A Grim Almanac of the Workhouse E-Book

Peter Higginbotham

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 423

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

For two centuries, the shadow of the workhouse hung over Britain. The recourse of only the most desperate, dark and terrible tales of malnutrition, misery, mistreatment and murder ran like wildfire through the poorer classes, who lived in terror of being forced inside the institution's towering walls. This book contains 365 incredible tales of fires, drownings, explosions and disasters, infamous scandals such as the Andover affair – where inmates were forced to eat the bones they were supposed to be crushing to ward off starvation – and sickening tales of abuse, assault, bodysnatching, poisonings, post mortems and murder. Accompanied by 70 rare and wonderful illustrations, this book will thrill, fascinate, sadden and unnerve in equal measure. DID YOU KNOW? In the early hours of 31 August 1888, the mutilated body of Mary Ann Nichols – the first generally accepted victim of Jack the Ripper – was discovered in Buck's Row, Whitechapel, just a little way from the Whitechapel workhouse infirmary. Nichols, aged forty-two at her death, had been a regular habituée of London's workhouses. On 30 May 1896, at the age of seven, future Hollywood star Charlie Chaplin entered the Newington workhouse in south London, together with his mother, Hannah, and his older half-brother Sydney. On 19 March 1834 a revolt took place amongst the juvenile female paupers of St Margaret's workhouse, Westminster. A young man named Speed, appointed as their superintendent, provoked their wrath by his alleged tyrannical behaviour. He was unmercifully thrashed by the girls who tore his clothes nearly off his back and beat him until his cries raised the alarm and the police were sent for to quell the disturbance.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

TITLE

INTRODUCTION

A WORKHOUSE TIMELINE

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT

INTRODUCTION

Workhouses never had a good image. From the seventeenth century, when the earliest such institutions appeared, until the inauguration of Britain’s National Health Service in 1948, which is often taken as the date of their final demise, workhouses were regularly painted as places of shame, abuse, degradation, slavery, cruelty, disease, squalor, and – due in no small part to a certain Oliver Twist – of starvation.

For most decent people, the possibility of ending up in a workhouse carried an enormous stigma. For one thing, it would be a very public humiliation – everyone would be aware of where they had gone. On top of that, there was the sheer unpleasantness of the whole experience – the separation of families, the monotony of the food, the uniform and, for the able-bodied at least, the daily grind of workhouse labour. For the elderly, the prospect of dying in a workhouse held out the grim possibility of a pauper’s funeral in an unmarked grave or, even worse, being despatched for anatomical dissection.

But were things really that bad? From the 1870s onwards, many aspects of workhouse life materially improved. Inmates increasingly benefited from better medical care, more varied and better quality food, and better recreational facilities in the shape of books, newspapers, entertainments, and outings to the country or seaside. The elderly, in particular, received extra ‘indulgences’ such as weekly allowances of tea, tobacco and snuff.

Despite such changes, the workhouse remained a place that many people would rather die than go into. Over the years, as illustrated in the pages of this book, numerous examples can be found of individuals taking their own life rather than enter the workhouse. (In one case at least, though, a suicide resulted from an individual not being allowed entry to a workhouse.) Suicides also regularly took place amongst those who were already workhouse inmates, the most favoured methods being throat-cutting, hanging, taking poison, or jumping from a high window.

Even for those who reconciled themselves to institutional life, the workhouse could be a dangerous place. There could be violence – sometimes with fatal consequences – between inmate and inmate, inmates and staff, or between members of staff themselves. Some of the most disturbing events in the history of the workhouse, though, occurred where those in positions of authority and control inflicted abuse or neglect on those in their care, sometimes for years on end before being discovered. Some of these individuals, most notably the tyrannical workhouse masters George Catch and Colin McDougal, and the sadistic children’s nurse Ella Gillespie, have now become infamous for the vileness of their activities.

For all workhouse inmates, though, life could hold unexpected perils. As this almanac reveals, even apparently innocuous activities such as eating dinner, having a bath, paying a visit to the toilet, sitting in front of the fire, or even lying asleep in bed could all turn into life-threatening situations. The medical care provided to inmates, too, could sometimes have perilous consequences. The accidental or inept administering of injurious treatments to workhouse patients was the cause of a number of deaths, including that of a workhouse master who had devised and himself tried out a particularly poisonous concoction. The occasional mind-numbing foolishness of staff is also evidenced in more than one instance when the investigation of a gas leak was conducted with a lighted candle or lantern.

The outbreak of fire was a danger in all large institutions, especially ones such as workhouses where children, the elderly, and the mentally impaired formed a large proportion of the inmates. Some of the most harrowing scenes described in this volume were the devastating results of fires which proved too intense for the facilities available to fight them or where defects in the buildings prevented the evacuation of those inside.

Despite such hazards, longevity was surprisingly common amongst workhouse inmates, with the remarkable age of 136 years being claimed in one instance. Romance, too, was not unknown in the workhouse. Despite the enforced separation between male and female inmates, love could find a way – as proved in a number of instances. Given the constrained lives imposed on workhouse employees, it is also not surprising that relationships between staff blossomed from time to time. There are even instances of staff and inmates falling for one another.

Workhouse inmates were not, of course, just passive recipients of poor relief. They knew how to play the system. Whether it was harbouring secret stashes of money, illicitly consorting with the opposite sex, smuggling alcohol or drugs into the premises via visitors or the informally appointed inmates’ ‘messenger’, or even – in the case of at least one elderly couple – getting married in order to benefit, it was alleged, from the provision of their own private room.

