ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Dickens makes fun of the statistical political economists, who, like Podsnap, simply refused to believe that there were people starving on the streets of London. The great novelist humanises the argument with the characterisation of a destitute Irishwoman who comes to a workhouse for help. In the city of London, in two contiguous thoroughfares—the shabbiest, dingiest, poorest of their class—there are two Houses of Poverty. Prosperity, the war notwithstanding, is continually increasing. None but the idle and the dissolute need be houseless and hungry. There was a lull in the admissions, and the author was inquiring about the Irish, when the official told the doorkeeper to ‘call the first female’. A long lank man in black mud came up afterwards; whose looks seemed fluttering between the unmistakeable ‘ragged and tired’ and an ominous ‘ragged and desperate’.
