Emma Sheppard
In 1848, by which time she had had seven children, they moved into Fromefield House[3] with George Sheppard senior, some ten years after the death of his wife, Mary Ann Stuart Byard.
She noted in her preface that in the year before there were 704,300 people enclosed within 624 'dull and dreary' workhouses across England and Wales; this figure did not include the able-bodied, just the old, infirm, disabled and children.
[12] She noted the extreme cleanliness of existing workhouses, but astutely commented that they were ‘painfully spotless, making one almost shudder to think of daily scouring under the beds and feet of the sick and rheumatic’.
One of her correspondents near London found one small girl with 'her back and arms .... covered with great weals and marks of ropes'; in this particular case, the report to the guardians of the workhouse led to the dismissal of the master and his wife.
Emma herself is clear that, in spite of rules that forbad the corporal punishment of boys (there is no mention of girls) except with the prior permission of governors, such cruelty must have prevalent.
I say, none - expect an hour's shivering play in a large, cold room in winter, or, in summer, a dried-up playground - not a flower or tree in it, no outlet for busy, roving childish limbs.
She does not confine herself to her own observations but calls upon Elizabeth Fry, Sydney Smith, Thomas Arnold, Bishop Armstrong and others to support her case for greater humanity towards workhouse inmates.
She offered them accommodation: 'I was going to trust to their honour, for I believed there was still a tiny corner of right good womanly feeling left in all their sin-degraded natures which would keep them from disobeying one who was trying to befriend them.'
[25] She appealed for funds in the local press on behalf of "our unfortunate sisters, without words of kindness to welcome them back to the paths of virtue and womanly happiness and peace with God".
yes, high-born, gently-bred, delicately-nurtured Ladies, that poor Outcast, upon whom you cast an eye of scorn and loathing as perhaps she tramped up Regent Street this morning, looking wistfully at your luxurious carriage, .... - that poor weary, outwardly-hardened, sin-based creature - a victim to man's brutal requirements - is, in the sight of our most holy God, your Sister .... bless that gracious God who has kept you unfallen in the eyes of the world, though perhaps equally guilty in the sight of Him to whom sin is sin.
[27]William Brett Harvey - the owner of the Somerset and Wiltshire journal for many years - was happy to commend her work and to publish letters concerning the Friendless and Fallen Society in London.
She herself was a major contributor to 'The Magdalen's Friend and Female Home's Intelligencer',[28] a monthly journal which was published from 1860 to 1864, created to reclaim fallen women and prostitutes, a “rallying point” for “Christians and Philanthropists” working in the field of the “great social evil”.
In her refuge there are “No reproaches for former sin, no dismal doubtings whether they would accept the offer of a new life, but a certain confidence expressed in the full and loving invitation”.
[35] The next year she is described as invalid, but her husband attended with family and many friends, distributing 'tokens of goodwill', along with roast beef and plum-pudding, plus strong beer at 'the usual Christmas dinner'.
[36] In 1870 she was so ill that she could not take her normal active role but she wrote to the local newspaper asking 'to spare me a basket of apples or walnuts, or buy me some oranges, buns or"sweeties" for the children'.
She had been challenged by a clerical friend to reject the view that "the kind sympathy of a Christian woman's heart is just the soft soap which we require to make our mechanisms work."
[39] In her book 'Sunshine in the Workhouse, she adopts a stronger tone: 'our Great All-Father says to us: "If they brother be waxen poor, and his hand faileth, then thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a stranger or sojourner, that he may live with thee".'
'We are not, as a Christian nation, doing our loving duty towards those of our beloved land, who are in the Union Houses for no fault of their own; those who, from having no near or dear ones left to them to shelter their declining years, have no other home.
have you never drawn an innocent girl into evil, and then recklessly left her to the awful fate which must ensue when maiden purity and modesty is a tale of the past alone?
and now, when these needful means are spoken of, so as to give her another chance of rising from the ruin into which you have plunged her, do you, as respectable Members of Parliament, as Guardians of the Poor, as Magistrates and upholders of right, and putters down of wrong - do you now ignore all thoughts of the kind?
[41]When visiting, Emma often brought some gifts with her: fabric, toys, household goods, items of food to distribute to whomsoever she met.
She talked with inmates, quietly and confidentially, listening to their stories, lending them books like Robinson Crusoe, Uncle Tom or The Pilgrim's Progress; often she prayed with them or read from the Bible, and encouraged them to sing a hymn together.
[42] The sight of public begging and the likely misuse of such money led her to make an arrangement with the Temperance Hotel in the Market Place to supply twopence of hot drink and bread and butter for a ticket-card issued instead of coins; she reimbursed the costs.
It specialises in care for dementia patients and their families, offering a range of stimulating activities, much in sympathy with her original wishes for the daily life and well-being of workhouse inmates.
