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

Falling into the Workhouse ...part 1 the Chorlton Union and Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Reflecting on the New Poor Law and how it impacted on one small rural community 4 miles from Manchester

The Workhouse, Hulme, 1844

The Stretford Road workhouse* was in the heart of Hulme just over three miles away. For any of our people from the township this must have seemed a forbidding place. On all sides and stretching out in all directions the area was a collection of closed packed terraced houses punctuated by timber yards and cotton mills.

All of which was a long way from the fields and woodland of the township. Here the prevailing sound would be that of the many machines engaged in ceaseless noisy activity and the ever present pall of smoke from countless domestic chimneys and boiler houses.

The isolation from all that was familiar was reinforced by the harshness of the immediate surroundings. The workhouse was not meant to be a comfortable resort. For both sick and healthy inmates the regime inside the institution was bleak and austere.

The Meadows, on the edge of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1979

The segregation of the sexes extended from the young to the old and from the sick to those judged to be lunatics. In all there were twelve exercise yards for the 300 inmates each dedicated to a particular group where behind tall walls no man or boy could gaze on the opposite sex. This was not a new policy and was followed by the Manchester workhouse before the new poor law.

The policy of segregation was particularly hard on elderly married couples who may have spent their entire adult life together but were now forced apart. Of the 17 couples in the work house in the summer of 1841 most were in their sixties.

But it was no less hard on those with young families seeking help. They too were split up. Boys were accommodated next to the old men and girls beside the old woman while the younger men and women were housed beyond the infirmary at the back of the workhouse bordering Devonshire Street.

Twenty-four children in our workhouse had been admitted with their mothers. These mothers were mostly in their thirties or forties were there without their husband or partner and most had entered with two or more children and as we shall see they would be separated from the children they had brought into this world.

Ploughing Row Acre, 1894

What constituted a child had been set down in the original classification back in 1834. This specified that females under 16 were girls, while males below the age of 13 were treated as boys, and those under seven were regarded as a separate class.

In certain circumstances a child under seven could be left with their mother and even share her bed. Other than that mothers were supposed to have access to the child. This was easier if the child were in the same workhouse and only a possibility if it were in a different institution. As to the length of the interview this depended on the Guardians.

In all there were 66 under the age of 16 of which a full 42 were there on their own. Their ages ranged from just a few days through to 15. Some were there with siblings but most had no one except the friends they could make.

Sutton's Cottage, 1750s-1894

They would have arrived in many different ways. Some would be orphans, or deserted children, while others might be illegitimate and yet others abandoned due to a range of disabilities.

Once inside the Guardians might decide to retain an orphan under the age of sixteen if they determined that on release the child was in danger.

Well might they have abandoned all hope for in a real sense they were lost to all but the officials of the institution and even those charged with their welfare may not always have been diligent in promoting their needs.

So it was with young Mary “Penny” in November 1841, who had been abducted from a nurse girl in Hulme, left with another child a few streets away for a penny and ended in the workhouse on Stretford New Road as an orphan where she languished for eleven months.

The admission book showed no record of the baby’s entry into the workhouse and the official position was that such events were improbable. This may well have sealed her fate, but the persistence of her parents combined with the testimony of an inmate resulted in the baby’s release. It is a bizarre and unusual story but one which points up more than a hint of what could happen to those with no voice or influence.

Extract from The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012, the History Press

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Hulme

Picture; The Workhouse in Hulme from the OS 1842-44, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/, the meadows, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, ploughing Row Acre, 1894, courtesy of Mr Higginbotham from the Lloyd Collection, Sutton’s Cottage, Chorlton Row, Barri Sparshot, 2011 from a photograph, 1894

*The Hulme/Stretford Road  Workhouse was replaced with a new building in Withington which was completed in 1855
.

Falling into the Workhouse ...part 2 the Chorlton Union and Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Reflecting on the New Poor Law and how it impacted on one small rural community 4 miles from Manchester

The Meadows on the edge of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1979

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

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

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.

Sutton's Cottage, 1750-1894

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.

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.

Ploughing Row Acre, 1894

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.” 

The village green, 1979

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.

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 The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012

Picture; The meadows & the village green, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, ploughing Row Acre, 1894, courtesy of Mr Higginbotham from the Lloyd Collection, Sutton’s Cottage, Chorlton Row, Barri Sparshot, 2011 from a photograph, 1894

Stories from the Workhouse ......... part 1 ..... Manchester and Chorlton

Now when I was growing up in the 1950s, the Workhouse still cast a grim shadow over those of an older generation.

