Voices from the Workhouse E-Book

Peter Higginbotham

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

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Voices from the Workhouse tells the real inside story of the workhouse - in the words of those who experienced the institution at first hand, either as inmates or through some other connection with the institution. Using a wide variety of sources — letters, poems, graffiti, autobiography, official reports, testimony at official inquiries, and oral history, Peter Higginbotham creates a vivid portrait of what really went on behind the doors of the workhouse — all the sights, sounds and smells of the place, and the effect it had on those whose lives it touched. Was the workhouse the cruel and inhospitable place as which it's often presented, or was there more to it than that? This book lets those who knew the place provide the answer.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

A Workhouse Timeline

ONE INMATES

London Corporation Workhouse: Poor Out-Cast Children’s Song and Cry

John Trusty: Dinner Speech at the Bishopsgate Workhouse

Paul Patrick Kearney: London Pauper Farms

Ann Candler: Reflections on My Own Situation

Charles Shaw: When I Was a Child

James Reynolds Withers: Written from Newmarket Union

Thomas Hartley: Letters of Complaint to the Poor Law Commissioners

Anonymous: An Unemployed London Carpenter

H.M. Stanley (John Rowlands): Autobiography

Richard Gibson: Neglect at St Giles’s Workhouse

Casual Ward Inmates: Workhouse Graffiti

‘W.H.R.’: The Autobiography of a Pauper Boy

John Rutherford: Indoor Paupers

Charlie Chaplin: Newington Workhouse and Hanwell School

Charles Burgess: Shoreditch Union Cottage Homes

Bill Golding: Stockbridge Workhouse and Southampton Cottage Homes

Bella Aronovitch: A London Workhouse Infirmary

Len Saunders: Croydon Union Workhouse and Children’s Homes

TWO WORKHOUSE STAFF AND ADMINISTRATORS

Richard Hutton: Steward of the Quaker Workhouse at Clerkenwell

John T. Becher: The Anti-Pauper System

Benjamin Woodcock: Master of the Barnet Union Workhouse

Reverend Dennis L. Cousins: Extracts from the Diary of a Workhouse Chaplain

Richard Ellis: Profitable Employment of Paupers on Workhouse Land

Joseph Rogers M.D.: Reminiscences of a Workhouse Medical Officer

William A. Bailward: Are Workhouses Made Unduly Attractive?

Will Crooks: Evidence to a Local Government Board Inquiry

Margaret Joan Wells-Gardner: Growing up in the Workhouse

D.J. Evans: Workhouse Days Remembered

THREE REPORTS AND INQUIRIES

Anonymous: An Account of Several Work-houses

Sir Frederic Eden: The State of the Poor

1832 Royal Commission on the Poor Laws: Bethnal Green Workhouse

Charles Mott: The Bulcamp House of Industry, Suffolk

Samuel Green: Evidence to the Select Committee on Andover Union

The Lancet: Reports on Metropolitan Workhouse Infirmaries

Richard B. Cane: Poor Law Board Inspection Reports

British Medical Journal: Reports on Workhouse Infirmaries

1905 Royal Commission: Visits to Poor Law Institutions

Herbert Preston-Thomas: The Work and Play of a Government Inspector

FOUR SOCIAL EXPLORERS

James Greenwood: A Night in a Workhouse

J.H. Stallard: The Female Casual and her Lodging

Jack London: The People of the Abyss

Mary Higgs: A First Night in the Workhouse Tramp Ward

Frank Gray: The Tramp: His Meaning and Being

FIVE VISITORS

J.G. Kohl: The North Dublin Workhouse

Louisa Twining: Recollections of Life and Work

W.H. Wills and Philip Taylor: A Day in a Pauper Palace

Charles Dickens: Wapping Workhouse

Anonymous: London Pauper Burials

R.J. Pye-Smith: The Sheffield Union Workhouse

Anonymous: A Phonograph at the Haslingden Workhouse

References and Notes

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

GRATEFUL THANKS ARE DUE to the following: Chris Jones and the Carmarthenshire Historian digitisation project (carmarthenshirehistorian.org) for the extracts from Workhouse Days Remembered by E.V. Jones; Hertfordshire Record Publications for extracts from The Diary if Benjamin Woodcock; The London Record Society for extracts from Richard Hutton’s Complaints Book; Professor Tim Hitchcock for his transcription of the Kearney appeals; Delia Campbell for the memoirs and picture of her father Charles Burgess; PAC Holdings for permission to include the extract from My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin; Random House Group and University of Reading, Special Collections for the Rutherford letter. The Chell workhouse image is courtesy of The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, with special thanks to Sam Richardson. The image of Thomas Hartley’s letter (MH 12/14019/195) is reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives. The text of Hartley’s correspondence is Crown copyright and reproduced under the Open Government Licence (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence). All other illustrations are from the author’s own collection.

