Power was to be given to unite several parishes into one union, and to erect large workhouses for the several parishes thus massed together;[230] and every union was to be under the management of boards of guardians, elected by the rate-payers of the different parishes, with the addition of the resident magistrates as ex officio guardians.

“The master of a workhouse in Essex was once called in to act as chaplain to a dying pauper.

He began his clerical career at Lancaster in 1864; attended the asylum whilst at that town; afterwards had charge of a workhouse at Liverpool; is now Catholic chaplain of Preston House of Correction, and fills up his spare time by labouring in St. Joseph's district.

A chance visitor to the Liverpool Workhouse on Brownlow Hill might be lost in wonder at its vastness, as he looked at its streets of large buildings and was told of its more than four thousand inhabitants.

It differed from the workhouse of to-day apparently in this respect, that there was not even an attempt to separate the young and old, the sick and the healthy, the criminal and vicious from the respectable and honest.

The workhouse without Stephen Whitelaw must needs be infinitely preferable to Wyncomb Farm with him.

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.

There is no man breathing who has not an enemy, from the pauper in the workhouse to the king in his automobile.

This while back I've been going out to the country instead of into the town, and coming back here in the evenings I've seen the workhouse with the big wall around it, and the big gate going into it, and I've said to myself that Thomas Muskerry ought to be as secure and contented here as if he was in his own castle.

The other day a friend of mine questioned an old woman in a Galway workhouse about Queen Maive, and was told that "Queen Maive was handsome, and overcame all her enemies with a bawl stick, for the hazel is blessed, and the best weapon that can be got.