The Elephant Man Citizenship

For the end of the term you should read The Elephant Man story and do the portfolio about it.

To understand life at that time, we have read some texts about workhouses and  some London neigbourhoods (Whitechapel).There,  it was seetled a permanent exhibition in which people could pay to have an up-close look at the Elephant man. Moreover we have learnt that staying in a workhouse was a very harsh and tough experience for children. The main chacarter -J. Merrick- entered the Leicester Union Workhouse when he was seventeen years old because his physical condition prevented him from manteining a job. Here, we have a painting of J. Crowther called Whitechapel High Street, Stepney, London, 1884.

To get an idea about life in those workhouses, here we have an accurate description written by Dickens:

Groves of babies in arms; groves of mothers and other sick women in bed; groves of lunatics; jungles of men in stone-paved down-stairs day-rooms, waiting for their dinners; longer and longer groves of old people, in up-stairs Infirmary wards, wearing out life, God knows how - this was the scenery through which the walk lay, for two hours. In some of these latter chambers, there were pictures stuck against the wall, and a neat display of crockery and pewter on a kind of sideboard; now and then it was a treat to see a plant or two; in almost every ward there was a cat.