The Victorian Workhouses

“ English Bastille ”

Victorian compromise
between

Appearance:code of Reality:social
values promoted by the problems
Queen and the middle
class: *Poverty
*Respectability *Injustice
*Moral regeneration *Riots
*Self-reliance *Lowest standards of
living
*British superiority
*Unemployment
 The workhouses were established by
THE POOR LAW AMENDEMENT
ACT OF 1834
Utilitarianism by
Bentham
Before
The Elizabethan Great Poor Law 1601
• It relied greatly on the parish as the
unit of government, and therefore on
unpaid, non-professional
administrators. Relief may well have
been greater, more well-meant and
indiscriminate to individuals.
• Outside Relief
The charity
principles of
Evangelicals Social-economic ideas
of Malthus and Smith
The poor Law After
Amendament • The parishes were now grouped in unions to
Act share the costs.
• The Elizabethan Poor Law was inefficient
and costly. The provision of outdoor relief
led to idleness
• a clear distinction between poverty and
indigence (inability to work).
• Only indigence would qualify someone for
relief.
• Indoor relief.Money payments would no
longer be made, relief would be provided
through the workhouse.
• Conditions in the workhouses would be
Spartan or ‘less eligible’, to discourage
anyone choosing to be supported in this
manner, rather than making an effort to
improve their lot.
Harsh lifestyle
• Life was meant to be much tougher inside the
workhouse than outside, and the buildings
themselves were deliberately grim: they were
designed to look like prisons. They were full of illness
& disease brought about by over-crowding & the
starvation diet. When the poor were admitted, they
were stripped, searched, washed and had hair
cropped. They were made to wear a prison-style
uniform. Men,women,children were at all times kept
separate.

• After rising at 5am, the inmates worked for 10 hours

a day. Bed was 8pm. As well as gardening, cooking
and sewing, there was corn milling, sack making,
oakum picking and crushing stone. Bones were
crushed by hand to make fertiliser. Sometimes the
inmates were so hungry that they would pick scraps
of flesh off the bones and eat it.

• Until 1842 all meals were taken in silence, and no

cutlery was provided - inmates had to use their
fingers.The meals were kept dull and tasteless. The
official ration in HM Prisons was 292 ounces of food
a week. The workhouse diet was between 137 and
182 ounces a week only.