PLEASE SIR I WANT MORE!

Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:

'Please, sir, I want some more.'

Everyone who has seen the movies, Oliver, Oliver Twist and/or read Charles Dickens' great novel cannot fail to have been moved by this scene where the poor little orphan, Oliver, causes trouble by asking for more food.

When the story begins, Oliver is starving and neglected in that most horrific of institutions, the English workhouse.

Dickens wrote the novel partly to make people more aware of the suffering caused by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 which required paupers to live in workhouses. Here they were "offered the choice of 'being starved by a gradual process in the house or by a quick one out of it."1.

History of the Workhouse

The policy of making parishes responsible for the poor dates back to 1388. An Act was passed that required servants leaving their county to have a letter of authority from the Justice of the Peace.

In 1601 the 'Old Poor Law' was passed making parishes responsible for looking after their own poor. The money for this was collected by means of a poor rate tax from local property owners. Money or food was given to poor people who lived in their own homes. The wealthy complained about this 'out relief' and workhouses began to be built as an alternative. Conditions, at first, were not as bad as they became. Indeed, some workhouses were christened 'pauper palaces'.

The Workhouse Act, passed in 1723, denied relief to able-bodied paupers who refused to enter the institution.

The Poor Law Amendment Act, which Dickens derided, ended the process of out-relief. The able-bodied paupers who were desperate now faced the trauma of entering the workhouse.

Conditions

The workhouse was, in many ways, like a prison. People living there were even called 'inmates'. Other similarities were that, upon entry, paupers were stripped, their heads were shaved, and they were required to wear uniforms.

Men, women and children were separated and there were different classes of 'inmates'. The sick were separated from the 'able-bodied', for example. Even families and husbands and wives were often separated and punished if they spoke to each other.

The able-bodied were required to work very hard, so hard that it really amounted to 'hard labour'. Many of the entrants, however, consisted of the old and the infirm. There were also many orphans, like Oliver, 'fallen women' and unmarried mothers.

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