Workhouses of Wales and the Welsh Borders E-Book

Peter Higginbotham

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

Seitenzahl: 460

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

A survey in 1776 recorded almost 2,000 parish workhouses operating in England, while the number in Wales was just nineteen. The New Poor Law of 1834 proved equally unattractive in much of Wales – some parts of the country resisted providing a workhouse until the 1870s, with Rhayader in Radnorshire being the last area in the whole of England and Wales to do so. Our image of these institutions has often been coloured by the work of authors such as Charles Dickens, but what was the reality? Where exactly were these workhouses located – and what happened to them? People are often surprised to discover that a familiar building was once a workhouse. Revealing locations steeped in social history, Workhouses of Wales and the Welsh Borders is a comprehensive and copiously illustrated guide to the workhouses that were set up across Wales and the border counties of Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. It provides an insight into the contemporary attitudes towards such institutions as well as their construction and administration, what life was like for the inmates, and where to find their records today.

Leseprobe

First published 2022

The History Press

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© Peter Higginbotham, 2022

The right of Peter Higginbotham to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

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ISBN 978 0 7509 9978 6

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1 ANGLESEY

2 BRECONSHIRE (BRECKNOCKSHIRE)

3 CARDIGANSHIRE

4 CARMARTHENSHIRE

5 CARNARVONSHIRE

6 DENBIGHSHIRE

7 FLINTSHIRE

8 GLAMORGAN

9 MERIONETHSHIRE

10 MONMOUTHSHIRE

11 MONTGOMERYSHIRE

12 PEMBROKESHIRE

13 RADNORSHIRE

14 CHESHIRE

15 GLOUCESTERSHIRE

16 HEREFORDSHIRE

17 SHROPSHIRE (SALOP)

18 WORKHOUSE RECORDS

19 USEFUL WEBSITES

20 PLACES TO VISIT

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

In a roundabout way, the workhouse owes its existence to Henry VIII, whose dissolution of England’s religious houses from 1536 onwards removed a major source of support for the nation’s poor. Over the following decades, a variety of legislative measures were tried that gradually established the principle that the relief of the poor should come from the public purse rather than through charitable endeavours.

The 1552 Act for Provision and Relief of the Poor required that ‘collectors of alms’ be appointed in each parish, with every parishioner giving whatever their ‘charitable devotion’ suggested.1 When the funds raised by such voluntary donations proved inadequate, compulsory contributions were instituted by the Vagabonds Act of 1572, which introduced a local property tax, the poor rate, administered by parish collectors and overseers. The money raised was to be used to relieve ‘aged, poor, impotent, and decayed persons’.2

In 1576, the Act for Setting the Poor on Work stated a principle that was to influence the administration of poor relief for centuries to come – that the able-bodied were not to have ‘any just excuse in saying that they cannot get service or work and be then without means of livelihood’.3 To achieve this, every town was enjoined to provide ‘a stock of wool, hemp, flax, or other stuff by taxation of all; so that every poor and needy person, old or young, able to work and standing in need of relief, shall not fear want of work, go abroad begging, or committing pilfering, or living in idleness.’

Further measures were included in the 1597 Act for the Relief of the Poor. The Act, which brought together elements of earlier legislation, required parishes to appoint Overseers of the Poor, whose responsibility was to collect and distribute the poor rate, to find work for the able-bodied, and to set up ‘houses of dwelling’ for those incapable of supporting themselves.4 In the same year, the Hospitals for the Poor Act encouraged the founding of hospitals or ‘abiding and working houses’ for the poor. Accommodation for those in need through no fault of their own – often referred to as the ‘impotent’ or ‘deserving’ poor – coupled with premises and work for the able-bodied, formed the basis of what would eventually evolve into the workhouse.5

THE 1601 POOR RELIEF ACT

In 1601, another Act for the Relief of the Poor, essentially a slight refinement of its 1597 predecessor, formed the basis of the what became known as the Old Poor Law.6 The main elements of the 1601 Act were: the parish being the administrative unit responsible for poor relief, with its Overseers collecting poor rates and allocating relief; the provision of materials to provide work for the able-bodied poor, those refusing to work liable to be placed in a House of Correction;7 the relief of the impotent poor, including the provision of ‘houses of dwelling’; and the setting to work and apprenticeship of pauper children.

The assistance given to the poor through the parish poor rates was predominantly dispensed as ‘out-relief’ – what might now be referred to as hand-outs. Out-relief could be given as a cash payment, either for one-off specific purposes, such as the purchase of clothing or shoes, or as a regular weekly pension. Alternatively, it could be dispensed in kind, most commonly in the form of bread or flour.

At the heart of all this activity was the parish’s governing body, the vestry, which comprised the priest, churchwardens, and other respected householders of the parish.

THE STATUS OF WALES

Following the Acts of Union (1536–43), Wales was administered under the same laws as England. Thus, the Poor Law Acts of 1597 and 1601 and successive Poor Law legislation applied to Wales as well as England.

One Welsh county, the border county of Monmouthshire, had a peculiar status. After its name was omitted from the second Act of Union in 1543, the notion arose that it was a part of England rather than Wales. As a result, Monmouthshire was frequently placed in the English section of directories, reports and other publications, while statutes and other legal documents often used the phrase ‘Wales and Monmouthshire’ to deal with the ambiguity. The situation was only fully resolved by the Local Government Act of 1972, which formally placed the county in Wales.

EARLY WORKHOUSES

Although the 1601 Act talked about ‘work’ and ‘houses’, it made no mention of the word ‘workhouse’ – a term that seems to have come into general use in the 1620s. These early workhouses were often non-residential establishments, more like workshops in character. Work, usually related to the production of textiles, was provided for the willing able-bodied, either on a daily basis on the premises, or taken away to be done in their own homes.

At Shrewsbury, as early as 1604, the town corporation made plans to set the poor to work in the old castle, but the scheme appears not to have come to fruition. In 1627, however, it was ordered that ‘the Jersey house be made a work-house’, with ‘Jersey cloth’ being manufactured there.8 At around the same time, similar initiatives were taking place across the country in towns such as Reading, Taunton, Sheffield, Halifax, Leeds, Exeter, Plymouth and Cambridge.9 Later in the century, workhouses were established at Ludlow (1676), Nantwich (1677) and Macclesfield (1698).

