Times Archive Blog

Death by plum pudding - Christmas Day in the workhouse

The sentimental monologue by George Sims about a poor woman who starved rather than be separated from her husband at Christmas by the cruel officers of the Victorian workhouse has wrung many a heart. The husband bursts in on the do-gooding visitors as they watch the workhouse inmates eating their Christmas dinner, and berates them for  their smugness.

Yes, there in a land of plenty, lay a loving woman dead.
Cruelly starved and murdered for a loaf of the parish bread

The workhouse Christmas dinner was an annual institution, and the well-wishers of the poor did indeed visit, to make sure the recipients were duly grateful. The Times published an annual report of exactly what victuals had been enjoyed by the inmates, parish by parish, so there must have been some competition to make the offerings sound good. Generally, there was an allowance of beef, potatoes, plum pudding and, for the lucky ones, some snuff and tobacco, and a good pint of London porter.

Marylebone Parish: Number of outdoor poor about 6,500. Christmas fare, 1lb of roast beef free from bone, 1lb of potatoes and bread, one pint of porter, and 1lb of plumpudding, with 1 ounce of tea, sugar extra to each adult. The children are fed at the discretion of the master, and in the evening are allowed to partake of various amusements at the expense of the guardians, who had fruit and sweetmeats provided for them.

But the residents of the workhouses were, comparatively, the lucky ones.

How to be frugal and festive

Desperate housewives trying to keep Christmas merry in the dark days of wartime rationing were issued with plenty of helpful advice by the Ministry of Food. Have a look at the wonderful Christmas recipes that Times Online food editor Nick Wyke has dug out of the Archive. There's even a quiz, to test you on your arcane knowledge of powdered milk.

You might not want to go as far as knocking up mock cream out of margarine and custard powder, but the general spirit of making do isn't a bad one for these times. There are some more gems from the austerity years here too. Why not try out the Prune roly poly, or the Farmhouse scramble?

Six bad santas – and one sad one

Santa suits and crime go together like turkey and stuffing. In case anyone thought Billy Bob Thornton’s Bad Santa was a far-fetched invention, here are some festive, and not so festive criminal enterprises featuring the Man in Red.

1. Father Christmas robs a bank

Subtitled "A story from Texas", this 1927 Christmas Eve bank heist went seriously wrong when the robbers grabbed a bunch of schoolchildren to use as human shields. Bullets went flying all over the place anyway ...

A band of robbers, with their leader disguised as Santa Claus, raided the National Bank here today, and after "scooping up" $10,000, herded a number of little children together to shield themselves from the flying bullets. One of the raiders was shot in the head while endeavouring to climb into a waiting motor-ear, and the chief of police, the vice-president of the bank, and a police- man were wounded, but none of the children was hurt, save possibly one little girl, who the police fear was carried away by the robbers. The money was subsequently recovered, but the raiders themselves escaped.

But not for long. Evidently the ringleaders at least were caught and jailed, and two years on came this gruesome postscript:

Christmas fun, maybe

The “Crapland” stories got this year’s Christmas off to the traditional start. Shudders and sniggers all round Fleet Street at the sorry prospect of punters queuing for hours in wet fields to catch Santa snorfing a fag round the back of his grotty grotto.

They did Christmas entertainment better in the old days, even without trading standards officers. But still, the lofty disdain of the 1907 Times journalist, packed off to Olympia to see what thrills were being provided for the populace, has a familiar sort of ring:

Olympia has, for the second year in succession, been converted into a "mammoth fun city," the gates of which will be opened today to those in search of diversion.

There’s something so damning in that word “diversion”. It gets worse: