The Paradise at Tooting (20 January)
The Tooting Farm (27 January)
A Recorder’s Charge (3 March)
The Verdict for Drouet (23 April)
In January 1849, Peter Drouet’s Establishment for Pauper Children in Tooting, Surrey, was at the centre of a national scandal after many children in his care were suddenly struck down and killed by cholera. The event lead Charles Dickens to write four pieces over the coming months published in the The Examiner. At least 180 children from the school are believed to have died from the disease. Drouet was charged with manslaughter but subsequently acquitted.
The county of Surrey deemed it quite unnecessary to hold any inquests on these dead children, being as perfectly satisfied in his own mind that Mr Drouet’s farm was the best of all possible farms, as ever the innocent Candide was that the chateau of the great Baron Thunder-ten Tronckh was the best of all possible chateaux. Presuming that this learned functionary is amenable to some authority or other, and that he will be duly complimented on his sagacity, we will refer to the proceedings before a very different kind of coroner, Mr Wakley, and his deputy Mr Mills. But that certain of the miserable little creatures removed from Tooting happened to die within Mr Wakley’s jurisdiction, it is by no means unlikely that a committee might have sprung into existence, by this time, for presenting Mr Drouet with some magnificent testimonial, as a mark of public respect and sympathy.
Mr Wakley, however, being of little faith, holds inquests, and even manifests a disposition to institute a very searching inquiry into the Muses of these horrors; rather thinking that such grievous effects must have some grievous causes. Remembering that there is a public institution called the “Board of Health,” Mr Wakley summons before him Dr Grainger, an inspector acting under that board, who has examined Mr Drouet’s Elysium, and has drawn up a report concerning it.
It then comes out — truth is so perverse — that Mr Drouet is not altogether that golden farmer he was supposed to be. It appears that there is a little alloy in his composition. The “extreme closeness, oppression, and foulness of air,” in that supposed heaven upon earth over which he presides, “exceeds in offensiveness anything ever yet witnessed, by the inspector, in apartments in hospitals, or elsewhere, occupied by the sick.” He has a bad habit of putting four cholera patients in one bed. He has a weakness in respect of leaving the sick to take care of themselves, surrounded by every offensive, indecent, and barbarous circumstance that can aggravate the horrors of their condition and increase the dangers of infection. He is so ignorant, or so criminally careless, that he has taken none of the easy precautions, and provided himself with none of the simple remedies, expressly enjoined by the Board of Health in their official announcement published in the Gazette, and distributed all over the country. The experience of all the medical observers of cholera, in all parts of the world, is not in an instant overthrown by Mr Drouet’s purity, for he had unfortunately one fortnight’s warning of the impending danger, which he utterly disregarded. He has been admonished by the authorities to take only a certain number of unfortunates into his farm, and he increases that number immensely at his own pleasure, for his own profit. His establishment is crammed. It is in no respect a fit place for the reception of the throng shut up in it. The dietary of the children is so unwholesome and insufficient, that they climb secretly over pailings, and pick out scraps of sustenance from the tubs of hog-wash. Their clothing by day, and their covering by night, are shamefully defective. Their rooms are cold, damp, dirty; and rotten. In a word, the age of miracles is past, and of all conceivable places in which pestilence might — or rather must — be expected to break out, and to make direful ravages, Mr Drouet’s model farm stands foremost.
In addition to these various proofs of his mortal fallibility, Mr Drouet, even when he is told what to do to save life, has an awkward habit of prevaricating, and not doing it. He also bullies his assistants, in the inspector’s presence, when they show an inclination to reveal disagreeable truths. He has a pleasant brother — a man of an amiable eccentricity — who besides being active, for all improper purposes, in the farm, is “with difficulty restrained “from going to Kensington “to thrash the Guardians” of that Union for proposing to remove their children! The boys under Mr Drouet’s fostering protection are habitually knocked down, beaten, and brutally used. They are put on short diet if they complain. They are “very lean and emaciated.” Mr Drouet’s system is admirable, but it entails upon them such slight evils as “wasting of limbs, debility, boils; &c.,” and a more dreadful aggravation of the itch than a medical witness of great experience has ever beheld in thirty years’ practice. A kick, which would be nothing to a child in sound health, becomes, under Mr Drouet’s course of management, a serious wound. Boys who were intelligent before going to Drouet, lose their animation afterwards (so swears a Guardian) and become fools. The surgeon of St Pancras reported, five months ago, of the excellent Mr Drouet, “that a great deal of severity, not to use a harsh term” — but why not a harsh term, surgeon, if the occasion require it? — “has been exercised by the masters in authority, as well as some we presume, out of authority,” meaning, we presume, the amiably eccentric brother. Everything, in short, that Mr Drouet does, or causes to be done, or suffers to be done, is vile, vicious, and cruel. All this is distinctly in proof before the coroner’s jury, and therefore we see no reason to abstain from summing it up.
But there is blame elsewhere; and though it cannot diminish the heavy amount of blame that rests on this sordid contractor’s head, there is great blame elsewhere. The parish authorities who sent these children to such a place, and, seeing them. in it, left them there, and showed no resolute determination to reform it altogether, are culpable in the highest degree. The Poor-Law Inspector who visited this place, and did not, in the strongest terms, condemn it, is not less culpable. The Poor-Law Commissioners, if they had the power to issue positive orders for its better management (a point which is, however, in question), were as culpable as any of the rest.
It is wonderful to see how those who, by slurring the matter when they should have been active in it, have become, in some sort, participes criminis, desire to make the best of it, even now. The Poor-Law Inspector thinks that the issuing of au order by the Poor-Law Commissioners, prohibiting boards of guardians from sending children to such an institution, would have been “a very strong measure.” As if very strong cases required very weak measures, or there were no natural affinity between the measure and the case! He certainly did object to the children sleeping three in a bed, and Mr Drouet afterwards told him he had reduced the number to two — its increase to four when the disease was raging, being, we suppose, a special sanitary arrangement. He did not make any recommendation as to ventilation. He did not call the children privately before him, to inquire how they were treated. He considers the dietary a fair dietary — IF proper quantities were given where no precise quantity is specified. He thinks that, with care, the premises might have been accommodated without danger to health, IF all the accommodation, on the premises had been judiciously applied. As though a man should say he felt convinced lie could live pretty comfortably on the top of the Monument, IF a handsome suite of furnished apartments were constructed there expressly for him, and a select circle came up to dinner every day!
