Concept
Workhouse
Overview
In Britain and Ireland, a workhouse (Welsh: tloty, lit. "poor-house") was a total institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses. The earliest known use of the term workhouse is from 1631, in an account by the mayor of Abingdon reporting that "we have erected within our borough a workhouse to set poorer people to work".
The origins of the workhouse can be traced to the Statute of Cambridge 1388, which attempted to address the labour shortages following the Black Death in England by restricting the movement of labourers and ultimately led to the state becoming responsible for the support of the poor. However, mass unemployment following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the introduction of new technology to replace agricultural workers in particular, and a series of bad harvests, meant that by the early 1830s the established system of poor relief was proving to be unsustainable. The New Poor Law of 1834 attempted to reverse the economic trend by discouraging the provision of relief to anyone who refused to enter a workhouse. Some Poor Law authorities hoped to run workhouses at a profit by utilising the free labour of their inmates. Most were employed on tasks such as breaking stones, crushing bones to produce fertiliser, or picking oakum using a large metal nail known as a spike.
As the 19th century progressed, workhouses increasingly became refuges for the elderly, infirm, and sick rather than the able-bodied poor, and in 1929 legislation was passed to allow local authorities to take over workhouse infirmaries as municipal hospitals. Although workhouses were formally abolished by the same legislation in 1930, many continued under their new appellation of Public Assistance Institutions under the control of local authorities. It was not until the introduction of the National Assistance Act 1948 (11 & 12 Geo. 6. c. 29) that the last vestiges of the Poor Law finally disappeared, and with them the workhouses.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Workhouse is discussed.
For the workhouse is a jail too; he who does not finish his task gets nothing to eat; he who wishes to go out must ask permission, which is granted or not, according to his behaviour or the inspector's whim, tobacco is forbidden, also the receipt of gifts from relatives or friends outside the house; the paupers wear a workhouse uniform, and are handed over, helpless and without redress, to the caprice of the…
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 with a Preface written in 1892
states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Of these successful skilful workers some two millions it is now counted, sit in Workhouses, Poor-law Prisons; or have 'out-door relief' flung over the wall to them,--the workhouse Bastille being filled to bursting, and the strong Poor-law broken asunder by a stronger.[1] They sit there, these many months now; their hope of deliverance as yet small. In workhouses, pleasantly so-named, because work cannot be done in…
Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII.
names the idea; opens on it
By cottages are understood those who neither pay to church or poor, and are, by act of parliament in 1747, in consideration of the poverty of the people, declared to be exempted both from the tax and the two-shillings duty, and they only remain not accurately known, to ascertain the whole number of houses. However, they are so far known, that from all the accounts that are hitherto given in, they do not appear to be…
Various, Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part I. For the year 1757.
states what it is
Qu. Whether that income might not, by this time, have gone through the whole kingdom, and erected a dozen workhouses in every county? 209. Qu. Whether workhouses should not be made at the least expense, with clay floors, and walls of rough stone, without plastering, ceiling, or glazing?
George Berkeley, The Querist
names the idea
In those great manufactures, on the contrary, which are destined to supply the great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of the work employs so great a number of workmen, that it is impossible to collect them all into the same workhouse. We can seldom see more, at one time, than those employed in one single branch.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Workhouse
Related ideas
- George Orwell
- Abingdon-on-Thames
- Pandemic
- World War II
- Black Death
- Napoleonic Wars
- Jeremy Bentham
- Friedrich Engels
- Charles Dickens
- Church of England
- Dissenter
Place in the tradition
Part of Liberalism.