Life in a Victorian Workhouse

1. Workhouse - Wikipedia;
2. Food, Clothing and Identity: Life in the Workhouse – Exploring the Slum.
3. Workhouse Daily Routine.
4. BBC - Life in the Workhouses.
5. Know Thy Enemy;
6. The Sharks of North America;

The bell also announced meal breaks during which the rules required that "silence, order and decorum shall be maintained" although from the word "silence" was dropped. Communal prayers were read before breakfast and after supper every day and 'Divine Service' performed every Sunday, Good Friday and Christmas Day.

The Daily Routine

These were also the days when no work, except the necessary household work and cooking, was performed by the inmates. The use of the time between 7pm and 8pm was unspecified and was no doubt often used as an informal recreation period. From the s, most workhouses received donations of books and magazines for the inmates' use.

Workhouses also started to host occasional talks and musical entertainments, often performed by visiting groups such the one illustrated below by the "Delaware Minstrels" a group of local bank clerks at the Bethnal Green workhouse in The Delaware Minstrels at Bethnal Green workhouse, Holborn City Road workhouse Sunday concert, c.

Contents may not be reproduced without permission.

1. Before welfare: True stories of life in the workhouse.
2. Food, Clothing and Identity: Life in the Workhouse!
3. Three Loves in China.
4. Victorian Era Workhouses – The poor people’s shelter.
5. As Tight as it Gets.

Kent Greenwich Lewisham Woolwich London: In his autobiography Chaplin recounts the Friday morning punishment sessions where the boys lined up on three sides of a square. The miscreants were then caned in front of their peers, often fainting or even requiring treatment in the infirmary. Charlie Chaplin spent a few weeks in a workhouse where canings were common [REX]. Politician Will Crooks was a real rags-to-riches story.

He was a child inmate of the Poplar workhouse in the East End of London but returned later in life as one of its guardians.

Victorian Era Workhouses - The poor people's shelter

Before the Poor Law Amendment Act Christmas was a day of rest in the workhouses and dinner included baked veal and plum pudding. After the law stated that although inmates would continue to have the day free from work they were not to be allowed extra food and drink paid for by the workhouse's own funds. In most workhouses Christmas became a time for the guardians to visit and demonstrate their largesse. The usual punishments for adults who broke the workhouse code involved losing their next meal although for more serious breaches they could be brought before magistrates.

However, they could be subjected to humiliating rituals. Use of pillories and stocks were common.

One poor woman in the East Retford workhouse in had to cut her hair off and was forbidden from wearing a cap for three months because she allowed another inmate to have "very improper connections with her". One solution to the problem of poor children was simply to send them away.

The Victorian Era England facts about Queen Victoria, Society & Literature

In the first organised emigration of poor children took place when the London Common Council sent vagrant children to join the first permanent English settlement in America at Jamestown, Virginia. After large-scale loss of life during attacks by native Americans in and , further waves of children were sent to bolster the colonialists' numbers.

Entering almost entirely voluntary process. Applicants would approach their local relieving officer who would issue them with an "offer of the house" if they were deemed to be sufficiently deserving of the workhouse's aid. It was up to them if they accepted or not but it was expected that families entered and left the workhouse together.

Although known which workhouse was the one which Charles Dickens used as the model for Oliver Twist's home the strongest contender is the Cleveland Street workhouse in London's Fitzrovia. It was built to service the parish of St Paul's and Dickens lived just a few doors away. The staples of the workhouse diet were bread, broth and cheese with meat usually served two or three times a week.

The earliest reference to the thin oatmeal porridge known as gruel comes from St Margaret's workhouse in Westminster where, according to a menu dated , it was served for breakfast three days a week.

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Inmates could theoretically leave the workhouse at any time but if they were to do so while wearing the uniform it would constitute theft of the workhouse's property. Leaving the workhouse usually required giving authorities a notice period of three hours but inmates could apply for individual days off for attending church or looking for work. Investigators - including journalists, novelists and social reformers - who went undercover in the workhouse disguised as down-and-outs were collectively known as social explorers.