Christmas in the Workhouse Written by Pam Preedy. ‘Please Sir, I want some more.’ Who amongst us doesn’t recognise these words when Oliver Twist, an orphan, drew the short straw to ask for more food? Although this story by Charles Dickens was not set at Christmas, it illustrates one of the horrors of the workhouse – hunger. Poverty had always been a problem. It was generally believed that poverty was the fault of the poor because they were lazy and feckless. With the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII,…