Get ready to step into the time machine with me, Michala, and our esteemed guest, Peter Higginbotham, also known as "Mr Workhouse". We're geared up to take you on a fascinating exploration of the history and evolution of workhouses in the UK. Join us as we unravel how this historical shift led to the Poor Relief Act of 1601, the Workhouse Test Act of 1720, and the boom of parish workhouses in the 1700s.
We'll then take a deep breath and plunge into the 19th-century workhouse system. Together, we will examine the stark realities of segregation, stringent routines, and the meals that awaited the unfortunate inhabitants. We'll also take a peek at the workhouse cookbook to get a sense of the culinary experiences within. Our conversation will also bring to light the admission process, the religious practices, and the medical care offered to these inmates. This isn't your regular history lesson - we're going beyond the facts to grasp the human experience inside these walls.
But hold on; our journey doesn't end there! We will discuss the concept of scattered homes that emerged in the 1890s, and the differences between them and cottage homes. We'll try to understand how children within the workhouse system fared compared to those outside of it, and how Peter Higginbottom's fascination with workhouses led him to create his detailed database. This is more than just retracing history; it's about understanding how the past has left an indelible imprint on the present. So, strap in and prepare for a history lesson you won't forget!
To contact Michala, visit www.michalahulme.com
Peter's workhouse website is www.workhouses.org.uk
To watch the Oswestry Workhouse edition of Channel 4's The Great British Dig, visit https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-british-dig-history-in-your-garden/on-demand/72396-008
Get ready to step into the time machine with me, Michala, and our esteemed guest, Peter Higginbotham, also known as "Mr Workhouse". We're geared up to take you on a fascinating exploration of the history and evolution of workhouses in the UK. Join us as we unravel how this historical shift led to the Poor Relief Act of 1601, the Workhouse Test Act of 1720, and the boom of parish workhouses in the 1700s.
We'll then take a deep breath and plunge into the 19th-century workhouse system. Together, we will examine the stark realities of segregation, stringent routines, and the meals that awaited the unfortunate inhabitants. We'll also take a peek at the workhouse cookbook to get a sense of the culinary experiences within. Our conversation will also bring to light the admission process, the religious practices, and the medical care offered to these inmates. This isn't your regular history lesson - we're going beyond the facts to grasp the human experience inside these walls.
But hold on; our journey doesn't end there! We will discuss the concept of scattered homes that emerged in the 1890s, and the differences between them and cottage homes. We'll try to understand how children within the workhouse system fared compared to those outside of it, and how Peter Higginbottom's fascination with workhouses led him to create his detailed database. This is more than just retracing history; it's about understanding how the past has left an indelible imprint on the present. So, strap in and prepare for a history lesson you won't forget!
To contact Michala, visit www.michalahulme.com
Peter's workhouse website is www.workhouses.org.uk
To watch the Oswestry Workhouse edition of Channel 4's The Great British Dig, visit https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-british-dig-history-in-your-garden/on-demand/72396-008
Hello and welcome back to another past, a brand new family history and genealogy podcast brought to you by me, dr Michaela Hume. I am beyond thrilled to say that on this week's podcast I have got Mr Workhouse himself. Peter Higginbottom, thank you so much for coming on this podcast. I'm a huge fan of yours. No, as you well know. So for those that don't know, me and Peter filmed a show together. It must have been. What was it?
Speaker 2:a couple of years ago now A couple of years ago now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it must have been, wasn't it Something?
Speaker 2:like that.
Speaker 1:In Shropshire. Yeah, so I got a call asking if I wanted to be the historian, the 19th century sort of specialist, on this show. And it was the Great British Dig and we were doing a workhouse in Oswestry and I remember chatting to the director on the phone and they said do you know anybody that specializes in workhouses? I was like yes, I was like I do, and I mentioned your name in my head. I thought you probably won't do it, Is you know? He's like Tom Cruise in the in the history world.
