WHAT IMPACT DID THE WORKHOUSE HAVE ON THE LIVES OF PAUPERS?

Question 1

What was the principle that the workhouse was based on, why was it used?

Answer 1

• less eligibility- the conditions inside the workhouse were worse than those of the poorest labourer living outside the workhouse.
• intended to deter would-be-paupers from seeking relief.

Question 2

What were the 3 main ways or making the principle of less eligibility present in the workhouse?

Answer 2

• strict discipline.
• monotonous routine.
• dehumanisation.

Question 3

Why did the authorities have to be careful with the principle of less eligibility?

Answer 3

• they couldn’t be seen to be institutionalising dirt, disease and starvation, hence them using discipline, monotony and dehumanisation instead.

Question 4

In the presence of workhouses, what was the situation with outdoor relief?

Answer 4

• despite efforts to discourage it, it continued to be the most common form of relief.

Question 5

Who did the Poor Law Commission appoint as workhouse architect in 1835?

Answer 5

• Sampson Kempthorne- architect with a London practice.

Question 6

What were Kempthorne’s two basic workhouse designs?

Answer 6

• Y-shaped workhouse- contained by a hexagonal boundary. Split into 3 sections. Accommodated about 300 paupers.
• cruciform workhouse- contained by a square boundary. Split into 4 sections. Accommodated anywhere between 200-500 paupers.
• both- masters room was in the middle, so him and his staff could monitor the surrounding exercise yards. Contained a kitchen dining hall and chapel, workrooms, schoolrooms, dorms and day rooms.

Question 7

What was the main advantage of Kempthorne’s workhouse designs? What did it prevent?

Answer 7

• allowed for division and segregation of paupers.
• allowed for providing appropriate relief to each class of pauper.
• added to the workhouses deterrence nature by splitting up families.
• stoped the moral ‘contagion’ that would occur if paupers mixed freely.
• stoped individuality- paupers treated as impersonal units.

Question 8

What happened to pauper families on entry to a workhouse? Why did this happen?

Answer 8

• they were split up.
• husband and wife split up, and parents were split from children too (except mother’s with young children.)
• the pauper had given up responsibility for his family so should be separated from them.

Question 9

What happened to children in the workhouse?

Answer 9

• went to workhouse school.
• aged 9-10- were apprenticed often in the Lancashire cotton mills, with ought their parents consent or sometimes knowledge.

Question 10

What were paupers expected to wear in the workhouse?

Answer 10

• wear a workhouse often non-varied uniform, which sometimes didn’t fit.

Question 11

What happened to paupers in term of the cleanliness and appearance in the workhouse? How we’re the workhouse staff involved in this?

Answer 11

• men- given razors to shave once a week.
• paupers- had a weekly bath.
• workhouse staff watched this happen- prevent any attempts at self-mutilation or drowning, as well as ridding paupers of their personal privacy.

Question 12

What happened to any personal possessions of paupers in the workhouse? Why did this happen?

Answer 12

• they weren’t allowed- prevented any expression of individuality.

Question 13

How was a paupers daily routine structured within the workhouse?

Answer 13

• boring and monotonous-consisted of 3 meals with work in between, each day began and ended with prayers.

Question 14

What was the main aim of the work the paupers were set in the workhouse?

Answer 14

• to rehabilitate them to restore them to the workforce outside.

Question 15

In terms of setting work within the workhouse, what problems arose?

Answer 15

• the work had to be available locally to the workhouse and possible to do inside the workhouse.
• it couldn’t diminish the work available outside of the workhouse as more able bodied poor would become paupers.
• the work in the workhouse couldn’t pay more than it cost the workhouse to maintain a pauper, as paupers would have no incentive to return to the labour market.

Question 16

What work was done within the workhouse?

Answer 16

• women and children- helped to maintain the workhouse, working in the laundries, kitchens and sick rooms with jobs like cleaning and childcare.
• dispiriting abs monotonous work- sack making, unraveling ropes for reuse, chopped wood and smashed limestone or roads, and ground animal bones for fertiliser.
• paupers mostly found no the same work as convicts, aiming to degrade them.

Question 17

How was the less eligibility principle a problem in terms of the workhouse diet?

Answer 17

• on the outside many paupers were living on the edge of starvation, and even the strictest guardians were not willing to let their paupers live like this.

Question 18

What was the aim of the workhouse dietaries published by the commissioners?

Answer 18

• sustain and maintain life, whilst making meal times as boring and tedious as possible.
• paupers were to get no pleasure from the food they were eating.

Question 19

How did the workhouse I still repressive uniformity into meal times?

Answer 19

• until 1842- all meals were to be eaten in silence.
• paupers could have their food weighed in front of them- many workhouses used this as a way of delaying serving food until it was cold, which humiliated paupers.

Question 20

What did pauper meals consist of? How were they prepared and served?

Answer 20

• meal- meat, oatmeal, cheese and bread.
• preparation- poorly and carelessly cooked.
• serving- some workhouses didn’t let paupers use cutlery so they had to eat with their hands. (1830s)

Question 21

What was the behaviour like between paupers and staff like in the workhouse?

Answer 21

• workhouses were often rowdy.
• staff and paupers- verbal and physical abuse to other, from full scaled riots to exchanging foul language.
Sexual abuse was recorded.
• among the paupers- bullying and blackmail.

Question 22

What type of system did workhouse staff use to maintain order? How did this work?

Answer 22

• system of rewards and punishments.
• paupers could be punished for being in the wrong part of the building, being too noisy, working too slowly or disrespecting staff members.
• paupers were rewarded with food, ‘clean’ jobs or pocket money.