Although most of the events related in this book took place in the British Isles, a few are included from other countries around the world which operated workhouse-style institutions, including the United States, Russia, Sweden and Czechoslovakia. Inevitably, to rate as newsworthy in Britain, such incidents were generally major disasters such as devastating fires. An index of all the workhouse locations mentioned is included at the end of the book.

Finally, to keep the many grim events presented here in perspective, it must be remembered that under the new poor relief system established in 1834, there were more than 600 union workhouses set up in England and Wales. For most of these establishments, scandal or catastrophe was a rarity – perhaps occurring just once or twice over the century or so of their existence. For the vast majority of their lifetime, they just got on and did their job.

A WORKHOUSE TIMELINE

This book does not aim to be a comprehensive history of the workhouse system. However, for those not familiar with its development, here is a timeline of some major events:

1601

The Poor Relief Act is the basis of what becomes known as the Old Poor Law. Parishes become responsible for relieving their own poor funded by a local property tax – the poor rate. The poor rate can be spent on ‘out-relief’ (handouts to individuals) or accommodation for the ‘impotent’ poor – the elderly, lame or blind.

1630s

Workhouses gradually evolve to house the poor, with labour required from the able-bodied. Prototype workhouses include Reading, Abingdon, Sheffield, Newark and Newbury.

1698

Bristol’s parishes promote a local Act of Parliament allowing them to jointly administer poor relief and run workhouses.

1723

Knatchbull’s Act allows parishes to establish workhouses. Parishes can dispense with out-relief and offer relief claimants only the workhouse – a ‘test’ that they are truly destitute. Workhouse operation can be handed over to private contractors, the practice becoming known as ‘farming the poor’.

1777

Around 2,000 workhouses are in operation, covering about 14 per cent of parishes. Out-relief is still the dominant form of provision, however.

1782

Gilbert’s Act allows groups of parishes to form ‘unions’ and run joint workhouses to house non-able-bodied paupers.

1818

The national poor relief bill reaches an all-time high, having risen fivefold over the previous forty years.

1834

The Poor Law Amendment Act (the New Poor Law) establishes a new national system of poor relief administration, run by the central Poor Law Commissioners, based on groupings of parishes called Poor Law Unions. Each union is run by a locally elected Board of Guardians and has to provide a central union workhouse.

1837

Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist begins publication.

1838

A total of 584 Poor Law Unions are now operative in England and Wales. The Poor Relief (Ireland) Act establishes a union workhouse system in Ireland.

1845

The Poor Law (Scotland) Act introduces a new poor relief system in Scotland, with poorhouse provision as an option.

1847

The Poor Law Board replaces the Poor Law Commissioners.

1867

The Metropolitan Poor Act improves medical care for London’s poor, with the new Metropolitan Asylums Board to deal with infectious and mental conditions.

1872

The Local Government Board replaces the Poor Law Board.

1900

A major overhaul of workhouse food allows more varied and flexible menus.

1905

A Royal Commission begins a major review of the poor relief system. Its report, published in 1909, recommends abolition of Boards of Guardians, replacement of workhouses by more specialised institutions, removal of children from workhouses, and the provision of old age pensions, health insurance and unemployment support.

1913

Updated official regulations now refer to ‘poor law institutions’ rather than ‘workhouses’, and ‘poor persons’ rather than ‘paupers’. Inmate uniforms are now described as ‘suitable and sufficient clothing’.

1915

Children aged over three are no longer allowed to reside in workhouses.

1930

Boards of Guardians are abolished. The administration of poor relief, now known as ‘public assistance’, passes to county and borough councils.

1948

The National Health Service is inaugurated.

JANUARY

The horrific scene at the Wigan workhouse where a nine-month-old child was fatally scalded at the hands of Catherine Dawber, a pauper nurse who was officially classified as an ‘imbecile’. (See 9 January)

1    JANUARY

1890    In the early minutes of the New Year, a disastrous fire broke out at the Forest Gate Industrial School in East London, home to about 650 pauper children from the Whitechapel and Poplar Unions. The blaze, which devastated the north wing of the building, originated in a clothes storage cupboard through which a stove pipe passed. An assistant mistress raised the alarm after smelling smoke, but the building was soon engulfed in flames. Fifty-eight boys were sleeping in two dormitories on the floors above. Twenty-six died. The recovered bodies were wrapped in blankets and placed on the floor of the school’s infirmary, with identifying numbers marked in big figures, or the names chalked over those which had been identified. Many of the survivors had jumped from the lower dormitory, or had been dragged out by their friends or brothers. Others were not so lucky. The younger brother of a boy called Jones had insisted on putting on his socks before leaving the dormitory but had fallen down on the floor, never to rise again.

2    JANUARY

1857Henry Taylor, a pauper in the Harrogate workhouse, was passing over the line at a level crossing at Starbeck station when the five o’clock passenger train for Leeds knocked him down, severed his head from his body, and smashed his skull to a pulp.