Speaker 2:I thought he's probably compared Tom Cruise before, but thank you for that.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I thought he's probably all booked up and then, when they said you'd agree to do it, I was so happy, not only because you are a fabulous historian, but also because I have all your books and I thought I could get them autographed while we were working together which you know I did, and I've worked with a lot of people on DNA journey and obviously a lot of people on the Great British Dig, and I've done.
Speaker 1:Who Do you Think you Are? You and Alan Carr are the only two people that I've ever asked for a selfie with Peter.
Speaker 1:So, you are definitely up there for me, my friend and Peter can you explain to the listeners, for those that may not know a lot about workhouses I mean, for a lot of us here in the UK and I think maybe in other parts of the world we grew up knowing about the workhouses because most of us read Oliver Twist. So that was probably for most of us our first kind of introduction to the workhouse and what the workhouses were like. But can you just explain a bit about the history of the workhouses?
Speaker 1:And I suppose that change in 1834, and I suppose what we think of the Victorian workhouses and what it was like before then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. Well, in a kind of funny sort of way it goes all the way back to Henry VIII. Actually, in kind of Tudor times the religious houses, the monasteries and the abys and so on were one of the really important sources of help for poor destitute people. And in the 1530s, where Henry Day dissolved all the religious houses in the country, that removed support from the country's poor and as a result of that there was a huge increase in some begging in the streets, and particularly in the state like London you couldn't move for people begging in the streets. As a result there was pressure to find an alternative solution and over the sort of latter half of the 16th century the solution gradually emerged through various legislative experiments which really shifted the burden of helping poor onto the parish. The local householders actually started to be charred onto what became the rates as we knew them until not so long ago now, that sort of council tax. And in 1601, some of these experiments were crystallized into the 1601 poor relief act, which gave parishes a sort of legal duty to support their poor and destitute inhabitants. And initially the way it worked was that there were some parish officials called overseas who collected money from all the parish and have householders based on the value of their property, so it was a kind of local property tax that funded this. And most of the money in the early days was spent on handouts to people. It could be actual cash or it could be food, clothing, paying for medical care and so on, and to qualify for this you had to sort of demonstrate your poverty or destitution.
Speaker 2:And the thing that really introduced the workhouse was the desire to distinguish the deserving poor and the non-deserving poor. And if you were able-bodied and destitute then you were expected to work in return for a handout. And this could be done in various ways. Originally there were sort of non-residential kind of places where you could go and do a day's work and then get the handout and so on. But gradually residential institutions emerged, really having two functions. They housed the deserving poor who couldn't get by even with the help of a handout so the disabled, the elderly, the chronically sick and so on and also they were places where the able-bodied poor could go and get free board and lodging, if you like, in return for doing work. So it was twofold supporting the sort of deserving poor and places where the able-bodied poor could go and be housed.
Speaker 2:It took a while for the kind of what we think of as the workhouse to sort of crystallise. It really changed. In the 1720s there was a bit of legislation called the Workhouse Test Act. It was passed by Parliament and it formalised some of the sort of the regulations and options for a parish to set up a workhouse, because up to that point it had all been a bit ad hoc and a bit woolly about how it should operate. And in the 1700s there was only a parish workhouse boom. All around the country parishes were starting to set up workhouses and the impetus for that was that having a workhouse could save you money and the theory was that if you were able-bodied and wanted a handout, then going into workhouse would be a bit of a deterrent. So you would actually reduce the number of people claiming poor relief if you made a test of their destitution by offering them the workhouse.
Speaker 1:I take it that was with the hope and pizza it would push down the poor rate so people didn't have to pay as much.
Speaker 2:You would always take care of the helpless, the blameless, poor, but you could put a break on the number of what you might view as sort of layabouts and scrounges who were wanted a sort of free ride from the parish by saying, well, the only way actually we're going to help you is offering the workhouse no handouts around here anymore.
