#workhouses

In 1886 a new workhouse was built to imprison the poor of the Wandsworth & Clapham Poor Law Union, in Swaffield Road, off Garratt Lane, Wandsworth, now part of Southwest London, but then in open countryside.

Under the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, the Boards of Guardians were obliged by law to ‘help’ local poor folk unable to support themselves either with ‘outdoor relief’ (a minimum dole) or with ‘indoor relief’ – accommodation and work in the workhouse. In practice the workhouses were made oppressive, cruel and humiliating, to dissuade as many people as possible from applying. Families were split up, food was pitiable and inedible, long hours of grinding work were imposed under often sadistic overseers.

The Poor Law had been brought in because of a widespread concern among authorities and the upper and middle classes that the cost of welfare was spiralling out of control, and a convinced belief that people would rather seek an easy life, ie claiming relief, than work. The Act was therefore designed to make claiming relief so painful, degrading and inadequate that people would rather take any work instead.

If this sounds in any way familiar… There are many parallels between the way the power-that-be in the 1930s were viewing the poor, and discussing the ‘problem’ of the cost of welfare, and how this debate in recent years has also been framed. For an interesting exhibition, put together by the Anarchist Time Travellers, which illustrates the links between the two, see This Way to 1834.

Although there were riots in northern England when the Act was introduced, and a sprinkling of resistance by the working people forced into workhouses throughout the 19th century, all in all, the system worked quite well from the perspective of the rich. Fear and hatred of the workhouses (which became known as ‘bastilles’ for the notorious french prison) grew so that people would rather starve outside than in, and the shame of having to apply to enter became internalised deeply into working class consciousness.

However, in the sharp recession following World War 1, hundreds of thousands of working people were thrown into unemployment, including many who had taken part in strikes and industrial unrest before and during the war. As thousands of soldiers were demobilised from the army, and the war economy was suddenly wound down, struggles over rights to relief, and facilities for the unemployed, broke out all over the UK. Initially organised through local committees of the unemployed, most federated by 1921 into the National Unemployed Workers Committee Movement (usually known as the NUWM), which was to be the main vehicle for unemployed organising for 20 years.

As an example of the local struggles which gave birth to/characterized the early years of the NUWM: in July 1921, the unemployed in Wandsworth and Battersea were told by the local Board of Guardians they would not receive any outdoor relief, but would all have to apply to workhouse. The Battersea & Wandsworth Unemployed Committee decided that the best was to deal with this was to swamp the Workhouse. 1000 people all applied for tickets to enter, at the same time! Then, in late July, 700 unemployed people, including whole families, took over the building, having marched from Clapham Junction with a bagpiper at their head! (Interestingly, this became a sort of local tradition: I remember in the early 1990s, anti-poll tax and anti-cuts demos in Wandsworth used to march on the town hall with Alasdair from metal-bashing band Test Dept playing his pipes at the head of the procession).

Having occupied the workhouse, the unemployed refused to recognise the authority of the Poor Law officers, and refused to accept the measly food and harsh conditions. As there had been 900 people already in residence in the workhouse, the institution descended into chaos. A massive solidarity demonstration took place outside in support of the occupation. “From the hall of the workhouse speeches were delivered to the demonstrators outside. Then, to the amazement and jubilation of the demonstrators, about 9 o’clock just as it was getting dusk, we saw the red flag run up on a flag mast over the workhouse.” Eventually the embattled Poor Law Guardians withdrew their order and restored outdoor relief on 27th July.

In countries where workhouses no longer exist (or exist in only highly disguised and mutated forms), they no longer exist because the people in these countries decided workhouses were horrible and not an acceptable response to poverty.

I’m sure that in the heyday of workhouses, they felt as inevitable as institutions for disabled people feel to lots of people today.  Lots of people probably even thought they were a good thing -- and the only possible way to do certain good things.

A lot of people think the solution to institutions is to cure disabled people.

It’s not.

Disability will always exist and has always existed.

Institutions did not always exist and will not always exist.  They are not necessary.  There is not a single good thing done inside of them that can’t be done outside of them, and better.

Nursing homes, developmental centers, mental institutions, group homes, orphanages, all these things and more do not have to exist.  (This includes the worst of the “home care” agencies -- only “home care” by name -- that are basically institutions where the inmates live in separate places scattered all over town.  And other forms of what I call “community institutionalization”.  It’s possible to provide care without an institutional power structure.  Really.)

Literally do not have to exist.

All we frigging have to do is understand that not living in a hellhole (and even a painted-up hellhole with lots of perks that doesn’t feel to some people like as much of a hellhole, is a hellhole, also Stockholm syndrome is a thing) is a basic human right.

And if it’s a basic human right for everyone to live outside institutions.  And if it takes a certain kind of assistance for certain people to live outside institutions.  Then that assistance is a human right.  Assistance should never, ever be offered in a way where you can only get it if you agree to be institutionalized.  Just like food should never, ever be offered in a way where you can only get it if you agree to live in a workhouse (or join a religion, or etc.).

George Robert Sims

It is Christmas Day in the Workhouse, And the cold bare walls are bright With garlands of green and holly, And the place is a pleasant sight: For with clean-washed hands and faces, In a long and hungry line The paupers sit at the tables For this is the hour they dine. And the guardians and their ladies, Although the wind is east, Have come in their furs and wrappers, To watch their charges feast; To smile and be condescending, Put pudding on pauper plates, To be hosts at the workhouse banquet They've paid for — with their rates.