SETTLEMENT AND REMOVAL

The 1662 Settlement and Removal Act decreed that a parish was required to give poor relief only to those who were legally established or ‘settled’ there.10 Unless they were able to rent a property for £10 a year or more, any new arrivals deemed ‘likely to be chargeable’ to the poor rates could be forcibly removed back to their own parish.

A child’s settlement at birth was taken to be the same as that of its father. At marriage, a woman took on the same settlement as her husband. Illegitimate children were granted settlement in the place where they were born and thus became the responsibility of that parish. This sometimes led parish Overseers to try and get rid of an unmarried pregnant woman before her child was born; for example, by forcibly transporting her to another parish just before the birth, or by paying a man from another parish to marry her.

Over the years, the settlement laws were much amended. From 1691, settlement could be obtained by serving an apprenticeship in a new parish or by a year’s continuous employment there. Although gradually diluted, the settlement laws governed the administration of poor relief for almost three centuries, their final remnants only being repealed in 1948.

LOCAL ACT ADMINISTRATIONS

The administrative framework laid down in 1601 did not suit everyone. This was particularly the case in towns that contained a number of small parishes. In 1696, Bristol’s eighteen parishes obtained a Local Act of Parliament to create the Bristol Incorporation of the Poor. The Act enabled the incorporation to manage poor relief across the whole city, including the appointment of paid officers and the setting up of workhouses. By 1712, more than a dozen other towns had followed Bristol’s example and formed civic incorporations under Local Acts. This route was taken by Hereford in 1698, Gloucester in 1702, and Chester in 1761. The workhouses set up by Local Act incorporations were usually styled ‘Houses of Industry’ in the expectation, often unrealised, that the labour of the inmates would make a substantial contribution to the running costs of the establishments.

Despite the considerable legal expense involved in obtaining a Local Act, parishes usually judged that the benefits would justify the cost. Things did not always turn out that way, however. Within five years of Gloucester obtaining its Local Act, the city’s parishes had reverted to administering poor relief individually. Eventually, in 1764, the city obtained a second Local Act, which was successfully put into ongoing operation.

THE WORKHOUSE TEST ACT

By the start of the eighteenth century, parishes were increasingly providing residential accommodation for their poor. In most cases, these establishments – generally referred to as poorhouses – housed only the elderly and infirm, who received little or no supervision. However, the idea of the residential workhouse was gaining ground, where paupers were expected to work in return for their accommodation and maintenance. As well as the labour element, workhouses typically had a resident governor, strict rules regulating the inmates’ conduct, and a plain diet. However, use of the terms ‘poorhouse’ and ‘workhouse’ was not always consistent and the two words could be used almost interchangeably, as at Mydroilyn in Cardiganshire, where the poorhouse inmates were to be ‘properly employed’.11 The character of an establishment could also change over time, as happened in 1810 at Mitcheldean in Gloucestershire, when the existing workhouse was turned over for use as a poorhouse.12

An early 1900s view of St Peter’s Hospital, Bristol – originally the city’s ‘Mint’ workhouse, established in 1698.

The preamble to Tewksbury’s 1792 Local Act, promoting a new workhouse to be administered by an incorporated board of ‘guardians of the poor’.

A major impetus to the use of parish workhouses came from the 1723 Workhouse Test Act, also known as Knatchbull’s Act.13 The Act gave a legal framework for workhouses to be set up by parishes either singly, or in combination with a neighbour. Premises could be hired or purchased for the purpose, and workhouse operation could be contracted out – a system known as ‘farming’ the poor. The Act also provided for the use of the workhouse ‘test’ – that the prospect of the workhouse should act as a deterrent and that poor relief could be restricted to those who were prepared to accept its regime. Parishes often hoped that offering only the workhouse to some or all of its relief applicants would reduce the number of claimants and so reduce the cost of the poor rates. If it did not fulfil these expectations, the workhouse could be closed and a return made to solely using out-relief.

Workhouses sometimes operated in existing premises that might be owned by the parish or be rented for the purpose, and their location could change over time. If a parish felt confident about the benefits of a workhouse, it might purchase or erect a building for the purpose. Parishes often switched to and fro between running the workhouse themselves and appointing a contractor. Contractor-run workhouses were normally located within the parish that was financing them, although other arrangements were possible. From 1748 onwards, Thomas Hazlehurst’s establishment, based in Wellington, also received paupers from Newport, Little Wenlock, Wrockwardine and Berrington. In 1774, the Bromyard township of Winslow began using privately run workhouses 15 miles away in Hereford.14 Up until 1795, Knighton employed a contractor in Ludlow.15 In 1832, the Cheshire parish of Bostock was sending paupers to a workhouse in Middlewich.16

The workhouse at Sutton Lane Ends, near Macclesfield, erected in 1785.

Although the 1723 Act was permissive, many parishes made use of its provisions and it led to a surge in workhouse provision. Parishes establishing workhouses in the first ten years following the passing of the Act included: Cheltenham, Chester (St John the Baptist and St Mary’s on the Hill), Cirencester, Congleton, Ellesmere, Knutsford, Ledbury, Lymm, Much Wenlock, Shifnal, Stockport, Stroud and Tarporley. One of the earliest workhouses in Wales was opened at Hawarden in 1736.

THE PARISH WORKHOUSE REGIME

Parish workhouses varied in matters such as the inmates’ diet and the tasks given to those able to work. A typical establishment was that at Bishop’s Castle, in Shropshire, which in 1797 featured in a pioneering national survey of the poor by Sir Frederic Eden:

The contractor has £105 a year to feed and clothe [the inmates] and defray all other expenses, except appeals. 14 paupers, chiefly old, infirm and insane, are in the house. Those who can work are employed in spinning lint or other common work, according to their age and abilities. Table of diet in the Workhouse: Breakfast–every day, broth, or milk and water gruel. Dinner–Sunday, Wednesday, hot meat and vegetables; other days, cold meat and vegetables. Supper–every day, same as at breakfast. No bread is allowed at dinner. Sometimes potatoes and milk are served for supper. The matron always gives each person a little bread and cheese after breakfast. The house is kept pretty clean: of 10 beds 6 are stuffed with feathers and 4 with chaff. Both beds and bedclothes are very old.17

It is clear from reports such as this that bed-sharing was the norm in workhouses of the period.

