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The English Poor Laws were a system of poor relief in England and Wales that developed out of the codification of late-medieval and Tudor-era laws in 1587–1598. The system continued until the modern welfare state emerged after the Second World War.
In Britain, a workhouse was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. The earliest known use of the term workhouse is from 1631, in an account by the mayor of Abingdon reporting that "we have erected wthn [sic] our borough a workhouse to set poorer people to work".
The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 (PLAA) known widely as the New Poor Law, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed by the Whig government of Earl Grey. It completely replaced earlier legislation based on the Poor Law of 1601 and attempted to fundamentally change the poverty relief system in England and Wales. It resulted from the 1832 Royal Commission into the Operation of the Poor Laws, which included Edwin Chadwick, John Bird Sumner and Nassau William Senior. Chadwick was dissatisfied with the law that resulted from his report. The Act was passed two years after the 1832 Reform Act extended the franchise to middle class men. Some historians have argued that this was a major factor in the PLAA being passed.
A poor law union was a geographical territory, and early local government unit, in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Shoreditch was an ancient parish in the county of Middlesex. It was both a civil parish, used for administrative purposes, and an ecclesiastical parish of the Church of England. The parish church is St Leonard's, Shoreditch, often simply called "Shoreditch Church".
The Andover workhouse scandal of the mid-1840s exposed serious defects in the administration of the English 'New Poor Law'. It led to significant changes in its central supervision and to increased parliamentary scrutiny. The scandal began with the revelation in August 1845 that inmates of the workhouse in Andover, Hampshire, England were driven by hunger to eat the marrow and gristle from bones which they were to crush to make fertilizer. The inmates' rations set by the local Poor Law guardians were less than the subsistence diet decreed by the central Poor Law Commission (PLC), and the master of the workhouse was diverting some of the funds, or the rations, for private gain. The guardians were loath to lose the services of the master, despite this and despite allegations of the master's drunkenness on duty and sexual abuse of female inmates. The commission eventually exercised its power to order dismissal of the master, after ordering two enquiries by an assistant-commissioner subject to a conflict of interest; the conduct of the second, more public inquiry drew criticism.
The Metropolitan Asylums Board (MAB) was established under Poor Law legislation to deal with London's sick and poor. It was established by the Metropolitan Poor Act 1867 and dissolved in 1930, when its functions were transferred to the London County Council.
St Olave's Hospital was a general hospital serving the Rotherhithe area of London until its closure in 1985.
The Workhouse Visiting Society was an organisation set up in 1858 and existed "to improve moral and spiritual improvement of workhouse inmates" in England and Wales. The group was set up by Louisa Twining of the Twinings tea family. It began as a sub-committee of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. It was disbanded in 1865.
Louisa Twining was an English philanthropic worker who devoted herself to issues and tasks related to the English Poor Law. Her family owned the famous Twinings tea business on the Strand, which is a renowned business nowadays. In the early part of her adult life, Louisa was an artist and art historian. In her 30s she started work on projects related to the Poor Law which she followed for the rest of her life. She helped to establish a home for workhouse girls and a number of societies and associations related to workhouses and infirmaries. She also served as a Poor Law guardian and was president of the Women's Local Government Society.
Leigh Union workhouse, also known as the Leigh workhouse and after 1930, Atherleigh Hospital, was a workhouse built in 1850 by the Leigh Poor Law Union on Leigh Road, Atherton in the historic county of Lancashire.
The Cleveland Street Workhouse is a Georgian property in Cleveland Street, Marylebone, built between 1775 and 1778 for the care of the sick and poor of the parish of St Paul Covent Garden under the Old Poor Law. From 1836, it became the workhouse of the Strand Union of parishes. The building remained in operation until 2005 after witnessing the complex evolution of the healthcare system in England. After functioning as a workhouse, the building became a workhouse infirmary before being acquired by the Middlesex Hospital and finally falling under the NHS. In the last century it was known as the Middlesex Hospital Annexe and the Outpatient Department. It closed to the public in 2005 and it has since been vacated. On 14 March 2011 the entire building became Grade II Listed. Development of the site began in 2019 by current owner University College London Hospitals (UCLH) Charity as a mixed-use development including residential, commercial and open space, but construction has been held up by the necessity to remove human remains stemming from the use of the area around the workhouse as a parish burial ground between 1780 and 1853. There has also been controversy about the amount of social housing to be included in the development.
The Birmingham Union Workhouse was a workhouse on Western Road in Birmingham, England.
Joseph Rogers (1821–1889) was an English physician and campaigning medical officer.
St Alfege's Hospital was a hospital that operated in the Maze Hill area of east Greenwich in southeast London. It operated as the Greenwich Union Infirmary from 1874 to 1929. It was briefly known as the Greenwich and Deptford Hospital before becoming St Alfege's Hospital in 1931. It was then superseded by Greenwich District Hospital in 1968.
A Municipal hospital is a hospital under the control of a local government, as opposed to those run commercially, by some sort of charitable organisation, or by national or state governments.
The Bedwellty Union Workhouse was situated in Georgetown, Tredegar. It is 2.9 miles (4.7 km) from the Nanybwtch Junction A465. The building was in existence for approximately 127 years. The workhouse building was also used as a hospital. Today, the site where the building once stood, there is a housing estate known as St James Park.
The Poor Law Medical Reform Association was founded by Dr. Richard Griffin, the medical officer of the Weymouth Poor law union in 1853. It merged with the Convention of Poor Law Medical Officers in 1856. In 1868 it merged with the Association of Metropolitan Workhouse Medical Officers to create the Poor Law Medical Officers Association.
The Association for the Improvement of the Infirmaries of London Workhouses was established on 3 March 1866 at a public meeting organised by Joseph Rogers, and Drs. Hart, Anstie and Carr of the Lancet. It was chaired by Henry Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon. Charles Dickens and John Stuart Mill were present. It campaigned for the provision of six Poor Law hospitals in London of one thousand beds each, with trained nurses, resident medical officers, and medicines financed from the rates. Carnarvon denounced the dreadful and disgraceful conditions in workhouse infirmaries and the guardians responsible for them. He helped to pass the Poor Law Amendment Act 1867.
Workhouse infirmaries were established in the nineteenth century in England. They developed from the Workhouse and were run under the Poor law regime.
References
- ↑ Higginbotham, Peter (2012). The Workhouse Encyclopedia. Stroud: History Press. ISBN 978-0752477190 . Retrieved 19 March 2017.
- ↑ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1897). . Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 49. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
