"
Other pictures of suffering childhood are 'Little Nell' and 'The
Marchioness' in _The Old Curiosity Shop_, 'Jo' and 'Charley' in
_Bleak House_, and 'Smike,' the victim of the inhuman schoolmaster
'Squeers.'
The cruelty of the times is shown in the case of an unfortunate
sempstress who tried to earn a living by making shirts for
three-halfpence each. Once, when she had been robbed of her earnings,
she tried to drown herself. The inhuman magistrate before whom she
was brought told her that she had "no hope of mercy in this world."
It was after hearing of this from Charles Dickens that Thomas Hood
wrote the well-known "Song of the Shirt":
Work--work--work!
From weary chime to chime,
Work--work--work
As prisoners work for crime!
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Seam, and gusset, and band,
Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed,
As well as the weary hand.
The age might well take to heart the lesson taught by the great-souled
writer--that the two chief enemies of the times were Ignorance and
Want.
The lot of the unfortunate children in the Union Workhouses was no
better. They were treated rather worse than animals, with no sympathy
or kindness, owing to the ignorance of those who were set in authority
over them. Any one who reads _Oliver Twist_ may learn the nature of
the life led by the 'pauper' children in those 'good old days.
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