These children were farmed to Mr Drouet at four shillings and sixpence a week each; and some of the officials seem to set store by its being a great deal of money, and to think exoneration lies in that. It may be a very sufficient sum, considering that Mr Drouet was entitled to the profits of the children’s work, besides: but this seems to us to be no part of the question. If the payment had been fourteen and sixpence a week each, the blame of leaving the children to Mr Drouet’s tender mercies without sufficient protection, and of leaving Mr Drouet to make his utmost profit without sufficient check, would have been exactly the same. When a man keeps his horse at livery, he does not take the corn for granted, because he pays five-and-twenty shillings a week. In the history of this calamity, one undoubted predisposing cause was insufficient clothing. What says Mr William Robert James, solicitor and clerk to the Board of Guardians of the Holborn Union, on that head? Mr Drouet “told him in conversation (!) that the four and sixpence a week would include clothing. No particular description of clothing was mentioned.” Is it any wonder that the flannel petticoats worn by the miserable female children, in the severest weather of this winter, could be — as was publicly stated in another metropolitan union a few days ago- “read through?”
This same Mr James produces minutes of visits made by deputations of guardians to the Tooting Paradise. Thus : As regards the complaint of Hannah Sleight, as to the insufficiency of food, we believe it to be unfounded. Elizabeth Male having complained that on her recent visit she found her children in a dirty state. her children had our particular attention, and we beg to state that there was no just cause of complaint on her part.
It being clear to the meanest capacity that Elizabeth Male’s children not being dirty then, never could by possibility have been dirty at any antecedent time.
But it appears that this identical James, solicitor and clerk to the Board of Guardians of the Holborn Union, had a valuable system of his own for eliciting the truth, which was, to ask the boys in Mr Drouet’s presence if they had anything to complain of, and when they answered “Yes,” to recommend that they should be instantly horsewhipped. We learn this, from the following extraordinary minute of one of these official visits :
We beg to report to the board our having on Tuesday, the 9th of May, visited Mr Drouet’s establishment to ascertain the state of the children belonging to this union. We were there at the time of dinner being supplied, and in our opinion the meat provided was good, but the potatoes were bad. We visited the school-rooms, dormitories, and workshops. Everything appeared clean and comfortable, led see are of opinion that the new sleeping resins for infants on the ground floor have a very unhealthy smell. The girls belonging to the Union looked very well. The boys appeared sickly, which induced us to question them as to whether they had any cause of complaint as to supply of food or otherwise. About forty of them held up their hands to intimate their dissatisfaction, upon which Mr Drouet’s conduct became violent. He called the boys liars, described some that had held up their hands as the worst boys in the school, and said that if he had done them justice, he would have followed out the suggestion of Mr James, and well thrashed them. (Laughter.) We then began to question the boys individually, and some of them complained of not having sufficient bread at their breakfast. Whilst pressing the inquiry, Mr Drouet’s conduct became more violent. He said we were acting unfairly in the mode of inquiry, that we ought to be satisfied of his character without such proceedings, and that we had no right to pursue the inquiry in the way we were doing, and that lie would be glad to get rid of the children. To avoid further altercation we left, not having fully completed the object of our visit.
If Mr Drouet was sincere in saying he would be glad to get rid of the children, he must be in a very complacent frame of mind at present when lie has succeeded in getting rid, for ever, of so many. But the general complacency, on the occasions of these visits, is marvellous. Hear Mr Winch, one of the guardians of the poor for the Holborn Union, who was one of the visiting party at the Tooting Paradise on this 9th of May:
I was in company with Mr Mayes and Mr Rebbeck. The children were at dinner. They were all standing; I was informed they never sit at their meals. I tasted the meat, and I cut open about 100 potatoes at different tables, none of which were fit to eat. They were black arid diseased. I told Mr Drouet the potatoes were very bad. He replied that they cost him 7l. a ton. The children had no other vegetables. I told Mr Drouet I should give them other food. He made no reply. I also told Mr Drouet 1 thought the newly-erected rooms, smelt unhealthy. Mr Mayes said it was a pity when he was building he had not made the rooms higher; when Mr Drouet said he would have enough to do if he paid attention to everybody. We went through some of the sleeping-rooms, which appeared very clean. The girls looked well; but the boys, who were mustered in the school-room, appeared very sickly and unhealthy. Mr Drouet, his brother, and the schoolmaster, were present. Mr Rebbeck said to the boys, ” Now, if you have anything to complain of — want of food, or anything else — hold up your hands;” and from thirty to forty held up their hands. Mr Drouet became very violent, and said we were treating him in an ungentlemanly manner; he said that some of the boys who had held up their hands were liars, and scoundrels, and rascals. He said we were using him very unfairly; that his character was at stake; and, if we had anything to complain of, that was not the way to proceed. One of the boys whom I questioned told me they had not bread enough either for breakfast or supper; and, on comparing their dietary with that in our workhouse, I think such is the case. In consequence of the confusion, we left Mr Drouet’s without signing the visitors’ book. I did not make any motion in the Board of Guardians for the removal of the children. I again visited Mr Drouet’s establishment on the 30th of May. The potatoes were then of excellent quality. I went into the pantry, and was surprised to find the bread was not weighed out. We weigh it out in the union, as we find that is the only way to give satisfaction. The loaves at Mr Drouet’s were cut into sixteen pieces without being weighed. I saw no supply of salt in the dining-room, but some of the boys who had salt in bags were bartering their salt for potatoes. I did not ask the children whether they had been punished in consequence of what had taken place at my previous visit. We were in the establishment for an hour and a half or two hours on the 30th. We then expressed our satisfaction at what we witnessed. We made no further inquiry as to what had occurred on our previous visit. I made no suggestion to the board for the improvement of the dietary. We had no means of ascertaining that the children received the amount of food mentioned in the diet-table.