Parish workhouses often had extensive rules covering matters such as the daily routine, prohibitions on smoking or the use of distilled liquors, and punishments for behaviour such as swearing, lying, malingering or disobedience. Despite the ban on strong drink, parish workhouses frequently had their own brewhouse and served ‘small’ or weak beer to their inmates, including children – it was often healthier than the local water supply.

Conditions in parish workhouses could vary widely, though, and some were clearly grim. In 1835, a workhouse at Clifton, in Bristol, was ‘filthy in the extreme, the appearance of the inmates dirty and wretched’.18 In contrast, at nearby Westbury-on-Trym, inmates were provided with a good building, good food and kind treatment – one writer suggesting that ‘even today it would be unlikely for an old person in a geriatric ward to receive such good treatment’.19 Despite the potential for making the workhouse a deterrent institution, this was far from always being the case.

GILBERT’S ACT

In 1782, MP Thomas Gilbert successfully promoted his Act for the Better Relief and Employment of the Poor.20 Gilbert viewed existing parish workhouses as ‘dens of horror’.21 The aim of his Act was to:

have the poor well accommodated and treated with great humanity, but kept under a strict conformity to the rules and orders of the house; to encourage good behaviour, sobriety and industry, by proper rewards, and to find suitable and proper employment, under prudent and careful inspection, for all who are able to work.22

Under the Act, whose adoption was voluntary, the use of workhouses was to be restricted to the old, the sick and infirm, and orphan children, while able-bodied paupers were to be found employment near their own homes, with landowners, farmers and other employers receiving allowances from the poor rates to bring wages up to subsistence levels. Refusal to do such work would result in being placed in a House of Correction. The Act allowed parishes to form groups or ‘unions’ and operate a joint workhouse. The administration of Gilbert Unions was through a board of guardians, elected by the ratepayers of each member parish, and supervised by a Visitor. The appointment of the Guardians and Visitor, the location of workhouses, and the appointment of a governor or contractor all required the approval of local magistrates.

Llantrisant’s former workhouse premises on Swan Street.

Well over 100 Gilbert administrations were eventually established, most of which were Gilbert Unions, some comprising more than forty parishes. Motives for adopting the Act varied. Apart from any humanitarian considerations regarding the treatment of the poor, having a share in a large Gilbert Union workhouse could prove financially attractive for a parish compared to running its own institution. In some places, magistrates seem to have actively endorsed use of the Act, perhaps reflecting the greater control it bestowed on them in relation to the local operation of poor relief.23

Gilbert’s Act proved particularly popular in Gloucestershire, where fifteen individual parishes eventually adopted its provisions.24 No Gilbert administrations seem to have been formed in Cheshire, Herefordshire or Shropshire, and apparently just two in Wales, at Bangor and Swansea, although the Glamorgan parish of Llantrisant was clearly motivated by the Act despite not formally adopting it.

RURAL INCORPORATIONS

In the second half of the eighteenth century, a series of Local Act incorporations were formed in rural East Anglia. Fifteen were eventually established, most being based on traditional county sub-divisions known as hundreds. In 1784, Shrewsbury obtained a Local Act and its incorporation opened a large House of Industry in a building originally erected as a branch of London’s Foundling Hospital. Seven years later, apparently stimulated by Shrewsbury’s activities, five rural incorporations were formed in just two years in north-west Shropshire and neighbouring Montgomeryshire. The five – Atcham, Ellesmere, Oswestry, Whitchurch, and Montgomery and Pool – all closely followed Shrewsbury’s model of operation and the style of its workhouse. The Montgomery and Pool Incorporation was run by a board of twenty-one directors, appointed by its constituent parishes. The incorporation spent £12,000 on erecting a House of Industry at Forden for up to 500 inmates, who were occupied in spinning, weaving, tailoring and shoemaking.

OUT-RELIEF VERSUS THE WORKHOUSE

A parliamentary survey published in 1777 revealed that there were almost 2,000 workhouses in operation in England, with around one in seven parishes operating an establishment. In total, almost 90,000 workhouse places were provided, enough to accommodate about 1.1 per cent of the population. It was rather a different picture in Wales (Monmouthshire included), however, where a mere nineteen workhouses were in use, covering about one in sixty parishes and able to house about 0.1 per cent of the population.25 Eleven of these workhouses were in Pembrokeshire. In 1803, a total of 3,755 parishes in England were making use of (though not necessarily themselves operating) workhouses, while the figure for Wales was then seventy.26

The Foundling Hospital building was adopted as the Shrewsbury Incorporation’s House of Industry and became a model for five further establishments in the region.

Despite the growing use of the workhouse, out-relief was the dominant means for supporting the poor on both sides of the border – one in seven English parishes running a workhouse meant that six in seven were not running one. In 1802–03, across England and Wales, 956,248 paupers were relieved outside the workhouse at a cost of just over £3 million. At the same date, 83,468 paupers were maintained in workhouses, at cost of about £1 million.27

As the figures indicate, workhouses played very little part in parish poor relief in Wales, where out-relief was always the preferred method of providing for the poor. The main means of support were by the payment of rents out of the poor rates, by the exemption of cottages from rate assessments, by regular periodic relief, by casual or occasional assistance in money or kind, and in some parishes by establishing poorhouses where poor individuals or families could live rent-free but without any supervision.28

The readiness with which out-relief was provided could vary over time, however, depending on factors such as the prevailing economic conditions in the area. In the 1820s, able-bodied applicants in Shrewsbury first had to work on the town’s streets. In lean times, some Shropshire coalfield parishes cut down on the numbers they supported with out-relief.29

THE OLD POOR LAW IN CRISIS

The early nineteenth century saw a time of increasing financial problems for the poor relief system. The national cost of poor relief rose enormously – from around £2 million in 1784 to a peak of £7.87 million in 1818.30 The majority of that expenditure was on out-relief.