1868    An inquest was held at Preston following the death of a boy named Patrick Burke, an inmate of the Walton-le-Dale workhouse, and also the son of Stephen Burke, executed in 1866 for murdering his wife. Two days before Christmas, the governor had decided to make the workhouse boys more presentable for inspection by visitors, and obtained from the surgery a pot of ‘blue ointment’, which contained a considerable quantity of mercury. He rubbed half a tablespoonful of the ointment on the head of each of the eighty or so boys in his charge and, a few hours later, washed them and sent them to bed. Next morning, they all felt unwell, and the following day, the doctor was called and salivated four of them. Burke died shortly afterwards, and the governor then revealed what he had done, with forty of the boys being confined to bed for treatment. The inquest was told that Burke would have been buried without an inquest had it not been for an anonymous letter sent to the authorities. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death, but cautioned the governor to be more careful in future.

3    JANUARY

1881    At the Leeds workhouse, a fire was discovered just before noon in a new hospital block. The blaze began in a storeroom on the fourth floor of the building in which 216 inmates were accommodated. The workhouse steward, Mr Strain, was summoned and rapidly organised a body of twenty men to use fire buckets in dashing water into the room. Water from the building’s main storage tanks, located in the vicinity of the fire, was also deployed, literally flooding the place and rapidly quelling the fire.

1894    An aged inmate of the Retford workhouse named Elizabeth Blenkhorn was found dead today in suspicious circumstances. The woman was a confirmed opium eater, and when she was visited by friends, precautions were taken to prevent anything illicit being introduced into the workhouse. On the day prior to her death she had received visitors, and the master, being suspicious, examined her bed and found a bottle containing laudanum. An inquest revealed that Blenkhorn had been a large-scale consumer of narcotics for more than twenty years. A woman who visited her recently had been sent to buy her half an ounce of laudanum, together with twopence-halfpenny worth of gin. The same person had seen Mrs Blenkhorn regularly drink a ‘basinful of beer and laudanum’. On a recent occasion, while out on leave for four hours, Blenkhorn had swallowed 2 ounces of laudanum, and smuggled back a large amount of the same drug. The master stated that a quantity of opium had been found concealed in her stockings.

4    JANUARY

1839    A letter to the editor of the Essex Standard, from a ratepayer living in the Essex union of Tendring, claimed that workhouse inmates were now being treated worse than felons. It was, he asserted, ‘the first time within the memory of any man living, that the poor in our workhouse were, on a Christmas, without roast beef and plum pudding, tea, sugar, snuff, and tobacco, with a little good porter to wash it down.’ He hoped that some kindhearted guardian would join him in declaring that it was ‘not too late even now to cheer the heart of the aged pauper.’

1850    Hannah Boothby, a poor woman in an advanced state of pregnancy, together with her two children, was taken to the Hull Charity Hall workhouse to ask for assistance. She was accompanied by an Irishwoman named Kitty. They arrived at about 9 a.m. and Kitty knocked at the workhouse door which was opened by the porter, Robert Peacock. Kitty told him, ‘Here is a poor woman bad in labour.’ Peacock refused them entry saying, ‘We cannot take you in until ten o’clock, until the Governor comes. Go away.’ He then shut the door. Kitty and another woman then tried several times more, saying that Hannah was in a dying state. On each occasion, Peacock told them to go away. At about ten o’clock, Hannah gave birth on the street in front of the workhouse. The workhouse door was then opened and the mother and child wrapped in blankets and taken inside. The child at first appeared to be dead, but on being warmed, it quickly revived. At a subsequent inquiry, Peacock denied having been told that Hannah Boothby was in labour. This may have had something to do with his being extremely deaf – a fact that, strangely, appeared to be unknown to his employers. Described by one guardian as being ‘a most improper person to be the doorkeeper of this establishment’, Peacock was ultimately given the blame for Hannah Boothby not having been taken into the workhouse. As soon as her situation became known to the workhouse authorities, she had been properly attended to.

5    JANUARY

1825    Today’s Morning Chronicle reported the melancholy events following the birth of a child to a young mother at St Martin’s workhouse, just before Christmas. Within a few days, the woman was seized with an inflammation of the bowels. She was attended by Messrs Simmons and Gosna, the parish surgeons, but despite their best efforts she died on Christmas Eve. On the morning of Christmas Day, the two gentlemen visited the workhouse to conduct a post-mortem on the body. Mr Simmons, while removing the intestines, slightly lacerated one of his fingers, but paid no attention to the incident. A little later, Mr Gosna wiped his hands upon a cloth in which a pin was sticking, and scratched his finger. The following day, Mr Simmons had a violent pain in the arm, extending to the shoulder, and two tumours were found near to the armpit. Fomentations were applied, resulting in some relief from the pain and a reduction of the tumours. But, reluctant to take any medicine, he soon had a relapse and died a few days afterwards. Mr Gosna had been similarly attacked and was now dangerously ill.

1856    An inquest was held today on the body of William Jones, an old man who had been admitted to the Hereford workhouse after being found at midnight standing in the Gloucester & Hereford Canal. From the time of his admission, he had sometimes been very violent and had also briefly escaped from the workhouse. On the night of his death, he was more than usually violent, and struck and kicked at several men in the sick ward. He fell backwards and hurt his head a little, from which he appeared stunned for a minute or so. It later proved necessary to restrain him by means of a straitjacket, in which he died at about half past eight. It was stated that death was probably due to a long-standing affliction of the brain and not from the fall which had only caused a mild abrasion to the back of the head. A verdict was returned of death from natural causes.

6    JANUARY

1736    On this day, it was reported that the governor of a workhouse in the Liberty of Westminster had been committed to the Gatehouse for ravishing a girl of about nine years of age.