But we expressed our satisfaction at what we witnessed. Oh dear yes. Our unanimity was delightful. Nobody complained. The boys had had ample encouragement to complain. They had seen Mr Drouet standing glowering by, on the previous occasion. They had heard him break out about liars, and scoundrels, and rascals. They had understood that his precious character — immeasurably more precious than the existence of any number of pauper children — was at stake. They had had the benefit of a little fatherly advice and caution from him, in the interval. They were in a position, moral and physical, to be high-spirited, bold, and open. Yet not a boy complained. We went home to our Holborn Union, rejoicing. Our clerk was in tip-top spirits about the thrashing joke. Everything was comfortable and pleasant. Of all places in the world, how could the cholera ever break out, after this, in Mr Drouet’s Paradise at Tooting!
If we had been left to the so-much vaunted self-government, the question might have been unanswered still, and the Drouet testimonial might have been in full vigour. But the Board of Health — an institution of which every day’s experience attests in some new form the value and importance has settled the question. Plainly thus:— The cholera, or some unusually malignant form of typhus assimilating itself to that disease, broke out in Mr Drouet’s farm for children, because it was brutally conducted, vilely kept, preposterously inspected, dishonestly defended, a disgrace to a Christian community, and a stain upon a civilised land.
The following article, The Tooting Farm was first published in The Examiner on Saturday, 27 January 1849.
On Tuesday last the coroner’s jury, after a long inquiry before Mr Wakley, returned a verdict of manslaughter against the Tooting Farmer, coupled with an expression of their regret at the defects of the Poor-law Act, and of their hope that establishments similar to that at Tooting would soon cease to exist.
Nothing came out in the further progress of the inquiry to soften those results of evidence which we summed up generally last week. The new testimony did anything but weaken the case against the person now criminally inculpated. On the contrary, the physical deterioration of the surviving children, as a body, was more affectingly and convincingly shown than before. What good legal assistance could do for the defence, was done, but it could do nothing. What deplorable shifts and attempts at evasion on the part of an educated witness could do on the same side, was also done. But it could do nothing either.
We observe that one metropolitan Board of Guardians considers itself ill-used by the public comments that have been made on this case, and is about to enter on a voluntary defence of itself. Any individual or body of individuals made the subject of uncomplimentary newspaper remark, is ill-used as a matter of course. It never was otherwise. The precedents are numerous. Mr Thurtell was very bitter on this point, and so was Mr Greenacre. But while we recognise a broad distinction between the culpability of those who consigned hundreds of children to this hateful place, too easily satisfied by formal, periodical visitation of it, — and the guilt of its administrator, who knew it at all hours and times, at its worst as well as at its best, and who drove a dangerous and cruel traffic, for his own profit, at his own peril, — we must take leave to repeat that the Board of Guardians concerned are grossly in the wrong. The plain truth is, that they took for granted what they should have thoroughly sifted and ascertained. A certain establishment for the reception of pauper children exists. One Board of Guardians sends its children there; other Boards of Guardians follow in its wake, like sheep. We will assume that the existing accommodation in their Unions was insufficient for the reception of these children. For aught we know, it may, in the case of the Saint Pancras workhouse for example, have been perfectly inadequate. But that is no reason for sending them to Tooting, and no ground of defence in having sent them there. The sending them to Norfolk Island, or the banks of the Niger, might be justified as well by the same logic.
We have no intention of prejudging a case which is now to be brought to issue before a criminal court. It will be decided upon the law, and upon the evidence, and there is not the least fear that the general humanity will unjustly prejudice the party impeached. That is not at all a common vice of such a trial in England. What we desire to do, is to point out in a few words why we hold it to be particularly desirable that this case, in all its relations, should be rigidly dealt with upon its own merits; and why that vague disposition to smooth over the things that be, which sometimes creeps into the most important English proceedings, should, in this instance of all others, have no pin’s-point of place to rest upon.
In town and country, for some months past, we have been trying and punishing with necessary severity certain seditious men who did their utmost to incite the discontented to disturbance of the public peace. We have, within the last year, counted our special constables by tens of thousands, and our loyal addresses to the throne by tens of scores. All these demonstrations have been necessary, but some of them have been sad necessities, and, on the subsidence of the natural indignation of the moment, have not left much occasion for triumph.
The chartist leaders who are now undergoing their various sentences in various prisons, found the mass of their audience among the discontented poor. The foremost of them had not the plea of want to urge for themselves; but their misrepresentations were addressed to the toiling multitudes, on whom social inequalities impossible to be avoided, and complicated commercial circumstances difficult to be explained to them, pressed heavily. There is no doubt that among this numerous class, chartist principles are rife; that whereever the class is found in a large amount, there, also, is a great intensity of discontent. There are few poor workingmen in the kingdom who might not find themselves next year, next month, next week, in the position of those fathers whose children were sent to Tooting; and there are probably very few poor working-men who have not thought “this might be my child’s case, to-morrow.”
No opportunity of doing something towards the education of such men in the conviction that the State is unfeignedly mindful of them, and truly anxious to redress their tangible and obvious wrongs, could be plainer than that which now arises. If the system of farming pauper children cannot exist without the danger of another Tooting Farm being weeded by the grisly hands of Want, Disease, and Death, let it be now abolished. If the Poor Law, as it stands, be not efficient for the prevention of such inhuman evils, let it be now rendered more efficient. If it has unfortunately happened, though by no man’s deliberate intention or malignity — as who can doubt it has? — that the children of sundry poor men and women have been carried to untimely graves, who might have lived and thriven, let there be seen a resolute determination that the like shall never happen any more. It is not only even-handed justice, but it is clear, straightforward policy. It is the correction of widely-spread and artfully-fomented prejudice, dissatisfaction, and suspicion. It is to challenge and to win the confidence of the poor man on his tenderest point, and at his own fire-side.