In many parts of the country, the supplementing of labourers’ wages from the poor rate as advocated by Gilbert’s Act had become common. The practice had become formalized in allowance systems such as that introduced in 1795 at Speenhamland in West Berkshire, which linked wage supplements to the price of bread and size of family. The Napoleonic Wars (1803–15) also contributed to an increase in the number of relief claimants, while the introduction of the Corn Laws in 1815 led to higher food prices and the cost of feeding the poor.

A few places, however, managed to buck the national trend of rising poor rates. In the early 1820s, the Nottinghamshire parish of Southwell virtually abolished out-relief and claimants were instead offered only the workhouse. The workhouse was strictly and economically run, with males and females segregated, work required of the inmates and a restricted diet imposed. As a result, the parish’s poor relief expenditure fell from £1,884 in 1821–22 to £811 the following year. In 1824, a much larger workhouse run on similar lines was opened nearby by the Thurgarton Incorporation, again achieving significant financial savings.31

Elsewhere in the country, growing discontent among the labouring classes reached a climax in the autumn of 1830 with the so-called ‘Swing’ riots. Beginning in Kent and rapidly spreading across Surrey, Sussex, Middlesex and Hampshire, agricultural labourers engaged in increasingly violent protests against low wages, expensive food and the growing mechanization of farms. Attacks on workhouses featured among their activities.

A Royal Commission, appointed in 1832 to review the operation of the Poor Laws, highlighted the deficiencies of poor relief administration in many parishes. The Commission’s report, published in 1834, characterized the typical parish workhouse as containing:

a dozen or more neglected children, twenty or thirty able-bodied adults of both sexes and probably an equal number of aged and impotent persons who are proper objects of relief. Among these the mothers of bastard children and prostitutes live without shame, and associate freely with the youth, who also have the example and conversation of the inmates of the county gaol, the poacher, the vagrant, the decayed beggar, and other characters of the worst description. To these may be added a solitary blind person, one or two idiots, and not infrequently are heard, from among the rest, the incessant ravings of some neglected lunatic.32

A subsequent report on the Llantrisant workhouse was no better, describing it as a ‘large workhouse … but it is ill-managed, the children are half naked and dirty, while the diet was as the Overseer admitted better than that of most of the small farmers of the Parish’.33 Llantrisant’s vestry, described by one writer as ‘corrupt and inefficient’, was not untypical of others in the region. Having to run the workhouse was a ‘thorn in the flesh of the vestry’ – the Overseers at one point looking after the place on a monthly rota system.34

The Royal Commission noted that many parishes in Monmouthshire had no workhouse or poorhouse, while most of those in Herefordshire and Shropshire did possess them. However, many Herefordshire parishes with workhouses had recently discontinued their use, believing they could maintain their poor more cheaply without them. In the north of Shropshire, the practice of parishes maintaining their poor in a common House of Industry was widespread. It was also observed that farming the poor was common in the region. In Monmouthshire, the common practice was for the contractor to be paid a gross annual sum, while in Shropshire and Herefordshire it was more usual for him to receive a weekly payment for each of the inmates in the house, with their daily diet being prescribed. In the former case, the contractor benefited from admitting as few paupers as possible, while in the latter it was in his interest to admit as many as possible.35

The Commission particularly criticised the use of allowance systems, said to be particularly prevalent in towns in the south of England, and also documented numerous examples of inefficiency or corruption in the local administration of poor relief. Eradicating this state of affairs was the main thrust of their report’s proposals.

THE 1834 POOR LAW AMENDMENT ACT

The Royal Commission’s recommendations were implemented in the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act.36 The Act, which formed the basis of what became known as the New Poor Law, aimed to create a national, uniform and compulsory system of poor relief administration under a new central authority, the Poor Law Commissioners (PLC). New groupings of parishes areas known as Poor Law Unions were created, each managed by a board of guardians elected by local ratepayers. Funding of the new system continued to be from local poor rates. Each union was expected to provide a workhouse, which was to be the only form of relief available to able-bodied men and their families, although out-relief would still be available in certain situations.

Although the 1834 Act had an enormous impact, it did not actually overturn existing principles of poor relief – the financial responsibility of the parish, the use of a workhouse test, the administrative grouping of parishes, local management by ratepayer-elected bodies, settlement qualifications, and plural voting had all featured in Old Poor Law legislation. What the 1834 Act did change was the administrative structure through which poor relief was dispensed. Details of exactly how the new system would operate were left for the PLC to devise.

One of the three Commissioners, George Nicholls, later noted two significant deficiencies in the Act. First, it allowed Local Act Incorporations and Gilbert Unions to continue operating if they wished to do so. The latter continued to hinder the formation of new Poor Law Unions in some areas until all remaining Gilbert Unions were abolished in 1869. Second, the PLC could not compel a union to provide a workhouse without the support of a majority of its ratepayers or its board of guardians, although the alteration or enlargement of existing workhouse premises could be demanded.37

THE FORMATION OF UNIONS

The creation of Poor Law Unions was supervised by Assistant Poor Law Commissioners in consultation with local parish officials and landowners in each area. Unions could vary widely in size and population, but typically comprised one or two dozen parishes, centred on the main town in the area. However, local geography and, often more importantly, local politics could play a large part in the number and make-up of the unions in each area.

The Assistant Commissioner responsible for Breconshire, Cardiganshire, Herefordshire and Radnorshire was Edmund Walker Head, who proposed placing the parishes of Radnorshire in unions based on the market towns of Builth, Hay, Kington, Knighton, Presteigne and Rhayader, all of which straddled the county’s borders. Presteigne, whose member parishes had a total population of only 3,441, was the smallest by far of any union in Wales and barely viable. However, it lay between its more prosperous neighbours of Kington and Knighton, with whom it had considerable rivalry, and its formation was largely due to Presteigne’s jealously guarded status as Radnorshire’s county town.

In unions spanning the England-Wales border, Head’s strategy was to include a majority of English parishes so as to counteract any rebellious tendencies among the Welsh members. He also believed that the Welsh guardians, mostly small tenant farmers, would have their character raised through contact with their English counterparts, who were more likely to be substantial yeoman farmers.38

RESISTANCE TO THE NEW POOR LAW

Apart from a few short-lived protests in Kent and Sussex, the introduction of the 1834 Act in the south of England was relatively trouble-free – unions were formed, guardians elected, and workhouses put into operation. However, the subsequent implementation of the Act in other parts of the country, notably in the manufacturing areas of the north of England and in rural central and north-west Wales, met with considerable resistance.

