Guiding In A Welsh Workhouse
- Author:
Alfreda Humphreys (H.O.E.).
Being out of a job I wrote to my County Commissioner for one. ^ replied with : ” Will you form a Ranger Company amongst the mentally deficient g in the P Workhouse ” (fifteen miles away). My heart sank?whose would ?but I said I would meet her there, and see.
It was the loveliest of days in June, and the beauty of sea, and the riot of colour in the gardens and countryside 1 e , turce into dreadful contrast the gloom of that awful courtyard. uge w wv,iiP sides, tall iron railings on the fourth, a round weed patch in the middle, while wandering round arm in arm, or huddled in corners, were my fu ure g ? But not all, so we went inside. Long well-scrubbed tables, shiny po is le ? big bare walls. A tall pretty girl in one corner, hoping that she had escape o gaze. ” Yes, she’s all right; you are all right, aren’t you, Lizzie. sai e Matron, and I turned away hot with shame only to meet a terrible help ess orm in a chair that leered at me, another came up and gazed into mine with her PO?r> senseless, entreating face, tried to pick a white thread off my stocking, and te and I had to pick her up.
Two rooms and a courtyard?their world. There for life. Ages seventeen to thirty-six. Twenty-nine of them of every shape and kind, from the v^ry nicest girls that one could meet anywhere, to the most dreadful creatures that one could not look on twice.
Some had laundry work, some had housework, many nothing but a walk once a week (if fine), others not even that. No books, no handicrafts (one or two could make baskets, and some did the mending), no physical exercises of any kind. All the dreadful happenings that one has to meet with when one lives, and eats, and sleeps, with the most degraded forms of epilepsy (in their bed- rooms, they sleep good and bad alternately), and nothing to help to wipe away those happenings.
The only visitors, County Council and other officials (men), who more often than not think the girls deaf and freely discuss them in front of their faces. It all seemed so hopeless. Almost all desire for anything seemed to have gone. Why not? And I turned away sick at heart, feeling that not wild horses would drag me inside that place again.
Yet one couldn’t rest and do nothing. One couldn’t let Guiding down and say it was helpless there. So I hunted out my best Guide friend, older than I, and one that could be trusted not to talk too much to the merely idle curious?a most necessary qualification, for the girls know at once. (Once only I made that mistake, and then it was through taking someone whom I did not know, a friend of a friend.) To this Guide I painted what I’d seen, and would she come? “Yes.” So we set to work.
First we took plants, in full bloom, and turned the weed patch into a gay garden. A few helped us, most looked on. Then Toby, my small dog, worked hard to entertain them with tricks; that broke the ice, they loved him. Then we played games, team games, and other- * Reprinted by permission of the Author and of the Editor of the Parents’ Review, wise. But team games were hopeless. And so ended our first attempt.
For the next six months we only met twice a month for about two hours. (It took the in-between time to get over one meeting and screw oneself up for the next.) But during this time we sorted out our Company?nineteen girls we kept, the others we had to leave.
The first thing to do was to get them to move and think for themselves, so we played games; round games like Tom Tiddler’s Ground, Two’s and Three’s, Cat and Mouse. Also we did a certain amount of Guide tenderfoot work, and a fair amount of bandaging. Gradually more and more joined in, until the time came that when we started a game, all would join in, and most play really well. But the games had to be many and various, for at that stage no game would keep their interest for more than about ten minutes.
Each time we would have a short talk on the Guide Law, etc., though we might just as well have talked Greek. However, they got used to sitting still and hearing us talk, the listening was yet to come ! Here, of course, the language was a great bar. English is a foreign language, they can understand it, on the whole, quite how much we never really know. But it’s in Welsh they move and have their being. Having at last got them really moving and thinking for them- selves the next step was to get them to work together, and for each other. So we went on to Patrol work and Competitions, Miss P. being the leader of one patrol, myself of the other. We would teach our patrols, and then have competi- tions on what we had taught. One time we would arrive armed with bunches of twigs and teach them the names, etc., then joining forces, either we would hold up a twig in turn (Miss P. and I) and who ever named it first would score for her patrol, or else we would put the twigs in a row, call out the name of a twig and see who would touch the right one first. When the same girls had answered several times we would ask them to stay silent to give the others a chance, and so even the very slowest were drawn in.
