Quotes from Shadows of the Workhouse

“Bah! Suffragettes. I've no time for suffragettes. They made the biggest mistake in history. They went for equality. They should have gone for power!”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“Health is the greatest of God's gifts, but we take it for granted; yet it hangs on a thread as fine as a spider's web and the tiniest thing can make it snap, leaving the strongest of us helpless in an instant.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“Life turns on little things. The momentous events in history can leave us untouched, while small events may shape our destinies.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“The young can be very lovely, but the faces of the old can be truly beautiful. Every line and fold, every contour and wrinkle of Sister Monica Joan's fine white skin revealed her character, strength, courage, humanity and irrepressible humour.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“Inanimate objects have a life of their own, especially when they are the daily companions of a living soul. Without that life, they take on a bleak, desolate appearance, like furniture piled up in a warehouse.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“You know the secret of life, my dear, because you know how to love.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“The Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“Sir, I have the honour to inform you that I do not consider your government has any right to detain me as a prisoner. I have therefore decided to escape from your custody,’ and ending up: ‘I remain, sir, your humble and obedient servant, Winston Churchill.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“When you are young, you go where you wish, but when you are old, others will take you where you do not wish to go.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“I remember one old woman we pulled out of the rubble. She wasn’t hurt. She gripped my arm and said: ‘That bugger Hitler. ’E’s killed me old man, good riddance, ’e’s killed me kids, more’s the pity. ‘E’s bombed me ’ouse, so I got nowhere ’a live, bu’ ’e ain’t got me. An’ I got sixpence in me pocket an’ vat pub on ve corner, Master’s Arms, ain’t been bombed, so let’s go an’ ’ave a drink an’ a sing-song.’” There”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“I woke in the middle of the night, and he was standing at the side of my bed. He was as real as my husband sleeping beside me. He was tall, and upright, but looked younger than when I had known him, like a handsome man of about sixty or sixty-five. He was smiling, and then he said, “You know the secret of life, my dear, because you know how to love.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“Nothing binds people more strongly than the same sense of humour, and the ability to laugh together.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“The accumulated experience of old age was much more interesting than the chatter of the young.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“I sells ladies fings, and vis nun, she comes up to me stall an’ afore you can blink an eye, she picks up a couple of bread an’ cheeses, tucks ’em in ’er petticoats, an’ is off round the Jack Horner, dahn ve frog an’ toad, quick as shit off a stick. I couldn’t Adam an’ Eve it, bu’ vats wot she done. When I tells me carvin’ knife wot I seen, she calls me an ’oly friar, an’ says she’ll land me one on me north and south if I calls Sister Monica Joan a tea-leaf. Very fond of Sister, she is. So I never says nuffink to no one, like.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“...Our Lord's words to Peter, as recorded in St. John's gospel: 'When you are young, you go where you wish, but when you are old, others will take you where you do not wish to go.'...I have always thought that it is a general reflection about us all.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“The young can be very lovely, but the faces of the old can be truly beautiful. Every line and fold, every contour and wrinkle of Sister Monica Joan’s fine white skin revealed her character, strength, courage, humanity and irrepressible humour.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“We must all commit Sister Monica Joan to our prayers. We must seek God’s help. But I will also engage a good lawyer.” I”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“The young can be very lovely, but the faces of the old can be truly beautiful.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“The knowledge of rejection, of being unwanted, is more terrible to live with than anything else, and a rejected child will usually never get over it.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“Well, it certainly is for men, because large numbers of men living together can easily become like wild animals. Men are brutes at heart, and without the civilising influence of women they quickly revert to savagery.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“And ‘woman’ in the slums is capable of taking on almost superhuman responsibility, from a very young age, that would crush most of us. Today they live in luxury — look at all the giddy young girls around us — they have no memory of how their mothers and grandmothers lived and died. They have no understanding of what it took to raise a family twenty or thirty years ago.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“For the working class, life was nasty, brutish and short. Hunger and hardship were expected. Men were old at forty, women worn out at thirty-five. The death of children was taken for granted. Poverty was frankly regarded as a moral defect. Social Darwinism (the strong adapt and survive, the weak are crushed) was borrowed and distorted from the Origin of Species (1858) and applied to human organisation.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“We who live comfortable, affluent lives in the twenty-first century cannot begin to imagine what it must have been like to be a pauper in a workhouse. We cannot picture relentless cold with little heating, no adequate clothing or warm bedding, and insufficient food. We cannot imagine our children being taken away from us because we are too poor to feed them, nor our liberty being curtailed for the simple crime of being poor.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“More than anything else a dying person needs to have someone with them. This used to be recognised in hospitals, and when I trained, no one every died alone. However busy the wards, or however short the staff, a nurse was always assigned to sit with a dying person to hold their hand, stroke their forehead, or whisper a few words. Peace and quietness, even reverence for the dying, were expected and assured.
I disagree wholly with the notion that there is no point in staying with an unconscious patient because he or she does not know you are there. I am perfectly certain, though years of experience and observation, that unconsciousness, as we define it, is not a state of knowing. Rather, it is a state of knowing and understanding on a different level that is beyond our immediate experience.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“I was in a Highland Regiment, as you know — the Scots Guards — and I’ll tell you something: there is nothing in the world like the sound of the bagpipes to raise a man’s morale, to lift his spirits, and give him strength. However tired and thirsty we were, the bagpipes at the front of the column only had to strike up and within seconds you felt your feet lift off the ground, your step lighten, your spirits rise, and every man-Jack was marching strong, in rhythm to the pipes.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“The men were ordered to retreat, and to leave the dead. In the sun the injured would die of thirst the following day. “That was the moment when I realised the truth of my mother’s words, that we were just ‘cannon-fodder’. Young private soldiers were ordered, time and time again, to march directly into gunfire, and High Command didn’t give a damn how many died, nor the cost in human suffering.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“In large groups of enclosed people who were not allowed out, infectious diseases spread like wildfire. For example, in the 1880s in a workhouse in Kent, it was found that in a child population of one hundred and fifty-four, only three children did not have tuberculosis.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“War brutalises a man. It is not surprising he was moody and violent. But you must remember two things: running away from battle has always been punishable by death. Military discipline must be harsh, or every soldier would run away; and secondly in a firing squad of ten men only one held a rifle with live ammunition — nine held blanks. So every man had a nine out of ten chance of not being responsible for the death of his colleague.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“The reason why Jane’s spirit was not broken was that she had a secret. It was her own special secret and she had told no one else except Peggy. She locked it in her heart and hugged it to herself. It was this glorious secret that filled her with such irrepressible joy and exhilaration. But it was also to be the cause of her greatest disaster, and her life-long grief.
The rumour that her father was a high-born gentleman in Parliament must have reached Jane’s ears when she was a little girl. Perhaps she had heard the officers talking about it, or perhaps another child had heard the adults talking and told her. Perhaps Jane’s mother had told another workhouse inmate, who had passed it on. One can never tell how rumours start.
To Jane, it was not a rumour. It was an absolute fact. Her daddy was a high-born gentleman, who one day would come and take her away. She fantasised endlessly about her daddy. She talked to him, and he talked to her.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

“She knew the risk. We both did. I’m glad that she was taken first, and not left on her own. Death is kinder than life. There is no more suffering beyond the grave. We will meet again soon, I hope.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse

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“You’re . . . you’re going back to the Marines?” Alston stuttered. “I thought SOCOM was defunct.”
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