Poor Law Union areas in the 1880s. (By kind permission of GB Historical GIS Project)

At its mildest, this could be a letter of protest such as that from the vestry of the Merionethshire parish of Maentwrog to the Home Secretary, Lord Russell, in November 1836. The letter expressed disapproval of workhouses because they separated man and wife, provided an inadequate diet, and prevented inmates attending their usual places of Sunday worship.39 In rather more forceful terms, in August 1839, the Bangor & Beaumaris guardians wrote to the PLC expressing their reasons for not erecting a workhouse: the union had insufficient paupers in the relevant condition to justify it, orphan children could be more cheaply maintained by out-relief, and families would be separated by it.40

At Macclesfield, in 1836, the guardians’ plans for a new workhouse had to be shelved after intense local opposition, particularly from workers in the town’s declining silk-weaving industry. The builder contracted to erect the building was abused and menaced by a mob. In May 1837, at Llanfair Caereinion (part of the Llanfyllin Union), a 400-strong mob hurled missiles at the Llanfyllin guardians and a visiting Assistant Poor Law Commissioner. In May 1838, the part-built walls of the Newtown & Llanidloes Union workhouse at Caersws were damaged by ‘idly and evil disposed persons’.41 Two months later, Llandovery’s nearly completed workhouse suffered serious damage from a fire, thought to have been started deliberately. In January 1839, the new workhouse at Narberth suffered an arson attack. Workhouses were also among the targets of the ‘Rebecca Rioters’ who, in 1842-43, carried out a campaign of protests across South Wales, which included the storming of the Carmarthen workhouse.

The most sustained resistance came from the boards of guardians in unions, particularly those in Wales, who were opposed to the New Poor Law in general and – in a region deeply rooted in the use of out-relief – to the provision of a workhouse in particular.

One tactic was for a board to endlessly postpone discussion of the workhouse question until some future occasion. At Rhayader, in 1838, the guardians initially agreed to build a workhouse but somehow could never agree on a suitable site and the scheme went into limbo. During the 1840s, the guardians actively even appealed to the public to avoid claiming poor relief and thus the need for the establishment.42

Although opposition to the 1834 Act in Wales was widespread, some Welsh unions were persuaded of its potential benefits. At Aberayron – the first union in Cardiganshire to build a workhouse – the guardians saw it as a way of reducing the number of relief claimants, especially single mothers, and the expenditure on cottage rents. It would also provide a way of providing labour for the able-bodied poor.43

Where unions lacked a workhouse in which to relieve their able-bodied paupers, the PLC introduced the Outdoor Labour Test. This allowed such claimants to receive out-relief, half in cash and half in bread, in return for performing daily physical labour such as repairing roads, spade husbandry, and stone breaking.

In 1841, the PLC recorded seventeen out of the forty-seven Welsh unions as still ‘not having efficient workhouses in operation’. This compared with nineteen out of 544 English unions lacking operational workhouses at the same date.44 Steady pressure from the Commissioners, and their successors the Poor Law Board (PLB), gradually reduced this number, but by the late 1860s five unions in the centre of Wales (Builth, Lampeter, Presteigne, Rhayader and Tregaron) were still holding out, together with Crickhowell, which was refusing to replace its ageing and inadequate former parish workhouse. Further pressure and threats resulted in compliance from all but Rhayader and Presteigne. Finally, in 1876, the Local Government Board (LGB), which replaced the PLB in 1871, obtained new powers enabling it to dissolve any union if it deemed it necessary. In the face of this threat, Rhayader finally proceeded to build a workhouse. It received its first inmates in August 1879, making the union the last in the whole of England and Wales to provide a workhouse. Presteigne, however, stood its ground and was dissolved in 1877, with its constituent parishes being redistributed among adjacent unions.

Even when a union had a workhouse, the guardians did not necessarily make great use of it, often still preferring to support the poor through out-relief. Apart from any ideological grounds, this was usually the cheaper option. The 1841 census recorded that a year after its opening, the Pwllheli workhouse had only six inmates, the same number as the master and his family. Following the opening of three workhouses in Cardiganshire, the number of inmates was small, mostly comprising children, the chronic sick and vagrants.45 In August 1843, the Aberystwyth Union workhouse, with accommodation for 200, had only six inmates.46 On 1 January 1870, when the union was supporting 1,615 individuals, only fifty were in the workhouse.47

ENTERING THE WORKHOUSE

Although it was a lynchpin of the New Poor Law, relief claimants were not ‘sent’ to the workhouse, rather they resorted to it. Their initial contact with the system was usually through one of the union’s relieving officers. Most unions had two or three of these officials who regularly visited each member parish, interviewed claimants, and assessed their circumstances. In the case of the able-bodied, the most likely outcome was an offer of the workhouse. Although entry into the institution was a voluntary process, a person’s situation might give them little option but to accept. Families entered the workhouse together and left together. A man could not abandon his family outside while he entered the workhouse or, once they entered, leave them behind there.

On admission to a union workhouse, new inmates were given a bath, had their own clothes taken away for disinfection and storage, and were issued with workhouse clothing – the term ‘uniform’ was never officially used. At the Hereford workhouse in 1837, clothing purchased for the male inmates included: jackets, breeches and trousers of Fearnought cloth; strong calico shirts; shoes, hats and cloth caps. For women and girls there were grogram gowns, calico shifts, petticoats of Linsey-Woolsey material, gingham dresses, stays, stockings and shoes.48 New entrants to the workhouse usually spent some time in a receiving or ‘probationary’ ward and had a medical inspection in case they were carrying any infectious disease such as smallpox.

Inmates could discharge themselves at any time – workhouses were not prisons. However, leaving the premises without permission while wearing workhouse clothing could result in a charge of stealing union property and earn a month’s hard labour. A few hours’ notice had to be given for an inmate’s own clothes to be retrieved from storage.

