In the case of a child, the child is, as a rule, incapable of eating the
food at all. Any one who knows anything about children knows how easily
a child's digestion is upset by a fit of crying, or trouble and mental
distress of any kind. A child who has been crying all day long, and
perhaps half the night, in a lonely dim-lit cell, and is preyed upon by
terror, simply cannot eat food of this coarse, horrible kind. In the
case of the little child to whom Warder Martin gave the biscuits, the
child was crying with hunger on Tuesday morning, and utterly unable to
eat the bread and water served to it for its breakfast. Martin went out
after the breakfasts had been served and bought the few sweet biscuits
for the child rather than see it starving. It was a beautiful action on
his part, and was so recognised by the child, who, utterly unconscious of
the regulations of the Prison Board, told one of the senior wardens how
kind this junior warden had been to him. The result was, of course, a
report and a dismissal."
Robert Blatchford compares the workhouse pauper's daily diet with the
soldier's, which, when he was a soldier, was not considered liberal
enough, and yet is twice as liberal as the pauper's.
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