Retitled 'Wapping Workhouse' in collected editions of the series 

'My knowledge of the general conditions of the sick poor in workhouses is not of yesterday,' Dickens wrote in 1866 to the Secretary of the newly-formed Association for the Improvement of the Infirmaries of London Workhouses: 'nor are my efforts in my vocation to call merciful attention to it. Few anomalies in England are so horrible to me as the unchecked existence of many shameful sick wards for paupers side by side with the constantly increasing expansion of conventional wonder that the poor should creep into corners and die rather than fester and rot in such places' (Pilgrim, Vol. XI, [late Feb 1866] pp. 164–65). Dickens's 'efforts' included the commissioning and publishing of dozens of articles in HW and ATYR on workhouse conditions, and also the writing of such powerful papers as 'A Walk in a Workhouse' ([HW, Vol. I, 27 May 1850] see Vol. 2 of [the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism], Item 45), 'A Nightly Scene in London' ([HW, Vol. XIII, 26 January 1856] (see Vol. 3 [of the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism], Item 45), and the present article.

       In The Times of 23 January 1860, a Thames Police Court Magistrate (Henry Selfe) was reported to have said during a case that 'a most disgraceful and painful state of things existed' in the Wapping Workhouse for female paupers, that the place was 'a perfect bear-garden', that '...it was a great shame', and that 'the Guardians of the Stepney Union should look to [it]' (p. 10, cols. a, b). Acting on this account, Dickens visited the workhouse sometime before the end of the month, but found its management excellent under the circumstances, as described in the present item. According to The Times of 30 January, 'persons in authority had visited the Wapping poorhouse in the course of last week... and on leaving said the Guardians were a very much ill-used body' (p. 9, cols. e, f): which may be a veiled reference to a visit by Dickens and others prior to the writing of the present paper. On 28 January, meanwhile, the Guardians of the Union sent a deputation to the magistrate to defend their arrangements, but Selfe repeated his erroneous accusations that there was no classification among inmates at the Workhouse, and no separate ward for Refractories. The deputation pointedly suggested Selfe should visit the Workhouse himself, which in due course he did, causing Dickens to comment on 10 February that 'it would have been as well if the magistrate... had so timed his visit as to have given it the precedence of his remarks' (Pilgrim, Vol. IX, pp. 204-05&nn., 212&n.). The two Refractories described, who confess to having been 'taken before the magistrate', may be identified from the Times reports as Elizabeth Francis and Elizabeth Regan, two able-bodied paupers.
      The reference to 'the fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing at St. George's in [the East],' and, later in the article, to 'these unfortunate dissensions' alludes to another news story of the time. For some months, the Rev. Bryan King, Anglican incumbent of St. George's-in-the-East (Cannon Street Road, E1) had been at the centre of disturbances over allegedly 'Romish' innovations in his conduct of divine services, and in his own dress. Since the previous Autumn, violent anti-Catholic protests reminiscent of the so-called 'Gordon' riots of the 1780s had been proceeding unchecked during services, as neither police commissioners nor the Bishop of London were certain how to proceed (see accounts by Charles Collins, 'Our Eye Witness at Church', ATYR, Vol. I [1 Oct. 1859], pp. 537–40 and in The Examiner, 4 Feb. 1860, p. 81, cols. a, b); problems continued until 25 July 1860, when Mr. King resigned pro tem.
      The bridge dubbed 'Mr Baker's Trap' has been identified as the swingbridge which formerly carried Old Gravel Lane across the lock connecting two of the London Dock basins. For its popularity with suicides, it was known to locals as 'The Bridge of Sighs' (The Dickensian, Vol. 3 [1906], pp. 42–43). Dickens's reference to levels of provision 'at Boston in the state of Massachusetts' show him recalling an inspection of the Boston House of Industry made on his first Amercian trip and recorded in American Notes, Ch. 3. The demand for equalisation of the Poor Rates with which Dickens forcibly concludes his account of the workhouse for women was not to be met until 1894 with the bringing in of the Equalization of Rates Act and the establishment of Parish Councils. The St George's in the East Workhouse for Women was situated near Cable Street, E1, and was finally demolished in 1868.

Literary allusions

• 'the constancy of the young woman... 'baccer box marked with his name' paraphrases the ballad 'Wapping Old Stairs' set to music by John Perry (d. 1797); the relevant stanza runs

Your Molly has never been false she declares
Since the last time we parted at Wapping Old Stairs
When I swore that I still would continue the same
And gave you the 'baccer box marked with my name
When I passed a whole fortnight between decks with you
Did I e'er give a kiss to one of your crew?

• 'the Foul ward ...the fair world' echoes 'Fair is foul/ And foul is fair', Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Sc. 1 ; (p. 00) 'my honourable friend Mrs Gamp': drunken old nurse and midwife in Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), Ch. 19 et seq.;
• 'poetical commission to the baker's man': paraphrase of the Nursery rhyme beginning 'Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, Baker's man'; 
• 'this vault to brag of' Shakespeare, Macbeth (c. 1605), Act 2 Sc. 3; 
• 'When Britain first, at Heaven's command...': from James Thomson's Alfred, A Masque (1740) Act 2, Scene the Last, lines later popularised as 'Rule, Britannia';
• 'when they had sung an hymn': Mark 14:26