Introduction: In this essay, I will explain the background of the workhouse in Britain, where the idea came from, why it arose and I will talk about how it has affected the British society today. What is the Victorian workhouse and where did the idea come from? Before the Victorian workhouses in the early 1800’s, the poor were looked after by the land owners. However, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 stated that all able-bodied people had to support themselves by working for their own food and accommodation. This meant that if you were jobless, you would be forced to live in a workhouse with others in similar situations as yourself, including the elderly, unmarried mothers, orphans or abandoned children who had none to fend for them. …show more content…
In each workhouse, there was a measly staff which was made up of one Master of the household, a Matron, one Medical Officer, a Chaplain, a porter and one school-teacher for everybody’s needs. Although it was not all doom and gloom: workhouses provided a bakery, laundry, vegetable gardens, and dormitories amongst other facilities for essential necessities. However, thanks to the government’s fear of idle citizens, they made sure that the workhouses were dreadful enough to be feared and kept clear from. Wives and husbands were separated on entry, not only from each other, but also from their children with sanctions if they tried to see each other. The education provided did not even include reading and writing (two of the most basic and essential skills required in order to be able to stand on your own two feet), they were made to wear a prison-like uniform, people were humiliated daily by being stripped and bathed under supervision, not to mention that the food was tasteless and insipid, and was repeated day after day, the labor was tedious, and children and parents lived with the threat of the children finding themselves “hired out” (sold) to work in factories or coal …show more content…
When did the workhouse end in Britain? Thanks to Doctor Thomas Barnardo, who set up children’s homes in 1867, orphans no longer had a need to live and work in the workhouses. At the beginnings of the 19th century, the workhouse became refuges for the elderly and the sick rather than the able-bodied poor people, and in 1929 legislation was passed to allow local authorities to take over workhouse infirmaries as municipal hospitals. All workhouses were formally abolished by the same legislation in 1930. These harsh institutions were replaced by other less prison-like institutions such as public schools, nurseries, hospitals, homes for the elderly etc. Not to mention the many important reforms in Britain that started in the 1900’s for example dole money and council housing. Is Britain better off without
For the first time in history children were an important factor of the economic system, but at a terrible price. The master of the factories employed children for two reasons. One, because of their small body which can get inside the machines to clean it and use their nimble fingers. Second, the masters use to pay low wages to the children who could be easily manipulated. The average age for the parents to send their children to work was ten. Although, Conventional wisdom dictates that the age at which children started work was connected to the poverty of the family. Griffith presents two autobiographies to put across her point. Autobiography of Edward Davis who lacked even the basic necessities of life because of his father’s heavy drinking habit and was forced to join work at a small age of six, whereas the memoir of Richard Boswell tells the opposite. He was raised up in an affluent family who studied in a boarding school. He was taken out of school at the age of thirteen to become a draper’s apprentice. The author goes further and places child employees into three groups, according to the kind of jobs that were available in their neighbourhood. First group composed of children living in rural areas with no domestic industry to work in. Therefore, the average of a child to work in rural area was ten. Before that, farmers use to assign small jobs to the children such as scaring birds, keeping sheep
In fact, many believed the poor were just worthless idlers who were not even trying to better there own situations, but instead were taking the high roads away from taxes and worries (Document 11). There were many observed instances in which those in poverty, when given the opputinity to better their lives, chose to stay poor and recieve handouts. One such cause comes from William Turner, and English Physican for Lord Earl of Somerset when he recounts how poor folks often begged on the Earl's door but when Turner offered to help health wise, they chose to stay sick and beg (Document 6). Similar to modern day abusers of the American Wellfare system, officals became very angry with idlers who did nothing but feed off the wealth of the working class in the form of alms. They even believed that idlers should be expelled from their communites as they only bring economics down (Document 5). Many also thought that in order received any aid at all a person must be working. Reforms such as the Workhouse Test Act in 1723, though this occured later than the period of discussion, were a result of these opinions. This act, among others, required that people work a set amount of hours before they could receive any aid. Even the famous Cardinal Richelieu of France believed that the idlers were “good-for-nothings” who were restricting those who actually needed help from getting it while they were being lazy and greedy (Document 8). This opinion of certain poor indivudals being lazy and abusing resources remains amoung those in power even today in
Boydston, Jeanne. Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Poor Work Conditions in the 1850's Work is a very important part of everyone's life. Work leads to wages, which then leads to the lifestyle you may live. Between 1750 and 1850, work transformed greatly in Europe. It changed all types of aspects of work including where you work, what you do, and how much you may get paid for it.
