Workhouses - just how bad were they?

[Just Gillian]

I came across a sad little piece yesterday in Jackson's Oxford Journal of September 1876.

One of OH's by marriage, aged 77, was charged with sleeping in a closet in Worcester Street the previous evening. The Workhouse Superintendent said she had only come out of the Union that day. She was discharged after promising to return to the Workhouse.

Her husband had died in 1874 and her death was registered in March Q 1877.
The report said nothing about her being of unsound mind, so presumably sleeping rough had seemed a better option than staying in the Workhouse, even at her age.

[Little Nell]

I know that the very word "workhouse" conjures up grim thoughts. But we don't know what this woman was doing - maybe she disliked the idea of being given "charity" or wanted her independence. Perhaps she was hoping to walk to a family member hoping they would take her in?

I am always saddened when I find any of my lot died in the workhouse, even though they were probably in the infirmary receiving some form of care.

[Guy]

How long is a piece of string?

By the 1870s life in many workhouses had changed for the better, however as with everything some were good some where bad and many were average.

There was always a stigma attached to the workhouse and even after many had been changed to hospitals many elderly folk feared going in as they felt they would never come out alive.

Even today many old folk have that impression about hospitals which is the legacy of the workhouse. It follows that even if the workhouse she was in was a good workhouse she might have preferred not to stay in it.
Cheers
Guy

[Just Gillian]

Nell - she was the widow of OH's gt gt grandfather's cousin and was from Ireland. She had no children. The only surviving family member in the Oxford area would have been a widowed cousin from her husband's family who was 76 herself and died within weeks of this case. This cousin had a considerable amount of property, so I suppose it's possible she was trying to reach her to ask for assistance.

Worcester Street is a fair few miles from the Headington Union so I'm guessing she must have been reasonably fit still. Her death certificate is too much of a luxury item for now, but I suppose it is most likely she died in the workhouse.

How long is a piece of string?
Guy

Guy - Thanks for your reply.I guess it was that sort of question!

And I am guilty of making the assumption that she was opting for a life sleeping rough, whereas she might, as Nell suggested, have been on her way to ask for assistance.

[Olde Crone Holden]

I suppose some people have a better developed sense of independence than others.

I know that if the day comes when my daughters put me in an old people's home, I shall be doing my regular best to escape!

As Guy says, some Workhouses were good, some bad and some indifferent. But they were all very regimented and the ethos was always that conditions should be WORSE inside the workhouse than out.

I expect it would have been just like being in prison.

OC

[Mary from Italy]

... except that prisoners have a release date to look forward to.

[Mary from Italy]

Life was meant to be much tougher inside the workhouse than outside, and the buildings themselves were deliberately grim & intimidating - they were designed to look like prisons. They were full of illness & disease brought about by over-crowding & the starvation diet.

When you were admitted to the workhouse, you were stripped, searched, washed & had your hair cropped. You were made to wear a prison-style uniform.

Women were at all times kept separate from the men, including their husbands. Children were kept separately from adults - even from their own parents.

The union workhouse, a history & resource

[Mary from Italy]

There's a horrific description of a workhouse here:

Victorian London - Houses and Housing - Housing of the Poor - Workhouses

(scroll down to the section entitled "A Night in a Workhouse")

[Olde Crone Holden]

I think the Workhouses made strenuous efforts to find ANY relatives who might have the means to support (or employ) workhouse inmates.

She may of course have had some kind of dementia, or other disability which meant that no distant relative would take her in.

OC

[Just Gillian]

the ethos was always that conditions should be WORSE inside the workhouse than out.

I expect it would have been just like being in prison.
OC

OC - I imagine there were also as many more fortunate members of the public then as now who were ever-eager to object to their taxes going towards the upkeep of those they perceived as "scroungers".

Following links from Mary's below, it appears that, in the mid 19th century at least, the workhouse per capita food allowance was approximately half that of a prisoner.

The union workhouse, a history & resource

Thank you for that link Mary. There is some grim reading there!