The offices of the Chorlton Union, 2009

Even though they had been dispatched to history in the 1930s, the power of those “Poor Law Bastiles” exerted a mix of quiet horror and fear amongst anyone who lived on the margin and might well remember a period spent within their walls.

My own great grandmother had her last child in the Derby Workhouse and all her surviving children spent time in the care of the Derby Union.

And I suspect that most of us will if we delve back into our own family history find a relative who was forced to seek admission.

For the poor who were old or infirm they might be the final destination after a life of hard labour and much privation, and for others they might be a temporary measure when illness, unemployment or the death of the breadwinner plunged them into extreme poverty or destination.

So over the next few weeks I shall be revisiting the story of the Poor Law, both before and after 1834, and its development during the 19th and early 20th century.

The infirmary, Withington Workhouse, 1900

And because I live in Manchester and others have expressed an interest in the Poor Law Unions in the city here is a description of those covering Manchester and beyond taken from the archives and local history library of Manchester Libraries.*

The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act replaced the old poor law with a national system for dealing with poor relief. It was was administered by the newly formed Poor Law Unions. Boards of Guardians replaced Overseers of the Poor. In Manchester three Poor Law Unions were created: Manchester Union, Prestwich Union and Chorlton Union.

The original Manchester Union was formed in 1841. It consisted of the following townships:
Manchester, Blackley, Bradford, Cheetham, Crumpsall, Failsworth, Harpurhey, Moston, Newton, Prestwich, Great Heaton and Little Heaton.

Inside the Withington Workhouse, 1900

In April 1850 the township of Manchester was constituted as a separate Poor Law authority and the remaining townships formed the Prestwich Union.

The township of Beswick was added in 1858 and Clayton in 1894. Great Heaton and Little Heaton were detached in 1891.
Chorlton Union was formed in January 1837.

It was made up of:
Chorlton-Upon-Medlock, Chorlton-Cum-Hardy, Openshaw, Ardwick, Hulme, Stretford, Moss Side, Levenshulme, Rusholme, Didsbury, Withington, Gorton, (divided in 1894 into Gorton and West Gorton) and Burnage.

Barton-upon-Irwell, Flixton and Urmston were added in 1841, but detached in 1849. Stretford was also detached in 1849. In 1910 the Poor Law Union was consolidated to form the township of South Manchester for Poor Law purposes

The entrance to the Chorlton Union Office, 2009

In 1915 the Poor Law Unions undertook a major reorganisation. The township of Manchester, the township of South Manchester and the Prestwich Union were joined to constitute the Manchester Union.

We hold some records of the Guardians of The Poor of The Manchester Chorlton and Prestwich Unions, 1837 to 1948 (ref GB127.M4, available in the search room, please make an appointment with at least one day notice).

Location; Manchester and Chorlton

Pictures; the offices of the Chorlton Union, 2009, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and inside Withington Workhouse, the sick ward m08952, 1900, T. Morley-Brook, and staff and inmates, date unknown m81238, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass


*Manchester City Council Archives and Local history https://secure.manchester.gov.uk/info/448/archives_and_local_history/7384/poor_law_workhouses_and_industrial_schools/3

The miller without a mill ............ another story from Lois Elsden

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

Chorlton's Workhouse .............. part 3

Our workhouse stood on the island formed by Leaf Street, Streford New Road, Nelson Street and Devonshire Street in Hulme. It was replaced by the Withington Workhouse built in 1855.

This building survived into the 20th century as a workhouse before being a hospital. It was here that two of my sons were born, the place where a third stayed for 5 weeks after breaking his leg and a frequent destination for the minor accidents of young lads.
Picture; The Withington Workhouse 1856 m53434 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

Chorlton's workhouse ...... part 1

The Stretford Road workhouse was in the heart of Hulme just over three miles away. For any of our people from the township this must have seemed a forbidding place. On all sides and stretching out in all directions the area was a collection of closed packed terraced houses punctuated by timber yards and cotton mills.

All of which was a long way from the fields and woodland of the township. Here the prevailing sound would be that of the many machines engaged in ceaseless noisy activity and the ever present pall of smoke from countless domestic chimneys and boiler houses.

The isolation from all that was familiar was reinforced by the harshness of the immediate surroundings. The workhouse was not meant to be a comfortable resort. For both sick and healthy inmates the regime inside the institution was bleak and austere. The segregation of the sexes extended from the young to the old and from the sick to those judged to be lunatics. In all there were twelve exercise yards for the 300 inmates each dedicated to a particular group where behind tall walls no man or boy could gaze on the opposite sex. This was not a new policy and was followed by the Manchester workhouse before the new poor law.