Question 23

How was the Poor Law Commission involved in the discipline system of the workhouse?

Answer 23

• specific punishments were laid down by the commissioners, and workhouses had to keep a standard punishment book to record them.
• but some reward and punishment systems had no legal backing and had grown through custom.

Question 24

How were workhouse punishments under the reformed Poor Law made less severe than those of the old Poor Law?

Answer 24

• old Poor Law- paupers at the mercy of the overseer, who could abuse paupers however they wanted with no consequences to their actions.
• new Poor Law- guardians knew there were limits to their powers which were determined by the commissioners.

Question 25

What examples are there where the Poor Law commissioners controlled the extent of workhouse punishments?

Answer 25

• girls andwomen couldn’t be beaten.

* there was a maximum that rations could be reduced as a punishment.

Question 26

What were some of the more serious workhouse punishments?

Answer 26

• serious crimes- the usual processes of the law were applied.
• punishment cells- for minor crimes.
• some workhouses made their own refinements- eg: forcing paupers to spend a night in the workhouse mortuary.

Question 27

How did a mobile population of paupers make the workhouse difficult to manage?

Answer 27

• paupers drifting into and out of relief- bringing in with them the tensions and petty crime of the outside world.

Question 28

What were the rules on paupers coming and going from the workhouse? When did this change?

Answer 28

• paupers were free to come and go as they pleased.
• only 3 hours notice was required if a pauper wanted their own clothes to leave.
• workhouse staff couldn’t stop paupers from leaving, or refuse to readmit them, which paupers exploited to the full.
• 1871- an Act of Parliament have guardians powers to limit them number of times paupers could enter or leave.

Question 29

How were pauper children viewed when entering the workhouse?

Answer 29

• children entering the workhouse- their parents had given up responsibility for them.
• believed that children couldn’t be held responsible for their own poverty.

Question 30

How successfully was the principle of less eligibility applied to children within the workhouse?

Answer 30

• in reality, the situation of children in the workhouse was better than the poorest children outside the workhouse.
• in the workhouse they received a basic education, basic medical treatment and they were apprenticed at 9 years old.

Question 31

How was the nature of education still quite unappealing for workhouse children?

Answer 31

• education was very basic and limited.

* children could be apprenticed to any passing trades person and taken far away.

Question 32

What happened if pauper children wanted to leave the workhouse?

Answer 32

• they couldn’t leave at their own free will- if they tried to run away and were caught they would be returned.

Question 33

How did pauper children react to life on the outside world after the workhouse? What legislation changed this?

Answer 33

• pauper children became institutionalised and unable to scope with life outside.
• Education Act (Fosters Act) 1870- placed the education of pauper children within the elementary school system to help their integration into society.

Question 34

Why is it difficult to analyse the types of people opting for indoor relief from the pauper population as a whole?

Answer 34

• outdoor relief continued as the most common form of relief.
• regional and local differences, but by large pauper structures within workhouses were quite similar.

Question 35

At anyone time, how many workhouse inmates had been inside for 5 or more years?

Answer 35

• 1/5 of inmates.

Question 36

How did young people use the option of relief in a workhouse?

Answer 36

• temporary shelter- moved into and out of workhouses several times a year.
• did this due to personal crisis- seasonality of employment, harshness of winter and severities of local epidemics.

Question 37

How were vagrants treated by workhouses? Why were they treated like this?

Answer 37

• given overnight accommodation in a ‘casual ward’- not admitted until the evening and were fed a
meal of bread and water.
• better workhouses- stripped, deloused and their clothes were disinfected.
• vagrants were consider less deserving than any ‘settled poor’ and believed to be beyond redemption- workhouse staff wanted to get rid of them ASAP.

Question 38

How were the elderly treated within the workhouse? What group was more prominent than the other and why?

Answer 38

• provided with shelter until death.
• old men were more common- elderly women could be of domestic use to their families so tended to be kept at home with their relatives.

Question 39

What percentage of admissions to the workhouse did children make up?

Answer 39

• 25-40%

Question 40

What type of children went into the workhouses?

Answer 40

• abandoned children.
• orphans.
• ill children.
• illegitimate sons and daughters of inmates- likely to go onto spending their childhood in the work house.
• children of parents who were there for short term stays- went in and out with their parents.

Question 41

What types of single women often entered the workhouse when outdoor relief wasn’t an option?

Answer 41

• widows.
• abandoned wives.
• single mothers.
• prostitutes.

Question 42

How much did the proportion of mentally ill people in the workhouse grow over the century?

Answer 42

• 1 per 100 to 1 per 8 inmates.

Question 43

How were paupers outside the workhouse involved in its running?

Answer 43

• poor people who lived outside the workhouse worked long hours on low wages in jobs that ran the workhouse- they wanted to keep themselves out of the institution they helped to make function.
• jobs included cleaners, porters, washerwoman, cooks, scullery maids and chimney sweeps.

Question 44

What were the key posts in the workhouse? What were their roles?

Answer 44

• master- responsible for the discipline and economy of the workhouse.
• matron- responsible for the female paupers and the domestic side of life.

Question 45

What examples of workhouses are there that show the ranging attitudes, skills and expertise of workhouse masters?

Answer 45

• Ashford Union workhouse (Kent)- ran by a retired naval officer and his wife, and was renowned for its efficiency and compassion, held up by the commissioners as a model workhouse which others should aspire to.
• London workhouses- George catch ex policeman moved around them inflicting terror and cruelty in all. Boards of guardians have him excellent testimonials to try to get rid of him.
• Cerne Abbas workhouse (Wiltshire)- master lasted just 2 weeks as he has little education so couldn’t keep up with the demand of the commissioners.