Description
Everyone has heard of the workhouse. But exactly what was it? Who went there? And how did an institution so universally hated come to be set up? This title tells the story from its first beginnings in Elizabethan times until the final demise of “the union” in the 1940s. The book concentrates, however, on the Victorian workshouse in the years of its tarnished glory. It describes the circumstances which in the 1830s led to the opening of 600 new workhouses, against astonishingly little effective oposition, and it explains why radicals like Francis Place and humane reformers like Lord Brougham supported the New Poor Law, while a handful of Tories like Disraeli and arch-reactionaries like Colonel Sibthorpe fought against it. It records riots, the protests, the pleadings, with which the poor challenged their virtual enslavement, and the misery of their daily life when they were finally incarcerated within the workhouse walls. What did gruel taste like? Why was the workhouse uniform so uncomfortable to wear? How did it feel to pound bones all day, or grind corn or scrub floors? How was Christmas Day in the workhouse celebrated in reality? Norman Longmate has answered these and many more questions. All the essential facts – of legislation passed and numbers admitted are presented, illustrated by a wealth of anecdote, which reveals in human terms the meaning of the poor laws and regulations.