But to waste the occasion in play with foolscap and red tape; to bewilder all these listening ears with mere official gabble about Boards, and Inspectors, and Guardians, and responsibility, and non-responsibility, and divided responsibility, and powers, and clauses, and sections, and chapters, until the remedy is crushed to pieces in a mill of words; will be to swell the mischief to an extent that is incalculable. There are scores of heads in the mills of Lancashire and the shops of Birmingham, sufficiently confused already by something more perplexing than the rattling of looms or the beating of hammers. Such dazed men must be spoken to distinctly. They will hear then, and hear aright. Let the debtor and creditor account between the governors and the governed, be kept in a fair, bold hand, that all may read; and the governed will soon read it for themselves, and dispense with the interpreters who are paid by chartist clubs.
en it first became known that a virulent and fatal epidemic had broken out in Mr Drouet’s farming establishment for pauper children at Tooting, the comfortable flourish of trumpets usual on such occasions (Sydney Smith’s admirable description of it will be fresh in the minds of many of our readers) was performed as a matter of course. Of all similar establishments on earth, that at Tooting was the most admirable. Of all similar contractors on earth, Mr Drouet was the most disinterested, zealous, and unimpeachable. Of all the wonders ever wondered at, nothing perhaps had ever occurred more wonderful than the outbreak and rapid increase of a disorder so horrible, in a place so perfectly regulated. There was no warning of its approach. Nothing was less to be expected. The farmed children were slumbering in the lap of peace and plenty; Mr Drouet, the farmer, was slumbering with an easy conscience, but with one eye perpetually open, to keep watch upon the blessings he diffused, and upon the happy infants under his paternal charge; when, in a moment, the destroyer was upon them, and Tooting church-yard became too small for the piles of children’s coffins that were carried out of this Elysium every day.
The learned coroner for the county of Surrey deemed it quite unnecessary to hold any inquests on these dead children, being as perfectly satisfied in his own mind that Mr Drouet’s farm was the best of all possible farms, as ever the innocent Candide was that the chateau of the great Baron Thunder-ten Tronckh was the best of all possible chateaux. Presuming that this learned functionary is amenable to some authority or other, and that he will be duly complimented on his sagacity, we will refer to the proceedings before a very different kind of coroner, Mr Wakley, and his deputy Mr Mills. But that certain of the miserable little creatures removed from Tooting happened to die within Mr Wakley’s jurisdiction, it is by no means unlikely that a committee might have sprung into existence, by this time, for presenting Mr Drouet with some magnificent testimonial, as a mark of public respect and sympathy.
Mr Wakley, however, being of little faith, holds inquests, and even manifests a disposition to institute a very searching inquiry into the Muses of these horrors; rather thinking that such grievous effects must have some grievous causes. Remembering that there is a public institution called the “Board of Health,” Mr Wakley summons before him Dr Grainger, an inspector acting under that board, who has examined Mr Drouet’s Elysium, and has drawn up a report concerning it.
It then comes out — truth is so perverse — that Mr Drouet is not altogether that golden farmer he was supposed to be. It appears that there is a little alloy in his composition. The “extreme closeness, oppression, and foulness of air,” in that supposed heaven upon earth over which he presides, “exceeds in offensiveness anything ever yet witnessed, by the inspector, in apartments in hospitals, or elsewhere, occupied by the sick.” He has a bad habit of putting four cholera patients in one bed. He has a weakness in respect of leaving the sick to take care of themselves, surrounded by every offensive, indecent, and barbarous circumstance that can aggravate the horrors of their condition and increase the dangers of infection. He is so ignorant, or so criminally careless, that he has taken none of the easy precautions, and provided himself with none of the simple remedies, expressly enjoined by the Board of Health in their official announcement published in the Gazette, and distributed all over the country. The experience of all the medical observers of cholera, in all parts of the world, is not in an instant overthrown by Mr Drouet’s purity, for he had unfortunately one fortnight’s warning of the impending danger, which he utterly disregarded. He has been admonished by the authorities to take only a certain number of unfortunates into his farm, and he increases that number immensely at his own pleasure, for his own profit. His establishment is crammed. It is in no respect a fit place for the reception of the throng shut up in it. The dietary of the children is so unwholesome and insufficient, that they climb secretly over pailings, and pick out scraps of sustenance from the tubs of hog-wash. Their clothing by day, and their covering by night, are shamefully defective. Their rooms are cold, damp, dirty; and rotten. In a word, the age of miracles is past, and of all conceivable places in which pestilence might — or rather must — be expected to break out, and to make direful ravages, Mr Drouet’s model farm stands foremost.
In addition to these various proofs of his mortal fallibility, Mr Drouet, even when he is told what to do to save life, has an awkward habit of prevaricating, and not doing it. He also bullies his assistants, in the inspector’s presence, when they show an inclination to reveal disagreeable truths. He has a pleasant brother — a man of an amiable eccentricity — who besides being active, for all improper purposes, in the farm, is “with difficulty restrained “from going to Kensington “to thrash the Guardians” of that Union for proposing to remove their children! The boys under Mr Drouet’s fostering protection are habitually knocked down, beaten, and brutally used. They are put on short diet if they complain. They are “very lean and emaciated.” Mr Drouet’s system is admirable, but it entails upon them such slight evils as “wasting of limbs, debility, boils; &c.,” and a more dreadful aggravation of the itch than a medical witness of great experience has ever beheld in thirty years’ practice. A kick, which would be nothing to a child in sound health, becomes, under Mr Drouet’s course of management, a serious wound. Boys who were intelligent before going to Drouet, lose their animation afterwards (so swears a Guardian) and become fools. The surgeon of St Pancras reported, five months ago, of the excellent Mr Drouet, “that a great deal of severity, not to use a harsh term” — but why not a harsh term, surgeon, if the occasion require it? — “has been exercised by the masters in authority, as well as some we presume, out of authority,” meaning, we presume, the amiably eccentric brother. Everything, in short, that Mr Drouet does, or causes to be done, or suffers to be done, is vile, vicious, and cruel. All this is distinctly in proof before the coroner’s jury, and therefore we see no reason to abstain from summing it up.
But there is blame elsewhere; and though it cannot diminish the heavy amount of blame that rests on this sordid contractor’s head, there is great blame elsewhere. The parish authorities who sent these children to such a place, and, seeing them. in it, left them there, and showed no resolute determination to reform it altogether, are culpable in the highest degree. The Poor-Law Inspector who visited this place, and did not, in the strongest terms, condemn it, is not less culpable. The Poor-Law Commissioners, if they had the power to issue positive orders for its better management (a point which is, however, in question), were as culpable as any of the rest.