The policy of segregation was particularly hard on elderly married couples who may have spent their entire adult life together but were now forced apart. Of the 17 couples in the work house in the summer of 1841 most were in their sixties. But it was no less hard on those with young families seeking help. They too were split up. Boys were accommodated next to the old men and girls beside the old woman while the younger men and women were housed beyond the infirmary at the back of the workhouse bordering Devonshire Street.

Twenty-four children in our workhouse had been admitted with their mothers. These mothers were mostly in their thirties or forties were there without their husband or partner and most had entered with two or more children and as we shall see they would be separated from the children they had brought into this world.

What constituted a child had been set down in the original classification back in 1834. This specified that females under 16 were girls, while males below the age of 13 were treated as boys, and those under seven were regarded as a separate class. In certain circumstances a child under seven could be left with their mother and even share her bed. Other than that mothers were supposed to have access to the child. This was easier if the child were in the same workhouse and only a possibility if it were in a different institution. As to the length of the interview this depended on the Guardians.

In all there were 66 under the age of 16 of which a full 42 were there on their own. Their ages ranged from just a few days through to 15. Some were there with siblings but most had no one except the friends they could make.

They would have arrived in many different ways. Some would be orphans, or deserted children, while others might be illegitimate and yet others abandoned due to a range of disabilities. Once inside the Guardians might decide to retain an orphan under the age of sixteen if they determined that on release the child was in danger.

Well might they have abandoned all hope for in a real sense they were lost to all but the officials of the institution and even those charged with their welfare may not always have been diligent in promoting their needs.

So it was with young Mary “Penny” in November 1841, who had been abducted from a nurse girl in Hulme, left with another child a few streets away for a penny and ended in the workhouse on Stretford New Road as an orphan where she languished for eleven months. The admission book showed no record of the baby’s entry into the workhouse and the official position was that such events were improbable. This may well have sealed her fate, but the persistence of her parents combined with the testimony of an inmate resulted in the baby’s release. It is a bizarre and unusual story but one which points up more than a hint of what could happen to those with no voice or influence.

Extract from Chorlton-cum-Hardy, A Community Transformed

Picture; The Workhouse in Hulme from the OS 1842-44

Our families in their Workhouses

Born in the workhouse. Even now over 80 years after they were abolished the image of a family member being admitted to one of these places has a powerful impact on the family historian.

They had been called Poor Law Bastilles and in the years after the Poor Law Amendment Act which reorganised the way benefits were applied they were often a target to be attacked during periods of social and class tension.

But despite the fact that they were feared and hated they were a regular and recognised part of the strategies that the poor might use when faced with unemployment or sickness.

And the Unions did help the sick. There was apparently no legal obligation to do so but the Poor Law commissioners recognised “if a man is able to provide himself and family with food, and lodging, and clothing, whilst in health, but is unable in cases of sickness to provide medical aid, he is entitled to receive medical relief at the charge of the poor rates”. However humanitarian this appeared there were sound economic reasons to do. If those who sought relief did so because they were ill the Poor Law Commissioners reasoned, it was “therefore most important to get them cured as speedily as possible” thereby saving them from “coming on the rates for maintenance.”


So the Unions employed qualified medical officers to care for those who applied for help in the infirmary. But there were no clear guidelines on who could qualify and so “in some Unions Medical Relief is withheld except where the families are large and young; in other Unions it is given to all applicants.”

It was the job of the Relieving Officer to assess the needs of the applicants, both those asking for medical help and those requesting general assistance. His assessment would be passed on to the Guardians and if he considered they were eligible for relief he issued an order to the medical officer or doctor who was employed by the Union.*

And this is how my great grandmother got to be in the Derby Workhouse in the December of 1902. Now I do not think we will ever know why she and my great grandfather separated after having had four children but it may have been partly to do with the death of their infant son in the February. My great grandfather stayed in the south and she returned to Derby with their surviving three sons and the soon to be born daughter.

Now as we all know the workhouse was the last place for the desperate, and was predicated on the idea that only those who had explored all the other possibilities would walk through its doors. It was also the case that my grandmother had to prove that neither of her parents were in a position to help and neither were. Her mother was dead and her father was himself in the workhouse. So that was where she went and that was where my great aunt was born.

Most of us who find a relative in the workhouse are moved by a mix of pity and outrage, and if the truth be known most of us will be able to track some family member to a workhouse somewhere in the country. Now I do not have any love of the workhouse. They were grim harsh places where families were separated, individuals often given menial and tiring tasks and marked you out as an outcast. Yet in a sense the workhouse is not what should anger us, it is the philiosphy underpinning the provision of poor relief.

