Why Did People Enter the Workhouse?

People ended-up in the workhouse for a variety of reasons. Usually, it was because they were too poor, old or ill to support themselves. This may have resulted from such things as a lack of work during periods of high unemployment, or someone having no family willing or able to provide care for them when they became elderly or sick. Unmarried pregnant women were often disowned by their families and the workhouse was the only place they could go during and after the birth of their child. Prior to the establishment of public mental asylums in the mid-nineteenth century (and in some cases even after that), the mentally ill and mentally handicapped poor were often consigned to the workhouse. Workhouses, though, were never prisons, and entry into them was generally a voluntary although often painful decision. It also carried with it a change in legal status until 1918, receipt of poor relief meant a loss of the right to vote. The operation of workhouses, and life and conditions inside them, varied over the centuries in the light of current legislation and economic and social conditions. The aims of many pre1834 workhouses are well expressed in this 1776 sign above the door of Rollesby workhouse in Norfolk:
East & West Flegg workhouse, Rollesby, 2000. Peter Higginbotham.

The emphasis in earlier times was more towards the relief of destitution rather than deterrence of idleness which characterized many of the institutions set up under the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act.

Entering the Workhouse

Whatever the regime inside the workhouse, entering it would have been a distressing experience. New inmates would often have already been through a period of severe hardship. It was for good reason that the entrance to the Birmingham union workhouse was through an arch locally known as the "Archway of Tears".
Archway of Tears at Birmingham workhouse, 2000. Peter Higginbotham.

The Admission Procedure

Admission into the workhouse first required an interview to establish the applicant's circumstances. This was most often undertaken by a Relieving Officer who would visit each part of the union on a regular basis. However, the workhouse Master could also interview anyone in urgent need of relief.
St Marylebone workhouse Master's admission ticket, c.1901. Peter Higginbotham.

Formal admission into the workhouse proper was authorised by the Board of Guardians at their weekly meetings, where an applicant could summoned to justify their application. This would no doubt have been an intimidating experience the heroine of the 1840s novel Jessie Phillips collapsed on the board-room floor. Half a century later, however, a cartoon in Punch showed how times and attitudes had changed in the intervening years.
Before the Board (from Jessie Phillips by Frances Trollope (1844). Peter Higginbotham.

Guardians' Interrogation (from Punch, 1899). Peter Higginbotham.

Prior to their formal admission into the main workhouse, new arrivals would be placed in a receiving or probationary ward. There the workhouse medical officer would examine them to check on their state of health. Those suffering from any infectious illness would be placed in a sick ward. Each new arrival at the workhouse would go through a fairly involved admission procedure. After all the necessary paperwork had been completed, paupers were stripped, bathed, and issued with a workhouse uniform. Children (although not adults) could be required to have their hair cut. An inmate's own clothes would be washed and disinfected and then put into store along with any other possessions they had and only returned to them when they left the workhouse.
Liverpool inmates' bathing regulations

Leaving the Workhouse

While residing in a workhouse, paupers were not allowed out without permission. Shortterm absence could be granted for various reasons, such as a parent attending their child's baptism, or to visit a sick or dying relative. Able-bodied inmates could also be allowed out to seek work. Although there was often little to physically prevent a pauper from walking out of the workhouse, to do so without permission would result in a charge of the theft of union property his workhouse uniform. Any pauper could, however, on giving "reasonable notice" typically three hours discharge himself from the workhouse. His clothes would then be fetched from the store and more administrative paperwork would need to be completed. In the case of a man with a family, the whole family would have to leave if he left. Despite the lengthy admission and discharge procedures, some paupers treated the workhouse as a free lodging, leaving and departing as the fancy took them. It was not unknown for a pauper to discharge himself in the morning and then return demanding readmission the same evening, possibly the worse for wear from drink. In 1901, one 81-yearold woman named Julia Blumsun recorded 163 separate admissions to the City of London workhouse, while a 40-year-old man in the Poplar workhouse had been in and out 593 times over the period since 1884. These were the most extreme examples of what became known as the "ins-and-outs". Because of the amount of time they took to deal with, became the bane of the workhouse staff's life. Eventually, in the early 1900s, new regulations were introduced to lengthen the amount of notice required depending on how recently an inmate had previously discharged himself. Perhaps a more typical example of the ins-and-outs is provided by seven-year-old Charlie Chaplin who in 1896 briefly became an inmate of the Lambeth union workhouse, together with his mother, Hannah, and his older half-brother Sydney. After a three-week probationary period, the two children were then transferred to the Central London District School at Hanwell. Two months later, the children were returned to the workhouse where they were met at the gate by Hannah, dressed in her own clothes. In desperation to see them, she had discharged herself from the workhouse, along with the children. After a day spent playing in Kennington park and visiting a coffee-shop, they returned to the workhouse and had to go through the whole admissions procedure once more, with the children again staying there for a probationary period before returning to Hanwell. Many inmates were, however, to become long-term residents of the workhouse. A Parliamentary report of 1861 found that, nation-wide, over 20 percent of inmates had been in the workhouse for more than five years. These were mostly consisted of elderly, chronically sick, and mentally ill paupers. Fifteen inmates in the survey had been workhouse residents for sixty years or more. Institutionalization of inmates, particularly women, was something that was to continue right until the end of the workhouse era. In the past few years, whilst visiting a number of former workhouses that now operate as care homes for the elderly, I have been told on two separate occasions that one of the establishment's current residents had been there since the 1920s. Originally, the Poor Law Commissioners anticipated that union workhouse inmates would make their own clothes and shoes, providing a useful work task and a cost saving. However, they probably failed to realise the level of skill required to perform this and uniforms were

