Workhouse

Workhouse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaWorkhouse
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Former workhouse in Nantwich, dating from 1780
A workhouse was a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment. The term was the usual word in England, Wales, and Ireland for the institution more commonly known in Scotland as a poorhouse.[1] Its earliest known use dates from 1631, in an account by the mayor of Abingdon in which he reports that "wee haue erected wthn our borough a workehouse to sett poore people to worke".[2] The workhouse was colloquially known as 'The Spike' as a reference to the spikes used by the inmates to pick oakum, [3] also specifically the casual ward of a workhouse.[4]
Although small numbers of workhouses were established in other European countries, the system was most highly developed in England. Holland, for instance, had three large workhouses for the entire country,[5] whereas the English county of Cheshire alone had 31 by 1777.[6]
Contents [hide]
1 Background
1.1 Legal
1.2 Social
2 Management and staffing
3 Living conditions
3.1 Work
3.2 Diet
3.3 Discipline
4 Architecture
5 Later developments and abolition
6 See also
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
Background

Legal
According to historian Derek Fraser the fear of social disorder following the Black Death resulted in the support of the poor becoming a responsibility of the state, instead of a "personal Christian charity". The plague killed about one-third of England's population, leading to a severe shortage of labour. The Poor Law Act of 1388 attempted to address the crisis by fixing wages and restricting the movement of labourers, as it was feared that if they were allowed to leave their parishes for higher-paid work elsewhere then wages would inevitably rise. The resulting laws against vagrancy were the origins of state-funded relief for the poor. From the 16th century onwards a distinction was legally enshrined between those who were able to work but could not, and those who were able to work but would not, between "the genuinely unemployed and the idler". The Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII, which began in 1536, exacerbated the problem of supporting those who were destitute, as the monasteries had been "a significant source of alms" and provided a good deal of direct and indirect employment.[7] The Poor Relief Act of 1576 went on to establish the principle that if the able-bodied poor needed support then they had to work for it.[8]
The Poor Law of 1601 made no mention of workhouses, but it did place a legal responsibility on each parish to care for those within its boundaries who, because of age or infirmity, were unable to work. It essentially classified the poor into one of three groups: the impotent poor, the old or infirm; the able-bodied, who were offered work in a house of correction, the precursor of the workhouse; and the "persistent idler", to be punished in a house of correction.[9] Although the Act proposed the construction of housing for the impotent poor most assistance continued to be in the form of outdoor relief – money, food, or other necessities given to those living in their own homes, funded by a local tax on the property of the wealthiest in the parish.[2] The workhouse system evolved in the 17th century as a way for parishes to reduce the cost to ratepayers of providing poor relief. The Workhouse Test Act of 1723 was introduced to prevent irresponsible claims on a parish's poor rate. Anyone seeking poor relief could be obliged to enter a workhouse and undertake a set amount of work, usually for no pay, a system known as indoor relief. Many parishes established workhouses during the 18th century, and by the 1830s most had at least one.[10]
Gilbert's Act of 1782 was intended to allow parishes to share the cost of poor relief by forming unions – known as Gilbert Unions – to build and maintain workhouses to accommodate the elderly and infirm. The able-bodied poor were instead either given outdoor relief or found employment locally.[6] Few workhouses were built under Gilbert's scheme, but supplementing wages under a system known as the Speenhamland system did become established.
By 1831 the amount spent on poor relief nationally had risen to £7 million a year, more than 10 shillings per head of population,[11] and the large number of those seeking assistance had pushed the system to "the verge of collapse".[12][nb 1] The economic downturn following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century resulted in increasing numbers of unemployed, coupled with developments in agriculture that meant less labour was needed on the land. Many suspected that the system of poor relief was being widely abused, and in 1832 the government established a Royal Commission to investigate and recommend how relief could best be given to the poor.[14] The result was the establishment of a centralised Poor Law Commission in England and Wales under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, also known as the New Poor Law, which discouraged the allocation of outdoor relief to the able-bodied; "all cases were to be 'offered the house', and nothing else".[15] Individual parishes were formed into Poor Law Unions, each of which was to have a union workhouse. More than 500 workhouses were built during the next 50 years, two-thirds of them by 1840. Outdoor relief was further restricted by the terms of the 1844 Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order.[16]
The principles of the 1834 Act were extended first to Ireland, with the passage of the Poor Relief (Ireland) Act, 1838 and then to Scotland by the 1845 Act for The Amendment and better Administration of the Laws Relating to the relief of the Poor in Scotland.[17]
Social
It is beyond the omnipotence of Parliament to meet the conflicting claims of justice to the community; severity to the idle and viscious and mercy to those stricken down into penury by the vicissitudes of God ... There is grinding want among the honest poor; there is starvation, squalor, misery beyond description, children lack food and mothers work their eyes dim and their bodies to emaciation in the vain attempt to find the bare necessities of life, but the Poor Law authorities have no record of these struggles.[18]
“”
Philanthropist William Rathbone, 1850
The Poor Law was not designed to address the issue of poverty, which was considered to be the inevitable lot for most people; rather it was concerned with pauperism, "the inability of an individual to support himself". Writing in 1806 Patrick Colquhoun commented that:[18]
Poverty ... is a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilisation. It is the lot of man – it is the source of wealth, since without poverty there would be no labour, and without labour there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.[18]
Historian Simon Fowler has argued that workhouses were "largely designed for a pool of able-bodied idlers and shirkers ... However this group hardly existed outside the imagination of a generation of political economists".[19] Workhouse life was intended to be harsh, to deter the able-bodied poor and to ensure that only the truly destitute would apply, a principle known as less eligibility.[20]
Despite the intentions behind the 1834 Act, those responsible to the local taxpayers who were obliged to pay for the relief of the poor had a powerful economic incentive to use whatever loopholes they could, such as sickness in the family, to continue with outdoor relief; the weekly cost per person was about half that of providing workhouse accommodation.[nb 2] In 1846, of 1.33 million paupers only 199,000 were maintained in workhouses, of whom 82,000 were considered to be able-bodied, leaving an estimated 375,000 of the able-bodied on outdoor relief.[22] Excluding periods of extreme economic distress, it has been estimated that about 6.5 percent of the British population may have been accommodated in workhouses at any given time.[17][nb 3]
There was a good deal of resistance to the new workhouses in certain parts of the country, some of it violent, particularly in the industrial north. Many workers lost their jobs during the major economic depression of 1837, and there was a strong feeling that what they needed was not the workhouse but short-term relief to tide them over temporary periods of unemployment. By 1838, 573 Poor Law Unions had been formed in England and Wales, incorporating 13,427 parishes, but it was not until 1868 that unions were established across the entire country.[23]
Management and staffing