1858    Alfred Feist, the former master of the Newington workhouse, was today charged with the illicit sale of pauper bodies to Guy’s Hospital medical school. Although the disposal of unclaimed bodies for such purposes was permitted by the 1832 Anatomy Act, Feist’s activities fell far outside the provisions of that statute. His scheme, which was said to have extended to more than twenty corpses, involved a cunning act of deception. On the day of an inmate’s funeral, any relatives present were allowed to view the body, but after they had departed to await its transfer to the hearse, the coffin was secretly switched. The fresh corpse was then sent off for use at Guy’s, while the funeral proceeded with a coffin which contained the dissected remains of a different person that had been returned by the medical school. At his subsequent trial, Feist was initially found guilty, but the verdict was later quashed by the Court of Appeal. The court decided that because the relatives of the deceased had not explicitly stated their objection to the medical disposal of the bodies – even though the question had not been raised with them – Feist had acted within the law.

7    JANUARY

1850    A riot took place today at Barham workhouse in Suffolk. Around fifty able-bodied inmates got out of their ward and demanded more food. After the governor told them that he had no power to alter their diet, they tore up the seats and flooring in their dayrooms. With the arrival of a policeman, the men remained quiet during the night but their rioting was resumed the next morning and the governor was struck and injured. Eventually a detachment of Lancers was sent from Ipswich but, by the time they arrived, the riot had been quelled by the police and six of the ringleaders put into prison.

1924    It was reported that a tramp sheltering for the night at a workhouse at Eastry, near Canterbury, had had an encounter with a ghost. The tramp, who was the sole occupant of the vagrant ward, was found in the middle of the night trembling from head to foot. He related how ‘something white’, uttering dreadful, guttural sounds, approached with long, thin, bony fingers spread out as though to throttle him. It disappeared when he screamed. The guardians were making it known that a ghost had been seen in the vagrant ward, and the master reported that as a result there had been a falling off in the number of vagrants.

8    JANUARY

1834    At London’s Marlborough Street magistrates’ court, Sarah Corney, ‘a rawboned Irishwoman’ with an infant, was charged with having behaved in a disorderly manner in the parish workhouse of St George, Hanover Square, and with having broken nine squares of glass. Mr Randford, the workhouse master, said the woman had been in receipt of parish relief for many years. She was one of the most violent, vicious and drunken women in the house, and had on several occasions been brought before the Bench on account of her conduct. The previous Monday, she had gone out and got drunk and so was barred from leaving the workhouse. She became very violent, and when brought before the Bench, the magistrates recommended that she be re-admitted to the workhouse but not allowed to go out. When she got back to the workhouse, she demanded her dinner and a pint of beer. When this was not immediately brought, she seized a pint pot and smashed windows to the value of £3. She then fought and resisted until overpowered. The woman said she admitted breaking the windows. She had asked for her dinner and beer, but she did not get it. The overseer, she considered, promoted bad conduct amongst the paupers by not giving them as much ‘wittles’ as they could eat. The woman was sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment.

1925    An inquest today heard allegations that an inmate of Barnsley workhouse was placed in a bath that was too hot. The deceased, Elizabeth Preston, sixty-nine, was said by Edith Pearson, a probationer nurse, to be unable to walk and had been taken in a chair to the bath. When her supervisor Nurse Prentice started to bathe the deceased, she found that the water was too hot, and they lifted her out of the bath. Dr Collings, the workhouse medical officer, attributed death to heart disease accelerated by the shock of scalds, although it did not appear the water had been excessively hot. Nurse Prentice had been at the institution for six years and was considered to be most competent. The coroner returned a verdict of death from misadventure.

Nottingham workhouse staff pose outside the institution’s entrance block.

9    JANUARY

1839    The Times today reproduced a letter to the editor of the Berkshire Chronicle signed by seven inmates of the St Lawrence’s workhouse, Reading:

Jany 3rd, 1839. – Mr Edetor, – Sir, we should be very glad if you put these few words in Press. We saw in the Reading Mercury that the Workhouses in Reading had Puding, meat, and Beer, which we all can contrydict—our Allowance was six ounces of Bread and two ounces of Chees for Cristmas Diner in Saint Lawrences Workhous.

1868    At Wigan workhouse, an inquest was held on the body of Ruth Bannister, an illegitimate child aged nine months, who had been scalded to death in a bucket of hot water. The body was said to present a shocking appearance, the lower extremities having been dreadfully burned. The child had been placed in the infant ward in the care of two pauper nurses, assisted by a girl of seventeen named Catherine Dawber, who was described as an imbecile. On the morning of the incident, Dawber brought the child to a nurse named Margaret Gaskell, saying it was dirty, and was told to take off its napkin. The girl took the child into another room, and a few minutes later another pauper ran in to inform Gaskell that the child was scalded. Gaskell went to see what the matter was, and found the child on Dawber’s knee, near to a bucket containing eight or nine quarts of scalding water. Its feet and legs were so badly scalded that the skin was peeling off and blood was coming from the wounds. Although previously being a healthy child, it had died the same evening. Mary Finch, another inmate, said she saw Dawber place the child in the water, and it gave a piercing cry. She then took it out and began to wipe it with a coarse towel. Finch saw she was doing this roughly and took the towel, in which she found a piece of skin 3in long. The inquest jury decided that the child had died from being negligently and carelessly scalded whilst being nursed by Dawber, a verdict the coroner considered amounted to one of manslaughter. At her subsequent trial, however, Dawber was found not guilty of the charge.

10    JANUARY

1894    At a meeting of the North Dublin guardians, the chairman gave details of a letter written to the board by a man named Hayes, whose aunt, Mary Hayes, was an inmate of the workhouse. Mr Hayes had been informed by the officials that she had died, and he came and identified a woman in a coffin in the mortuary as his aunt. He then went away, had a grave dug at Glasnevin Cemetery, bought a coffin, and brought it in a hearse to the workhouse to hold the funeral. But it was then discovered that the dead woman was not his aunt at all but another inmate of the same name, and that his aunt was alive and well. He had now written a letter of complaint, and asked the guardians to refund him the money he had expended in preparing for the funeral. The guardians declined to comply with the request.

1895    Following a recent explosion in a steam pipe at Liverpool workhouse which led to the deaths of three men, a new theory emerged as to the cause of the catastrophe. The blast had occurred when steam was being blown off from the main boiler into an underground tank. Subsequent inspection of the tank revealed the body of cat which, from its appearance, had not been there long. It was believed that the cat had somehow got into the tank and blocked an overflow pipe, causing a build-up of pressure and eventual explosion. The three fatalities, all resulting from the horrific scalding injuries they received, were the workhouse engineer, Richard Long, and two inmates who acted as stokers.

11    JANUARY

1854    A child of sixteen months was murdered by its mother, Isabella Thompson, at the Bishop Auckland workhouse. On her admission to the workhouse, it had been noticed that the child had a black eye, which the mother accounted for by saying that it had fallen on the ground. Later the nurse, hearing that the infant was ill, went to the ward and found it dead. Its arms, face and the left side of its head were swollen and black, and there was fresh blood on its hair. The stone fireplace was spattered with blood and it was evident that the poor child had been dashed against the mantelpiece. The mother left the workhouse, saying she did not wish to stay until the child was buried. While in the workhouse, she had been seen to throw the child in a rough careless manner on the bed. Thompson denied having injured her child in any way, and said the blows had been inflicted by the child having thrown itself, whilst in a fit, against an iron plate at the head of the bed.

It was subsequently discovered that, six months earlier, the child had been kidnapped by its killer, real name Isabella Crosier, from a woman named Thompson who, being ill, had engaged her from the workhouse at Sunderland. Mrs Thompson identified Crosier as her absconding servant and, after the disinterment of the infant’s body, confirmed it as her lost child.

1839    On this day a report in The Times alleged that smallpox was rife at the Wimborne and Cranborne Union workhouse in Dorset. Mothers and their children were said to be sleeping three to a bed and, in one very small room, five beds were being shared by thirteen inmates, five of whom had gone down with the disease. It was also claimed that little was being done to halt the spread of the infection through the ward. No nurse had been appointed to attend the patients and the workhouse surgeon was receiving only £10 a year to attend the workhouse’s 195 inmates. The report, subsequently revealed to have originated from one of the union’s medical officers, George Place, provoked a robust rebuttal from the Wimborne guardians who claimed it had contained ‘unfounded and exaggerated statements’. The smallpox outbreak had originated, it was said, with a newly admitted mother and child who had been isolated from other inmates once the disease had been confirmed on 28 December. Vaccination of all previously unvaccinated inmates had been carried out as soon as it could be arranged and no further instances had been diagnosed until 8 January. The following day, the workhouse school, a large and well-ventilated room, had been adapted for use as an isolation ward. Thirteen inmates were then placed there, attended by three nurses. It was conceded, however, that for a short period, thirteen persons did, without the knowledge of the guardians, sleep in five beds in the same room which measured just 18ft by 16ft. Finally, there was no specific salary for the medical officer attending the workhouse since it formed part of one of the union’s medical districts. In the preceding year, the total salaries of the union’s four medical officers had amounted to £151.

12    JANUARY

1866    Today’s Pall Mall Gazette carried the first instalment of a remarkable account of the grim conditions inside the Lambeth workhouse tramps’ ward. The article was written by journalist James Greenwood who, a few days earlier, had garbed himself in a ragged and ill-fitting overcoat, battered billycock hat, and the boots of a tramp, and shuffled into the establishment to apply for a night’s shelter. Greenwood’s colourful account of his experiences caused a sensation and also provoked an immediate visit to the premises by a Poor Law Inspector, Mr Henry Farnall. Typical of Greenwood’s revelations was his encounter with the tramps’ bath, to which he was introduced by an old-timer known as ‘Daddy’:

The porter went his way, and I followed Daddy into another apartment where there were three great baths, each one containing a liquid so disgustingly like weak mutton broth that my worst apprehensions crowded back. ‘Come on, there’s a dry place to stand on up at this end,’ said Daddy, kindly. ‘Take off your clothes, tie ’em up in your hank’sher, and I’ll lock ’em up till the morning.’

Accordingly, I took off my coat and waistcoat, and was about to tie them together when Daddy cried, ‘That ain’t enough, I mean everything.’

‘Not my shirt, Sir, I suppose?’

‘Yes, shirt and all; but there, I’ll lend you a shirt,’ said Daddy. ‘Whatever you take in of your own will be nailed, you know. You might take in your boots, though – they’d be handy if you happened to want to leave the shed for anything; but don’t blame me if you lose ’em.’

The cover of James Greenwood’s A Night in a Workhouse, articles reprinted in pamphlet form.

James Greenwood, who became known as the ‘amateur casual’.