more usually bought-in. Uniforms were usually made from fairly coarse materials with the emphasis being on hard-wearing rather than on comfort and fitting. In 1837, the Guardians of Hereford union advertised for the supply of inmates' clothing. For the men this consisted of jackets of strong 'Fernought' cloth, breeches or trousers, striped cotton shirts, cloth cap and shoes. For women and girls, there were strong 'grogram' gowns, calico shifts, petticoats of Linsey-Woolsey material, Gingham dresses, day caps, worsted stockings and woven slippers. ('Fernought' or 'Fearnought' was a stout woollen cloth, mainly used on ships as outside clothing for bad weather. Linsey-Woolsey was a fabric with a linen, or sometimes cotton, warp and a wool weft its name came from the village of Linsey in Sussex. Grogram was a coarse fabric of silk, or of mohair and wool, or of a mixture of all these, often stiffened with gum.) By 1900, male inmates were usually kitted out in jacket, trousers and waistcoat. Instead of a cap, the bowler hat had become the standard issue for male inmates in southern unions such as Tonbridge in Kent. In later years, the uniform for able-bodied women was generally a shapeless, waistless, blue-and-white-striped frock reaching to the ankles, with a smock over. Old women wore a bonnet or mop-cap, shawl, and apron over. The daughter of the matron of Ongar workhouse in the early 1900s recalls that: My mother made all the women's dresses, I think. They were blue and white striped cotton material, lined. Some wore white aprons and some did not. I think the ones who worked wore caps, and the dear grannies who did not work, bonnets. They had woollen material shawls to wear, and red flannel petticoats tied around the waist, thick black stockings and black shoes or boots. The men wore thick corduroy trousers, thick black jackets and black hats, grey flannel shirts, black thick socks and hobnailed boots. For many years, certain categories of inmate were marked out by clothing or badges of a particular colour, for example, yellow for pregnant women who were unmarried. In 1839, the Poor Law Commissioners issued a minute entitled "Ignominious Dress for Unchaste Women in Workhouses" in which they deprecated these practices. However, more subtle forms of such identification often continued. At the Mitford and Launditch workhouse at Gressenhall, unmarried mothers were made to wear a 'jacket' of the same material used for other workhouse clothing. This practice, which resulted in their being referred to as 'jacket women', continued until 1866. Workhouses varied enormously in size, with the smallest such as Belford in Northumberland housing fifty inmates, while the largest such as Liverpool could be home for several thousand. However, all workhouses were essentially a self-contained and often largely self-supporting community. Apart from the basic rooms such as a dining-hall for eating, day-rooms for the elderly, and dormitories for sleeping, workhouses often had their own bakery, laundry, tailor's and shoe-maker's, vegetable gardens and orchards, and even a piggery for rearing pigs. There would also be school-rooms, workshops, nurseries, infirmary and fever wards for the sick, a chapel, and a dead-room or mortuary. Workhouses were also highly compartmentalised to separate the various classes of inmates, with the yards between the various buildings being divided up by eight-foot-high walls.