Built in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, in 1824, this was considered to be "the model of a well-regulated workhouse".[24]
Each union was run by a locally elected board of guardians, comprising representatives from each of the participating parishes, assisted by six ex officio members.[25]
Every workhouse had a complement of full-time staff, often referred to as the indoor staff. At their head was the governor or master, who was appointed by the board of guardians. His duties were laid out in a series of orders issued by the Poor Law Commissioners. As well as the overall administration of the workhouse, masters were required to discipline the paupers as necessary, to ensure that prayers were read to them before breakfast and after supper each day, and to visit each ward twice daily, at 11 am and 9 pm. Female inmates and children under seven were the responsibility of the matron, as was the general housekeeping. The master and the matron were usually a married couple, charged with running the workhouse "at the minimum cost and maximum efficiency – for the lowest possible wages". The largest workhouses included schools, lunatic asylums, workshops and infirmaries, and employed a staff of hundreds; the smallest may only have had a porter and perhaps an assistant nurse in addition to the master and matron.[26] A typical workhouse accommodating 225 inmates had a staff of five, which included a part-time chaplain and a part-time medical officer.[27]
The governor of a Victorian prison received £600 a year. A workhouse master and matron running a similarly sized organization received on average £80 a year between them.[citation needed] Workhouse chaplains and doctors were paid less than half of what they could expect anywhere else. Medical officers had to pay for the drugs they supplied.
Workhouse teachers were a particular problem. Workhouse guardians were keen to educate pauper children for the very good reason that if they could read and write they were less likely to return to the workhouse as adults. In Salisbury, Coventry and Deptford it was revealed that the appointed teacher (usually one of the paupers) was illiterate.[citation needed]
Living conditions