CLASSIFICATION AND SEGREGATION

The operation of New Poor Law workhouses was based on a principle known as ‘less eligibility’ – that the regime they provided would always be less attractive than that enjoyed on the outside by even the lowliest independent labourer. Accordingly, inmates in union workhouses had plain repetitive food, were required to work according to their ability, and were separated into a number of groups or classes – the aged and infirm, the able-bodied, children aged from 7 to 15, and those under 7 years. The first three groups were further divided by gender, creating seven classes in total. Additional classes could be locally designated by the guardians, such as the ‘lewd women’ at the Cheltenham workhouse.

A fundamental requirement of workhouse accommodation was the segregation of the various classes of inmate. This could be achieved in two ways: by housing different groups in separate premises, or by partitioning a single building. Many English unions initially adopted the former option, making use of two or three former parish workhouse premises, but only while they erected a large, new single-site workhouse. The relative paucity of parish workhouses in Wales meant that their re-use was not an option for most Welsh unions. Very quickly, the single ‘general mixed workhouse’ emerged as the simplest and cheapest arrangement and became the standard style of workhouse provision.

The segregation of families as soon as they passed through the doors of a workhouse was one of the most resented aspects of the workhouse system. Husbands were separated from wives, and parents from children, only to be reunited when they left the workhouse. There were some small concessions to this requirement. A child under the age of 7 could reside in one of the female departments and its mother allowed access to it at all reasonable times. In addition, the father or mother of a child in the same workhouse could request a daily ‘interview’ with that child, though a weekly meeting on Sunday afternoon was the most common arrangement. From 1847, unions could allow elderly married couples, both aged over 60, to live together, so long as they were provided with their own sleeping apartment. By 1853, 297 couples in England were enjoying this privilege, with just two in Wales.49

Workhouses usually contained more elderly men than elderly women, usually attributed to women’s greater adaptability in being able to support themselves and stay independent in their old age.

UNION WORKHOUSE ARCHITECTURE

In 1835, the PLC published a set of model plans to assist unions in the construction of new workhouse buildings, most of which were by a young architect named Sampson Kempthorne. His radial layouts, influenced by prison designs of the period, had wings for the different classes of inmates that radiated like spokes from a central polygonal hub, whose windows looked out in all directions. The wings, up to four storeys in height, could number three or four, respectively forming a ‘Y’ or a ‘+’. The space between the wings formed segregated exercise yards, which could be supervised from the hub where the master and matron had their quarters. An entrance block at the end of one of the wings contained a porter’s lodge and waiting room on the ground floor, with the guardians’ boardroom above. The perimeter buildings housed stores, workshops, laundry, stables, mortuary, etc. The four-wing or ‘square’ design (so-called because of the shape of its overall footprint) was the most popular, with typical examples at Pembroke, Hay and Northleach. A cut-down version of the ‘square’ design, referred to as the ‘200-pauper’ plan, was aimed at ‘less pauperised districts’, with Northwich providing a good illustration of the layout. It was limited to two storeys (or just one for the parts to the rear of the centre) and lacked the polygonal hub. The rooms in all Kempthorne’s designs occupied the full width of the building, with windows at each side providing light and ventilation.

Kempthorne himself designed two individual workhouses in the area covered by this volume, those at Winchcombe and Thornbury, and also gave advice on the adaptation of the existing workhouse at Tetbury. However, his model plans formed the basis of tens of designs by other architects, most notably George Wilkinson, who was responsible for a dozen workhouses in Wales, four in Herefordshire, and two in Gloucestershire.

A bird’s-eye view of Sampson Kempthorne’s model ‘square’ design, published by the PLC in 1835.

The ground-floor layout of the ‘square’ plan, of which many variations were devised.

Other prominent workhouse architects of the period included the partnership of George Gilbert Scott (previously an assistant to Kempthorne) and William Bonython Moffatt, who designed over forty workhouses and evolved their own distinctive layout, which was used at Gloucester and Chipping Sodbury. It featured a single-storey block at the front, which typically contained the porter’s lodge, boardroom, receiving wards and chapel. A central entrance archway led through to an inner courtyard, either side of which were boys’ and girls’ yards. A long main building, running parallel to the entrance block, was typically three storeys high and again featured a central hub containing the master’s quarters, with kitchens and scullery leading off behind. The male and female accommodation wings to each side contained day rooms and dining rooms on their ground floor with dormitories above and sometimes cross-wings at their outer ends. A separate infirmary was placed at the rear of the site, parallel to the main block.

Although Scott and Moffatt’s later designs, such as that at Macclesfield, were more varied, their use of parallel blocks became a popular workhouse layout. Such designs increasingly featured deeper blocks where the rooms were placed off a corridor running along the centre or side of the building. Corridor-plan workhouses in the region included those at Bangor, Congleton, Ross and Wellington.

Among the many other workhouse layouts were the simple T-shape (examples at Builth and Great Boughton) and the double-courtyard design (Neath and Swansea).

THE WORKHOUSE REGIME

Daily life in a union workhouse was conducted to a fixed timetable, punctuated by the ringing of the workhouse bell. On Sundays, no work was performed except for essential domestic chores. Below is the typical routine for able-bodied inmates.50

Communal prayers were read before breakfast and after supper every day and Divine Service was performed on Sunday, Good Friday and Christmas Day. The PLC’s rules originally required that during meals ‘silence, order and decorum shall be maintained’, though from 1842 the word ‘silence’ was dropped.

The nature of the work demanded from able-bodied adults was decided by each board of guardians. Some workhouses, such as Macclesfield, had workshops for sewing, spinning and weaving or other local trades. Others, such as Chepstow and Cleobury Mortimer, had extensive vegetable gardens where inmates, particularly older boys, worked to provide produce for the workhouse. Women chiefly performed the domestic tasks of cooking, cleaning and laundry. Able-bodied men were given heavy manual work such as breaking stone (e.g. at Abergavenny and Hereford), pumping water from a well (Bangor and Newtown), turning a large corn mill (Pembroke), or picking oakum – teasing apart the fibres of old ropes, known as ‘junk’ (Pwllheli and Macclesfield).

