The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To JOSHUA HARRISON STALLARD,1 19 DECEMBER 1866

MS Tom Wingate

GAD’S HILL PLACE,
HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.

Wednesday Nineteenth December
1866.

Dear Sir
    I have written a note to our friend Mr George Russell,2 which I have no doubt he will communicate to you, in reference of your project establishing Scrap Kitchens.3

   Concerning the other project you advocate,4 I am generally favourable to it, although I have great doubts of the discretion of boards of unpaid visitors, and am inclined to believe that the sincerer and better order of Poor would not like to submit themselves to that amiable Inquisition. Decidedly, I do not think it calculated to “postpone the question of the public treatment of the Poor”, for I am persuaded that official personages will of themselves postpone it to the utmost confines of human endurance.

            Faithfully Yours, 

               CHARLES DICKENS

Dr Stallard

• 1. Joshua Harrison Stallard (1822-95), MRCS, MRCP; physician, St George's and St James's Dispensary. Besides medical books, published Workhouse Hospitals (1865); The Female Casual and her Lodging. With a Complete Scheme for the Regulation of Workhouse Infirmaries (1866); London Pauperism Amongst Jews and Christians: An Inquiry into the Principles and Practice of Out-Door Relief in the Metropolis and the Result Upon the Moral and Physical Condition of the Pauper Class (1867); Pauper Lunatics and their Treatment (1870) and several lectures on pauperism and sanitation.
• 2. George Russell (1828-98), of Swallowfield Park, Berks; educated at Eton and Exeter College, Oxford; BA 1850; called to Bar 1853; Recorder of Wokingham 1862; married Constance, eldest daughter of Lord Arthur Lennox, 1867; succeeded his brother as 4th Bart 1883; Conservative MP for Wokingham 1885.
• 3. The system that Stallard envisaged was based on a Parisian scheme for feeding beggars; the Lancet reported: “A scheme is now a-foot to secure the systematic collection of all the scraps and kitchen refuse of our large hotels, restaurants, eating-houses, and even private dwellings, for the purpose of feeding the half-starved children of the poorest classes, at a nominal cost. . . We understand that Dr. Stallard, than whom no one is better acquainted with paupers and pauperism, is very active in prosecuting this scheme, which has received the support of Lord Shaftesbury, the Hon. Mr. Cowper, and others” (“Scrap-Kitchens”, The Lancet [15 Dec 1866]: 674-5). CD wrote to Russell on 16 Dec about the proposed scheme: “I have no doubt that an enormous quantity of good food is wasted in this town, and that the habit of wasting it — this is an important consideration — engenders a vast amount of pilfering, lying, secret huckstering in petty spoil, and consequent deterioration of character among servants. Also I have no doubt that if such food were well recooked and well re-distributed among poor children, it would soon prove itself to be so much labour-stamina. But the scale on which it is proposed to try the experiment in the beginning — the place in which it is proposed to try it — the sort of kitchen — the sort of dining Hall — the staff and its wages — the rent to be paid — the cost of the cooking apparatus to be erected — the hours at which meals can be had — all these things must be made subjects of accurate calculation and statement, before the public help can be got to any useful purpose”. In this letter CD also informs Russell that he would canvass the opinion of the social and sanitary reformer Edwin Chadwick (1800-90); he adds, “I think this notion far too crude and immature to go before the public yet” (Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 285). Given the dating of CD’s letters to Stallard and Russell, he probably learned of the Scrap Kitchen scheme through the Lancet article.
• 4. The Female Casual and her Lodging. With a Complete Scheme for the Regulation of Workhouse Infirmaries (London: Saunders, Otley & Co., 1866), an investigative account which relied on the observations of a female informant, who, falsely representing herself as in need of a night’s lodging, entered casual wards in Newington, Lambeth, Whitechapel, and St George in the East, to expose the appalling conditions. Stallard concluded his investigation thus: “We must equalize the rates, and organize a responsible executive of the Poor Law; and we must consolidate the system of public relief, that the poor may be uniformly and fairly dealt with in every part of the Metropolis, whether it be rich or poor’ (p. 79). Reviews of the work had appeared in newspapers and periodicals since Sept 1866. On 8 Dec John Bull quoted a long passage concerning a visit to Newington Workhouse, and observed, ‘one is at a loss to understand why the fearful testimony of the intrepid woman who encountered the wretchedness she describes has been so little noticed’ (“Literary Review”, p. 18).