Living conditions after 1847 were governed by the Consolidated General Order, which contained a list of rules covering every aspect of workhouse life including diet, dress, education, discipline, and redress of grievances.[28] Inmates surrendered their own clothes and were required to wear a distinctive uniform. Men were provided with a striped cotton shirt, jacket and trousers, and a cloth cap. For women it was commonly a blue-and-white striped dress worn underneath a smock. Shoes were also provided.[29]
Inmates were free to leave as they wished after giving reasonable notice, generally considered to be three hours, but if a parent discharged him or herself then the children were also discharged, to prevent them from being abandoned.[28] Food and accommodation were provided free of charge, but by entering a workhouse paupers were held to have forfeited responsibility for their families; men and women were segregated and children were separated from their parents.[29] In some cases, like that of Henry Cook in 1814, the Poor Law authorities forced the husband to sell his wife rather than have to maintain her and her child in the Effingham workhouse. She was bought at Croydon market for one shilling; the parish paid for the cost of the journey and a "wedding dinner".[30]
Education was provided for the children, but they were often forcibly apprenticed without the permission or knowledge of their parents.[29] The comic actor Charlie Chaplin, who spent some time with his mother in Lambeth workhouse, records in his autobiography that when he and his half-brother returned to the workhouse after having been sent to a school in Hanwell he was met at the gate by his mother Hannah, dressed in her own clothes. Desperate to see them again she had discharged herself and the children; they spent the day together playing in Kennington Park and visiting a coffee shop, after which she readmitted them all to the workhouse.[31]
There were many well-meaning measures, such as the provision of medical officers and chaplains, but in many ways the treatment in a workhouse was little different from that in a prison, leaving many inmates feeling that they were being punished for the crime of poverty. Some workhouse masters embezzled the money intended for blankets, food and other essential items. Visitors reported rooms full of sick or elderly inmates with threadbare blankets and the windows wide open to the freezing weather.
Work
Daily workhouse schedule[29]
6:00 Rise
6:30–7:00 Breakfast
7:00–12:00 Work
12:00–13:00 Dinner
13:00–18:00 Work
18:00–19:00 Supper
20:00 Bedtime
Sunday was a day of rest. During the winter months inmates were allowed to rise an hour later and did not start work until 8:00 am.[29]
Historian M. A. Crowther has commented that the purpose of workhouse labour was never clear. In the early days of workhouses it was either a punishment or a source of income for the parish, but during the 19th century the idea of work as punishment became increasingly unfashionable. The idea began to take hold that work should rehabilitate the workhouse inmates for their eventual independence, and that it should therefore be rewarded with no more than the workers' maintenance, else there would be no incentive for them to seek work elsewhere.[32]
Some poor law authorities hoped that payment for the work undertaken by the inmates would produce a profit for their workhouses, or at least allow them to be be self-supporting, but that vision was never realised; whatever small profits could be produced never matched the running costs. In 1803 workhouse paupers nationally earned about £70,000 and cost about £40,000 to maintain, "nowhere near self-sufficiency". Local people also became concerned about the competition from cheap workhouse labour.[33]
Diet
In 1836 the Poor Law Commission distributed six diets for workhouse inmates, one of which was to be chosen by each Poor Law Union depending on its local circumstances.[29] The food was dreary but generally nutritionally adequate,[34] although there were notable exceptions. A government inquiry into conditions in the Andover workhouse in 1845, for instance, found that starving paupers were reduced to fighting over the rotting bones they were supposed to be grinding for fertilizer, to suck out the marrow.[35] The resulting scandal led to the withdrawal of bone-crushing as an employment for those living in workhouses and the replacement of the Poor Law Commission by the Poor Law Board in 1847.[29]
According to contemporary records great care was taken in preparing meals, and issues such as training staff to serve and weigh portions were well understood.[34] Gruel was a notable workhouse food, a staple of the workhouse diet.[36]
Discipline
Discipline was strict. For minor offences such as swearing or feigning sickness the "disorderly" could have their diet restricted for up to 48 hours. For more serious offences such as insubordination or violent behaviour the "refractory" could be confined for up to 24 hours, and might also have their diet restricted. Boys under the age of 14 could be beaten with "a rod or other instrument, such as may have been approved of by the Guardians". The persistently refractory, or anyone bringing "spirituous or fermented liquor" into the workhouse, could be taken before a Justice of the Peace and even jailed.[37] All punishments handed out were recorded in a punishment book, which was examined regularly by the workhouse guardians.[38]
Architecture



