Posted with permission of the transcriber, 'Ann'. The Workhouse inmates didn't have much to survive on did they? No wonder Oliver Twist asked for more. So far as I can tell the ration for males and females was the same but I seem to recall seeing a similar such list some time ago where women received less than men. I think that might have been in Essex. I found the sidebar comments amusing; On Wednesday the potatoes are mashed and on Saturday 'With the 2oz. of peas, oatmeal and vegetables are promised. We have carefully examined Mrs. Glass's Cookery, but this dainty of the Commissioners appears to have been unknown to that experienced lady.' No indication as to whether the 'promise' was ever honoured and I wouldn't mind betting that the 'dainty' was even less well known to the Commissioners than to Mrs. Glass. I also doubt very much that the Workhouse cooks, assuming they could read, ever bothered to consult Mrs. Glass's Cookery book anyway. <g> Geo. SICKNESS & POVERTY IN Nineteenth Century Whitehaven. # 41. THE COCKERMOUTH FAMINE BOARD. We have all along contended that the Poor Law Amendment Act was a cruel, harsh, and tyrannical measure, and that the poor under its provisions were left entirely at the mercy of the commissioners or guardians, both with respect to raiment, food and treatment; therefore, we properly ( ? ), if the Guardians are humane men the poor will be benefited, if they are not the situation of the pauper may be trult deplorable. The principle object of the Bill appears to us, as to many others, to be to find the lowest point of subsistence at which human nature can exist, and to feed sumptuously a horde of hungry Whigs. We have been favored with a copy of the diet-table for able bodied men and women in the Cockermouth Union, and we transfer it to our columns in order that every reader may judge for himself how he thinks the commissioners have approached the point of starvation by the establishment of a systematic famine board in that union. It needs not one word of comment; but we cannot refrain from calling the attention of the Rev. H. THOMPSON and other apologists and defenders of the bastile system, to this inhuman and abominable mode of starving the poor. We ask Mr. THOMPSON if he does not now see that the administration of the poor law; as we told him in reply to his letter some weeks ago, may be made whatever the guardians will it to be - that it may be merciful and humane at Ulverston and tyrannical and oppressive elsewhere. Instead of being well fed and clothed, as Mr. THOMPSON maintains the paupers are at Ulverston, he will discover that at Cockermouth the daily food of an able bodied pauper is barely sufficient to keep the body and soul together; and there is no account of any wine, which he told us was given to paupers who required it in the Ulverston Union. Without further comment however, we submit the dietary table to the perusal of the reader: - Sorry, I had to delete the table as it was an embedded image which rootsweb will not accept. It should be OK on the SmartGroups page though. Geo.