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 had ushered in the system of Poor Law Unions and the practice of less eligibility which aimed to make conditions in the workhouse worse than anything the applicant had so far experienced thereby acting as a deterrent on seeking relief. But there had already been a trend to grouping some parishes together with a super workhouse and long before 1834 the regimes in some of these places had reflected the idea that the poor must be desperate before seeking help.

In what was by any standards a wealthy country we were prepared to judge the poor as feckless and as targets for punishment. Nor can we hide behind the excuse that this was the prevailing idea and that somehow to criticise the system is to judge it by the values of a later time. There were plenty back in the 19th century who said it was wrong.

But equally it would be a distortion of what I know to blame the Derby
Workhouse for what happened to my great grandmother and her children who in the case of the three boys ran wild and loose in their early years. There was something not quite right about great grandmother Eliza, and the hints are there in the drunken brawl with the police back in the 1890s and the fact that in 1913 after having struggled to get most of children out of insititions she lost them again because she was “unfit to have control.”

Now I don’t absolve my great grandfather. His early life in the army of the old Queen suggests he too was unable to conform and was quite prepared to set up a new family unit in the south, have five more children and not make any attempt to contact his other children.

The Derby Poor Law Guardians provided for my grandfather and his siblings and did find occupations for all of them. The eldest was apprenticed to a blacksmith, my great aunt sent into service and grandfather placed in the training ship Exmouth while great uncle Roger was sent to Canada as a British Home Child. I doubt that the Guardians’ motives were any less pragmatic than the Poor Law Commissioners arguments for sick provision for poor working men but at least all were cared for.

So where does that leave the family historian who tumbles over a connection with a workhouse?

I suspect it will be a mix of feelings but above all a renewed desire to dig deep into the history of the Workhouse and also the provision of poor relief, and I would recommend http://www.workhouses.org.uk/


*From Chorlton cum Hardy A Society Transformed due out in the autumn

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

Reflections on the workhouse

For any one born before my generation the workhouse held a particular dread and its one that features in many stories of British Home Children.

It is true the workhouse and the 1834 Act which introduced the new system of relief have many critics.

Much was written on the conditions in the workhouse, and these Poor Law Bastilles were both hated and feared particularly amongst those who had to rely on them.  There were also many in the establishment who were hostile. These included Thomas Carlyle, and Charles Dickens, along with the Tory Richard Oastler who had long campaigned for factory reform and the radical William Cobbet. They were joined by the Times newspaper which from the late 1830s into the 40s carried letters highlighting some of the worst abuses.

Like all campaigning propaganda some of what was written was at best exaggeration and at worst falsehoods. The powerful scenes in Oliver Twist are in case in point. There was brutality and at times a callous disregard of the inmates which reaches its highpoint in Oliver’s diet “of three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week on Sundays.” But contemporary accounts and modern research suggest that this diet owed more to Dickens’s own hatred of the workhouses than reality.

But this should not blind us to what awaited any of those from our township who sought relief in the years after 1834. A precondition of admission was that families were segregated. It mattered little if the couple had been together for almost all their entire adult life or that they entered as a family unit.

The sad fact was that many working families could expect to seek relief at some point and the hated “bastilles” were one of the strategies to cope with unforeseen circumstances by all of those on the margin of poverty. This extended to those who were ill and might be admitted to the infirmary as well as those giving birth outside wedlock.
The Poor Law Commissioners reasoned that to provide medical care for a bread winner would in the long run be more economical than having to provide assistance to the whole family in the event that the illness proved long term. In the same way they were keen to promote schemes to resettle agricultural families from the depressed south to the growing industrial north and sponsor emigration to Canada and Australia.

It is always dangerous to make judgements about the past. The economic and political landscape as well as the prevailing philosophy of self help are, or at least were so different from our own that it can be misleading to criticise the system of poor relief. On the other hand Britain was the workshop of the world with vast riches flowing into the country from a growing empire.

But that wealth was held by a small section of the community who saw fit to devise a system of relief which regarded the sick, the unemployed and the old as feckless and grasping and whose poverty had to be punished.

Nor was the outcome of the 1834 Act a departure from existing thinking on caring for the poor. During the 18th century experiments had been undertaken to group parishes together with a central workhouse with the guiding principle that conditions inside should be so harsh that only the desperate would seek help. Nor should we forget that the policy of issuing settlement and removal orders had been in existence since the early 17th century. These made settling in a parish conditional on the family or individuals being able to prove they had the means to support themselves and in the event that they couldn’t provided for removal to their place or origin.

Extracts from Chorlton-cum-Hardy, by Andrew Simpson to be published in April 2012.