The other inmates in the ward were a very rough crowd:

Towzled, dirty, villainous, they squatted up in their beds, and smoked foul pipes, and sang snatches of horrible songs, and bandied jokes so obscene as to be absolutely appalling. Eight or ten were so enjoying themselves – the majority with the check shirt on and the frowsy rug pulled about their legs; but two or three wore no shirts at all, squatting naked to the waist, their bodies fully exposed in the light of the single flaring jet of gas fixed high upon the wall.

1871    A fire broke out in the tailors’ workshop at Stockport workhouse but was extinguished by the inmates before the arrival of the fire brigade.

13    JANUARY

1826    Today’s Cambridge Chronicle reported the proceedings of a vestry meeting in the town’s Trinity parish to examine the conduct of its workhouse governor, John Allum. It appeared that Robert Silk, of about twenty-five years of age, had been in the workhouse some years. Silk was a distressing and unfortunate case, being dumb and an idiot. The charge against Allum was that, for a long period, and during the worst of weathers, he had confined Silk to an unheated outhouse where, with no chair or stool to sit on, he was penned up on a board in one corner. Silk had no shoes or stockings, bare arms, and only some coarse covering for the upper part of his body. He remained there all day, trampling in his filth, until being put into a crib with a small portion of straw. Eventually, news of this state of affairs reached the ears of a magistrate, Mr Alderman Coe, who went to the workhouse. Finding Silk in his cage, he instantly ordered him to be taken into the house, clothed with shoes and stockings, placed near the fire, and properly taken care of. On a return visit two days afterwards, the magistrate was astonished to find that the poor young man had been returned to his former condition, with the very water and dirt he stood in gushing up between his toes. Allum was subsequently dismissed for his acts of cruelty.

14    JANUARY

1842    A tragedy occurred today after Thomas and Sarah Brunt, their four-year-old son Thomas, and two younger children were admitted to the Rugby Union workhouse. At 5 p.m., the children were taken to the kitchen to be fed bread and cheese and then let out to play. At bedtime, Thomas could not be found. After some searching, the kitchen’s cellar door was found to be open. The cellar was never used as it was undrained and always had several feet of water standing in it, although the top of the steps was used for storage. After a lamp was brought, bread was seen floating on the water and Thomas’s body was then recovered by one of the paupers but he could not be revived. A bruise was found on his right temple, assumed to be caused by falling down the stairs after he had gone through the wrong door.

1850    Also on this day a disastrous fire resulted in the loss of more than thirty lives in two auxiliary premises of the Killarney workhouse in County Kerry. The fire broke out at about 10 p.m. in a building known as the College which was being used as a hospital for more than 160 patients. After the blaze took hold, the cries of the wretched inmates from the windows were truly appalling. So fierce was the fire that within two hours, the building was a blackened heap of ruins. The immediate death toll was said to be three, although the number unaccounted for the following morning was fifteen. The most dreadful part of the events, however, took place a few hundred yards away in a branch workhouse known as the Brewery, housing pauper girls and their nurses. The cries of ‘fire’ and the livid glare of the flames from the burning College building awoke the children. After shouting in vain for the doors of their dormitories to be unlocked, they sought an alternative means of exit through an unused loft. Under their weight, the rotten planks of its floor gave way with twenty-seven girls and two nurses being killed in the collapse, and a similar number being frightfully mutilated.

15    JANUARY

1887    Elizabeth Berry, a nurse at the Oldham workhouse infirmary, was charged with poisoning her eleven-year-old daughter Edith Annie Berry. Edith, who usually lived with her aunt and uncle, had come for a stay with her mother at the workhouse on 29 December and become ill on 1 January. Despite receiving treatment from the workhouse medical officer, Dr Thomas Patterson, Edith had died three days later. An inquest on the child, whose life was insured by Mrs Berry for £13, had returned a verdict of ‘wilful murder’ after a post-mortem by Dr Patterson indicated the cause of death to be corrosive poison. Following her trial, Berry was found guilty of ‘a murder, cold-blooded, merciless, and cruel upon her poor little child’ and sentenced to be hanged.

Berry’s trial also raised suspicions over the sudden death in the previous year of her mother, Mrs Mary Ann Finley, whose life had been insured for over £100. Her body was exhumed and was found to contain traces of poison. Berry was found guilty of the wilful murder of her mother and received a second death sentence, her execution being the first to take place at Liverpool’s Walton Gaol. Berry, who had always blamed her daughter’s death on the workhouse medical officer, protested her innocence to the end, her last words being ‘God forgive Dr Patterson.’

The hangman, coincidentally also named Berry, operated a lever to open the floor-level trap. The drop was 6ft 6in and the rope was ¾in, government made. To those on the scaffold, no movement was perceptible and death appeared to be instantaneous. The gaol surgeons, Dr Beamish and Dr Hammond, descended into the pit by means of a ladder and, having examined the body, pronounced life extinct, and that the executioner had done his work effectively.

1839    Mary Matthews, the schoolmistress, and Samuel Hewitt, the porter of the Greenwich Union workhouse, were today convicted of a number of offences. They had embezzled a considerable amount of butter, meat and bread intended for the children in their care, much of it being smuggled out to Matthews’ mother’s house by the children themselves, who had been threatened with punishment if they told anyone. Matthews had pocketed a 10s donation from the guardians which had been intended to buy the children cake and fruit at Christmas. Children had also been used to transport bottles of gin into the workhouse. Finally, Matthews was found guilty of various assaults on the children in the workhouse by beating them with an iron bar and a heavy ruler, and making them stand all night with their hands above their heads. Both were sentenced to terms of imprisonment in Maidstone Gaol.

