I took a tour of the Southwell Workhouse a couple of weeks ago. Founded in 1824, it became a model for a new method of “poverty relief”, in the UK, written into the “New Poor Law”, a decade later, leading to numerous such workhouses across the land. They were meant to replace or alleviate the increasing burden on the state of giving direct financial assistance to the poor, and were only phased out with the rise of the modern welfare state, post WWII. This particular workhouse was still serving as temporary accommodations for otherwise homeless women and children, into the 1990s.
But the reason I bring it up is that I was most struck by the explicit imperative that residing at the workhouse be made apparent to all as not a pleasant way of life. What few families wound up there were split, man, woman, and child. Food was gruel, work was hard, breaks were few, privacy nil, and punishments involved harder work still–tell one, tell all! I mean, these people were poor and homeless, and this was a way to get fed and housed, but it had to be made known, far and wide, that there was nothing to enjoy about life in the workhouse, lest ever more poor dare avail themselves of it.