It is wonderful to see how those who, by slurring the matter when they should have been active in it, have become, in some sort, participes criminis, desire to make the best of it, even now. The Poor-Law Inspector thinks that the issuing of au order by the Poor-Law Commissioners, prohibiting boards of guardians from sending children to such an institution, would have been “a very strong measure.” As if very strong cases required very weak measures, or there were no natural affinity between the measure and the case! He certainly did object to the children sleeping three in a bed, and Mr Drouet afterwards told him he had reduced the number to two — its increase to four when the disease was raging, being, we suppose, a special sanitary arrangement. He did not make any recommendation as to ventilation. He did not call the children privately before him, to inquire how they were treated. He considers the dietary a fair dietary — IF proper quantities were given where no precise quantity is specified. He thinks that, with care, the premises might have been accommodated without danger to health, IF all the accommodation, on the premises had been judiciously applied. As though a man should say he felt convinced lie could live pretty comfortably on the top of the Monument, IF a handsome suite of furnished apartments were constructed there expressly for him, and a select circle came up to dinner every day!
These children were farmed to Mr Drouet at four shillings and sixpence a week each; and some of the officials seem to set store by its being a great deal of money, and to think exoneration lies in that. It may be a very sufficient sum, considering that Mr Drouet was entitled to the profits of the children’s work, besides: but this seems to us to be no part of the question. If the payment had been fourteen and sixpence a week each, the blame of leaving the children to Mr Drouet’s tender mercies without sufficient protection, and of leaving Mr Drouet to make his utmost profit without sufficient check, would have been exactly the same. When a man keeps his horse at livery, he does not take the corn for granted, because he pays five-and-twenty shillings a week. In the history of this calamity, one undoubted predisposing cause was insufficient clothing. What says Mr William Robert James, solicitor and clerk to the Board of Guardians of the Holborn Union, on that head? Mr Drouet “told him in conversation (!) that the four and sixpence a week would include clothing. No particular description of clothing was mentioned.” Is it any wonder that the flannel petticoats worn by the miserable female children, in the severest weather of this winter, could be — as was publicly stated in another metropolitan union a few days ago- “read through?”
This same Mr James produces minutes of visits made by deputations of guardians to the Tooting Paradise. Thus : As regards the complaint of Hannah Sleight, as to the insufficiency of food, we believe it to be unfounded. Elizabeth Male having complained that on her recent visit she found her children in a dirty state. her children had our particular attention, and we beg to state that there was no just cause of complaint on her part.
It being clear to the meanest capacity that Elizabeth Male’s children not being dirty then, never could by possibility have been dirty at any antecedent time.
But it appears that this identical James, solicitor and clerk to the Board of Guardians of the Holborn Union, had a valuable system of his own for eliciting the truth, which was, to ask the boys in Mr Drouet’s presence if they had anything to complain of, and when they answered “Yes,” to recommend that they should be instantly horsewhipped. We learn this, from the following extraordinary minute of one of these official visits :
We beg to report to the board our having on Tuesday, the 9th of May, visited Mr Drouet’s establishment to ascertain the state of the children belonging to this union. We were there at the time of dinner being supplied, and in our opinion the meat provided was good, but the potatoes were bad. We visited the school-rooms, dormitories, and workshops. Everything appeared clean and comfortable, led see are of opinion that the new sleeping resins for infants on the ground floor have a very unhealthy smell. The girls belonging to the Union looked very well. The boys appeared sickly, which induced us to question them as to whether they had any cause of complaint as to supply of food or otherwise. About forty of them held up their hands to intimate their dissatisfaction, upon which Mr Drouet’s conduct became violent. He called the boys liars, described some that had held up their hands as the worst boys in the school, and said that if he had done them justice, he would have followed out the suggestion of Mr James, and well thrashed them. (Laughter.) We then began to question the boys individually, and some of them complained of not having sufficient bread at their breakfast. Whilst pressing the inquiry, Mr Drouet’s conduct became more violent. He said we were acting unfairly in the mode of inquiry, that we ought to be satisfied of his character without such proceedings, and that we had no right to pursue the inquiry in the way we were doing, and that lie would be glad to get rid of the children. To avoid further altercation we left, not having fully completed the object of our visit.
If Mr Drouet was sincere in saying he would be glad to get rid of the children, he must be in a very complacent frame of mind at present when lie has succeeded in getting rid, for ever, of so many. But the general complacency, on the occasions of these visits, is marvellous. Hear Mr Winch, one of the guardians of the poor for the Holborn Union, who was one of the visiting party at the Tooting Paradise on this 9th of May:
I was in company with Mr Mayes and Mr Rebbeck. The children were at dinner. They were all standing; I was informed they never sit at their meals. I tasted the meat, and I cut open about 100 potatoes at different tables, none of which were fit to eat. They were black arid diseased. I told Mr Drouet the potatoes were very bad. He replied that they cost him 7l. a ton. The children had no other vegetables. I told Mr Drouet I should give them other food. He made no reply. I also told Mr Drouet 1 thought the newly-erected rooms, smelt unhealthy. Mr Mayes said it was a pity when he was building he had not made the rooms higher; when Mr Drouet said he would have enough to do if he paid attention to everybody. We went through some of the sleeping-rooms, which appeared very clean. The girls looked well; but the boys, who were mustered in the school-room, appeared very sickly and unhealthy. Mr Drouet, his brother, and the schoolmaster, were present. Mr Rebbeck said to the boys, ” Now, if you have anything to complain of — want of food, or anything else — hold up your hands;” and from thirty to forty held up their hands. Mr Drouet became very violent, and said we were treating him in an ungentlemanly manner; he said that some of the boys who had held up their hands were liars, and scoundrels, and rascals. He said we were using him very unfairly; that his character was at stake; and, if we had anything to complain of, that was not the way to proceed. One of the boys whom I questioned told me they had not bread enough either for breakfast or supper; and, on comparing their dietary with that in our workhouse, I think such is the case. In consequence of the confusion, we left Mr Drouet’s without signing the visitors’ book. I did not make any motion in the Board of Guardians for the removal of the children. I again visited Mr Drouet’s establishment on the 30th of May. The potatoes were then of excellent quality. I went into the pantry, and was surprised to find the bread was not weighed out. We weigh it out in the union, as we find that is the only way to give satisfaction. The loaves at Mr Drouet’s were cut into sixteen pieces without being weighed. I saw no supply of salt in the dining-room, but some of the boys who had salt in bags were bartering their salt for potatoes. I did not ask the children whether they had been punished in consequence of what had taken place at my previous visit. We were in the establishment for an hour and a half or two hours on the 30th. We then expressed our satisfaction at what we witnessed. We made no further inquiry as to what had occurred on our previous visit. I made no suggestion to the board for the improvement of the dietary. We had no means of ascertaining that the children received the amount of food mentioned in the diet-table.
