In 1906 the Cambridge Union became the Cambridge Poor Law Infirmary, no longer a workhouse, but its memory didn’t die.
Fifty years later, a friend of mine was born in a private nursing home because the old Union was now the maternity hospital, and his mother was adamant that no child of hers would be “born in the workhouse”.
The folk memory endured, and the hatred and fear of a place lasted for generations.
In my genealogical novels, ‘Radwinter’ and ‘Magick’, my main character Thomas finds individuals on both sides of his family tree who were in a workhouse.
You may well discover when you are researching your family that someone has their residence as ‘the Union’, which is the workhouse.
In my novels I looked at records of actual workhouses and placed my imaginary families in real institutions among real people. Thomas discovers an 11 year-old ancestor recorded on the 1841 census in the North Union Workhouse in Doddington Cambridgeshire.
“The North Union was built in 1838, four years after the new Poor Law Act was passed. It was designed as a cruciform two-story block and photos make it look an agreeable and attractive place… I’m sure it wasn’t thought of like that a hundred and seventy years ago!
There was an entrance with a porter’s lodge and a room for the workhouse guardians, to meet and discuss the inmates. The ‘residents’ were in buildings at the back, men separated from women, husbands from wives, sons from mothers, daughters from fathers. There may have been an infirmary there… much needed I guess.
What a dismal place, but maybe it was better than sleeping in ditches? I looked at the occupations of the ‘residents’; before they had fallen on hard times many of them had crafts and must have once worked in respected positions. There were many agricultural labourers; here written out in full – on other censuses they are abbreviated to ‘ag lab’.”
Thomas finds that among the inmates are children on their own without parents, children as young as six who were recorded as child labourers. He finds men and women who once were respected in their community; an old man who was a miller… what had happened to his mill?
Among the other occupations were hawkers, lace-makers, shoe-makers, shirt-maker, tailors, gardeners, carpenters, a mill-wright, washer women, butchers and carpenters.
These were all people who in 1841, at the time of an agricultural depression in rural Cambridgeshire found themselves in such desperate straits that they were admitted to the workhouse.
My character Thomas researches workhouses:
”There had been places for the poor going back to the beginning of the seventeenth century… but the character of these places changed over time.
They may have started as local charitable institutions which homed those who had fallen on hard times as well as vagrants’; sometimes ‘poor relief’ was given out, like people might get grants today, I suppose.
However, things changed with The Poor Law Act of 1834… as a result of the Act fifteen thousand or so parishes formed Unions and built new workhouses.
Apparently, through the Act, the threat of the Workhouse was supposed to deter able-bodied people from depending on it and there was a ‘workhouse test’. Poor Relief would only be given, begrudgingly, to those poverty-stricken people who were so desperate that they had to go into a workhouse; they were dreadful, uncharitable, cold places, punishing the poor for being poor, condemning the destitute for their desperation.”
If you find you have ancestors who ended up in workhouses, or if you are just interested in social history, here is an excellent site:
© Lois Elsden, www.workhouses.org.uk
loiselsden.co.uk/loiselsden.com
My genealogical mysteries, ‘Radwinter’ and ‘Magick’ are available on Amazon
Pictures; inside our own workhouse, the sick ward m08952, 1900, T. Morley-Brook, and staff and inmates of our own workhouse date unknown m81238, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
The folk memory endured, and the hatred and fear of a place lasted for generations.
In my genealogical novels, ‘Radwinter’ and ‘Magick’, my main character Thomas finds individuals on both sides of his family tree who were in a workhouse.
You may well discover when you are researching your family that someone has their residence as ‘the Union’, which is the workhouse.
In my novels I looked at records of actual workhouses and placed my imaginary families in real institutions among real people. Thomas discovers an 11 year-old ancestor recorded on the 1841 census in the North Union Workhouse in Doddington Cambridgeshire.
There was an entrance with a porter’s lodge and a room for the workhouse guardians, to meet and discuss the inmates. The ‘residents’ were in buildings at the back, men separated from women, husbands from wives, sons from mothers, daughters from fathers. There may have been an infirmary there… much needed I guess.
What a dismal place, but maybe it was better than sleeping in ditches? I looked at the occupations of the ‘residents’; before they had fallen on hard times many of them had crafts and must have once worked in respected positions. There were many agricultural labourers; here written out in full – on other censuses they are abbreviated to ‘ag lab’.”
Thomas finds that among the inmates are children on their own without parents, children as young as six who were recorded as child labourers. He finds men and women who once were respected in their community; an old man who was a miller… what had happened to his mill?
These were all people who in 1841, at the time of an agricultural depression in rural Cambridgeshire found themselves in such desperate straits that they were admitted to the workhouse.
My character Thomas researches workhouses:
”There had been places for the poor going back to the beginning of the seventeenth century… but the character of these places changed over time.
However, things changed with The Poor Law Act of 1834… as a result of the Act fifteen thousand or so parishes formed Unions and built new workhouses.
Apparently, through the Act, the threat of the Workhouse was supposed to deter able-bodied people from depending on it and there was a ‘workhouse test’. Poor Relief would only be given, begrudgingly, to those poverty-stricken people who were so desperate that they had to go into a workhouse; they were dreadful, uncharitable, cold places, punishing the poor for being poor, condemning the destitute for their desperation.”
If you find you have ancestors who ended up in workhouses, or if you are just interested in social history, here is an excellent site:
© Lois Elsden, www.workhouses.org.uk
loiselsden.co.uk/loiselsden.com
My genealogical mysteries, ‘Radwinter’ and ‘Magick’ are available on Amazon
Pictures; inside our own workhouse, the sick ward m08952, 1900, T. Morley-Brook, and staff and inmates of our own workhouse date unknown m81238, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
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