not. As I told you yesterday, but for my uncle’s support when my father died, I would probably have gone into service too. Anyway, to get back to St Peter’s and the crisis we are in here, if it wasn’t for the Sisters of Mercy, who fortunately think God has personally instructed them to stay here, I don’t know what we should