Life in the Loughborough Workhouse

Before you begin reading this article , I wish to make abundantly clear that its original author was Andre Becherand of the University of Nancy in France. It was originally published in the Leicestershire Historian in Winter 1972. There is no intention here to infringe upon any existing copyrights, however I thought the contents of this article would be of interest to many studying local history or researching their genealogy. A Google search showed that the contents of this article did not already appear to be online and therefore I have reprinted it here with the sole intention of preserving it for posterity. If the copyright holders wish me to withdraw it then I can of course do this.

Please bear in mind that attitudes and presentation are preserved intact and relate to 1972.

Hastings House was destroyed in the 1990s and it has proved impossible to find pictures of what was Loughborough's workhouse even though it later became a hospital and then a retirement home. Should a photo emerge I will endeavour to add it to this blog (KH 08/20)

Before the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, relief of the poor was the responsibility of each parish. The parish vestry raised poor rates and appointed overseers of the poor to administer them. This system was created by a series of statutes (‘ the Old Poor Law’) which was replaced by the 1834 Act, under which parishes were grouped into Unions, each with its Board of Guardians for relieving the poor.

The Loughborough Union of parishes was formed on August 16th. 1837, the first meeting of the Board, taking place on September 11th. that year. When the Board took over the powers of the Vestry ( according to Joseph Deakin in ‘Loughborough in the Nineteenth Century’ the Select Vestries duties of relieving the poor did not end until June 1838), they decided to proceed at once to the erection of the Union Workhouse; for the old poor house, a relic of the act of Queen Elizabeth's reign, was considered inadequate. In the meantime, the Loughborough Union had no choice but to continue to use the two existing parochial workhouses at Loughborough and Shepshed. The old Loughborough parochial workhouse was at the Star Foundry, on the site now taken over by the General Post Office on the Nottingham Road.

The cost of erecting the new Workhouse, which, with its grounds and outbuildings, covered a considerable acreage, amounted to £7,000. The new Workhouse, nowadays still called ‘the Workhouse’ by Loughburians, is now an Old Folk’s Home, and it's called ‘Hastings’, after the famous local family.

In this article, we intend to relive the time, and to give evidence of the life of the inmates of the Union workhouse. However, we would wish to add that indoor relief was far from being the main mode of relief, since the workhouse ( which was in use from March 1842 ) never accommodated more than 269, a figure contrasting with the 350, which was the estimated potential accommodation given in the articles of agreement.

As we should expect the workhouse was a mixture of various establishments: a school, an infirmary, a prison, a place of work and a shelter, and consequently, the inmates formed a sort of ‘melting pot’, where the able-bodied poor were in the minority. In Loughborough, the inmates ranged from a prostitute of 16, and various ‘notorious drunken characters’ to a professor of music. It should be added that a few Irishmen found shelter in the workhouse in 1846, and that the number of inmates used to increase with the onset of winter. The Union Workhouse operated on the principle of wards, excluding communication between men and women, between able-bodied and the aged and infirm, and between children above and under seven. According to the Poor Law Board, ‘its proper object (was) the reception and maintenance of the poor of the district, who, from age, sickness, or destitution may require relief’, but it also intended to discourage the poor from wanting to return by ‘subjecting the inmates to the discipline’.

The regulations were as follows:

the inmates wishing to leave the house to visit their friends (had to) obtain permission.

tobacco, matches, and newspapers were not allowed.

No visitors (were) admitted on Sundays and visits were authorised on Thursdays, only between 2 p.m and 4 p.m.

sexes (were) prevented from associating with each other or of being employed together.

The classification prescribed by the General Consolidated Order (had) to be carried out.

suckling children (were) put in the nursery and others taken from their mothers who (were) allowed to see them twice a day.

No games of chance were permitted.

It is clear that, thus described the Workhouse appeared as a sort of prison, and this aspect was further stressed by the fact that ‘the inmates (were) clothed on admission with the Workhouse dress’.

People breaking the Workhouse rules were, of course, punished, for example, the Minute Books, give us cases of poor taken out of the Workhouse, for good, for absenting and losing part of the Union clothing; of a male pauper entering the women's ward and confined for 24 hours in the refractory ward on a diet of bread and water. For an act of ‘indecency’, a pauper was also put in solitary confinement for 24 hours on a diet of bread and water and was deprived for a while of tea and sugar.

Cases of misconduct, insubordination, general bad conduct, misbehaviour or disorderly conduct were common and many inmates were reported as ‘very troublesome’ or ‘refractory’, and of course, were then punished, often by an increase in their work tasks. Many inmates were also reported to have absconded, a fact which shows that the workhouse was not an earthly paradise. There were also some other signs of rebellion against the institution. An inmate burnt and partly destroyed his shoes. Another one assaulted two policemen. Another one wilfully damaged a water tap. Children did not escape punishment, two of them were confined in prison for two months for having broken an oak- chest in the wash-house.

