What was a workhouse?

A workhouse was a state-run institution, most associated with Victorian Britain, where people unable to support themselves were housed, fed, and required to perform hard labour in return for basic relief.

Workhouses had existed in various forms since the Poor Law of 1601, which made parishes responsible for their poor. The system was radically reshaped by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which grouped parishes into Poor Law Unions, each required to build a central workhouse under the supervision of elected Boards of Guardians. The new system was designed around the principle of "less eligibility", meaning that life inside the workhouse had to be less attractive than the worst paid work available outside, so that only the truly destitute would seek entry.

Conditions were deliberately bleak. On admission, families were separated, with men, women, older children, and younger children housed in different wings. Inmates wore a uniform, gave up their own clothes, and were forbidden alcohol and tobacco. Meals were plain and monotonous, typically bread, gruel, and watery broth. Work included picking oakum, breaking stones for road-making, grinding bones for fertiliser, and heavy domestic and agricultural labour. Discipline was strict, with punishments for refusing work, using foul language, or attempting to leave without permission.

Workhouses housed a wide range of people. The able-bodied unemployed were the system's intended target, but in practice most inmates were children, the elderly, the sick, unmarried mothers, people with mental illness or learning disabilities, and disabled workers who could no longer support themselves. Children in the workhouse received a basic education and were often apprenticed out in their teens.

The workhouse became a powerful symbol of Victorian social policy and attracted some of the period's most biting criticism. Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, published in 1838, is the most famous depiction of the cruelty of the system. The Andover workhouse scandal of 1845, where inmates were found chewing rotten bones for food, prompted national outrage and reform.

From the late nineteenth century onwards, specialised institutions began to replace the general workhouse. Infirmaries for the sick, schools for pauper children, and homes for the elderly were separated out. The Local Government Act 1929 transferred the last Poor Law functions to local authorities, and the National Assistance Act 1948 formally abolished the Poor Law and what remained of the workhouse system. Many workhouse buildings became NHS hospitals, and a number still stand, including Southwell in Nottinghamshire, which is preserved by the National Trust.