Life in the workhouse: everything you wanted to know - HistoryExtra
"‘The workhouse was always part of what we'd call the welfare system, or in those days that the poor relief system. And that really goes back to the Elizabethan days. Parishes started collecting money from all their householders. And most of that money was actually used as handouts. Pensions even actually even date back to that kind of, that period. And the workhouse kind of grew up within that welfare system.
And it really had two main functions. One, it was a place where people who couldn't even get by with a handout, the elderly, the chronically sick, the mentally ill, orphaned children, those sort of people needed a refuge somewhere that would look after them. And later on, it also took on another function, which was for dealing with what were called the able bodied poor. People, you know, who are quite capable of working, but for some reason, weren't earning any money. And if those people wanted help from the parish, then instead of a handout, they could be offered a place in this institution called the workhouse where they would really have to work in return for their board and lodging.
And in fact, the, the workhouse became a, what's called a test of someone's destitution or need, if they were prepared to go to this place, then that was fine. They were clearly deserving. If it worked, as far as the parish was concerned, it would bring down the cost of looking after the poor. You'd get rid of lots of people who were really deserving of help, by only offering them the workhouse. Probably about one in five, one in six parishes over the years decided to run a workhouse.
But handouts were always the main way of helping the poor. The workhouse, although it's the most kind of visible part of this whole welfare system, was actually in financial terms and in numbers of people who were being held, was a bit of a minor player...
Certainly Oliver Twist and lots of the versions of it that appeared over the years have created this picture that's, that's far from the truth. In Oliver Twist, the boys in the workhouse if I remember rightly, exist on a diet of gruel and an onion on Sundays, and there was never a workhouse where that was the diet. There was never a workhouse where the inmates existed solely on gruel. And in fact, in some work houses, the food was very good. You know, you've got three very square meals a day. It varied enormously though, because each parish could do its own thing and some parishes obviously sort of more generous than others in what they provided. But interestingly, the sort of the negative parts of Oliver Twist, were used to sort of run down the new system... the musical Oliver, there's a song called boy for sale. Workhouses never sold boys. They were offered for apprenticeships, but they, they came with money. Not, you didn't get money from their future employer, you gave some money for him to take them off their hands. So there's lots of sort of distortions...
If you look at Dickens’s more journalistic writings, in the various magazines that he was involved in, he visited a few work houses and related establishments, and was actually sometimes quite either complimentary or sympathetic towards them. So I think, viewing Dickens as a stern critic of the workhouse is probably you know, not, not a fair picture.’...
‘Many of the workhouse buildings are incredibly beautiful, and she says like the factory medical museum in Leeds. People know that one. So why was so much cost put into building them to then be so miserly with the inmates?’...
‘You got paid a percentage of the cost price of the building, if you, if you design a very big building, your 3%, or whatever it was, was actually quite a decent, decent cut. So it's it's kind of an interesting story that goes with that...
It was always an offer, you'll never be put in the workhouse sent, sent to the workhouse, sentenced to the workhouse, it was always an offer. And it's a bit like today, if you're unemployed, there's unemployment assistance, but you're not forced to claim it... There are people who are usually referred to as the ins and outs. They use the workhouse just like a free lodging house. They turn up on a Monday, get checked in, stay a couple of days and then decide they had enough, you know, discharge themselves, go visit Auntie Flo, you know, in the next village, and then she’ll throw you out and are back on the workhouse doorstep a couple days later. There were people who literally check themselves in and out of the workhouse, dozens and dozens of times a year for different amounts that you know, anything between, you know, even just as little as one day, and go in and said, oh, stuff this, and they’ll laugh. In the 1870s the rules were changed slightly so that if you had been in, you know, in the last month, then you couldn't leave within so many days. The longer, the more times you've just been in and out, the longer you had to stay until you could discharge yourself again. So it was, you know, but up till that point, they, these people were the bane of the workhouse staff life, because there was this long admission discharge procedure, even if you left the next day...
The thing about the workhouse infirmary is that really up till the 1860s workhouses were probably the worst place you'd want to get sick in to some degree. Because the nursing was done by elderly female inmates on the whole, and a lot of those, those women couldn't read and write, they couldn't read instructions on bottles or instructions left by the doctor. And they were actually drunk most of the time, you know, they often got a, you know, a ration of beer, volunteering to the job in the first place, and a lot of the things that were dispensed to the sick poor in the workhouse infirmary, you know, were either brandy or Porter or, or, you know, they contained alcohol in some shape or form. And a lot of that stuff didn't always quite make it to the patient. And you literally, you know, I’m being quite serious, a lot of workhouse nurses, you know, were actually the worst for wear, you know, by nine o'clock in the morning...
If you were poor, outside the workhouse, but couldn't afford a doctor, because you had to pay for doctors in those days, then you would increasingly be packed off to the workhouse infirmary, for any treatment that you needed. And as a result of that, in many places, the workhouse infirmary became the local hospital for poor people. And again, because of that increased traffic then the workhouse medical facilities expanded as a reaction and in many workhouse, particularly ones in cities, the workhouse medical facilities outgrew the accommodation for the poor, they basically became large hospitals. When the National Health Service in England and Wales was formed in 1948, you know, it had this culture of free access to all, actually going back 60 years or more. And it inherited a lot of workhouse sites. A big proportion of the NHS real estate in 1948 was former workers infirmaries. In fact, the new system was inaugurated at a workhouse infirmary up in Lancashire’"
