I Was Born In The Workhouse!

[Paul Barton, Special Agent]

I've just foud out that Hammersmith Hospital, where I was born, was built as a workhouse. In fact it's astonishing how many London hospitals were converted from workhouses.

[Olde Crone Holden]

So was I Paul - the Workhouse I mean.

Most Workhouses were converted into hospitals in the ealy 1900s and then taken over by the National Health Service in the 1940s, as they were ready made and ready-equipped.

From the early 1900s (can't remember the exact date) the Registrar General instructed all Registrars not to put "Workhouse" or "Institution" on any certificate, such was the stigma of being either born or dying there. Only the street address was to be used.

OC

[JBee]

50+ years ago after babies were born in the local hospital they went to a lying in hospital for a few days until they went home. This lying in hospital was the old fever hospital - hope all the germs had gone!!!!!! It's since been knocked down.

[Margaret in Burton]

Place where I was born used to be the workhouse as well.
Then it was converted to the maternity wing.
The whole of Burton hospital is built on what was the workhouse site now.

[Velma Dinkley]

My local outpatients hospital used to be the workhouse. The old buildings used to house the wards for old people in respite care and they hated it, knowing it's former use. They're now used for offices and storage.

[Helen Smith Too]

Our Workhouse became a hospital, and many of the elderly town residents didn't like being treated there. It's been demolished, and a housing estate is being built there. The streets are being named after some of the doctors that used to work there.

Our old maternity hospital is now a private residental home, raising the possibility of more people being born and dying in the same building.

[Sue at the seaside]

I was born in a Salvation Army Hospital for unmarried mothers....well it had been in the past. Mum said she always got a funny look when she said she was having the baby there, she was well and truly married! By the time I was born it was just a Salvation Army Maternity Hosp, but the stigma was still attatched to it.

[Uncle John]

My elder daughter was born in the workhouse. By the time her sister came along they'd built a maternity unit at the main hospital. The workhouse building also housed a geriatric unit, so hatches and near-dispatches were in adjacent wards.

[Margaret in Burton]

I was born in a Salvation Army Hospital for unmarried mothers....well it had been in the past. Mum said she always got a funny look when she said she was having the baby there, she was well and truly married! By the time I was born it was just a Salvation Army Maternity Hosp, but the stigma was still attatched to it.

That reminds me of something my mil said when I asked why she had OH at home when the hospital was only 200 yards away from where they lived.
She was shocked and said that there was no way she was having her baby in the workhouse.

As I am 3 years older than OH and I was born there I was very insulted. I told her it wasnt the workhouse by that time (1956). She was having none of it.

Funny though I had both my children in the same hospital and she never said that then. Perhaps realised she had upset me.

[Sue at the seaside]

I was just having a look through "my favourites" and came across this, wondered if it might be of interest. www.workhouses.org.uk - The Workhouse Web Site

[perranmaid]

I was also born in the Workhouse and then did most of my training 18 years later in the near dispatches (coining Uncle John) in the adjacent ward. By then the whole place was the geriatric unit.

[Little Nell]

Hitchin Workhouse was converted to a maternity hospital and then into an old people's home, but it also does outpatient work of a non-acute kind. A road that runs nearby is still called "Union Path" (it was the Union Workhouse).

So my children were born in Stevenage, which annoyed me - I would have liked them to be born in their home town.

I was born in Redhill (which was much further away from parents' home than other hospitals, but it was all to do with our GP).

[Little Nell]

Oh dear. Just googled and found:

"The site of the Redhill General - next to Earlswood common - has also now been used for housing. The General was previously known as the Redhill County Hospital (and briefly the Surrey County Hospital, Redhill) and could trace its origins back as far as 1794, when 'The Union' workhouse occupied the site."

[allie island]

Isn't it funny that now we say with some pride "I was born in the workhouse"!

My Grandad was born in the Strand Union in 1898, but his mother wasn't an inmate (as I discovered when I went to the LMA) as the record says "discharged herself to own home".
I think my aunts were ashamed of where their Dad was born, so I was pleased to tell them the real story!

[Laura the Explorer]

Hi
I am not telling you this really but I was born in Parkhyrst LOL





Laura

[allie island]

Hi
I am not telling you this really but I was born in Parkhyrst LOL Laura

The Prison or the Forest? ;):D

I can see the forest from my house