Hello. This week we're talking about a subject which is very close to my heart,
and that is welfare. And we're going to clear up a few things about the Victorian Workhouse.
When you think of the workhouse you're almost immediately drawn to the works of Dickens and the
vision of destitution that's in each and every one of his books. But Dickens is creating a narrative.
A narrative around his own opinions of the workhouse, and what he did was he combined elements
seen in a wide range of earlier workhouses to create the ultimate dank and desperate setting.
Using Dickens to learn what workhouses are like is like using Shakespeare to get a handle on
Richard III. They're writing fictions. Albeit they're writing fictions with undeniably vivid
narratives, and it's very easy to forget that, but they are fictions all the same.
So with that in mind we've come today to settle four big myths about the Victorian workhouse.
Myth number one! They're not prisons. We have this idea that a person or whole family is
sentenced to a workhouse and then once in the workhouse that's where they must stay
and this is simply not the case. Entering the Workhouse is entirely voluntary. Well, it is for
adults at least. It's true that your circumstances might dictate that you have no other choice and it
may be your only alternative to homelessness or destitution, but it is still voluntary. There
isn't some overbearing beadle or parish guardian who determines that you're not wealthy enough or
productive enough and sentences you to live out your days in the workhouse. That's just wrong.
In fact as well as it being entirely your own choice as to whether or not you go into a
workhouse as well, it actually takes some effort to get admitted. You can't just walk up to the door and
knock. If you're applying for parish relief then you would first apply via your parish Poor Law
Guardians. Then you would be visited by a Relieving Officer who would judge the sort of relief that
would be appropriate. If you were able-bodied and capable of work then you'd likely be
offered admission to the workhouse, you'd be given the appropriate documentation to show that you had
permission to enter the workhouse, and you'd go off and report for admission. If you're not
able to work then you may be offered parish money or outdoor poor relief. You still retain the right
to decline these though. There might not be anything else offered as an alternative if you did
so but again welfare and workhouses were voluntary. You could refuse, and just as it's your decision to
go into the workhouse it is also entirely your decision as to if you leave. Most workhouse stays
were totally temporary. You gave a few hours notice of your intention to leave and then you were off.
Again there wasn't any kind of like grants or assistance going outside, so
transitioning to the outside actually could be quite difficult. But they weren't going to force
you to stay. Now a minor exception to this were the casual wards, which offered a little more than
the roof over your head. They required inmates to stay until at least 9.00am after one full day of
admission and work. But this was really to stop them becoming just a free lodging house. Again,
workhouses are not prisons. So Victorian Workhouse myth number two. They're just not Victorian.
We think of the Workhouse as a quintessentially Victorian institution and it's true that
the Victorian era was their golden age, or possibly when they are the bleakest of houses,
but the workhouse institution massively predates this time. The seeds of the workhouse appear as
early as the 14th Century when the 1388 Statute of Cambridge placed restrictions on the movement
of labour, as a response to labour shortages in the aftermath of the Black Death. Since the poor
could not leave the area to find work this is the first time the state has to become involved
in the lives of the poor. At this time a great proportion of that sort of work fell on the church,
but then Henry VIII was going to come along and see fit to end a lot of that.
But the birth of the workhouse as we know them really comes from as early as the end of Elizabeth
the First's reign, when the 1601 Act for the Relief of the Poor made parishes responsible for the care
of the poor in their distric,t and the able-bodied poor were offered work in houses of correction.
That'll be a time when workouts were prisons. 1631 is the earliest reference we have and that's when
the Mayor of Abingdon wrote "we have erected within our borough a workhouse to set poor people to work".
So, far from being a Victorian thing, they've actually been with us since late Tudor times.
Now myth number three. The food was not as bad as you think.
When we think of food at a workhouse we're pretty much straight back into the idea of gruel three
times a day and an onion twice a week, which is the menu laid out in Oliver Twist. And again we
need to stop thinking Dickens and start thinking history. The food might have been basic but in many
cases it was more nutritious than the average workhouse inmate had before they went in there.
It could even be better than some meals had by people who have jobs. And before we dismiss gruel,
let's actually examine it. It's not a torture food, it is basically thin porridge with treacle,
it's a touch bland because you're using water rather than milk. But it's okay for
a cheap breakfast. We'll put the recipe in the description if you want to make it yourself. It's
rather interesting to note that if you follow the instructions on the side of Scots Porridge Oats
you're getting basically the same recipe but the addition of treacle today is seen as a "tasty
tip" when it was a staple part of the gruel recipe. Plus you would only be having that
maximum once a day. It was part of breakfast it wasn't part of the mainstay of your diet.
Now the rest of the menu features midday meals. Things like suet pudding, rice pudding, soup, meat
and vegetables three times a week and usually a fish dinner one day per week as well. The sort
of diet that Dickens portrays in his workhouses, the three bowls of gruel and half an onion
just wouldn't sustain a working person. Dickens's menu comes to 825
calories per day. Bear in mind that the current recommended calorie intake to maintain health is
two and a half thousand per men, and two thousand per woman, 825 is just unsustainable and dangerous.
Myth number four. The treatment and health was not as shocking as you think.
Now while it's true that earlier workhouse healthcare was the domain of female inmates
who were in many cases drunk, illiterate, elderly, or combination of the three,
that was very much a Georgian phenomenon. The Victorians made huge advances in cleaning
up the health of the Workhouse population. The 1870s saw new workhouse infirmaries being built
which, thanks in no small part to the constant campaigning of Florence Nightingale,
employed trained nurses. Access to medical care was available through Poor Law doctors in a way
that just wasn't outside the workhouses. Outside this medical care had to be paid for and therefore
a low-income family such as a family of costermongers or general labourers might struggle to
get the basic medical care that the workhouse inmate gets for free, and facilities for their
time were state was state-of-the-art. You'll find that many of our hospitals were former Workhouses.
This is certainly the case where we live. Here is St. James's in Leeds. Dewsbury General Hospital,
Stoke Royal and Northallerton General are all former workhouses whose medical role stayed on
when the workhouses closed. Many Workhouse inmates were here for that very reason,
particularly the elderly as their end-of-life care often couldn't be maintained by their
family and so they would enter the workhouse for their latter days. On death you get a
parish funeral. The idea that you are dumped in unhallowed ground is a complete myth.
The workhouse graves in Beckett Street Cemetery shows what are known as
guinea graves. The workhouse dead. Sure they may be communal. But they are marked. They are blessed.
In conclusion, the workhouse was never going to be fun. It wasn't supposed to be fun.
There's plenty wrong with workhouse schemes. I don't feel, for example, that they served the
purpose that Victorian society wanted, which was the improvement of the poor. The people in the
workhouse were not picking up skills, they were not making employment contacts, and they were not able
to look for work independently without leaving the workhouse. In short their best way out of poverty
was closed off to them, and the sad thing is it took until the late 1940s for us to truly see
the back of workhouses. But it is important not to look at them as something that they were not.
Because that way we don't learn anything. Now many of our former workhouses are still standing. Ripon,
for example, has turned theirs into a workhouse museum and if you want to check out your local
one then I'd recommend visiting workhouses.org.uk which is an incredibly thorough look at the history
of workhouses and what happened to the ones in each parish. I'll leave you with the one local
to me in Yorkshire. Pontefract Union Workhouse. The building still stands and it has now been
refurbished into flats. In 1871 you could live here when you have absolutely nothing.
150 years later living here will cost you £65,000 for a flat. How times change. Bye