The first competition ever won, the winning patrol, hugely pleased, clapped itself hard, while the others sat glum ! But the beaten ones soon learnt to ” give honour where honour is due,” and in clapping the winners would cheer them- selves on to fresh efforts. Never again did the winners clap themselves. We never kept the same patrols, we re-mixed them each time?a rather important point.
By December, 1926, we were ready for something new, so we persuaded the Master to hunt out a dilapidated old gramophone. ” Yes,” they had plenty of records. Next time we arrived in triumph, bearing the rejuvenated gramophone. But alas ! all the records were hymns ! and mostly cracked at that. Someone gave us a new polka and once more we returned to the scene of action, this time only to find that they had absolutely no idea of moving to music ! So we sat them down and taught them to clap, one, two, three, four, to the polka. Then in a circle, five or six at a time, we stamped it, then we danced it. Then one by one I took each of the nineteen girls and danced it round and round the room. Here I was alone, my friend could not dance. In time about half could dance really well with me; but with each other, that was a different question. So I took the two best, put them together, then ran round the room after them saying, one, two, three, hop ! To the polka we added some musical games, and then the Berlin polka, Sir Roger, and another dance like it, to the same music. Then, joy of joys, another friend, who spends her holidays with me, promised, if I could get the records, to teach them Country Dancing in the Easter holidays. She knew the girls, having been with me 011 previous occasions, and they loved her.
From the very beginning Country Dancing was a great success. Every girl danced but one, and she is at the same time our best and most difficult girl. And now eight of them dance twelve dances really well, and all but the one dance the easy ones.
But to go back to the beginning of 1927. We found that one girl, Jennie, was passionately fond of reading. Someone had given her the Wide, Wide World for Christmas, and she had read it three times in two weeks.
book of John’s Birds, she begged to be allowed to keep it until the following week, and read it through from cover to cover. So we decided to collect a library. But there was nowhere to house it, so Miss P., being an expert car- penter, we taught them to make a bookcase. This they sand-papered, hammered together and varnished with great joy. One about five feet by three ee . u the books were not so easy to get, and are still a great difficulty. As ey are their only means of getting away from those two rooms and courtyard, will one who can spare them send us some? Books for all ages, from ten years o c upwards, story books or lesson books (the P.N.E.U. sort)?all but the modern novel ” kind. Our librarian, the same Jennie who won’t dance, not only reads herself, but sees that the others do too ! and reports to me most weeks on who has read and what. All books are covered, numbered and catalogued, and great caie is taken of them.
About Easter, 1927, we began to divide our company into ” big ” ones and little ” ones. Now the ” big ” ones, to the ordinary person, seem absolutely normal, and in fact, unusually intelligent; some unusually nice looking. from that time on the ” big ” ones played and worked together, and the ” little ones likewise, only joining for dancing or patrol work and competitions, when each patrol has both ” big ” and ” little.”
Gardening began to interest them, and a kind friend presented four rose trees in tubs to train up the courtyard walls. But gardening never really took hold until each girl had a garden of her own, the Master having beds laid down along the sides of the courtyard. And now many of our afternoons start with each girl, armed with a spoon ! going proudly to plant two or three new possessions. They had a loyely present of bulbs this autumn; it was too wet to see them planted that day, so next time Miss P. and I had a great time finding where they had been put and how many were upside down !
One of their rooms is now very gay with pictures, many given by friends, some passe partouted ” by the girls themselves. But the big room is still empty, ^.as anyone any unwanted pictures ? About half-way through the year we started them on raffia work, at which they are now experts ; also rug making, with thrums, which is now a much loved industry.