If the inmates refused to work, they were put on a low diet for 48 hours, or sent to jail for 21 days. The Poor Law Commission insisted, in 1843, on preventing people from leaving the Workhouse, since it meant bad contacts, infectious disorders and improper articles brought in, hence this measure taken by the Board on the return of the absconders: ‘ they were washed and cleansed in cold water and deprived for a month of meat dinners’. No doubt the separation of sexes gave rise to a feeling of frustration, for a few inmates started to show sadistic tendencies: the Matron, for instance, was abused and assaulted twice, and an inmate showed indecent behaviour towards some of the girls; he was confined in the workshop on a low diet. The Master had also to deal with notorious drunken characters, with inmates tearing up their sheets to convert them into articles of clothing or into rags to scale the wall; stealing of pillow cases or clothes from the Workhouse was also common.

Then there were ‘struggles’ between inmates, usage of ‘very violent, abusive and improper language’. Other punishments were carried out, for not attending the divine service, for breaking a hole in the wall of the infectious ward, or for taking money out of the Relieving Officers office.

The usual punishments were: an increase in work tasks, confinement in some place on a low diet (with bread and water only) for 24 or 48 hours, the house of correction for 21 days, prison (for periods from 12 days to 12 months) and even transportation, for 13 years: this was a pauper who had stolen sheets, escaped from the Workhouse, and then sold the sheets in the town. It should be noted that punishment was very difficult to avoid as rewards were offered to persons giving information leading to the conviction of the offender.

Life in the Workhouse, as it has just been described, was consequently very difficult. However, it is our duty to point out the human aspects of the Workhouse: flannel shirts for the aged, a swing for the boys, skipping ropes for the girls. gas tar for the boys and girls in the yards, a stout pinafore as covering for the boys, below nine, during cold winters, a water mattress for a patient, a shed over the pump in the yard to protect people employed from the inclemency of the weather. As far as the entertainment of the poor was concerned, we are confronted with a lack of documents, the only detail we have, concerns a leave of absence, in June 1856, allowed to all the inmates, to witness the Public Demonstration in celebration of peace after the Crimean War and a gift of Rosettes, and Medals to the children, in honour of this event.

As the name itself suggests, a workhouse was a place of work; The idea, had been to have a self- supporting establishment and to discourage idle poor. In Loughborough, the type of work carried on was basically stone breaking, each able bodied male inmate was requested to break from 10 to 15 cwt. of stone a day. In the case of refusal, he was not allowed any meat and his work was increased in the following days, or he was sent to jail. Young people above 15 had to break 7 cwt. a day, and partially disabled people 6 cwt. The quantity of stone was carefully weighed, and the workers had to wheel their stone into the stone yard and, when broken, to move it back. The profit, if any, was accredited either to the parishes or to the establishment accounts; the stone was usually sold to the Loughborough Bridgemaster, and used for local repairs. Other activities were leather work, pumping, gathering ashes. night soil, manure, rags and bones or fattening pigs. A mill to grind corn was also in use, besides a mill for carding the hocks used for bedding. As for grinding, pounding and breaking bones, this had been forbidden in January, 1845 by the Poor Law Commission.

It should be said that the usual reports from the Visiting Committee and the Inspectors included terms such as ‘clean’, ‘comfortable’, ‘order’, ‘satisfactory state’, a view which clashes with the comment of the local papers and was at least contradicted in 1841, when two policemen had to stay in the house at night on account of ‘great disorder in the Workhouse, a plot (having) been laid by the inmates for the destruction of the windows’. In 1846 again rumours were in circulation in Loughborough, that the paupers in the Workhouse had rebelled and were not properly treated. Besides the lack of drainage and ventilation, there were other reasons for complaint: the Workhouse was an abode of fever, the nursery was crowded, the secured cesspools were detrimental to the health of the inmates, there was a disagreeable smell in the W.C., the bath house was very damp, steam from the laundry pervaded the whole house, the water course was often disturbed and the children had to wash in hard water; few improvements appear to have been effected, however, apart from the fitting of drainpipes, and a cistern to collect the water from the roof.

To end with, we should point out that usually when an inquiry was carried out after the death of an inmate, the most common answers were ‘apoplexy’, ‘debility’, ‘disease of the heart’, ‘ pulmonary congestion’, plus a special emphasis on the fact that there have been ‘no improper treatment’. This detail proves that the board was very much concerned with a good reputation of the Workhouse. Still, on the question of death in the Workhouse, we wish to mention that the clothes of the deceased, in another connection reported as ‘harbour for moth and filth’, were given to other people! As for their property and money, this was often given to the Union or the parishes as a sort of repayment.

At this stage, and leaving aside in this article such important items as diet and education in the workhouse, we see clearly already that the horrors of the workhouse system, described by historians and writers are not exaggerated; a workhouse was more a prison than a simple shelter.

The picture, we have of the Loughborough Union Workhouse does not help us to give a favourable judgement of the 1834 Act, but we should not forget that the defects of the Workhouse were often the result of the decisions of the local authority, that is the Board of Guardians, and of their inadequate policy. In our study, we set out to judge the 1834 Act by its operation in the Loughborough Union, but we have in the end been forced to attempt a criticism of local government, and after much thought, to lay much of the blame on the Loughborough Guardians, who were sticking to the practices of the Old Poor Law in an era of new legislation. Their short-sighted and utilitarian views in fact largely defeated the aims of the New Poor Law in the Loughborough Union of Parishes.