Speaker 2:The only way we're going to help people like you is a place in the workhouse where you were expected to work in return for your board and lodging. Unfortunately, because this was a bit sort of fuzzy, the each parish could operate things how it wanted and in some places actually, workhouses were a bit lax and even attractive to people because the officials who ran them often changed every year. They had new, so overseers and so on, and sometimes they just can be bothered actually to do. You know they collected the money and spent it on the workhouse, but very kind of rigorous in enforcing the work requirement and so on. So the workhouse was really a part of a bigger system because the handouts to the what you might call the Zerley Port carried on all through this period. A lot of parishes were still giving weekly handouts or, you know, ad hoc handouts to the poor, and although there were a large number of parishing workhouses, was always far more money out of the poor rates spent on helping people outside the workhouse.
Speaker 2:If you're in family history, the thing that's going to possibly mention your ancestor more often is all the ledgers about people paying into the system and people receiving handouts of various sorts outside the workhouse. We tend to get a bit focused on the workhouse because it's a concrete sort of symbol of the whole system, but the reality was actually things like old age pensions, you know were going strong in the 1700s. You can find the parish records, weekly lists of mostly elderly widows actually, and they get sort of six months a week or one and six a week from the parish but in their own homes. In that area there is actually generally not a lot recorded or that survived. That was recorded about the parish workhouse inmates and you know what they did. So in the 1700s, early 1800s you're far more likely to find a poor connection, if you like, in the records of the overseers and the parish committee, the vestry, than in any kind of workhouse records.
Speaker 1:And they are really interesting records. If you've not checked them out Again, it is a bit of a postcode lottery as in what records are available, but they are. You know, they're a fascinating set of records, aren't they the overseers records, and it might be the fact that the overseer is paid for somebody's shoes, you know you might find that your ancestor, or it might be that they have.
Speaker 1:You know they've chased a man to another parish who you know needs to come back and pay for his children. They are a really, really interesting set of records and they do mention again. Often when we think about parish records we just think about baptisms, burials and marriages, you know, in the 18th century. But these records are. They do mention people by name, so you know you potentially would be able to find an ancestor, and it just gives you a tiny snippet of what is going on in that village or town at the time.
Speaker 2:Yes, things like Mary Smith given six months for gin, for sitting up all night with a dead body, you know that's just died, or just just as you say, little, tiny, little snippets of so parish life. You don't get any of the sauce, really, because you know it's the kind of stuff that was everyday life to them but nobody thought was, you know, worth writing down. You know, in the same way, you know, nobody that I know, you know, has given a sort of detail, a description of the experience of going around the supermarket. You know, in a hundred years time people say, oh, what's these things called supermarkets? What were they all doing?
Speaker 2:How were they arranged and you know how did you get in and how did you pay for things you know, it's kind of all little fine detail and of course these days we have endless videos and blogs and all sorts of stuff. So you know, it might not actually be quite that difficult for that in that situation. But you know, transposing it's a sort of you know parish life, just all little tiny, little juicy fragments of you know how life was going on.
Speaker 1:So let's then pick up on that change. So obviously we've got the the 18th century system of poor relief and, as I say, we've got outdoor relief and indoor relief predominantly. I think a lot more people were more outdoor relief and then, as we get into the 19th century, we see a real shift, don't we?
Speaker 2:We do, and in fact this has kind of very modern resonances. Actually it's really to do with the welfare bill of the country. Really, at the end of the 18th century England was actually a bit of a parlous state in the sort of 1790s. We had a whole series of banned harvests which caused problems you know, amongst you know parish labourers and so on. We had the Napoleonic Wars, which caused a big sort of set of problems for the country.
Speaker 2:You know, men going off to war, often not coming back and leaving widows or coming back injured, disabled, and then claiming poor relief, and so between about 1790 and 1820 the cost of poor relief across the country, I think, quadrupled and the people paying for this, you know the rate payers were starting to get, you know, fully upset about this and the Corn Laws I'm sure everybody remembers from school days, in that 1815 pushed up the price of grain that you know sort of being imported from overseas, and again that pushed up the price of feeding all these poor relief claimants because you either give them literally bread or money to buy bread, and eventually in the 18, early 1830s the government decided the whole thing needed sorting out and there are also lots of reports of you know parish poor relief being run very inefficiently, or there were the corruption going on that all this lots of money sloshing through the parish coffers and there's a lot of room for corruption.