Oh, the paupers are meek and lowly With their "Thank'ee kindly, mum's" So long as they fill their stomachs, What matter it whence it comes? But one of the old men mutters, And pushes his plate aside: "Great God!" he cries; "but it chokes me! For this is the day she died."

The guardians gazed in horror, The master's face went white; "Did a pauper refuse the pudding?" Could their ears believe aright? Then the ladies clutched their husbands, Thinking the man would die, Struck by a bolt, or something, By the outraged One on high.

But the pauper sat for a moment, Then rose 'mid a silence grim, For the others had ceased to chatter And trembled in every limb. He looked at the guardians' ladies, Then, eyeing their lords, he said, "I eat not the food of villains Whose hands are foul and red:

"Whose victims cry for vengeance From their dank, unhallowed graves." "He's drunk!" said the workhouse master, "Or else he's mad and raves." "Not drunk or mad," cried the pauper, "But only a hunted beast, Who, torn by the hounds and mangled, Declines the vulture's feast.

"Keep your hands off me, curse you! Hear me right out to the end. You come here to see how paupers The season of Christmas spend. You come here to watch us feeding, As they watch the captured beast. Hear why a penniless pauper Spits on your paltry feast.

"Do you think I will take your bounty, And let you smile and think You're doing a noble action With the parish's meat and drink? Where's my wife, you traitors — The poor old wife you slew? Yes, by the God above us, My Nance was killed by you!

"Last winter my wife lay dying, Starved in a filthy den; I had never been to the parish, — I came to the parish then. I swallowed my pride in coming, For, ere the ruin came, I held up my head as a trader, And I bore a spotless name.

"I came to the parish, craving Break for a starving wife, Bread for the woman who'd loved me Through fifty years of life; And what do you think they told me, Mocking my awful grief? That 'the House' was open to us, But they wouldn't give 'out relief.'

"I slunk to the filthy alley — 'Twas a cold, raw Christmas eve — And the bakers' shops were open, Tempting a man to thieve; But I clenched my fists together, Holding my head awry, So I came to her empty-handed And mournfully told her why.

"Then I told her 'the House' was open; She had heard of the ways of that, For her bloodless cheeks went crimson, And up in her rags she sat, Crying, 'Bide the Christmas here, John, We've never had one apart; I think I can bear the hunger, — The other would break my heart.'

"All through that eve I watched her, Holding her hand in mine, Praying the Lord, and weeping, Till my lips were salt as brine. I asked her once if she hungered, And as she answered 'No,' The moon shone in at the window Set in a wreath of snow.

"Then the room was bathed in glory, And I saw in my darling's eyes The far-away look of wonder That comes when the spirit flies; And her lips were parched and parted, And her reason came and went, For she raved of our home in Devon, Where our happiest years were spent.

"And the accents long forgotten, Came back to the tongue once more, For she talked like the country lassie I woo'd by the Devon shore. Then she rose to her feet and trembled, And fell on the rags and moaned, And, 'Give me a crust — I'm famished — For the love of God!' she groaned.

"I rushed from the room like a madman, And flew to the workhouse gate, Crying, 'Food for a dying woman!' And the answer came, 'Too late.' They drove me away with curses; Then I fought with a dog in the street, And tore from the mongrel's clutches A crust he was trying to eat.

"Back, through the filthy by-lanes! Back, through the trampled slush! Up to the crazy garret, Wrapped in an awful hush. My heart sank down at the threshold, And I paused with a sudden thrill, For there in the silv'ry moonlight My Nance lay, cold and still.

"Up to the blackened ceiling The sunken eyes were cast — I knew on those lips all bloodless My name had been the last; She'd called for her absent husband — O God! had I but known! — Had called in vain, and in anguish Had died in that den — alone.

"Yes, there, in a land of plenty, Lay a loving woman dead, Cruelly starved and murdered For a loaf of the parish bread. At yonder gate, last Christmas, I craved for a human life. You, who would feast us paupers, What of my murdered wife!

. . . . . . . .

Does anybody know if it was, or is, possible to register a person’s death if their birth was never registered? The time i’m trying to trace is the early 1900s in London.

I’m trying to trace my family tree which is proving to be difficult as my great grandfather was put into a children’s home when he was 4 so never knew anything about his family. I’ve managed to find out who his mother was but his father is an absolute mystery but have found out that he had 4 sisters and a brother that he obviously never knew anything about!

His mother was in and out of workhouses in London before she eventually married and moved to Canada, and the only birth registrations I can find are the children that she had whilst in a workhouse, the same with one of the children’s deaths. She had this daughter outside of a workhouse and we’re not sure she registered her birth, but I think the death was only registered because she was in a workhouse so they probably took care of it for her? Same with the workhouse births; I’m assuming the staff in the workhouse took care of registering their births for her.

“Fuel Clubs To Help In Work Of Relief,” Toronto Star. December 3, 1909. Page 05. --- Increase in the Number of Bread Stations of the House of Industry --- At a conference of the visitors of the Toronto House of Industry representatives from all parts of the city, including the extreme east and west ends, were present to discuss the best methods of the work of visitation, and a spirit of enthusiasm was manifested in carrying out the work that the House stands for.

Mr. Beverly Jones recommended establishing fuel clubs early in the year that would assist the problem of relief.  The visitors were also of the opinion that pastors of churches should be brought into closer touch with cases relieved by the House.