Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
09 May 2011
Life Inside a British Workhouse
Victorian paupers in England who had nowhere
to turn entered local workhouses that were
deliberately designed to be unpleasant
During the early decades of the 19th century the cost of looking after England’s poor kept rising. The upper classes and growing middle class mainly paid the price through local taxes raised by towns on property and weren’t happy about this.
Hearing the complaints of their better-
Reducing the Cost of Looking after the Poor
As Britain’s National Archives puts it, “The new Poor Law was meant to reduce the cost of looking after the poor, prevent scroungers, and impose a system which would be the same all over the country.”
This anti-
Parishes were grouped together so they could raise enough funds to build workhouses into which the poor were forced. If they chose to stay in the own homes, no matter how wretched they might be, the new law said they could not receive help.
The only way the poverty stricken could get assistance was to surrender their freedom and enter the workhouse where they could be clothed and fed and have a roof over their heads.
Thousands of the nearly destitute lived in dread that some accident or illness would send them to the workhouse.
Families Separated inside Workhouses
Britain’s National Trust maintains an old workhouse in Southwell, Nottinghamshire (below) as an historical exhibit.
Andy Stephenson
The Trust says that “Families were split up: children and adults; men and women were kept apart and were further separated into groups called the ‘idle and profligate’ or ‘blameless and infirm.’ ”
Those who were capable had to spend several hours a day doing monotonous work, such as breaking up rocks to be used in road building. They also had to maintain and clean the building, and do the cooking and laundry.
Children were given some education, but they might also be hired out work in factories or mines.
Workhouse Rules Sternly Enforced
For those who lived in them, the workhouses must have seemed like prisons. Referred to as inmates the residents had to wear a uniform. Their lives were controlled by masters and matrons who could be arbitrary and sadistic in enforcing rules and regulations, with punishments ranging from flogging to solitary confinement.
Inmates rarely received visitors and could not leave without permission.
Workhouse Life Filled with Deprivation and Monotony
According to the National Trust, “There was a repetitive and dull diet. A strict daily menu was provided, with every portion measured or weighed. The daily main meal might be a stew or suet pudding, supplemented by gruel twice daily.”
Everybody slept in a dormitory with 70 or more to a room. Men and women were kept strictly separated; the Victorians did not want workhouse residents creating any more children who might be a burden to the taxpayers.
Workhouse Conditions Caused Concern
Some of the worst abuses became public knowledge. Britain’s National Archives chronicles
the infamous “Andover Workhouse, where it was reported that half-
Inside a workhouse illustration from 19th century.
The terrible conditions inside Andover Workhouse in 1845-
Workhouses Lasted for a Century
Christopher Hudson reports in The Mail (August 12, 2008), “The workhouses were officially closed in 1930. But since there was nowhere else to house thousands of institutionalized people who could not be expected to adjust to the outside world, they continued under other names well into the second half of the 20th century.”
So, the dreadful living conditions lasted long enough into the modern era to be retold
by those who endured them. Jennifer Worth, in her 2008 book Shadows of the Workhouse
tells the first-
Sources
“Workhouse of Horrors: How this Medieval Hell of Beatings and Sack Cloth Exists within Living Memory.” Christopher Hudson, The Mail, August 12, 2008.
“Shadows of the Workhouse.” Jennifer Worth, George Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2008.
“What Did People Think of the New Poor Law?” British National Archives.
© Canada and the World, May 2011
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BONE CRUSHING
One of the jobs given to workhouse inmates was the crushing of bones to make fertilizer. One resident of the Andover workhouse, Charles Lewis, gave testimony to an enquiry in 1846 into workhouse conditions:
Enquiry: “What work were you employed about when you were in the workhouse?”
Lewis: “I was employed breaking bones.”
Enquiry: “Was that the only employment you had?”
Lewis: “That was the only employment I had at the time I was there.”
Enquiry: “Was the smell very bad?”
Lewis: “Very bad.”
Enquiry: “Did it appear to affect your health?”
Lewis: “It did a great deal mine, and appeared to affect the others.”
Enquiry: “How many men were so employed?”
Lewis: “Whether it was nine or ten boxes round the room, I don’t recollect.”
Enquiry: “How did you break them?”
Lewis: “We had a large iron bar to break them with.”
Enquiry: “During the time you were so employed, did you ever see any of the men gnaw anything or eat anything from those bones?”
Lewis: “I have seen them eat marrow out of the bones.”
Enquiry: “Did they state why they did it?”
Lewis: “I really believe they were very hungry.”
Enquiry: “Did you yourself feel extremely hungry at that time?”
Lewis: “I did, but my stomach would not take it.”
Enquiry: “Did you see any of the men gnaw the meat from the bones?”
Lewis: “Yes.”
“The workhouse, in its heyday, was intended to be a form of social welfare for those with nothing. In practice, it was seen as a dark and terrible fate.”
Christopher Hudson