Speaker 2:Some you get examples of things like you know people giving given handouts into in the form of vouchers that they had to be spent at certain shops which has happened to be the brother-in-law of the. You know the overseer, you know kind of those kind of things you know, and the system had to be overhauled.
Speaker 2:But it was really the, you know, the welfare bill is too high and it needs it needs trimming. So in 1834 we had what was known as the poor law amendment act and what that did? It didn't actually change too much really, it was really just the administrative, administrative structure that changed. You know, people, parish householders were still going to pay for this new system, but it was run on what was thought of as a more efficient scale. Parishes were grouped together into areas called poor law unions, typically 20 or 30 parishes around a market town, and each union apparently poor law union had a local committee elected by the ratepayers and each parish in the union would provide typically one to you know, ten bargeons, poor law guardians on the the board of guardians committee that ran the union based on the size of the population of each, each parish. So a big parish, typically the town at the center, would have maybe five or ten guardians on the board and the small parishes might just have one or two. So that was that. It was locally run. But there was a central body called the poor law commissioners who kind of had oversaw the whole system and churned out rules and regulations.
Speaker 2:But the kind of underlying thrust to this new system was that from this point on there would be no handouts whatsoever for able-bodied men and their dependence. So there was still, say, scope for handouts, you know, for people who were, you know, poor and sick or widowed and so on. But it was intended to be a deterrent system, and the deterrence came in the form of a news flavor of workhouse which would serve the whole union. So a big, a big workhouse and a very strictly run workhouse, say it, would be off-putting in various ways. The food would be very plain and repetitive. There will be a requirement to work if you were able bodied in the workhouse.
Speaker 2:The new big workhouse buildings would have an enforced system of segregation. If you went into the new workhouse, then men would be in one part of the building, women in the other, the elderly and the able bodied to be separated and children would be separated. That was one of the things that really people hated about the new workhouse system the segregation, and families, since they got inside the door of the place, would be separated until they left. A thing to say, though that's often a slight misimpression you get, is people were sent to the workhouse or put in the workhouse. Strictly speaking, they were offered the workhouse. It's a bit like today if you're unemployed, you're not forced to claim unemployment benefit.
Speaker 2:It's there if you want to claim it, but you're not forced to apply for it. All over the country in the 1830s these new big workhouses will be put up. In some cases, old existing parish buildings were converted into the new flavor of workhouses. It was a very strict regime.
Speaker 1:I was going to say in the early years, what was a typical day like? If we had just arrived at the workhouse, peter, how would that work? I take it the first thing we're going to do is get our uniform as such.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, in fact, even before that, actually, you didn't typically roll up at the workhouse and knock on the door. In theory you could do that, but generally you were dealt with first by the frontline official of the system, the relieving officer, who would interview you and assess your circumstances. Actually, you might potentially say okay, well, we give you a bit of cash to tide you over or whatever. If you were able-bodied, he would probably say well, sorry, all I can offer you is the workhouse. If you're happy with that, I'll give you a chitty and you take your family up to the workhouse.
Speaker 2:If you had a family, you all had to stick together. It was the basic expectation. You couldn't just have the husband in the workhouse and the family outside, or if they were outside they wouldn't get any help. So you all went in together, you all came out together, so you would turn up at the workhouse. I thought even that would be quite difficult. If you could live possibly seven or eight miles from the workhouse and there wouldn't be a bus or a train in those days, you'd have to make your own way there. Even that actually could be a bit of an ordeal. So you'll fish up at the workhouse. There'd be a long admission process. You would have to. You know there's paperwork to be done. You'd have to have a bath and a medical make sure you weren't carrying anything infectious. There was kind of a quarantine period.
Speaker 1:Yeah, close.