INTRODUCTION

OVER THE PAST couple of decades, a great deal has been written about the workhouse and, more generally, about the wider poor relief system of which it formed a pivotal part. In addition to general surveys of the system,1 some authors have focused on particular political or economic developments, charting the evolution of policy at a national level and exploring the huge body of statistical data and other information accumulated in official reports and archives.2 Other writers have been more concerned with examining the poor relief system at a more local level, with studies of a particular region or comparing administration in different areas.3 Still others have considered particular themes such as the treatment of groups such as children or the sick, or the evolution of institutional architecture or diet.4

What is common to virtually all this body of literature, and also to the great majority of previous writing on the subject over the past three or four centuries, is that it has been generated in the main by those who have had no first-hand experience of the institution they are discussing. The present-day limits on human longevity inevitably mean that writing about any event that took place more than about ninety years or so ago will not be based on direct personal testimony or recollections but on other accounts which themselves may often be second-hand.

That is not, of course, to say that such studies are any the worse for that. An absence of personal involvement and the perspective offered by the passage of time can make for a more measured appraisal of past events. A dispassionate tracking of, say, the annual statistics for expenditure on workhouse accommodation for different categories of inmate, or examining the public pronouncements or private correspondence of politicians of the day, can undoubtedly inform our understanding of how and why particular policies were pursued, compromises made, and events unfolded in the way that they did.

On the other hand, hearing from those who – in a variety of roles – passed through the doors of a workhouse and experienced conditions there for themselves, can provide a different yet equally valuable insight into the operation of the workhouse system.

Although it is workhouse inmates that perhaps most readily spring to mind as the source of personal testimony, accounts of life ‘inside’ are relatively few, particularly bearing in mind the numbers who, over the years, resorted to ‘the house’. The reasons for this may include the often basic literacy of those concerned, a lack of opportunity or incentive to record such matters, and the limited audience for such accounts. Apart from the pauper inmates, however, many others had a first-hand acquaintance with the institution – visitors of various sorts, workhouse staff and their families, local administrators, official inspectors, reformers, journalists, ‘social explorers’, or even just the plain curious. The words of these individuals come down to us in a variety of forms – letters, songs, poems, autobiographies, newspaper articles, and official reports and inquiries. In more recent times, the activities of local historians have preserved a wealth of informal reminiscences via the medium of oral history projects and collections.

While many authors have drawn upon such accounts, for example to support or illustrate a particular argument, their quotations are usually brief. Where longer extracts have occasionally made an appearance, they have generally been limited to a specific individual, theme or time period. The aim, in compiling the present volume, has been to provide a diverse and wide-ranging collection of fifty different workhouse voices, covering a period of almost 300 years, and – within the limits of space available – to include rather more than the usual one or two sentence ‘sound-bite’.

Those writing or speaking about their experience of or involvement with the workhouse can often provide us with valuable insights into how an institution was run, the character or behaviour of inmates and staff, or small details of its operation which may not be recorded elsewhere. Their own reactions and feelings about the establishment can also add much to our understanding. Personal testimony should not, however, be assumed always to be truthful or unbiased. The authors of many of the examples included in this book were pursuing particular agendas, with their words intended to evoke sympathy for themselves, to entertain, to shock, to substantiate a complaint or grudge, to obtain a better salary, to reprimand, to evade, to bring about reform, or to sell newspapers.

In modern times, the workhouse is often portrayed as an unremittingly grim institution, with its inmates routinely subjugated, abused and ‘dehumanised’. However, as several of the examples in this book illustrate, this is a rather distorted picture. Workhouses could indeed be badly run, with inmates – particularly in the mid-nineteenth century – being poorly treated and accommodated in far from wholesome conditions. However, conditions did gradually change, with improved medical care, more varied and better quality food, and a relaxation of petty regulations. Inmates too, were not always passive and submissive but were quite capable of ‘playing the system’ to their own advantage, as is made clear in several of the pieces included here.