Victorian workhouse in Ripon, now used by the local council as offices
By the time the New Poor Law was introduced in 1834 many towns and villages already had workhouses, but the Poor Law Commissioners were scathing about the majority of them. They complained in particular that "in by far the greater number of cases, it is a large almshouse, in which the young are trained in idleness, ignorance, and vice; the able-bodied maintained in sluggish sensual indolence; the aged and more respectable exposed to all the misery that is incident to dwelling in such a society". The commission proposed that all new workhouses should allow for the segregation of paupers into at least four distinct groups, each to be housed separately: the aged and impotent, children, able-bodied males, and able-bodied females.[39]
After 1835 many workhouses were constructed with the central buildings surrounded by work and exercise yards enclosed behind brick walls, so-called "pauper bastilles". A common layout resembled Jeremy Bentham's prison panopticon, a radial design with four three-storey buildings at its centre set within a rectangular courtyard, the perimeter of which was defined by a three-storey entrance block and single-storey outbuildings, all enclosed by a wall. The basic design, by the architect Sampson Kempthorne, allowed for four separate work and exercise yards, one for each class of inmate.[40]
Later developments and abolition



Eventide: A Scene in the Westminster Union (workhouse), 1878, by Sir Hubert von Herkomer
As early as 1841 the Poor Law Commissioners were aware of an "insoluble dilemma" posed by the ideology behind the New Poor Law:[21]
If the pauper is always promptly attended by a skilful and well qualified medical practitioner ... if the patient be furnished with all the cordials and stimulants which may promote his recovery: it cannot be denied that his condition in these respects is better than that of the needy and industrious ratepayer who has neither the money nor the influence to secure prompt and careful attendance.[21]
The education of children presented a similar dilemma. It was provided free in the workhouse but had to be paid for by the "merely poor";[21] free elementary education for all children was not provided in the UK until 1918.[41] Instead of being "less eligible", those living in the workhouse were in certain respects "more eligible" than those living in poverty outside.[21]
By the late 1840s most workhouses outside London and the larger provincial towns housed only "the incapable, elderly and sick"; by the end of the century only about 20 percent of those admitted to workhouses were unemployed or destitute. Responsibility for administration of the Poor Law passed to the Local Government Board in 1871, and the emphasis soon shifted from the workhouse as "a receptacle for the helpless poor" to its role in the care of the sick and helpless.[42] A Royal Commission of 1905 reported that workhouses were unsuited to deal with the different categories of resident they had traditionally housed, and recommended that specialised institutions for each class of pauper should be established, in which they could be treated appropriately by properly trained staff. The "deterrent" workhouses were in future to be reserved for "incorrigibles such as drunkards, idlers and tramps".[43]
The Local Government Act of 1929 gave local authorities the power to take over workhouse infirmaries as municipal hospitals, although outside London few did so.[44] The workhouse system was abolished in the UK by the same Act on 1 April 1930, but many workhouses, renamed Public Assistance Institutions, continued under the control of local county councils.[45] Even as late as the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 there were still almost 100,000 people accommodated in the former workhouses, 5629 of whom were children.[46] It was not until the National Assistance Act of 1948 that the last vestiges of the Poor Law disappeared, and with them the workhouses.[45] Many of the buildings were converted into old folk's homes run by local authorities;[47] Slightly more than 50 percent of local authority accommodation for the elderly was provided in former workhouses in 1960.[48]
See also

Poorhouse
Almshouse
Book of Murder
Unfree labour
Wife selling