Grim tales of life in workhouse laid bare by archive

Today the bleak and Dickensian story of Victorian-era workhouses has been laid bare for all to see as thousands of letters and records relating to the era are made public.

The documents are being published online by the National Archives under the title of Living the Poor Life, allowing people to experience and learn about this fascinating period of British history at the click of a mouse.

Compiled by hundreds of volunteers it contains more than 115,000 pages of information from contemporary records and has been described by one of the historians who worked on it as "Dickens -but real".

Among the documents are heartbreaking tales of personal tragedy and deprivation which could have come straight from the pages of Dickens.

Incidents of family breakdown, corruption, blackmail, fraud, violence and neglect are all present in the archives – but so too are stories of personal strength and resistance.

Included in the archives is reams of correspondence relating to two Yorkshire workhouses, one at Keighley at the other at Reeth, near Richmond, North Yorkshire.

Project director Dr Paul Carter said: "The importance of this series of records cannot be overestimated. Conditions were to be harsh; families were to be divided, paupers uniformed and inmates time controlled.

"The records cover all aspects of poor relief but also cover matters such as opposition to the workhouse system, industrial strikes, chartism, wages, treatment of children and much more. They are essential for any study of Victorian life".

Workhouses were created as a means of providing poor relief to those in dire need. Meagre shelter and food was provided in exchange for mind-numbing and arduous labour. Conditions were purposefully harsh, designed to act as a deterrent to people becoming financial destitute.

The documents record the basic diet of gruel and bread that was designed merely to sustain the workers. The labour itself was wilfully severe, usually involving tasks such as the breaking of rocks or separating oakum – rope fibres.

Amongst some of the poignant tales revealed in the new documents, available at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk, is that of Thomas Simpson. Aged in his late 60s the former lead miner was so opposed to entering Reeth's workhouse that he claimed he would rather die than do so.

He continued to live in a rundown shack, sleeping in his ragged clothes and surviving off of a pig which he had pickled and salted after it died of disease. The documents later detail that he was found dead.

Another fascinating incident concerns that of an organised strike among workers in Keighley. The documents reveal the high levels of organisation involved, in which one mill would go on strike while workers in other mills would continue working to support those taking part in the action. They would then rotate round among themselves.

Living the Poor Life was put together thanks to the painstaking efforts of more than 200 volunteers, including Alan Mills from Reeth and local and family historians, who catalogued from digitised scans the records of 21 Poor Law Unions.

Dr Carter told the Yorkshire Post: "Workhouses were meant to be a deterrent. They used to say a good workhouse was an empty one. It did kind of work given that only people who desperately needed help would apply. The legacy still lasts to this day."

DETTERENT BID TO CUT COSTS

Workhouses were run by Poor Law Unions, a product of the 1834 Poor Laws.

Each of these new unions were based around one or more union workhouses. The unions usually consisted of a number of parishes and were managed by boards of guardians who were elected by ratepayers.

The new poor law unions were to report to the Poor Law Commissioners, based in Somerset House in London.

The new system was expected to reduce expenditure, using a harsh and deterrent workhouse test.

Claimants would be "offered the house" but if they turned it down then the legal obligation to offer relief had been met.

Much of the "raw history" around such matters can be found in the Poor Law Union correspondence, part of the huge Ministry of Health archive held at the National Archives, Kew.