You can get a good idea of the complexity of a workhouse from old maps or plans. You can see examples of these on some of the pages for individual institutions such as Manchester or Oxford. For more detail on the different styles and layouts of workhouse buildings, see the architecture section. The workhouse tour section of the web-site will also show you what many of the buildings actually looked like. Once inside the workhouse, an inmate's only possessions were their uniform and the bed they had in their own dormitory. Beds were simply constructed with an wooden or ironframe, and could be as little as two feet across. Bedding, in the 1830s and 1840s at least, was generally a mattress and cover, both filled with straw, although blankets and sheets were later introduced. Bed-sharing, particularly amongst children, was common although it became prohibited for adult paupers.
Early iron beds from Gressenhall workhouse. Peter Higginbotham.

For vagrants and casuals, the 'bed' could be a wooden box rather like a coffin, or even just be a raised wooden platform, or the bare floor. In some places, metal rails provided a support for low-slung hammocks. The inmates' toilet facilities were often a simple privy a cess-pit with a simple cover having a hole in it on which to sit shared perhaps by as many as 100 inmates. Dormitories were usually provided with chamber pots, or a communal 'tub'. After 1860, some workhouses experimented with earth closets boxes containing dry soil which could afterwards be used as fertiliser. They were mostly used by rural workhouses where there was a ready supply of soil and there the spent soil could be usefully disposed of. Once a week, the inmates were bathed (usually superintended another assault on their dignity) and the men shaved. Meals were usually eaten in a large communal dining-hall which often doubled-up as a chapel. Some dining-halls had religious mottoes on the wall, reminding inmates that they should be grateful for the care they were being given. The addition of separate chapels, often funded by charitable contributions, became more common from the 1860s onwards. As elsewhere in the workhouse, men and women were segregated. The chapel at the Tonbridge workhouse had separate entrances for men and women.

The daily routine for workhouse inmates prescribed by the Poor Law Commissioners in 1835 was as follows: Hour of Rising. 25 March to 29 September 29 September to 25 March Interval for Breakfast. Time for setting to Work. Interval for Dinner. From 12 to 1. From 12 to 1. Time for leaving off Work 6 o'clock. 6 o'clock. Interval for Supper. 6 to 7. 6 to 7.

Ti go Be

6 o'clock. From past 6 7 o'clock. to 7. 7 o'clock. From past 7 8 o'clock. to 8.

8.

8.

Half an hour after the workhouse bell was rung for rising, the Master or Matron performed a roll-call in each section of the workhouse. The bell also announced meal breaks during which the rules required that "silence, order and decorum shall be maintained" although from 1842 the word "silence" was dropped.

Food in the Parish Workhouse

The diet fed to workhouse inmates was often laid down in great detail. For example, the rules for the parish workhouse of of St John at Hackney in the 1750s stipulated a daily allowance of: 7 Ounces of Meat when dressed, without Bones, to every grown Person, 2 Ounces of Butter, 4 Ounces of Cheese, 1 Pound of Bread, 3 Pints of Beer Weak or "small" beer was widely consumed by both adults and children, both for its flavour and also as an alternative to water whose quality could be very variable. Many workhouses made their own beer and had a brewhouse specifically for this purpose. More often than not, meals followed a weekly rota, with meat featuring on only a limited number of "meat days". The weekly menu at Hertford in 1729 comprised: Breakfast Sunday Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday Saturday Broth Dinner Supper Broth

Bread & Cheese Meat

Pease-Porridge Bread and Cheese Broth Bread and Cheese Broth

Bread & Cheese Hasty-Pudding Bread and Cheese Broth Broth Frumety

Wednesday Bread & Cheese Meat Bread & Cheese Ox-Head

Hasty-Pudding Bread and Cheese N. B.. None are Stinted as to Quantity, but all eat till they are satisfy'd.

Workhouse diets are often thought of as being very plain and meagre but this was often far from the truth. At Brighton in 1834, the 336 workhouse inmates were provided with three

meals a day with no limits on quantity. Men received two pints of beer a day, children one pint, and women a pint of beer and a pint of tea. There were six meat dinners in the week and the inmates were served at table with the governor carving for the men and boys, and the matron for the women and girls. The full diet is shown below.

