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arising from the most trifling circumstances, as carelessness
in throwing brushes, clothes, or dolls, down water-closets.
Servants and children should be strictly cautioned against
such negligence, either as regards combined or single housedrains.
the women admitted to the workhouse from
hyde park.
There are circumstances which make it worth while to
introduce a note of the facts relating to the unfortunate
women who are in the habit of haunting Hyde Park, and
who are brought by the police to the Mount-street Workhouse
from time to time, when their state of disease and
filth becomes unbearable.
It may be noted, in the first place, that these women, if
outcast and homeless, are so by their own act and choice,
and not because they are refused admission into our Workhouse.
One morning in October we went round Hyde Park
with one of the officers of the Workhouse, and with one of
the park-keepers, and hunted out and spoke to every destitute
person whom we found there. On that occasion we
found nine women, most of them under 20, respectably born ;
they were educated, and had been at school (this we tested
by asking them to spell, such words as " Michael," " Norwich,"
&c.); they were in all degrees of tidiness, one or two
apparently neat, some crouching under trees, like animals, in
the very extremest state of dirt; they all seemed well fed,
even if tattered in their clothes ; some had been in the park
only a few days, others for 5 or 6 months; some were well
known at Mount-street, where they had been inmates: all
were entreated by us to come in and be taken care of, and all
refused.