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What problems, if any, did the workhouse solve
Poor Law Amendment Act came into fruition and workhouses became more widely established in Britain. This law united parishes in an attempt to change the state of the relief given to the poor. They wanted to diminish the cost of caring for the poor, prevent beggars abusing the scheme and impose a system that would be the same all over the country.
Approximately 15,000 parishes in England and Wales were linked in unions with each other, having their own workhouse and a Board of Guardians to supervise. The buildings were designed to segregate the different categories of pauper — male and female, able-bodied and infirm, and children. Families were split apart by walls and used to make money for the institution. There was to be no speaking even on tea breaks or punishment would be given. It was reported: children seen to be slacking would be slapped with a belt or even have their heads dipped in boiling water.
The rich presumed the poor were that way due to laziness; they called them the ‘undeserving poor’. However, this was not the case, people were poor because of unemployment, a rise in the population, disease and high food prices etc. The poor were no longer bound to their parish through feudal bonds and with the Enclosure Movement between the 16th and 18th centuries and the commercialisation of agriculture and the take over of land (common pastures) by landlords, a large section of society had now been made poor. Resentment towards the unfortunate had grown to be strong, and often the work within these workhouses was made to be extremely difficult. As well as being hired out, the workhouse staff had to do deliberately tedious chores such as stone-breaking, sack-making, corn-grinding, laundry work, gardening, cooking & sewing. In order to make fertilizer, animal and human bones were crushed by hand, and it was reported that in the Andover Workhouse, inmates were so hungry they were found eating the scraps off these bones. Thankfully, bone crushing was banned after 1845. So the system had now become a test to find the deserving and the undeserving poor, it was thought anyone prepared to accept relief in the workhouse must have been lacking the moral determination to survive outside it. Workhouses had changed; they were now a terrible last resort for those that could afford no better.
The Workhouse should be a place of hardship, of coarse fare, of degradation and humility; it should be administered with strictness, with severity; it should be as repulsive as is consistent with humanity.
The Revd. H. H. Milman to Edwin Chadwick, 1832
Although at the time, it was thought that the workhouses would solve many social problems, it actually had only a few minor advantages. As it was such a disgrace and shame for you and your family to be sent to work in a workhouse, it encouraged men, as the sole breadwinner, to work harder. This improved the quality of the workforce, although forced; production went up for the few [next page]