Death in the Workhouse

If an inmate died in the workhouse, the death was notified to their family who could, if they wished, organize a funeral themselves. If this did not happen, which was often the case because of the expense, the Guardians arranged a burial in a local cemetery or burial ground this was originally required to be in the parish where the workhouse stood, but later rules allowed it to be the deceased's own parish if they or their relatives had expressed such a wish. A few workhouses had their own burial ground on or adjacent to the workhouse site. The burial would be in the cheapest possible coffin and in an unmarked grave, into which several coffins might be placed on the same occasion. Under the terms of the 1832 Anatomy Act, bodies unclaimed for forty-eight hours could also be disposed of by donating them for use in medical research and training this was not specific to workhouses, but applied to any institution whose inmates died while in its care. Deaths were, however, always registered in the normal way.

Christmas in the Workhouse

In the era of the parish workhouse, prior to 1834, Christmas Day was the traditional occasion of a treat for most workhouse inmates. In 1828, for example, inmates of the St Martin-in-the-Fields workhouse received roast beef, plum pudding, and one pint of porter each. In the Bristol workhouse in the 1790s, the Christmas Day (and Whit Sunday) dinner included baked veal and plum pudding. At the same date, Leeds workhouse inmates were given veal and bacon for dinner at Easter and Whitsuntide, roast beef at Christmas, and 1lb. of spiced cake each at each of these festivals. At Carlisle on Christmas Day the workhouse inmates were allowed roast mutton, plum pudding, best cheese, and ale. However, in the new union workhouses set up by the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, things were rather different, at least to begin with. The Poor Law Commissioners ordered that no extra food was to be allowed on Christmas day (or any other feast day). The rules also stated that "no pauper shall be allowed to have or use any wine, beer, or spirituous or fermented liquors, unless by the direction in writing of the medical officer." Nevertheless, some unions chose to disregard the rules and celebrate Christmas in the traditional way. In Cerne Abbas, for example, the new workhouse's first Christmas dinner in 1837 included plum pudding and strong beer. At Andover, the inmates received bread and cheese on the previous "meat day" so as to save a ration of beef for Christmas day. Despite the lack of festive fare, Christmas Day was (along with Good Friday and each Sunday) one of the special days when no work, except the necessary household work and cooking, was performed by the workhouse inmates. By 1840, the Poor Law Commissioners revised their rules to allow extra treats to be provided, so long as they came from private sources and not from union funds. Following

the Queen's marriage to Prince Albert in 1841, the the Victorian celebration of Christmas took off in a big way, with the importing of German customs such as Christmas trees and the giving of presents. Dickens' A Christmas Carol also raised the profile of the event. In 1847, the new Poor Law Board who succeeded the Poor Law Commissioners relented further and sanctioned the provision of Christmas extras from the rates. By the middle of the century, Christmas Day (or more often Boxing Day, December 26th) had a became a regular occasion for the Guardians to visit the workhouse and dispense food and largesse. The workhouse dining-hall would be decorated and entertainments organised. The Western Gazette's 1887 report on the Christmas festivities in Chard is typical: The inmates, thanks to the liberality of the Guardians and the kindness of Mr and Mrs Pallin, spent a very enjoyable time on Christmas Day and Boxing day. The pretty chapel was nicely decorated with holly and over the Communion-table was a cross of Christmas berries. On the walls were the words "Emmanuel, God with us". The inmates afterwards had cake and tea, which was much enjoyed. On Monday the usual festivities took place. The dining hall was elaborately decorated with evergreens, mottoes, gilded stars and Prince of Wales' plumes. ...The mottoes were of the usual; festive character but one, expressive of esteem, "Long Life to Mr and Mrs Pallin" showed the feeling entertained by the inmates towards those put over them. Dinner was served at two p.m. and consisted of prime roast beef, potatoes, baked and boiled, and each adult had a pint of beer. One ounce of tobacco was given to each man, snuff to the old ladies, and oranges and sweets to the children. After tea, which comprised cake and bread and butter, a capital magic lantern display was given and was thoroughly enjoyed by young and old. Then followed some ancient ditties, sung by the old people, and those who liked tripped it merrily. Songs were sung by the Master, Porter and several friends, and a very enjoyable evening came to an end. Cheers were given for those who had strived to make them happy. Even at Christmas time, though, some workhouse rules stayed firmly in force, such as the segregation of males and females seen in the 1874 illustration below of Christmas festivities in the Whitechapel workhouse.