Chorlton's workhouse ............ part 2

The Chorlton Union, was resposnible for poor relief in what is now South Manchester. 

From the 1850s their workhouse was in Withington, but prior to that it was sighted in Hulme.

Hated as these Poor Law Bastilles were many people accepted that circumstance might force them to seek relief at some point in their lives.

Mr.s Sutton's Cottage, 1892

One such inmate was Thomas Taylor who was in the Withington workhouse in the April of 1861 but later was living with his daughter.

The largest group were the old. After a lifetime of hard work, struggling with low wages punctuated by periods of unemployment and ill health, many were forced into the workhouse as a last resort.

So it was for Ellen Warburton who in that April of 1861 was 98 years old and seeking assistance inside the walls of the workhouse.

Her story may be typical. She was born in the township in 1776 and retained her independence well into her 60s, running a home which she shared with her teenage grandson.

Cottages of the green

By 1851 the situation had changed, and Ellen aged 75 was living in the home of her now married grandson. A decade later the family had moved to Manchester and Ellen was in the workhouse.

 She was by now a very old woman, and the new home in John Street, Chorlton on Medlock was a one up one down terraced house inside the loop of the River Medlock, hemmed in on all sides by chemical works, timber yards, and a brewery.

The Chorlton Workhouse, Hulme, 1849

But it is only when we peel back the figures and begin to follow the Guardian’s own policy of segregating the inmates by gender that the full picture of who carried the biggest burden emerges. In the summer of 1841 the single largest group were adult women who as we have seen often entered the workhouse with children.

Many may have been there as a direct result of the emigration of their husbands. In the June of 1842 the Morning Chronicle reporting on the slump in trade wrote that “Chorlton Workhouse is filled with the wives and families of men going or have gone to America in quest of employment......Emigration is going on extensively.” This was a policy that was actively pursued by the Poor Law Commissioners with parochial aid or assistance from local landlords.

 The Commissioners reported that over 2, 000 had gone to Canada in 1841 which was an increase on the year before, and that assistance was also being given to move to Australia and New Zealand.

Chorlton, 1979

But there was also a trend of “men quitting England and procuring a passage to the United States, leaving their families to be forwarded to the country by the parish officers or private individuals.” Not unsurprisingly the Commissioners’ expressed “our strong opinion of the inexpediency of rendering the assistance to the families of persons so circumstanced which is the object of the parties to obtain the desertion of their families.”
Extract from Chorlton-cum-Hardy, A Community Transformed

Picture; The Workhouse in Hulme from the OS 1842-44, courtesy of Digital Archives Association,  Mrs Sutton’s cottage, circa 1892, and Chorlton cottages, reproduced from  photographs by Bari Sparshot 2011, and Chorlton in 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson