Last updated 19:40, Thursday, 10 April 2008

A MIXED ward was the problem for the Cockermouth Guardians back in 1925.

It’s why they refused to allow services to be held on Sunday afternoons in the women’s hospital in the workhouse. It wasn’t gender they were bothered about, but religion.

The ward was full of Anglicans, Catholics and various non-conformists and, to quote one member, “perhaps some of them would object to the service.”

It might seem a trifle over sensitive to us today, but they had every reason to err on the side of caution. In previous decades they’d spent too much time bickering about religious and inter-denominational niceties.

They were meeting in the old Grecian Villa in Cockermouth and, as always, their deliberations were fully reported in the local papers.

Their monthly meetings (and they had in earlier years been fortnightly) must have been a reporter’s dream.

They could always be relied upon to argue and sound off – on matters both grave and seemingly trivial.

Like false teeth! A Keswick woman who was on benefits (to use modern terminology) had rotten teeth.

The Keswick Relief Committee had “recommended that she have her teeth extracted and that an artificial set be provided.”

The members were not happy with this proposal, especially Mr W Beck.

Despite being told that her doctor had recommended that she get new teeth, he still wanted to squash the recommendation.

And this is where the older style of newspaper reporting is so good, because it tells you who says what and when.

Beck said: “But there are many hundreds of people who have bad teeth and cannot afford to pay their rates,” later adding: “Our job is to provide them with something to eat, but not to get them teeth to eat with.”

Mr Shuttleworth dived in, asking: “What is the use of giving people something to eat, if they have not got teeth to eat it with.”

After further debate, they decided to refer the matter back to Keswick “for further consideration” and a full report from the doctor. All that for a set of dentures!

They then moved on to a more serious matter.

They’d been asked to support a resolution passed by the Lutterworth Guardians, who proposed: “That HM’s Government be urged, through the Members of Parliament, to seriously consider the urgent question of the sterilisation of the mentally unfit, not later than the age of puberty, and thus save untold suffering and expense.”

Some members were appalled. But others thought that the idea had some merit and proposed that they support the resolution.

That they should do so might surprise us. But Eugenics was quite trendy at the time, both in Europe and America.

Mr Beck, while conceding that it was a delicate topic, felt that had it already been done they “would have a far healthier population.”

Mr Shuttleworth agreed, claiming that such a measure would have ensured that workhouses and institutions would have been less full . . . with a saving on the rates.

AB Pears had not wanted the proposal to be discussed and had wondered “what the attitude of mind was that had prompted a resolution of that kind.” He was not happy.

He was even less happy when the vote was declared. The press report doesn’t tell us what the vote was but, judging from Pears’ reaction, it seems likely that they supported the motion.

Now it could be that the journalist was being over diplomatic when he reported that “Mr Pears uttered a remark . . . which was inaudible to the Press.”

Whatever he said, it elicited a response from Mr Beck, who concluded that “a farmer takes more care of his stock today than the human race does!”

The pro-Eugenic argument would have found favour with a great many back in the twenties. And had Hitler and his supporters not come to power, perhaps Eugenic measures would not have been regarded as being quite so abhorrent.

They did have other contentious matters to discuss, but they managed to end on a happy note by accepting Workington Brewery’s usual offer of free beer on Christmas Day for the inmates of the workhouse.

Some 30 years earlier they might have argued about the offer - but they obviously didn’t have any diehard teetotallers on the committee in 1925.