As stated by the author, the “Principle of less eligibility,” meant that those receiving public assistance “should be worse than that of the lowest paid self-supporting laborer.” In a sense this meant if a person dug ditches or scooped human waste for a living, the situation of a public assistance recipient should be much worse. The author points out that in 1834, when the “Poor Law Reform Bill,” passed it enforced the negative attitudes about poverty. Essentially, if someone was poor it was viewed as their fault. Services should never lift a recipient out of poverty, but just provide meager assistance in a stigmatizing way. The author describes how impoverished individuals in England during the mid-1800’s, were viewed in negative, criminal ways if they received assistance. Furthermore, those described as “able bodied and on assistance were particularly maligned in the court of public opinion. Many of the homeless and
In the 1800's, it was not out of the ordinary for a child to work sixteen-hour days, seven days a week. Michael Thomas Sadler tried to show in the Sadler Report of the House of Commons, how brutal it was. The Sadler Report was volumes of testimonies from children workers and older people, who once had to work as children in the mines and factories. The treatment of children had become increasingly worse and worse. The main point the Sadler Report was trying to get across was the exploitation of children workers.
They starved to death and many got infections that were not taken care of properly. They were beaten for the simplest things and they were used as experiments. They were taken into gas chambers where they were tricked into thinking that they were taking baths. They lost their friends and family they were torn away from their children, mostly they were never seen again. In the final months of the war they were taken on marches killing off even more of them.When they came to their old homes ( even though some ceased to exist) they were still hated they were beaten and killed by rioters. Many were lost, but in the end there were survivors people that made it through this torturous place. “ No tiger can eat me no shark can beat me... even the Devil would lose his teeth biting me I feel it ; I will get out of this place.” - Fritz Loehner.( Aretha)
There was a growing sense that the poor did not deserve assistance and so in 1834 the ‘Poor Law Amendment Act’ was introduced. This was designed to make conditions more severe and to even further force self-improvement amongst the poor. ‘The central objective…was to withdraw poor relief from men judged ‘able-bodied’ in Poor Law terminology’. (Thane: 1978: 29) Alternatives such as the work-house were introduced. The notion that you should only ask for help if you desperately needed it as a last resource loomed. The Charity Organisation Society was ‘a body w...
It is difficult to decide what is worse, the work done in the mines or the housing to which the miners returned to at night. The especially cruel truth. is the fact that the rent of a family of six living in two barren rooms, two hundred yards from an outdoor privy, extorted most of the household wages. Orwell 's urgent prose does not let anyone turn a blind eye to the facts. Although Orwell wrote from the perspective of a “participant observer” it still resonates today 's concerns about the effects of poverty on people 's everyday lives and dreams.
The workhouse really rose to prominence with the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which required each of the new unions of parishes to provide a central workhouse which would classify the poor by age, sex, and circumstances and accommodate them under conditions which only the truly destitute would apply. Relief was given only to those poor who agreed to accept the strict regime of the workhouse, where the conditions provided were funded at a level below that affordable by a person in work.
Geremek (1997) figures out the principles of the poor law which were institutional aid to the poor, job creation, the imposition of work, and the repression of the vagrants (p.166-167). Nonetheless, it was no more than a codification of the existing practices. After that, despite the disciplining aspect of the practices of the Poor Law of the seventeenth century, T.H. Marshall (1965) also remarks that ambiguous position of Elizabethan Poor Law which was located between the planned society and competitive economy (p.87). The Poor Law was “the last remains of a system which tried to adjust real income to the social needs and status of the citizen and not solely to the market value of his labor”
The Industrial Revolution in nineteenth-century England brought about many changes in British society. It was the advent of faster means of production, growing wealth for the Nation and a surplus of new jobs for thousands of people living in poverty. Cities were growing too fast to adequately house the numerous people pouring in, thus leading to squalid living conditions, increased filth and disease, and the families reliance upon their children to survive. The exploitation of children hit an all time peak in Britain when generations of its youth were sacrificed to child labor and the “Coffers” of England.
Many worked in dangerous working conditions. Living conditions were worse for the poor. Many turned to poorhouses which were set up by the government. The houses were designed to be deliberately tough places to deter people from staying on government aid. Family’s members were disconnected and treated harshly.
The Victorian Era is the period of Queen Victoria and also it is the period, which social classes were divided. The people from the upper class had a lot of money, which their life were always happy, comfortable, healthy and also their children were educated and had enough food to eat. However, the people who came from the lower class, their life were different from the upper class’s people. They lived in a small house, which was uncomfortable, unhealthy. They also work hard.
and it is not surprising that many women preferred factory work to this (domestic service work). The maid of all work had virtually no social life, as they were always “on - call” at all hours of the day and the evening. Often their employers could only afford a servant which meant that their wages and accommodation were low and poor. Servants and maids were often treated badly and some were even physically beaten. They worked from late nights and early hours, had continual fatigue and hurry, and they were even more anxiety about the future from the smallness of their wages.