1867    On this day George Edward Douglas, master of the St Marylebone workhouse, was walking in Regent’s Park when ice on the frozen lake gave way. Two hundred skaters were instantly plunged into the freezing water. Douglas immediately organised the transport of the survivors back to the workhouse for medical attention. Forty bodies were subsequently recovered and taken to the workhouse mortuary where relatives later came to identify them.

Relatives queue up to identify bodies at the Marylebone workhouse mortuary.

1871    This day a fire broke out in the roof of the Clerkenwell workhouse. The master, Mr Roe, ascended the roof and, following his instruction, able-bodied inmates passed him fire buckets from which he tried to douse the burning rafters. The fire brigade arrived and the fire was extinguished in about twenty minutes. It was most fortunate that the fire did not occur at night as the house contained about 200 aged and sick persons confined to their beds, together with many mothers with infants, and a number of lunatics.

16    JANUARY

1834    The London Standard reported riot and confusion around Orchard Street, Westminster, following the appearance of four teenage girls at the windows of an empty house there. They told the passers-by that they had been confined in a dungeon at St Margaret’s workhouse, stripped naked and, after fourteen days’ unmerciful beating, had just escaped. A seething mob of more than 500 soon gathered, screaming abuse against the parish authorities. Fortunately, two parish officers happened to be passing and quickly revealed that the girls were notorious characters who, because of their repeated misdeeds, had frequently been sentenced by the magistrates to hard labour. The master of the workhouse had put them into solitary confinement from which they had escaped by a window 20ft above the ground. They had then scaled a wall and entered the back of the house which adjoined the workhouse. Amongst the riot and confusion, two of the girls were taken back from the officers by the mob, and it was only with great difficulty and danger that they were finally secured.

According to the report, the frequent disturbances amongst the juvenile paupers in the workhouse were entirely understandable. There was no classification amongst them, with orphaned and abandoned youngsters being placed in the same wards as young prostitutes. It was no wonder that their minds were soon corrupted like those who had incited the riot.

17    JANUARY

1880    It was reported today that at Horsham, Sussex, a complaint of a somewhat unusual nature had been laid against the workhouse chaplain, the Revd J.F. Cole. The master of the workhouse had discovered a young female inmate with a large hole in her apron. The girl revealed that during a recent communion service the chaplain had accidentally spilt a quantity of wine on the apron. He had told her that the affected area had become consecrated and that he would have to cut it out and deposit in a box at a local church. At their next meeting, the Horsham guardians reprimanded the chaplain for mutilating workhouse property in such a manner. If the girl had committed the same act herself, she would have been liable to punishment. In his defence, the chaplain later stated that he had ascertained that the apron had been worn out and worthless but would gladly pay for its replacement.

1891    On this day the Illustrated London News revealed that an old woman named Henley had been buried at Gosport after living more than ninety years in the workhouse there. Her early history was unknown but parish records showed that in 1801, when the new workhouse was built, Henley, who was then six years of age, had been transferred from the old to the new premises. The last forty years of her life were spent in the workhouse infirmary. Twelve years previously, she had fallen into a trance, in which she remained so long that she was regarded as dead, and was actually placed in her coffin before the mistake was discovered.

18    JANUARY

1859    An inquest began today at Drogheda, County Louth, following the death of Patrick Kenny at the workhouse fever hospital where he had been admitted the previous Wednesday. At about 2 a.m. on Friday, he rose from his bed and began running about the wards raving. He managed to enter the female patients’ ward where, being very boisterous, he was accosted by two nurses, one of whom he knocked down. He then entered the water closet, climbed through its open window and jumped into a paved garden, some 30ft below. He was subsequently brought into the house by the nurses but, remarkably, did not complain of having received any injury. He died in the evening of the following day.

1868    A wealthy farmer, Joseph Hankins, and his wife, of Almely, Herefordshire, were today reported to have been heavily fined for assaulting and beating Sarah Ann Baker, twelve years old, whom they had taken out of the Weobley workhouse the previous March. The girl testified that during haymaking time Hankins beat her with a horsewhip and left severe marks. At apple picking, he again beat her with a riding whip, cut her head against the stair post, and made her nose bleed. She had run away from him six times through his cruelty. On another day he had pulled her hair, kicked her on the hip, and knocked her over the pump trough. At haymaking, Mrs Hankins had struck her on the head with a shoe-brush causing blood to flow, then cut her across the shoulders with a holly stick. The Hankins’s son, Charles, under his mother’s directions, had beaten her with a birch in an indecent manner.

19    JANUARY

1884    At Braintree, Essex, a resident living near to the workhouse raised the alarm after observing flames in the stable at the east of the premises which contained a load of straw. On receiving the news, the master, Mr Nowell, at once summoned assistance and organised a band of workers from among the inmates to pump and carry water. The Braintree fire engine soon arrived and the fire was soon fully extinguished. The blaze was believed to have been instigated by an evil person breaking a pane in the stable window and dropping in a lighted match. A tramp who had presented himself for admission shortly before the outbreak departed during the confusion and had not been heard of since.

20    JANUARY

1881    Details were given today of an extraordinary blunder at Devonport. An inmate of the workhouse who had just died was removed to the mortuary to be placed in a coffin. By some error, when the bearers came to take it away and bury it, they removed an empty coffin instead of that containing the corpse and it was taken to the cemetery and buried with the usual rites. The mistake was not discovered until another death caused the mortuary to be visited again, when olfactory evidence indicated that something was amiss, and further investigation revealed what had happened.