But we expressed our satisfaction at what we witnessed. Oh dear yes. Our unanimity was delightful. Nobody complained. The boys had had ample encouragement to complain. They had seen Mr Drouet standing glowering by, on the previous occasion. They had heard him break out about liars, and scoundrels, and rascals. They had understood that his precious character — immeasurably more precious than the existence of any number of pauper children — was at stake. They had had the benefit of a little fatherly advice and caution from him, in the interval. They were in a position, moral and physical, to be high-spirited, bold, and open. Yet not a boy complained. We went home to our Holborn Union, rejoicing. Our clerk was in tip-top spirits about the thrashing joke. Everything was comfortable and pleasant. Of all places in the world, how could the cholera ever break out, after this, in Mr Drouet’s Paradise at Tooting!
If we had been left to the so-much vaunted self-government, the question might have been unanswered still, and the Drouet testimonial might have been in full vigour. But the Board of Health — an institution of which every day’s experience attests in some new form the value and importance has settled the question. Plainly thus:— The cholera, or some unusually malignant form of typhus assimilating itself to that disease, broke out in Mr Drouet’s farm for children, because it was brutally conducted, vilely kept, preposterously inspected, dishonestly defended, a disgrace to a Christian community, and a stain upon a civilised land.
[THREE]
The following article appeared on 3rd March 1849 in the weekly journal The Examiner. Although not signed, it was written by Charles Dickens. It was the third of four articles Dickens wrote for The Examiner between January and April 1849, giving his critical appraisal of the events surrounding the cholera outbreak at Mr Drouet's school for pauper children at Tooting. After 180 children from the school died from the disease, Drouet was charged with manslaughter but subsequently acquitted.
The other articles in the series were The Paradise at Tooting (January 20th), The Tooting Farm (January 27th), and The Verdict for Drouet (April 23rd).
People who went to see Mr. Catlin's party of Indians at the Egyptian Hall, were in general mightily entertained to observe how necessary 'medicine,' or mystery, was to the greater part of their proceedings; and how impossible the red men considered it to set hopefully about any grave undertaking without divers preliminary conjurations from the 'medicine man.' Really, the custom obtains quite as extensively among the white men of England. What an enormous amount of Medicine is held to be necessary, among us, before we can set about the plainest piece of business! Worse still. In some cases — as in that of the church, for example — our Medicine men differ violently among themselves, and in a conflict of Medicine set all England by the ears, when it is only desirous to say its prayers in peace. In parliament, besides a great deal of very indifferent Medicine constantly practised and never varying, we have the standard Medicine of a select committee, which is one of its most perplexing and complicated mysteries, and very bad Medicine indeed. At court we have ceremonies far more ridiculous than anything in the Ojibbeway code of etiquette. In law, we have a solemn jingling of words and phrases which is the most bewildering and unmeaning Medicine of all.
The grand jury, coming into court at the Old Bailey on Monday last
to be regaled with a little Medicine of this latter kind, were addressed by the learned Recorder for the City of London, who, as Medicine man, danced round and round them, and the general question of the Tooting case, in the following wild manner:
The charge in question was made against the keeper of an establishment for the reception of pauper children, at Tooting, and he was accused of having caused the deaths of no less than four children, by a degree of criminal neglect, in not giving them proper food, by crowding them together in an unwholesome atmosphere, and a general inattention to those precautions which were necessary to preserve a number of children, placed together under such circumstances, in a state of ordinary bodily health. It appeared that several parishes, acting under proper authority, had sent a number of children to the establishment in question, where they were placed under the charge of the defendant, who was to receive a stipulated price per head for the children. The exact number that was so received did not exactly appear, but there was no doubt that it was larger than the capabilities of the establishment could properly provide for, and that the children were consequently crowded together in a manner likely to be injurious to their health, and predispose them to the attack of any epidemic or contagious disease. The indictment would probably allege that it was the duty of the defendant, by the contract he had entered into, to supply proper food and clothing, and to take proper precautions to preserve the health of the children placed under his charge, and that he had criminally neglected to perform that duty. The depositions were very voluminous, and he was bound to say that they contained many statements which were not legally admissible, and which would not be received or admitted by a judge. A good deal of the matter consisted of hearsay evidence, and of conclusions drawn by parties who did not state any facts upon which those conclusions were founded. The cause of the deaths appeared to be clearly proved to be cholera, and by the depositions it appeared that there had been a good deal of speculation as to how the disease of cholera was occasioned, and how far it might have been prevented, in the present instance, supposing more food had been given to the deceased children, and they had been provided with more clothes and greater comforts. In an ordinary case of manslaughter, the cause of death was generally distinctly alleged against the party accused, but in this case the offence which appeared to be imputed to the defendant was, that by a certain course of improper treatment he had predisposed the system of the deceased children to receive the disease, and had rendered them peculiarly liable to be attacked by the disorder. The important question, however, was, what act had been done by the defendant that had conduced to the death of the deceased.