You will have realised by now that the girls have an excellent nurse. We teach her with the girls, give her books and patterns, and she carries on in the most amazing manner. To teach them service for others we put them on to making scrap books, each girl having her own penny exercise book to fill. These are sent to a Liverpool children’s hospital.
When one’s world is two rooms and a courtyard, and in many cases has been for the last five or six years, it’s not easy to grasp the ” Spirit of Guiding.” So to help I wrote once more to the County Commissioner, this time to ask for nineteen Rangers to adopt mine, send them birthday and Christmas cards and write about four times a year. The Rangers were found at once, and not only that but each of the Companies to which they belonged went to the workhouse (Christmas, 1926) and gave tea and entertainments, and are going to do the same this year,
When you haven’t had a letter for three or four years, and no hope of one, it brings guiding home in a way that we can hardly realise to find that there are Ranger guides in the outside world loving to write to you, and full of common interests. All these letters are treasured and brought out for us to read. This last year I have been most weeks, taking other friends when Miss P. couldn’t go. We arrive by train, about 1.30, and a two-minute walk takes us to the workhouse. We leave, after tea with the Master and Matron, by a 4.58 train. The girls’ tea time is normally 3.30, but on Guide days they go hungry until 4.40. Even the Master puts off his 4 o’clock tea until we arrive to share it. Yes, as you will have already guessed, the Matron is an ideal one. No words of mine can ever adequately express the tremendous help she is. She attends every meeting, never interferes, but is always ready if wanted. She has a marvellous power of under- standing, and never fails to do the right thing at the right moment, and at the same time sees that we don’t do the wrong ! in the most perfect, unobtrusive manner. We worry her no end with all the countless things we want, but they always appear. (And these girls are only a small part of the workhouse.) Nothing- seems to be too much trouble. She is that great rarity, a capable person who can let others bungle along until they find their feet.
The Guardians asked for drill. I replied, ” Impossible in those awful boots, give them gym. shoes.” Then the Master said, ” Impossible,” but Matron said, ” Wait and see.” And in due course they arrived. The weather was hot. To dancing, and games, and drill, marching to music and Swedish drill set to music, we had added Indian Clubs. Their dresses were down to their ankles, and yards round; up to their ears, and tight. Their stockings, meant to last ! The Guardians could hardly be expected to rise to gym. dresses, so I got white casement cloth, yards of it, for blouses, and even more yards of green for the dresses, and Matron, as ever, rising to the occasion, showed the girls how to make them for themselves. I had been wearing one myself for some months to get them used to it. Some weeks later they appeared, transformed, and ready to throw six times as much energy into their work and play. But now their stockings showed forth in all their horribleness, so when an aunt asked what I would like I said ” Stockings, really pretty ones, and as many different colours as possible.” Great was the joy when these arrived, and one of the girls got up and made a speech of thanks, another ably seconded it, and they clapped and cheered until we didn’t know where to hide ourselves, and neither of us were in the least capable of replying !
But the great day was when, a few weeks ago, one of the lady Guardians joined us, watched the dancing and drill, looked at the handicrafts, and joined in the games. But we did not treat her to a talk on the Guide Law ! And after, in the Matron’s room, she said, ” How did you do it? Why, the whole ex- pressions on their faces have changed ” ; and ” What can I give you to help ? ” And at our Christmas party she turned up with a beautiful new gramophone ! Yes, good records are a great need.
On reading this through I seem to have written much and told little. Only just the outside skin of it all. But perhaps it is that it’s hardly a subject one wants to go deeply into except to those who are willing to ” lend a hand.” It is a burning, red-hot subject, a dark blot on the face of our fair land. If only the public realised I believe it would rise as one and demand that our great nation should care for these girls, her wards, in a manner more worthy of her name. On whom does the responsibility rest ? Surely on the shoulders of each one of us.
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