For a small and shrinking group of individuals, the existence of the workhouse is still within living memory. I’ve had the pleasure of talking to several such people and some of their recollections are included in this volume. A question I’m often asked in this regard is ‘when did the last workhouse close?’ My reply usually begins with the words, ‘well, it all depends …’ One candidate for marking the end of the workhouse is 1 April 1930 when legislation came into effect abolishing the Poor Law Unions and their Boards of Guardians who had administered the poor relief system for the best part of a century. On that date, responsibility for ‘public assistance’ passed to county and borough councils. Under the new regime, some workhouses were closed but the majority continued in operation rebranded as Public Assistance Institutions (PAIs). However, since PAIs inherited existing workhouse buildings, staff and inmates, there was usually little to distinguish them from what had gone before. Indeed, PAIs invariably continued to be referred to locally as ‘the workhouse’. During the 1930s, some former workhouse infirmaries, particularly those in urban areas, were ‘appropriated’ by local councils as municipal hospitals with new facilities such as maternity units being added. Others languished as largely neglected homes for the elderly or chronic sick. The inauguration of Britain’s National Health Service in 1948 saw the end of PAIs, with some premises being disposed of, while others were incorporated into the new system as hospitals, elderly care homes, or other more specialised establishments. However, the adamant refusal of many elderly people to enter a hospital or old people’s home located in a former workhouse continued for very many years afterwards.

Author’s Note

Many of the selections included in this volume have been abridged to varying degrees. This has been to reduce the extracts to a manageable length, taking out material which I considered to be less interesting or less relevant to the main thrust of each piece, or which would be better appreciated within the context of the whole work. In order to assist readability, such excisions are generally not indicated in the text.

Peter Higginbotham, 2012

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 brief 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 20 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.

ONE

INMATES

OVER THE CENTURIES, the numbers of individuals passing through the gates of the workhouse ran into millions. Yet first-hand accounts of their experiences by workhouse inmates are relatively few and far between. Many paupers would, of course, have had a limited degree of literacy. For those who would have been able to record a written account of their encounter with the institution, there was probably little incentive to do so. Anyone struggling to regain their independence outside the workhouse was likely to have rather more pressing concerns, such as providing a roof over their head and putting food on the table. Besides, who would be interested in hearing about an experience which was both commonplace and also widely regarded as deeply shameful? It is perhaps not surprising then, that such accounts as do survive are often anonymous or never intended for publication. One source of workhouse memoirs that did reach a wider audience comes from those who ultimately made a success of their lives and were then happy to reveal their humble origins to an interested audience.

Whatever a person’s life story, or the reasons for their words coming down to us, their views of the workhouse have always to be viewed in the context in which they were recorded. Recollections of the time spent in a workhouse can often create an unbalanced view of the institution as they inevitably tend to focus on the most memorable or distressing aspects of the experience. Conditions inside the workhouse and the treatment received by inmates also have to be measured by the contemporary standards typically experienced by those outside the establishment. Workhouse food may have been plain and repetitive, but certainly no worse than the diet of many independent labourers and their families. The flogging of boys in workhouse schools may seem barbaric, but this was the norm in many Victorian children’s institutions.

This collection begins with two of the earliest surviving workhouse ‘voices’. In both cases, although the words recorded were spoken (or sung) by workhouse inmates, they were composed by others. Nonetheless, each provides an interesting insight into the workhouse experience in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries when children often featured prominently in workhouse populations.

London Corporation WorkhousePoor Out-Cast Childrens Song and Cry

The London Corporation of the Poor was first established in 1647 under An Ordinance for the Relief and Employment if the Poor, and the Punishment of Vagrants and other Disorderly Persons, whose provisions included the erection of ‘work-houses’ – one of the first pieces of legislation to employ the word. The Corporation was given two confiscated royal properties – Heiden (or Heydon) House in the Minories, and the Wardrobe building in Vintry – in which it established workhouses. By 1655, up to a hundred children and 1,000 adults were receiving relief via the establishment although residence was not a prerequisite. Adults could perform out-work in their own homes, or carry it out each day at one of the workhouses. As well as basic literacy, children in Corporation care were taught singing. A verse of one of their songs, very much a propaganda piece for the Corporation, paints a very rosy picture of their treatment:

In filthy Rags we clothed were;

In good warm Raiments now appear

from Dunghils to Kings Palaces transferr’d,

Where Education, wholesom Food,

Meat, Drink and Lodging, all that’s good

For Soul and Body, are so well prepared.5

Lack of funds hindered the Corporation’s activities and a later verse of the song makes an explicit appeal to the parliamentary legislators who in the mid-1650s were prevaricating on a scheme to expand England’s fishing industry to the detriment of other nations such as the Dutch and Danes:

Grave Senators, that sit on high,

Let not Poor English Children die,

and droop on Dunghils with lamenting notes:

An Act for Poor’s Relief, they say,

Is coming forth; why’s this delay?

O let not Dutch, Danes, Devils stop those Votes!

The Corporation’s activities came to a halt with the Restoration in 1660 when Charles II reclaimed his properties.

John TrustyDinner Speech at the Bishopsgate Workhouse

In 1698, the newly revived City of London Corporation established a workhouse on Bishopsgate Street, on what is now the site of Liverpool Street station. In 1720, the workhouse was said to be ‘a very strong and useful Building, and of large Dimensions, containing (besides other Apartments) three long Rooms or Galleries, one over another, for Workhouses, which are all filled with Boys and Girls at Work, some Knitting, most Spinning of Wool; and a convenient Number of Women and Men teaching and overseeing them; Fires burning in the Chimneys in the Winter time, to keep the Rooms and the Children warm.’6 The children, up to 400 in number, were taught to read and write, and given work to do until they could be put out to be apprentices, sent to sea, or ‘otherwise disposed’. The youngsters all wore clothing made from ‘Russit Cloth’7, with a round badge worn on the breast representing a poor boy and a sheep with the motto ‘God’s Providence is our Inheritance’.

On 29 October 1702, John Trusty, an eleven-year-old boy from the workhouse, was selected to make an address to Queen Anne at the Lord Mayor’s Day dinner in the Guildhall. Although clearly penned by someone else, his words – possibly the earliest on record spoken by an identifiable workhouse inmate – conjure up a rather charming scene:

The front entrance of the city of London’s Bishopsgate Street workhouse.

May it please Your Most Excellent Majesty: To Pardon this great Presumption in Us poor Children, who throw our Selves at your Royal Feet, among the Rest of your Glad Subjects, who here in Crowds appear to behold Your Sacred Majesty.

We, MADAM, have no Fathers, no Mothers, no Friends; or, which is next to none, those who through their Extreme Poverty cannot help us. God’s Providence is our Inheritance. (Pointing to the motto on his breast.) All the Support we have is from the Unexhausted Charities of Your Loyal Citizens of London, and other Your Good Subjects, and the Pious Care of our Governors, who are now teaching our little Hands to Work, and our Fingers to Spin.

These Threads, MADAM, (Holding some yarn in his hands) are some of the Early Fruits of our Industry. We are all daily employed on the Staple Manufacture of England, learning betimes to be useful to the World. And there seemed nothing wanting to compleat our Happiness, but the Opportunity which this Day affords us, of being the Objects of Your Tender Pitty and Compassion. One Gracious Smile from YOUR MAJESTY on this New Foundation will make us Live, – and Live to call You Blessed.

And may God Almighty long Preserve YOUR MAJESTY for the Good of these Your Kingdoms, and Your Royal Consort the PRINCE. So Pray We, Your Little Children: And let All Your People say, AMEN.8

Paul Patrick KearneyLondon Pauper Farms

In the eighteenth century, parishes in the city of London increasingly moved away from running their own workhouses and instead used the services of private contractors who operated ‘pauper farms’, often located outside the city boundaries.

One inmate of such an establishment was Paul Patrick Kearney, a colourful and disreputable character who was finally reduced to claiming poor relief from the City parish of St Dionis Backchurch where he had legal settlement.9 In 1764, after his initial requests for relief were turned down by two of the churchwardens, Kearney – as was every applicant’s right – took his case to the Lord Mayor of London who, like local justices of the peace elsewhere, could overrule such decisions. Churchwarden William Kippax then agreed to offer Kearney relief which, to Kearney’s horror, consisted not of the anticipated handout but of a note of admission to the parish’s pauper farm – or ‘mock workhouse’ as Kearney referred to it. The note, as Kearney later related, was addressed to the farm’s proprietor:

One Richard Birch in Rose Lane in the parish of Christ church Spitalfields in the county of Middlesex not only out of the said parish of Saint Dionys but also out of the city of London and Jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor which written note instead of being an order for this informants relief was a warrant of commitment of this informants body to imprisonment labour or work in an infected filthy dungeon called a work house kept by the said Richard Birch containing near one hundred poor victims to parish cruelty but not capacious enough healthily to hold forty persons, and therein the said Birch grossly insulted and abused and ordered [me] to work at emptying the soil out of vaults that pass in drains or sewers through under or in the said mock work house which so overcame [me, that I] fainted and fell sick and was in that condition forced into a nasty bed where [I] was swarmed with lice and got the Itch mange and a malignant or pocky leprosy.10

Although conditions on pauper farms had a poor reputation, the woeful picture painted by Kearney is clearly one whose intent is primarily to provoke sympathy for his claim for out-relief.

For several years afterwards, Kearney managed to extract relief from the parish in various forms including cash, lodging, clothing and medicine. In February 1771, by which time the parish was housing paupers with a contractor at Hoxton, Kearney was again petitioning the Lord Mayor. On this occasion, his pleas were heard by a sitting of aldermen who:

Sent me into prison to be bodily & unlawfully punished & mentally tortured in a Slaughter house for poor human bodies unlawfully kept by John Hughes & Wm Phillips & their accomplices at Hogsden [Hoxton].11

At a subsequent inspection of the Hoxton workhouse by the St Dionis churchwardens, Kearney complained:

I was perishing of cold for want of clean warm apparel & lodging ill of a complication of distemper occasioned by the cruelties exercised on me at Birches &c and that I could not eat half the victuals allowed me because of my illness & their being cold & not warm victuals fit for an ailing person, nor any spoon meat not even Sage tea & but 3 pints of small beer which occasion’d my drinking more water there than beer daily, and that I was insulted tormented vexed & otherwise constantly abused in so much that my life was a burthen to me there.12

Soon afterwards, Kearney proposed that in return for a one-off payment of forty shillings, he would agree never again to claim relief from the parish. The money was to allow him to take up a post as secretary to a Captain Scot who was embarking on several years of travels abroad. Although it is not clear if the money was paid, Kearney was not heard from again.

Ann GandlerReflections on My Own Situation

Ann Candler was born in 1740 at Yoxford in Suffolk, the daughter of glover William More and his wife. As a child, Ann displayed a ‘fondness for reading’, her favourites being travel books, plays and romances, though not poetry. Despite this, her first efforts after learning to write were in verse.13

In 1762, she married a man named Candler, a cottager from the nearby village of Sproughton. Candler’s heavy drinking, coupled with his service in the militia from 1763 to 1766, kept Ann and her growing family destitute. When Candler re-enlisted in 1777, Ann was ill for eleven weeks and was forced to put four of her six children into the Tattingstone workhouse. In 1780, she took refuge in the workhouse herself, where she gave birth to twin sons, an event which became the subject of one of her poems. Sadly, both twins died after a few weeks. Following Candler’s military discharge in 1783, the two of them entered the workhouse. Six months later, Candler departed – the last Ann ever saw of him. Remaining in the workhouse, she began writing more poetry, some of which was published by the Ipswich Journal. She gained several literary patrons, including the poet Elizabeth Cobbold, and in 1802 advance subscriptions for a small volume of her poems, Poetical Attempts, enabled Ann to take furnished lodgings near her married daughter Lucy.

The Tattingstone House of Industry was erected in 1768 to house 300 paupers, later becoming the Samford Union workhouse and now converted to residential use.

The poem ‘Reflections on my own Situtation, Written in T-tt-ngst-ne House of Industry, February 1802’ expresses her feelings about the ‘niggard alms’ of the institution. However, having acquired ‘a friend indeed’ outside the workhouse – presumably Mrs Cobbold – salvation is at hand. Here is the first part of the poem:

How many years are past and gone,

How alter’d I appear,

How many strange events have known,

Since first I enter’d here!

Within these dreary walls confin’d,

A lone recluse, I live,

And, with the dregs of human kind,

A niggard alms receive.

Uncultivated, void of sense,

Unsocial, insincere,

Their rude behaviour gives offence,

Their language wounds the ear.

