Sketches by Boz - Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People

MP3 Audio CD. Sketches by Boz: Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People

OUR PARISH


CHAPTER I—THE BEADLE. THE PARISH ENGINE. THE SCHOOLMASTER


How much is conveyed in those two short words—‘The Parish!’ And with how
many tales of distress and misery, of broken fortune and ruined hopes,
too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery, are they
associated! A poor man, with small earnings, and a large family, just
manages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day to
day; he has barely sufficient to satisfy the present cravings of nature,
and can take no heed of the future. His taxes are in arrear, quarter-day
passes by, another quarter-day arrives: he can procure no more quarter
for himself, and is summoned by—the parish. His goods are distrained,
his children are crying with cold and hunger, and the very bed on which
his sick wife is lying, is dragged from beneath her. What can he do? To
whom is he to apply for relief? To private charity? To benevolent
individuals? Certainly not—there is his parish. There are the parish
vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish officers,
the parish beadle. Excellent institutions, and gentle, kind-hearted men.
The woman dies—she is buried by the parish. The children have no
protector—they are taken care of by the parish. The man first neglects,
and afterwards cannot obtain, work—he is relieved by the parish; and when
distress and drunkenness have done their work upon him, he is maintained,
a harmless babbling idiot, in the parish asylum.

The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps the most, important
member of the local administration. He is not so well off as the
churchwardens, certainly, nor is he so learned as the vestry-clerk, nor