Children were required to receive at least three hours a day of schooling in ‘reading, writing, and in the principles of the Christian Religion; and such other instructions … as are calculated to train them to habits of usefulness, industry and virtue’.51 Initially, this usually took place within the workhouse but, as time went on, children increasingly went out to local schools.

Workhouse discipline distinguished two classes of offence. Conduct classed as disorderly, which included swearing, failing to wash, refusing to work, or feigning sickness, could be punished by withdrawal of foods such as cheese or tea. The more serious category of refractory conduct, such as disobeying or insulting a workhouse officer, being drunk, or damaging workhouse property, could earn a period of solitary confinement. This was often in a windowless ‘dark cell’ or ‘black hole’. More serious misdemeanours could be referred to a magistrate. An act such as deliberately breaking a window could result in two months’ hard labour.

If an inmate died, their next of kin were given the opportunity to arrange a funeral. If that did not happen, there were two possibilities. The first was a pauper burial, usually in the local parish churchyard in an unmarked multiple-occupancy grave. The second, from 1832, was for the body to be donated for use in medical training or research.

WORKHOUSE FOOD

In 1835, the PLC published a set of six model ‘dietaries’ or menu plans. Their intention was that the workhouse diet should on no account be ‘superior or equal to the ordinary mode of subsistence of the labouring classes of the neighbourhood’.52

The dietaries prescribed repetitive meals of basic foods such as potatoes, bread, cheese, suet pudding, gruel and broth, with meat and vegetable dinners two or three times a week. At the Conway Union workhouse in 1859, the able-bodied men’s diet was as follows:53

Breakfast

Dinner

Supper

Sunday

6 oz. bread, 1½ pints gruel.

14 oz. suet pudding.

6 oz. bread, 1½ oz. cheese.

Monday

“ ”

4 oz. cooked meat, 1 lb. potatoes.

6 oz. bread, 1½ pints broth.

Tuesday

“ ”

1½ pints soup, 4 oz. bread.

As Sunday.

Wednesday

“ ”

6 oz. bread, 1½ pints buttermilk.

As Sunday.

Thursday

“ ”

1 lb. rice, 1½ pints buttermilk.

As Sunday.

Friday

“ ”

As Monday.

As Monday

Saturday

“ ”

As Tuesday.

As Sunday.

The uptake of the different dietaries by unions varied around the country and could, with the PLC’s approval, be amended to reflect local preferences. At Pwllheli, in 1840, the inmates were served herrings for dinner three times a week.54 Men received, on average, around 25 per cent more food than women. The elderly could usually enjoy a ration of butter, sugar and tea. Children under 9 were given a locally decided proportion of the adult amount. Contrary to the impression given by Charles Dickens, workhouse inmates – including children – never existed just on watery gruel.

Alcohol was prohibited in union workhouses except for medical or sacramental purposes. An exception was added in 1847, when it could be provided along with other treats on Christmas Day. Some workhouses also provided a daily ration of beer to able-bodied inmates engaged in certain types of heavy labour such as laundry or nursing work.

The standard of workhouse food gradually improved, although changes were not always well received. In 1883, in an effort to improve health, the LGB suggested that inmates receive cooked fish for dinner once a week. Although the experiment was successful in some places, such as Bristol, more typical were the reactions at Ludlow, where some inmates claimed that fish ‘disagreed’ with them, and at Ross, where the master reported that ‘in many cases the inmates would not touch it and that on the second occasion he had cut up cheese and given it in lieu of fish’.55

An overhaul of workhouse food in 1900 allowed guardians to compile their own weekly dietary from a list of fifty or so dishes approved for the purpose. These included items such as Irish stew, pasties, roly-poly pudding and seed-cake, with a specially compiled cookbook issued to each workhouse to standardise the composition and preparation of the food.56

MEDICAL CARE

In the early 1860s, there was growing criticism of the frequently poor conditions inside the workhouses in London, many of which occupied old premises, often dating from the previous century. Medical care was a particular concern. Most nursing was carried out by elderly and often illiterate female inmates, and workhouse medical officers were usually required to bear the cost of any medicines they prescribed. A campaign for improvement attracted support from notable figures of the day, including Florence Nightingale and Charles Dickens.

Outside London, the need for improvement in workhouse conditions was being publicised by the Quaker social reformer Joseph Rowntree of Leeds, whose reports of his visits in 1864 to the workhouses of the Bala, Brecknock, Cardiff, Carmarthen, Dolgelley, Hay, Neath, and Newtown & Llanidloes Unions appeared in the letters columns of newspapers in each area. After visiting Neath, for example, he concluded that he had ‘never viewed property so cramped and manifestly unsuitable in every way for the erection of a union workhouse’.57 Perhaps because of the widespread antipathy to workhouses in Wales, it has been suggested that they were often ‘squalid and badly administered’.58

Matters were brought to a head in 1865 after the medical journal The Lancet began publishing detailed reports about the frequently abysmal conditions in the capital’s workhouses and their infirmaries. A few eyewitness reports were also published by the British Medical Journal, which visited several workhouses in Gloucestershire. At Northleach, for example, there was not a single water-closet in the entire establishment and the old men’s dayroom was ‘little else than a bare and stony cell’.59

Eventually, the campaigners’ efforts bore fruit in the shape of the 1867 Metropolitan Poor Act, which aimed to take the care of London’s sick poor away from individual unions and parishes. A new body, the Metropolitan Asylums Board, was set up to provide city-wide care of the poor who were suffering from infectious diseases and those who were, at the time, referred to as ‘imbeciles’ and ‘idiots’ – two increasingly serious degrees of intellectual impairment. London boards of guardians were pressed to separate the administration of their workhouses and infirmaries, which ideally would be sited at separate locations, and to employ more trained nurses.

