Pinnegar and Miss Frost are expelled from the workhouse after evidence of its abusive regime and the harm done to its girls comes into view. Their departures mark a change in who holds authority, but not a clean resolution: conditions improve, while Miss Frost later returns as a threat beyond the institution’s walls.

Institutional Conditions and the Grounds for Change

The Nuneaton Union Workhouse divided women, boys, girls, and men into separate sections. Inmates were assigned labor according to gender and perceived ability: men and stronger boys picked oakum or crushed bones, some worked in the gardens, and women and girls sewed uniforms, cooked, cleaned, or labored in the laundry. Residents rarely met across these divisions except on Sundays, a separation Sunday had repeatedly seen devastate families. The workhouse’s daily order was therefore both a regime of labor and a system that restricted contact and mutual support.

Its discipline reached beyond work assignments. Miss Frost announced the children’s daily duties and inspected their rooms; girls also endured compulsory washing routines backed by the threat of punishment. Sunday preferred occasional work in the nursery, but had to conceal that preference from Miss Frost, fearing that the matron would prevent her from going there. The staff’s authority shaped even the small choices available to the children.

Sunday later described to Lady Lavinia Huntley a sharp disparity between the workhouse’s stated provision and the children’s experience. Although the guardians contributed money intended to feed residents well, Sunday recalled dry grey bread, greasy porridge, and meals in which meat was infrequent and difficult to eat. She also described the punishment cellar: it had no bed or blanket, and she had once been confined there for three days without food or drink. She said she had been so weak on release that she needed to spend the night in the sickbay. Her account that two girls had disappeared after being locked away, with Miss Frost later saying they had died of influenza, further raised questions about what the institution concealed as well as what it punished.

Exposure and the Departures

Sunday spoke to Lady Lavinia Huntley after leaving the workhouse, when she believed that honesty might help those still living there. Lady Lavinia took notes as Sunday described the food and punishment. This testimony placed lived experience beside the guardians’ expectation that their financial contributions ensured adequate care, making the gap between institutional provision and actual treatment difficult to dismiss.

The mistreatment of girls was not limited to Sunday’s account. When Cissie Burns was about to be taken away, she accused Pinnegar of being responsible for what had happened to her. Miss Frost rejected the accusation and attempted to discredit Cissie, while the men sent to remove her tried to put her into a straitjacket. Sunday intervened physically to help Cissie resist. The scene exposes how Miss Frost’s authority could reinforce Pinnegar’s power: rather than investigate Cissie’s claim, she defended him and treated the girl as the offender.

Pinnegar was gone from the workhouse by the time Lady Lavinia discussed the changes with Zillah. Lady Lavinia hoped his removal meant that no other girls would suffer the same fate. The new housemaster and his wife were living in Pinnegar’s former cottage and were reported to be kind, suggesting a change in daily management as well as the loss of the previous master’s position.

Lady Lavinia also insisted that Miss Frost be dismissed because of her sadistic treatment of the girls. Miss Frost left shortly after Pinnegar. Lady Lavinia expressed no sympathy for her, and Zillah likewise regarded her as little better than Pinnegar. The two departures were connected by the abuses they had enabled, but Miss Frost’s dismissal followed Pinnegar’s rather than occurring as a single simultaneous expulsion.

Improvements and the Limits of Dismissal

Later reports describe a workhouse altered by the change in personnel. The meals had improved, the atmosphere was better, and the shadow of fear and bullying had lifted. The new matron had snapped Miss Frost’s split cane in two and thrown it away: a practical rejection of the instrument associated with the old discipline. Lady Lavinia and Verity Lockett intended to continue improving conditions, including by providing better bedding once Lady Lavinia had recovered from Stephen’s birth. The blankets then in use were considered inadequate.

These improvements did not erase the earlier harm, and removing the former officials did not make Miss Frost harmless. After leaving the workhouse, she continued watching Sunday and later abducted her. In the cellar where she held Sunday, Miss Frost blamed her for the loss of her position and admitted that she had murdered Pinnegar and Daisy Branning. Tom Branning and two police constables interrupted the attack and arrested her. The later revelation turns the dismissals into both an institutional turning point and an incomplete safeguard: the workhouse’s daily climate could improve, but its former matron carried her grievance into the world outside it.