Bowl

Pewter bowl used at the Mount Street workhouse in Mayfair, Westminster. Built in 1725 the workhouse was enlarged in the 1780s and finally demolished in 1886 due to overcrowding. The dish would have been used to hold gruel and soup. In Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens famously describes the inadequate food portions given to workhouse inmates: ‘The room in which the boys were fed was a large stone hall, with a copper at one end, out of which the master, dressed in an apron for the purpose, and assisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel at meal-times; of which composition each boy had one porringer, and no more – except on festive occasions, and then he had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides. The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation…they would sit staring at the copper with such eager eyes as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed.’