Who worked in The Workhouse?
Master, Matron, school teacher and a part-time clerk. The ratio of staff to inmate was practically non-existent. Punishments were harsh. Riots might have happened but there was nowhere else to go. We found out about one such riot at a Workhouse in Andover.
What were the jobs and punishments?
Jobs included:
- Crush bones to make fertiliser
- Breaking stones to make gravel for the roads for example.
- Turning a mill, used to make flour and other products.
- Cleaning the building (which was huge)
The jobs were not nice, laborious, slow, menial, boring, dull, lacking interest and sometimes painful. It must have felt degrading to do those jobs. Some people might have felt like they were dying.
Punishments such as solitary confinement were used and the first line of action was no food at the next meal. We read about one lady being sent to prison for 2 months for breaking a window.
We are really glad that we were not living in a place like that and worried that people must have suffered ill health, mental health and maybe even taken their own lives. It feels really sad.
How could you end up in a Workhouse?
You could end up in the workhouse for many reasons; because you were robbed, your house burned down, you had a run of bad luck. To call the inmates idle and profligate could have been as an insult in itself because there was no kindness or thought that the person found their way there through no fault of their own, there was only suffering. (MasterKAF is thinking like a depressed philosopher!)
MrsDTB decided to end the session here as, to be honest, it was getting very sombre! We feel very lucky to be living in this day and age and have the opportunities that we do.