The Recorder talks about "an ordinary case of manslaughter," as if there were nothing whatever in the Tooting case to make it an extraordinary one. The question is, what act has been done by the defendant to conduce to the death of the deceased! Is it? Or does the question extend itself into a series of acts, no one among them in itself perhaps involving the terrible catastrophe so widely known, but all, taken together, involving that degree of gross neglect of ordinary precaution for the safety of human life, which constitutes one form of manslaughter? Suppose another kind of "farmer," being skipper of a ship, had taken on board for his profit an unheard-of number of apprentices, and "by a degree of criminal neglect in not giving them proper food, by crowding them together in an unwholesome atmosphere, and a general inattention to those precautions which are necessary to preserve them," had so reduced and wasted those apprentices that after certain weeks of this ill-treatment scurvy or erysipelas broke out among them, and swept numbers of them away. Does the Recorder mean to say that to sustain a charge of manslaughter against that man, it would be necessary to prove any one specific act on his part amounting to inoculation for scurvy or erysipelas? "Did the defendant do any act." "They must see what act had been done."
Again and again the Recorder jingles and juggles with this phrase. "Under these circumstances he would ask them who could say that the defendant was the cause of the children being attacked by cholera, and yet they must be satisfied that this was the case before the defendant would be amenable to the present charge." But supposing the grand jury had taken it into their heads to ask the medical witnesses whether, the children being attacked by cholera, the defendant was the cause of its being physically impossible that they could recover, in that lazaar-house which was his Mint, — would they have travelled very far out of the strict justice of the case?
"The question is what act has been done." This is the great Medicine for the Grand Jury. Let us test the Medicine. Here is a proclamation, we will imagine, published with the sanction and authority of the Crown, and made notorious in every newspaper and channel of information, cautioning all engine-drivers on railways, that by reason of some uncommon condition of the atmosphere they are liable to a new class of fatal accidents; enjoining them, upon the first appearance of certain warnings which usually precede these accidents, and which are plainly described, to stop; and instructing them with what remedies to be provided beforehand, at the cost of a few pence, and how to use them, on the instant, for the protection of all under their charge. One engine-driver, having in his care the largest and the worst-appointed train in the kingdom, which is very profitable to him, sets these instructions at defiance, disregards the warnings which have been foretold to him, and which manifest themselves to his senses beyond all question, and going on headlong, comes to a crash, and destroys one hundred and fifty-five passengers,* — are we to be told that before he could be tried for the manslaughter of four of these unfortunates, it would be necessary to show that he had put a luggage-van across the railway, or a hundredweight of gunpowder into the boiler?
Is it easy to believe that the parallel case to this, the Recorder utterly dismisses from his and the grand jury's consideration? In all these wanderings and repetitions of words about ordinary cases of manslaughter, there is not one word of reference to the extraordinary circumstances of the time; to the bounden duty of the keeper of such an establishment to adapt his arrangements in some degree to the peculiar peril of the time; to the circular of the Board of Health, expressly addressed to masters of asylums, schools, workhouses, and all such institutions, warning them not to be defective, in all the respects in which this place was most defective; to the total neglect of that circular in this particular case; to the appearance of the premonitory symptoms one fortnight before the breaking out of the disease; and to their being passed over with the same shameful indifference and neglect which characterised the whole administration of the house! On all these vital points of the case, there is not one word in the Recorder's charge. Nay, the Recorder deems it a great point in the defendant's favour "that the same treatment had been pursued for a period of six years without any such result taking place;" and really is as cool upon it as if it were notorious to the whole world that the cholera had been among us all that time!
The magnates of the city have been taking very high flights into the regions of Noodledom lately, borne aloft upon the balmy air of Smithfield; and it would seem as if the Recorder were dutifully meting out his Medicine by the standard at Guildhall.
In the same spirit he talks about there having been no complaint with reference to the food generally, down to the month of June last, "when there was some complaint with regard to e potatoes." As if there had been no difficulty of complaint! As if nobody remembered anything of the defendant's conduct to the boys when they did complain! As if the surviving children had never been weighed against other pauper children, and found in an extreme state of physical deterioration! As if there were no evidence of dire and gnawing hunger having been among them habitually!
The Recorder's speech might be a good enough address for the defendant's counsel, but it is a very bad charge from the judicial bench. It could not have been much more out of place at Covent Garden Market the other day, when the modest Mr. Charles Cochrane and his literary friend Mr. G.W.M. Reynolds, author of the "Mysteries of London", and of the "Revolution of Trafalgar Square," appeared upon the hustings in hopes to inclose and cultivate for themselves a snug little farm of a grievance, out of the Tooting paradise. It is so peculiarly the misfortune of these illustrious patriots to damage and debase any cause with which they connect themselves, that we should hail their expatriation for life on any constitutional grounds, with unbounded satisfaction.
[Why is Dickens mocking Reynolds? This presumably is Reynolds of "Reynolds's [News]" - a rival to Household Words? - and whose fictions were outselling his.
Writing up a storm in Paris and London: G.W.M. Reynolds | https://sslh.org.uk/2023/06/28/writing-up-a-storm-in-paris-and-london-g-w-m-reynolds/
Spoken Word and Printed Page: G. W. M. Reynolds and ‘The Charing-Cross Revolution’, 1848 Author: Mary Shannon (University of Roehampton)
ntn-1595-shannon.pdf
https://19.bbk.ac.uk/article/id/1595/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysteries_of_London
https://gwmreynoldssociety.com/2019/03/05/stephen-knight-on-the-man-who-outsold-dickens/
https://www.victorianlondon.org/mysteries/mysteries-00-chapters.htm
Although we cannot but lament that the Poor-Law Amendment Act did not invest the Commissioners with due powers for the government of such a place as that at Tooting, we are glad to find, from Mr. Baines's explanation in the House of Commons, that such powers will now be conferred upon them. The most important provisions of the Out-door Pauper's Bill appear to be, that the Commissioners will henceforth prescribe rules for the management of such houses (of which there are but few in existence); that they will revise the contracts made between the guardians and the contractors, and stipulate for certain conditions, with power of enforcing penalties for non-fulfilment; that they will have the power of summarily dismissing the contractors; and that they will have "very effective powers of visitation." Nothing is more necessary than these last. If the Sanitary Commission had not fortunately possessed (under the Removal of Nuisances Bill) the right of visiting Tooting without invitation, we should probably never have had Mr. Grainger's Report.
