After the chilly reception by the guardians to our new ideas for the workhouse, John and I were as determined as ever to make our changes work and still maintain the budget. I had, each day after the meals, gone around to various of our regulars and asked how they had enjoyed it. I don’t think their approval was only because they knew that is what I wished them to say. I made sure I was around when the meals ended, and there was far less bread left and porridge thrown out than there had been in the first days after we arrived.

However, I do have another suggestion to make. It should not increase the budget by too much, but it will mean more work for the kitchen staff, and that is something they are very charry to accept. We are obliged to give each pauper a six ounce piece of bread with his meals - and that is a very large hunk. The bread has improved somewhat, but the quality is still such that it is hard, and chewing it often makes a great demand on the teeth, especially of the older people and those who have had such poor nutrition that they have lost many of their original set. So my suggestion is that instead of giving everyone a six ounce lump, we provide slices of bread - each about two ounces, and buttered lightly - and they can then choose if they wish to have their entire portion, or perhaps, will be happy with less. Again, it was obvious to me, the waste of the hunks of dry coarse bread, and no wonder. So I am hoping to get that change introduced next month, but it would not do to do too much at once - both from the kitchen staff’s point of view, and also that of the guardians.

One concern that has come up is the problem of milk going sour if we have too large a quantity on hand at a time, as there is no means of keeping it cold, especially in summer. We get our churn delivered from the local dairy at about 7 a.m., which is really too late for the morning porridge, as the meal is served by 7 - so it has the whole day to warm up and go bad before it is used for the evening porridge. I think it might be sensible to ask the dairyman to deliver to us in the late afternoon - from the second milking - if he will do that. Then it will be used straight away for the evening’s meal, and what is needed for the next morning will not get overheated by the temperatures of the day. We make five gallons of porridge for the two meals of it. That takes 5 lbs of oats, and 4 ½ gallons of milk, plus the same of water. Milk costs 2 shillings a gallon, but I am sure that with increasing my volume of business, I can get the dairyman to reduce his prices by a bit for us. I will assume that I can get the 5 gallons for 9 shillings.

Slicing the bread won’t increase the cost, but adding the butter to it will - as well as the effort involved in the bread being buttered. But the value to the meal is so much greater, and I think that has to be taken into consideration. Butter is just under a shilling a pound. If it is soft and spread thinly, an extra pound should suffice for the needs of the meals each day.

So that makes my planned total extra expenditure 10 shillings a day, or 70 shillings a week - an extra £3-10 shillings. That does seem a lot when put like that, and even if you break that down to an extra 8 pence per week per person, considering we only get 7 shillings a week per pauper to include all their expenses, it does perhaps seem a bit high. But as I have said, we will experiment on it for this month and next, and then might have to make alterations in the future. Perhaps, when we are having bread with butter on as well, we can change the porridge recipe to be a smaller portion of milk.

There is another possibility I want to discuss with John. I know that when butter is made, the whey is considered a waste product and fed to the pigs. Perhaps we could buy the whey, if it was produced in suitable ways, and use that in our porridge instead of the regular milk. But I am putting too much thought into this at the moment. We must just make our experiment and then think of alternatives if we feel that we need to later.

I have had a word with the casuals each morning before they leave, and they have said they think our porridge is much the best they have tasted in all their travels around. That is very good news to hear. They say they will tell others that ours is the best workhouse by far, but I am not sure that I want our numbers of casuals to increase by much. They are quite a lot of extra expense for not very much return. We only get 6d per night for each of them. The work they do in return is not very valuable to us in terms of our income either. We require that they pick 3 lbs of oakum to pay for their night’s accommodation and food. We get 1 d per lb. So they earn us roughly 3 d but that assumes that they do a good job, and there is always a lot of tidying up of the oakum after they have unravelled it.

I have to keep a close check on those whose job is to deal with the blankets and night clothes of the casuals. They are to be properly laundered after each use. Sometimes I have had a spot check of the supplies and have found the necks of the gowns obviously soiled from previous wear, and I have even found a few of them crawling with lice. The girls who are in charge look most innocent and aggrieved when I charge them with not doing their jobs properly, and I presume they have managed to get away without doing a proper job in the past, but if I want to keep up my priority of having a good workhouse - then cleanliness has to be a high priority of us all.

I checked with the school teachers and found that our new recruits have been of value to them - and so far no problem has occurred with them favouring their own children. I have heard grumblings from a few of the other mothers who are not among those I chose, so I may have to work out some sort of rota system so that they all have a chance to fill in, if they so wish.

I said I would make time to go and visit our infirmary - and specifically to find out how those labelled as imbeciles are getting on.

I went up to the ward where they are kept locked in, and they were pathetic to see. None of them had any occupation, so they sat and stared at the wall or the ceiling - some drooling, some obvious incontinent as the room stank to high heaven. They have a woman who supposedly looks after them, but I shall have words with the nurse, Mrs. Julia Ponkin, about her, as I think she is not doing her work properly. Presumably she just makes sure they eat, and go to bed and get up. What a life for them. Surely there must be something they can do.

Albert Williams, 21, is an idiot. Jane Gingell, 30, is too. The rest are imbeciles - either from birth, or from some other circumstances later in life. These include Elijah and Mary Green, brother and sister, aged 44 and 48 respectively. Leah Green, aged 49, probably also their sister, is labelled as imbecile from birth while they are not. I wonder why.

Reuben Milliner, aged 26, and Sarah and Elizabeth Lynn, aged 53 and 40 - again probably sisters, and all labelled imbeciles from birth. Then there is Albert Wilkins, 18, an imbecile, and Emily Webb, 25, an imbecile from birth. I must have a word with the Medical Officer, Doctor Donald Campbell who comes to call at least once a week, and oftener if there is a problem. He is due in on Friday. I shall get him to tell me the difference between idiot, and imbecile and tell me what we can do to make their lives better.

When we took on this job, I had no idea the sorts of challenges that we had let ourselves in for - but I am enjoying it, and hoping that we can, in fact, provide a much better life for these people than they have hitherto had.