Disgusting objects swarm around,

Throughout confusions reign;

Where feuds and discontent abound,

Remonstrance proves in vain.

No sympathising friend I find,

Unknown is friendship here;

Not one to soothe, or calm the mind,

When overwhelm’d with care:

Peace, peace, my heart, thy duty calls,

With cautious steps proceed:

Beyond these melancholy walls,

I’ve found a friend indeed!

Charles ShawWhen I Was a Child

Charles Shaw was born in 1832 at Piccadilly Street, Tunstall, in the Staffordshire Potteries. He was the sixth of eight children of Enoch Shaw, a painter and gilder, and Ann, née Mawdesley. After attending a dame school14 in Tunstall, he began work as a mould runner to an apprentice muffin maker,15 earning a shilling a week. When he was eight, he moved to another factory as a handle maker. In 1842 his father lost his job after participating in a strike and for a few weeks the family were forced into Wolstanton and Burslem Union workhouse at Chell.

Shaw later became a minister, a mill owner, and a writer. His book, When I Was a Child, was published in 190316 under the pen name of ‘An Old Potter’:

We went by the field road to Chell, so as to escape as much observation as possible. One child had to be carried as she was too young to walk. The morning was dull and cheerless. I had been through those fields in sunshine, and when the singing of birds made the whole scene very pleasant. Now, when the silence was broken, it was only by deep agonising sobs. If we could have seen what was driving us so reluctantly up that hill to the workhouse (‘Bastile’, as it was bitterly called then), we should have seen two stern and terrible figures – Tyranny and Starvation. No other powers could have so relentlessly hounded us along. None of us wanted to go, but we must go, and so we came to our big home for the time. The very vastness of it chilled us. Our reception was more chilling still. Everybody we saw and spoke to looked metallic, as if worked from within by a hidden machinery. Their voices were metallic, and sounded harsh and imperative. The younger ones huddled more closely to their parents, as if from fear of these stern officials. Doors were unlocked by keys belonging to bunches, and the sound of keys and locks and bars, and doors banging, froze the blood within us. It was all so unusual and strange, and so unhomelike. We finally landed in a cellar, clean and bare, and as grim as I have since seen in prison cells. We were told this was the place where we should have to be washed and put on our workhouse attire. Nobody asked us if we were tired, or if we had had any breakfast. We might have committed some unnameable crime, or carried some dreaded infection. We youngsters were roughly disrobed, roughly and coldly washed, and roughly attired in rough clothes, our under garments being all covered up by a rough linen pinafore. Then we parted amid bitter cries, the young ones being taken one way and the parents (separated too) taken as well to different regions in that merciful establishment which the statesmanship of England had provided for those who were driven there by its gross selfishness and unspeakable crassness.

I was ushered or shoved into a large room which I found was both dining and schoolroom. There were many guests assembled, and on the principle, ‘The more the merrier’, we ought to have dined merrily. But I saw no merriment, not even in that company of boys, at whose age Heaven usually endows them with almost irrepressible fun. I saw hungry-looking lads, with furtive glances, searching everything and everybody, and speaking in subdued whispers. I saw a stern, military, cadaverous-looking man, who was said to be the schoolmaster. I noticed his chilling glances, carrying menace in every look. When dinner was ready this stony-looking individual bent his head a few seconds and mumbled something. I suppose it was grace he was saying before meat, but as far as I could see there was no grace in anything he did. I noticed he did not join us in our repast, and I know now he was a wise man for not doing so. He had asked God’s blessing on what we were to eat; but he would have cursed it had he had to eat it himself. It was a fine piece of mockery, though I did not know it then, or I should have admired his acting. I was hungry, but that bread! that greasy water! those few lumps of something which would have made a tiger’s teeth ache to break the fibres of! The strangeness, the repulsiveness, and the loneliness, made my heart turn over, and I turned over what I could not eat to those near me, who devoured voraciously all I could spare. It was the first great dinner I ever attended, and I didn’t like it. I have been at other big dinners where there were many courses, and flowers, and gleaming silver, glass, and other amenities. But this big dinner was simply coarse, and looked only coarse even for a poor lad who had not been too daintily fed. In the afternoon we had our school work to do, and as I could read well I had no trouble with such lessons as were given. But if some of the other lads had had heads made of leather stuffed with hay they could not have got more knocks. It was a brutal place for the ‘dull boy’. However hard he worked, and however patiently he strove, he got nothing but blows. Tea and supper by a wise economy were joined together. The New Poor Law was to be economical if anything, even to the least quantity of food a growing boy’s stomach could do with. But supper time came. What would it bring? That was the question for me. It brought a hunch of bread and a jug of skilly. I had heard of workhouse skilly but had never before seen it. I had had poor food before this, but never any so offensively poor as this. By what rare culinary-making nausea and bottomless fatuousness it could be made so sickening I never could make out. Simple meal and water, however small the amount of meal, honestly boiled, would be palatable. But this decoction of meal and water and mustiness and fustiness was most revolting to any healthy taste. It might have been boiled in old clothes, which had been worn upon sweating bodies for three-score years and ten. That workhouse skilly was the vilest compound I ever tasted, unutterably insipid, and it might never have been made in a country where either sugar or salt was known.