Although only directly applying to London, the changes that followed the 1867 Act slowly percolated to unions outside the capital, with more trained staff employed and new infirmary buildings erected. Perhaps most significant was the increasing referral of paupers who were not themselves inmates of the workhouse, for treatment in its infirmary. In many places, the workhouse infirmary effectively became the local hospital for the poor. It often also became the de facto provider of accident and emergency facilities. In 1910, following a serious accident to a railway worker, the man was taken to the sick ward of Pwllheli workhouse, it being the only institution in the area for treating such cases.60

PAVILION PLAN BUILDINGS

New workhouse buildings erected from the 1870s onwards were increasingly based on the approach of placing different departments in separate blocks or pavilions. This concept had its roots in the principles espoused by Florence Nightingale in her 1859 Notes on Hospitals. What became known as ‘Nightingale’ wards were long and narrow, with their windows placed in opposing pairs, allowing a through-draught. Beds, typically between twenty-eight and thirty-two per ward, were placed along each wall either singly or in pairs between the windows. Sanitary facilities were placed in towers at the outer ends of the blocks, which were typically two or three storeys high.

Workhouse infirmaries incorporating ‘Nightingale’ wards began to appear in the mid-1860s. They usually comprised a number of men’s and women’s ward blocks, all linked by a corridor or covered walkway to an administrative block, which was often placed between the men’s and women’s sides. Unions that erected pavilion-plan infirmaries included Altrincham, Birkenhead, Merthyr Tydfil, Neath, Newport (Monmouthshire) and Stockport.

Following a PLB circular on workhouse design in 1868,61 the first entire workhouse based on the pavilion-plan principle was erected in 1871–75 by the Madeley Union in Shropshire. The reception, inmates’ wards, chapel, infirmary and isolation wards were all in separate interlinked blocks. Later examples in the region were erected by the Newport (Monmouthshire) and Barton Regis Unions.

The Barton Regis Union’s pavilion-plan workhouse at Southmead. The separate blocks are connected by covered walkways.

CASUAL WARDS

From 1837, workhouses were obliged to provide temporary overnight shelter for any destitute person at their door. At first, the ‘casual’ poor, as they were officially known, were often housed in stables and outhouses. Eventually, most workhouses had a purpose-built casual ward, an institution that became popularly known by tramps and vagrants as the ‘spike’.

The casual ward was usually placed at the edge of the main workhouse site, often with its own separate access gate. The wards were sometimes superintended by the workhouse porter, perhaps with his wife attending the female casuals. Some spikes were in the charge of a ‘Tramp Major’, usually a former tramp, informally employed by the workhouse.

At opening time, usually 5 or 6 p.m., new arrivals would be admitted and searched, with any money, tobacco or alcohol confiscated. Vagrants often hid such possessions in a nearby hedge or wall before entering the spike, although the items were often at risk of being removed by local children. Contraband such as cigarettes could be smuggled in by various means. One ploy was to hide such items under the armpit, held there by sticking plaster.

Entrants were required to strip and bathe – in water that might already have been used by several others. They were then issued with a blanket and nightshirt, with their own clothes being dried and fumigated or disinfected. Each was given a supper, typically 8oz of bread and a pint of ‘skilly’ (gruel), before being locked up until 6 a.m. the next morning. Until the 1870s, the norm was for casual wards to have communal association dormitories where inmates either slept on the bare floor or in rows of low-slung hammocks.

The following morning, a breakfast of bread and gruel would be served. From 1842, casuals were required to work for up to four hours before being released. For male casuals, stone breaking and oakum picking were widely used. For females, labour tasks included oakum picking and domestic work such as scrubbing floors. Once vagrants had done their stint of work, they were given a lump of bread and released to go on their way. From 1882, casuals were detained for two nights, with the full day in between spent performing work. They could then be released at 9 a.m. on the second morning, allowing more time to search for work or to travel to another workhouse. From 1871, return to the casual ward of the same union was not allowed within thirty days. Tramping circuits evolved linking a progression of spikes, eventually allowing a return to the first a month later.

In the 1870s, a new form of casual ward was developed. It consisted of individual cells, much like those in a prison, usually arranged along one or both sides of a corridor. Sleeping cells contained a simple bed, while work cells were usually fitted out for stone breaking. These featured a hinged metal grille in the outside wall through which unbroken lumps of stone could be deposited in the cell. The inmate had to break the stone into lumps small enough to pass back through the holes in the grille. Sometimes sleeping cells and work cells were separated, sometimes they were paired together.

Occasionally, casual wards were erected on sites separate from the workhouse. This could be the case in larger towns such as Newport (Monmouthshire) and Cardiff, or when the workhouse was in an isolated location. As the Congleton Union workhouse was several miles from the nearest town, Sandbach, the union opened a separate casual ward in Congleton.

Casuals were generally unpopular with workhouse officials and were often provided with uncomfortable conditions to discourage them from staying. From 1848, tramps could be required to first obtain an admission ticket from a local police station, which dissuaded many applicants. In an 1866 report, the master of the Wrexham workhouse disparaged vagrants for their ‘low cunning, outward immoral conduct, obscene language, and, in many cases, barefaced lying and stealing’.62 The same report recorded some of the graffiti left on the walls of casual wards, which acted as an informal noticeboard for leaving messages and passing on news, rather in the style of present-day social networking.63 The graffiti often included complaints or comments about the relief provided in different unions. They contrasted the ‘bare-boards’ of some vagrant wards with the ‘good padding’ of others, and warned about the quality of the ‘chuck’ (food) or the treatment of ‘tear-ups’ – those deliberately tearing up their clothing in the hope of being given a better replacement suit. Here are some typical examples:

Oh Sandbach, thou art no catch,

For like heavy bread, a damned bad batch,

A nice new suit for all tear-ups,

And stones to crack for refractory pups.

Beware of Ludlow – bare boards, no chuck.

Bishop’s Castle Union Workhouse is a good place to be down in, but a damned bad lot of paupers about it.

Salop Jack, Glo’ster Charlie and Emma, Lank Bill was here 16th October, bound for North Wales.

Exterior of the Festiniog Union workhouse work cells showing the grids through which broken stone had to pass.

CHILDREN’S ACCOMMODATION

In 1838, children under 16 formed almost half the workhouse population.64 They were usually housed in their own section of the workhouse, although a few unions that had taken over several former parish workhouses, such Cheltenham, Macclesfield and Wellington, allocated one of them to house children – at least until they had built new, single-site premises.

That year,1838, was also the year in which Dr James Kay (later known as Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth) put forward his proposals for removing all pauper children to their own accommodation, away from what he saw as the ‘polluting association’ with adult workhouse inmates.65