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The Workhouse
It's not often that a TV show can make me cry, but I'm currently watching "Call the Midwife" on Netflicks and catching up on earlier seasons that I'd missed.
The last episode of the first season (and one earlier episode as well) focus on the older generation who spend time in the workhouse.
I've done some reading around this period and the programme does not exaggerate.
Families were separated. Husbands from wives, children from their mothers. Many children died from malnourishment.
The Victorian view was that the poor were responsible for their poverty - only by making workhouse conditions really bad could you stop the lazy wanting to enter them.
There was a lot of variation over time, some times and places were better than others, but saving money was always a strong motive. Many young children were sold as apprentices to mills in the north or as to chimney sweeps to climb chimneys. Many of those 'apprentices' would die young. Others were sent overseas as part of colonisation programmes to meet a range of fates (all the way from kind adoptive parents to effective slavery).
The last episode of the first season (and one earlier episode as well) focus on the older generation who spend time in the workhouse.
I've done some reading around this period and the programme does not exaggerate.
Families were separated. Husbands from wives, children from their mothers. Many children died from malnourishment.
The Victorian view was that the poor were responsible for their poverty - only by making workhouse conditions really bad could you stop the lazy wanting to enter them.
There was a lot of variation over time, some times and places were better than others, but saving money was always a strong motive. Many young children were sold as apprentices to mills in the north or as to chimney sweeps to climb chimneys. Many of those 'apprentices' would die young. Others were sent overseas as part of colonisation programmes to meet a range of fates (all the way from kind adoptive parents to effective slavery).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Lanark
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I got the impression if they had been taken there when they couldn't have a say forgiveness would have been very difficult indeed.
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The USA equivalent of this was the Orphan Train, with a similar range of results.
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As for this attitude that the poor deserve to be that way, there are still wealthy people who think so. I knew one who,was working for the adult equivalent of pocket money - her husband was a pilot and she was the daughter of a tea planter back in the days of the Empire, who had never gone without anything, and this was her opinion.
And there are Tory governments like ours who talk about “getting people back into work” by keeping unemployment benefits below the rate at which people can actually pay their rent and feed their children. That is, encourage these lazy good for nothings to get a job, damn them! Politicians who have never had to go without anything, who went to exclusive private schools, then went straight into politics as soon as they got their law degrees, and will be able to access their superannuation early, while working in the corporate or banking sector when they have been voted out.
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I remember many years ago we had a work opportunity lad in our office. He kept a scrapbook of every single rejection letter. There were an awful lot of them.
It was very clear that he wanted work!
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I got an interview and was told that I was one of only five interviewees of 250 applications!
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I think it's even worse when they don't tell you. (But that in itself says how many people are chasing every job)
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I saw a horrific programme about workhouses. The perpetual attitude that poor people deserve to be poor and must be punished further for it, which certainly persists to this day, is so horrific. I don't understand it.
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It's easy for the well off to forget how much of an advantage a good education gives them. Education gives you far more job choices, better health (there's a very strong correlation between education and length of life - used to be hidden by an assumption that the correlation was with wealth, but countries like Cuba help tease out the correct relationship) and better life chances all round.
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