Our bedroom was a long, narrow room, with the beds in rows on each side of the room. Down the middle of the room was a long, narrow passage. The bed clothing was scant enough, and the beds hard enough for athletic discipline. At the end of the room, near the staircase, was a wide, shallow tub. There were boys there as cruel as neglect and badness could make them. They soon found out the timid ones, and would ‘walk the midnight air’ to frighten all they could by ghostly appearances. A poor lad, seeking the tub at night, would sometimes shriek through some brutal attempt to frighten him. By sheer weariness some would soon drop off to sleep, while others, alive with fears, would have to listen to the most harrowing stories of ghosts, boggarts and murders. Every new boy had to sing a song or tell a tale – the other boys wanted a taste of his quality – the first night, and pitied was that poor boy to be who could neither sing nor tell a tale. He was bullied, was pulled out of bed, and scarified by pitiless mockery such as that of ‘a schoolboy ere he’s learned to pity’.

Feverishly and restlessly I spent that first night. Hunger and terror were about my bed. A lively imagination made real and present some of the characters in the tales which had been told by the boys who were now asleep. I saw the ghosts they had spoken of. I saw the murderers, red-handed, rushing through the room. I heard their footsteps, and only found out too late that the footsteps were those of the poor little fellows who were visiting the tub at the end of the room. Sanitation was an angel undreamed of in the workhouses in those days, as well as in England generally. That tub, too, had to be carried down the stairs every morning before breakfast by two small boys in turn.

This first day’s experience of the Bastile was like most others, and the night’s too. On the Sunday, I remember, we were taken to church in the morning. After the church the clergyman came to our ‘dining-room’, but, like the schoolmaster, not to dine with us. He was to say ‘grace before meat’ in place of the schoolmaster as it was a most sacred day. He also gave us a preliminary homily as long as the sermon he had given in church. We stood up while this was given. We were told on that and other Sundays, as I well remember, of the great mercies we enjoyed, of the good food provided, of the comfortable clothing we had, and how we were cared for by those about us. All this was said while before us on the table lay a small hunk of bread, a small plate with a small slice of thin, very thin cheese, and some jugs of water. This was our Sunday dinner, and for such a dinner ‘that good man, the clergyman’, was brought to say grace. It was a dinner we liked, nevertheless, because of the bit of cheese with its appetising taste, and its power, as was said in those days, ‘to eat a lot of bread’. And because we liked it we disliked the parson for keeping us so long from enjoying it. However, the homily and the grace came to an end at last and the parson departed, but not to a dinner, however sumptuous, that he relished more than we did that bit of cheese. This was the one bit of food that reminded us of home.

Sunday afternoon brought an hour of unspeakable joy. The children who had mothers were permitted to go to the women’s room. It can easily be imagined what happened then. Bedlam was let loose for an hour. Wild joy, frantic exclamations, every conceivable form of speech possible to such people under such circumstances were employed. Love went mad in many cases. But all did not give way to the wild revelry of passion. Some mothers and children hung together in quiet, intense endearments. These were conveyed more by soft pressures of hands, embraces, and lips, than by words. Even among the poor many stand worlds apart. This was the one sweet merciful relief in the harsh discipline of the workhouse.