1900    On this day it was reported that a meeting of the Colchester guardians had agreed to advertise for a new superintendent nurse for the workhouse infirmary. A member of the board suggested that a postscript be added that there were ‘still a few widowers left’. This remark provoked much merriment – the explanation being that the last two ladies who had filled the position of superintendent nurse had abandoned the post for the purpose of marrying widowers who were members of the board. At a previous meeting it had been proposed that in engaging ordinary nurses they should be told as an inducement that the women so employed at the workhouse usually left to get married.

Sarah Ann Baker being beaten by the Hankins, who had ‘rescued’ her from the workhouse.

21    JANUARY

1882    A young man named John Wood, who was in the last stage of consumption, was today admitted to Sheffield workhouse, and died a few minutes after his admission. The body was removed to the workhouse mortuary and Wood’s wife arranged that the funeral should take place on the following Tuesday. Some relatives from Manchester attended with her on that day, and on their going to the mortuary they found that the coffin which bore his name and age was screwed down. There was some reluctance on the part of the officials to have the coffin unscrewed, but on Mrs Wood insisting that she wished to take a last look at her husband, the lid was taken off. She was then horrified to find that the body was not her husband’s, but that of a seventy-five-year-old man named Ellis. A search was then made for the body amongst a number of others, but it could not be found. It eventually occurred to one of the officials that it might have been taken to the School of Medicine. A messenger was despatched and Wood’s body was found in the dissecting-room, whence it was promptly returned.

22    JANUARY

1830    Between five and six o’clock in the morning, a daring burglary took place at the Mile End Old Town workhouse, where 500 residents were asleep. The thieves forced open a window and headed to the Committee Room where cash for relieving the outdoor poor was usually kept. They were disappointed, however, as the previous night it had been removed for safekeeping to the room of the mistress, Miss Mudge. They then proceeded to Miss Mudge’s bedchamber, passing several doors where workhouse servants slept. To guard against interruption, they fastened these doors from the outside using the bolts fitted there. The intruders told inmates who threatened them that they would receive immediate vengeance if they interfered. The men burst open Miss Mudge’s locked door, approached her bedside and, putting a dark lantern close to her face, asked her where the gold was stored. When she answered that there was none in the house, they demanded her keys, threatening to blow her brains out if she made a sound. The keys were given to them by a young girl who also slept in the apartment and, after remaining some time, they noticed a tea board on which was piled £125 in silver, provided for the payment of the poor. They tipped the money into a sack and made their escape. A £40 reward was later offered for their discovery.

23    JANUARY

1860    At Thames magistrates’ court, Elizabeth Pinners and Elizabeth Regan, inmates of the workhouse at Wapping, were charged with violently assaulting fellow pauper Frances McDonald. The workhouse porter stated that the two were guilty of gross insubordination and misconduct, and their language was extremely bad. McDonald, whose head was cut, and who had lost a good deal of blood, said that the prisoners had assaulted and beaten her, and had accused her of kicking up a row for which they had sworn to be avenged, with Pinners striking her on the head with a saucepan lid. The prisoners claimed that McDonald had provoked them and struck them first with the lid, and they were only in court because they had offended the master, matron and porter. They both entered into a long harangue, and almost tired out the patience of the magistrate. Elizabeth Wood, a wards-woman, said that McDonald had been in a lunatic asylum, and was a very irritating and irritable person, and had threatened to ‘rip up the bowels’ of the defendants. There had been a row and a fight, and the shrieks and shouts were awful. The magistrate, Mr Selfe, said that a most disgraceful state of affairs existed in Wapping workhouse, which was the worst regulated in the district. There was no classification, with the good and the bad, the sane and the lunatic, decent married women and prostitutes, all huddled together. It was shocking that such a state of things should exist in a civilised country.

As a result of this incident, Charles Dickens made a visit to the Wapping workhouse. His generally favourable account appeared in his volume The Uncommercial Traveller.

24    JANUARY

1839    At about eight-thirty this evening a fire broke out at London’s Saffron Hill workhouse. Inmates witnessed a sudden eruption of flames in a workroom in the lower part of the building. At the time, the pauper children were undressing and some were already in bed. The master, Mr Mantiman, ordered them all instantly to dress themselves, whence they were placed in the yard. Great efforts to suppress the fire was made by many of the elderly paupers who poured water onto the flames from pails and buckets. The hand engine from the Farringdon fire station arrived within a few minutes followed by another small engine belonging to Clerkenwell. The success of these two engines was such that a larger engine which arrived from the Farringdon station was not required.

1856    At Leicester magistrates, James Rodwell pleaded guilty to breaking windows at the workhouse and doing damage to the value of 10s. He was ordered to pay for the damage and costs, and in default, a month’s imprisonment with hard labour.

1886    The poorhouse in Jackson, Michigan, was burnt down in the early hours. The fire broke out in the kitchen and, no fire extinguishing appliances being available, the whole of the interior of the building was quickly destroyed. Forty of the inmates, five of them insane, blind or deaf and dumb, were literally roasted to death. The others rushed out half-naked into the snow where the temperature was ten degrees below zero. It was feared that many would die from exposure. The survivors were taken for treatment into Jackson, some six miles distant.

25    JANUARY

1823