That it is not proposed to invest the Poor-Law Commission with these new powers before they are needed, is now a trite truth, which we cannot better confirm than by a short extract from a valuable, thoroughly-informed, and most useful publication, the Journal of Public Health." Let us premise that we allow one thousand feet of cubic air to every felon in his prison:
"Let us set aside all the inhumanity and brutal indifference which have been brought out in evidence" — on this Tooting case — "the hunger and thirst, the cold, the ill-treatment, the uncleanliness, the diseases of filth and neglect, the itch, scald heads, the sore eyes, the running tetters, the scrofulous affections of the joints, and abscesses, the thin shanks and pot bellies, the diseased bowels, the foundation for the consumption of coming years, which were inflicted on these much-abused children — and judge of the system by the regard paid to the primary want of LIFE under all conditions — the supply of fresh air. We are told that the children had not quite 136 cubic feet of respirable air for each child, or an amount equal to what could be contained in a box five feet two inches every way. This supply would preserve life for eight hours, when the outraged laws of life would resolve the living frame into dead matter. In the boys' schoolroom, occupied for three hours twice a day, there were thirty-seven cubic feet of air for each boy!"
Will all our Medicine-men insist, like the Recorder, on having the Tooting tragedy in "one act," or will any of them be content to read it in fifty?
* The registered number of deaths from cholera at the Tooting Establishment to January 20th.
The peculiarity of this verdict is, that while it has released the accused from the penalties of the law it has certainly not released him from the guilt of the charge. The prosecution, badly as it was conducted, established what was alleged against Drouet. The hunger and thirst were proved; the bad food, and the insufficient clothing; the cold, the ill-treatment, the uncleanliness; the diseases generated by filth and neglect; the itch (much to Mr Baron Platt's amusement), the scald heads, the sore eyes, the scrofulous affections, the pot bellies, and the thin shanks. All were proved. We give a thousand cubic feet of respirable air to every felon in his prison, and each child in Drouet's prison had little more than a tenth part so much. They were half-starved, and more than half-suffocated. A terrible malady broke out, and a hundred and fifty perished. It was in evidence that every indecent and revolting incident that could aggravate the slightest illness, or increase the horrors of the most dangerous infection, existed in the establishment for which Drouet was responsible, when disease appeared there. But it was not satisfactorily proved that the disease might not have killed as many without such help, and therefore Mr Baron Platt very properly told the jury that the case had broken down.
The legal point arose upon that part of the indictment which charged Drouet with having neglected the duty of a right mode of treatment to the child named in it; in support of which the fact of the constitutional energy of the child having been so reduced by his management as to render it unable to resist the particular disease, was relied upon as having brought Drouet within the penalties of man slaughter. But the judge, setting aside this argument as inapplicable to the case, directed an acquittal on the ground that there had been no evidence adduced to show that the child was ever, at any time, in such a state of health as to render it probable he would have recovered from the malady but for the treatment of the defendant.
The extent of the wrong, in other words, precluded the remedy. For who, in such a crowd of children, could have singled out one poor child at any time, to say whether he was well or ill? The deputy-matron of the workhouse from which he went to Tooting, and to which he returned to die, could only say of the whole hundred and fifty-six that came back to her on the same night, that "they were not so stout and healthy as when they went to Mr Drouet's." No — she was certain they were not. "They were very sore in their bodies, and had sore feet, and there were wounds on different parts of their persons;" and some lived, and some died, and among the latter was little Andrews. That is the whole humble history. There was no doctor to examine the children when they left, or when they returned and evidence of half the wickedness of the "farm" was rejected, because one wretched little figure could not always be visibly separated from a crowd exactly like himself, and shown as he contended with horrors to which all were equally exposed. We are not objecting to the verdict on these grounds, but explaining it. The scruples of the law were quite justifiable and right; though we might have .been better pleased to see them enforced, in the particular case, with less tenderness for Drouet and more concern for his victims.
Mr Baron Platt declared himself early. The prosecution being less strongly represented than the defence, he took the very first opportunity of siding with the stronger. Witnesses that required encouragement, he brow-heated; and witnesses that could do without it, he insulted or ridiculed. Medical men are not famous for the clearness of their testimony at any time, and such questions from the bench as whether hunger and the itch were connected, and whether cholera was producible by the itch, did not put them more at their ease. Of course there was laughter at the facetiousness. There was also zealous applause, with which the prisoner signified his concurrence by tapping with his hand in front of the dock.
Nevertheless the trial cannot be read without much anguish of heart. The inexpressible sadness of its details is not relieved by Mr Baron Platt's jocoseness. One little touch came out in the evidence of a peculiarly affecting kind, such as the masters of pathos have rarely excelled in fiction. The learned baron was not moved by it; naturally enough, for he had not the least notion what it meant.
Mary Harris, examined by Mr Clarkson: I am a nurse at Holborn union workhouse, and went to the Royal Free Hospital, Gray's-inn road. I recollect Andrews coming with the other boys. He was not well. I gave him some milk and bread.
Mr Clarkson: Did he eat his bread? — Witness: No; he held up his head, and said, "Oh, nurse, what a big bit of bread this is!"
Baron Platt: It was too much for him, I suppose? — Witness: He could not eat it.
"Oh nurse!" says the poor little fellow, with an eager sense that what he had longed for had come too late, "What a big bit of bread this is! "Yes, Mr Baron Platt, it is clear that it was too much for him. His head was lifted up for an instant, but it sank again. He could not but be full of wonder and pleasure that the big bit of bread had come, though he could not eat it. An English poet, in the days when poetry and poverty were inseparable companions, received a bit of bread in somewhat similar circumstances which proved too much for him, and he died in the act of swallowing it. The difference is hardly worth pointing out. The pauper child had not even strength for the effort which choked the pauper poet.
Drouet was "affected to tears" as he left the dock. It might be gratitude for his escape, or it might be grief that his occupation was put an end to. For no one doubts that the child-farming system is effectually broken up by this trial. And every one must rejoice that a trade which derived its profits from the deliberate torture and neglect of a class the most innocent on earth, as well as the most wretched and defenceless, can never on any pretence be resumed.
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