There was one ‘case of discipline’ while I was at the Bastile to which I must refer. It was a conspicuous case, and therefore had ‘to be made an example of’. So ran the official cant. Discipline was administered with unfailing regularity every day. Hardly a boy escaped some form of it, and it was usually a merciless form. It seemed to be a standing regulation that this treatment was as necessary for the soul as skilly was for the body. No distinction was made, the same cuts and slashes and cuffs were aimed at the mobile and sensitive boy as were aimed at the sluggish and dull boy. The one boy would writhe and sob, and the other maintained a stolid silence. The case I am now going to refer to was that of a boy of lively temperament and unflagging energy. His activity was always bringing him into trouble. The theory formed by the officials seemed to be that his activity was essentially vicious, and so, instead of trying to guide it into wise and useful developments, it must be sternly repressed. Such a policy goaded the lad. He became defiant and reckless. Punish him they might, but he could not be repressed. One day, after being unusually provoked and punished, he scaled the workhouse wall, and bolted. Soon a hue and cry was raised, searchers were sent out, and after a few hours the lad was captured and brought back. This incident made an awful flutter in our little dove-cote. All were sorry for the lad, for he had made no enemies among us. All sorts of punishment were imagined as likely to be inflicted, but the boys who had been longest in the workhouse said he would be flogged in the presence of the other boys with a pickled birch rod – that is a rod which has been kept soaking in salt water. After the usual skilly supper that night we were all told to remain in the room. None were to go out on any account. The long table was cleared, and a smaller square table was brought in and placed in the middle of the room. The knowing ones whispered that the flogging would take place on this table, and this news made us all curious, eager, yet fearful. Several persons came in whom we did not usually see. Then the governor came in. To us poor lads he was the incarnation of every dread power which a mortal could possess. He was to us the Bastile in its most repulsive embodiment. Personally, he may have been an amiable man, I don’t know. He never gave one look or touch which led me to feel he was a man. He was only ‘the governor’, and as such, in those days, when the New Poor Laws meant making a workhouse a dread and a horror to be avoided, he was perhaps only acting the part he felt to be due to his office. His functions, and any outward compassion, were as wide asunder as the poles. He may have had compassion. He may have been inwardly tortured by the necessity for outward callousness. May Heaven forgive me if I do him any wrong, but word or act of kindliness from him I never heard or saw towards myself or anyone else. Now, however, the governor was in the room, and his presence seemed to fill it with an awful shadow. We were duly informed by him what was to take place, the bad qualities of the runaway were ponderously and slowly described, and we were exhorted in menacing tones to take warning by his ‘awful example’. This homily was enough of itself to make us shiver, and shiver most of us did with fear of those present and fear of the sight we were about to witness. When the solemn harangue was finished, the poor boy was pushed into the room like a sheep for the slaughter. He had a wild, eager look. His eyes flashed, and searched the room and all present with rapid glances. His body was stripped down to his waist, and in the yellow and sickly candlelight of the room his heart could be seen beating rapidly against his poor thin ribs. To punish such a boy as that, half nourished, and trembling with fear, was a monstrous cruelty. However, discipline was sacred, and could do no wrong in a Bastile sixty years ago. The boy was lifted upon the table, and four of the biggest boys were called out to hold each a leg or an arm. The boy was laid flat on the table, his breeches well pushed down, so as to give as much play as possible for the birch rod. The lad struggled and screamed. Swish went the pickled birch on his back, administered by the schoolmaster, who was too flinty to show any emotion. Thin red stripes were seen across the poor lad’s back after the first stroke. They then increased in number and thickness as blow after blow fell on his back. Then there were seen tiny red tricklings following the course of the stripes, and ultimately his back was a red inflamed surface, contrasting strongly with the skin on his sides. How long the flogging went on I cannot say, but screaming became less and less piercing, and at last the boy was taken out, giving vent only to heavy sobs at intervals. If he was conscious, I should think only partially so. The common rumour was that he would have his back washed with salt water. Of this I don’t know. I do know there had been cruelty enough. A living horror, hateful in every aspect, had been put before the eyes of the boys present.

A view of the Wolstanton and Burslem Union workhouse at Chell in Staffordshire, where Charles Shaw and his family spent time in 1842.

There was little sleep in our room for some boys, all their pulses were alive with fear and terror. The night bore on slowly and wearily. The broken whispers told of restlessness and sleeplessness. But the morning came, and the skilly, and the room where we had witnessed the bleeding back of the boy. The boy didn’t come, however. Where he was none of us knew. I never saw him again.17

Some of the events that Shaw recounted were incorporated by Arnold Bennett into his 1910 novel Clayhanger.