I was especially horrified by -
"Bones were crushed by hand to make fertiliser. Sometimes the inmates were so hungry that they would pick scraps of flesh off the bones and eat it. The bones were not all animal bones either! Bone crushing was banned after 1845."

The childless cousin of the deceased husband of the old woman I referred to in my first post was living very comfortably in Oxford at the time, owned several properties and had part of her deceased bedel husband's pension annually. I am tempted now to look for her will!

But, in reality - would it be any different today? I'm not sure what my own reaction would be if the partner of some deceased cousin applied to me for financial assistance.

[Just Gillian]

I think the Workhouses made strenuous efforts to find ANY relatives who might have the means to support (or employ) workhouse inmates.

She may of course have had some kind of dementia, or other disability which meant that no distant relative would take her in.

OC

She was from Ireland, so may have had no family of her own in the country. Her deceased husband was an immigrant from Switzerland and there is no evidence that his parents or siblings came here.

[Olde Crone Holden]

It was the appalling conditions in the Andover Workhouse, where inmates were eating the putrefying bones of horses intended for glue making, which led to the formation of the Union Workhouses, which was supposed to put an end to such inhuman conditions.

(The motivation for this came from horrified members of the UPPER CLASSES, by the way, so the Gentry weren't entirely inhuman).

I do have one wealthy farmer who took TEN inmates from the Workhouse, all bearing his surname, to be farm servants.

This would be because he was a Ratepayer, and was therefore entitled to pick his workers from the workhouse inmates. I expect it also pleased something in him to be helping his "kinsfolk" although I haven't yet established any contemporary family connection.

The Union Workhouses which were inspired by such high ideals, turned out to be a lot worse in most cases than the old Parish Poor Houses. These had always been run with a modicum of common sense and compassion where compassion didn't cost the ratepayer anything, and a system of out-relief was in place for those who fell temporarily on hard times.

Say an ag lab broke his leg and could not work. Pre-Union days, the parish might pay him a subsistence allowance which would enable him to keep his family together until such time as he was able to work again.

The Union system would take the whole family into the workhouse, sell their bits and bobs, separate the whole family and often it would mean the end of the family unit, who would be peeled off one by one to go and work somewhere.

There are elderly people in my area who refused wholesale to go and live in a very nice block of flats which had been converted by the council from the local Workhouse. Most said they would rather live in a field than go there, and one chap said "I was four when I last saw my mother, going through the gates of that place. She died in there and so did two of my brothers. Why would I want to live there?"

OC

[Jill on the A272]

Workhouses were not abolished until the late 1920s, (date escapes me) and my mother in law remembers men at the Cuckfield workhouse who were given a daily cheese allowance used to throw it away in her lane at it tasted so foul.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Jill

I am fairly sure the Workhouses weren't abolished until the 1940s, with the advent of the welfare state.

Certainly where I lived as a child, the old Workhouse still existed, although not called that, it was full of life-long inmates, and was a Workhouse in all but name.

OC

[David B]

This is a really good site about workhouses with some really good photographs.

www.workhouses.org.uk - The Workhouse Web Site

[kathyhpink]

A bit like the old gaols - Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, was very rough, but during the Irish potato famine, people were committing crimes so they could be sent to jail and be fed. In gaol they were fed in the morning with oats and half a pint of milk and in the evening they were given bread and some milk. Very depressing, but very interesting!

[Just Gillian]

Thanks for that link David. I've just had a look at pictures of the Wells workhouse OH's great grandmother had to keep going into every time her bigamist husband did a runner!

[Mary from Italy]

Most of the sites mentioned in this thread were already in the Wiki, and if anyone has any other interesting ones, they could be added.

Workhouses/Hospitals/Asylums And Sanitoriums - Family Tree Forum

[Lynn The Forest Fan]

I found it sad that my ggg grandmother appears on the 1881 census in the Chatham workhouse, as she had several surviving children who could have taken her in. I haven't been able to check the records to find out why she was in there & there is no trace of her afterwards, so I have no idea if she died there.