Speaker 2:And smallpox was a really big, serious fear in those days. So you spent a little time in quarantine and had a medical inspection. Your own clothes will be taken off you and either put into store or if they were too far gone, they'd possibly be burned. Actually, because if you say a lot of people you know might actually have been that state. And then you'd go into the main workhouse, you're into your separate section, depending on you know whether you were elderly, able-bodied and so on, and from that point on it was a fairly sort of rigid routine. It differed a bit whether you were able-bodied or elderly and inferred, but able-bodied typically you'd be up at sort of 6 in the morning, you'd have roll call and breakfast 7 till 12, you'd be working an hour off for your dinner. Another five hours work in the afternoons, 1 till 6, dinner in the sort of supper in the evening and you'd be in bed by 8 o'clock, some places even earlier. Some places actually resented buying candles and when it got dark. So you kind of went to bed when it was dark.
Speaker 2:Sunday was a bit different. Sunday was the day of rest. No sort of labor required, but you had lots of sort of religious activities, provided it would be a chapel service, a church service in the morning, sunday school, the Avenue of the Children, another sort of service in the evening. So lots of religious devotions were expected of you. So that was the basic routine. Food was again a very I was going to say what were we eating, peter?
Speaker 1:Because, I know, didn't you do a cookbook? Am I right? Right, Peter?
Speaker 2:No, no, actually, I actually came into possession of an original workhouse cookbook, which sounds like one of those humorous I was going to say I couldn't imagine there was many recipes in it, but I'm sure you're going to tell me that there is.
Speaker 2:Oh well, it was, but yeah, it's quite, I think, about 50 odd recipes. Well, in fact, the thing the real thing to be aware of or always consider when you're talking about the workhouse, is it changed over the decades. It did. It's very easy to read Oliver Twist and think, oh well, I'd say it was in 1920, but I'm sure, because that's what Charles Dickinson said, it changed enormously and in fact this very strict regime really covered really up to the 1870s.
Speaker 2:So 1830s to 1870s you had this very, very strict regime which I've really just described. So for that period the food was, I'd say, very plain. It would be sort of porridge, gruel or bread for breakfast and for supper or possibly bread and cheese. Very fixed amounts eight ounces of bread and six ounces of gruel or whatever, half a pint of gruel. The midday dinner was the main thing that changed a bit, typically four or five days a week. It was things like bread and broth or suet pudding. On a couple of days you would get meat and veg, but it was very stodgy. But again, you always have to compare what's happening in the workhouse to what's happening outside the workhouse, to the similar kind of people, if you've watched any of these TV series reconstructing life in Victorian times. You know that people are scraping and hating these pennies together to buy a bit of bread for their family. So although the workhouse food was very plain, at least it was three solid meals a day.
Speaker 1:That's what I was going to say. Life, especially in these rural towns and villages, especially if work is agricultural, which it mostly is, it's seasonal. We found that when we did our research for ossistry. For some people the workhouse it meant fresh clothes, it meant food. You didn't have to go out and try and get it.
Speaker 2:It was there.
Speaker 1:I think it's interesting what you said about how the workhouse changed. I think we found that, didn't we with ossistry, when we again, when we did our research there, that yes, there was a routine that is followed, but there was also provision. I remember there was like a heating system. Do you remember they tried to sort of introduce a kind of heating system and a band came in, do you remember? And I think somebody came in and did a play. Yeah, so I think exactly what you said, and I remember us having a discussion about this, because often when we think of the workhouse we think of Oliver Twist. There was like that in some workhouses for most of the 19th century. But, as you rightly said, we do get a shift, a change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, I certainly. I mean Oliver Twist, you know I found it. Remember the diet in the Oliver Twist workhouse was gruel, gruel and gruel and onion once a week or something, and in fact there was never, ever a real workhouse that I've ever come across that had that as the diet, you know. And if the Oliver Twist workhouse was a parish workhouse even though Oliver Twist was written out of, the new system had come into operation, the story actually reflects a parish workhouse, but there were some change. One of the big changes, which kind of is quite significant as far as family history is concerned, is to do medical care.
Speaker 2:Up until the 1860s, 70s, the workhouse was probably the least attractive place in the world to get sick. Every workhouse had a facility called an infirmary, but they're often, you know, tiny, badly ventilated, cramped, you know very, very minimal. The workhouse had a doctor, but most of the nursing was done by elderly female inmates, you know, who kind of volunteered or pressed, ganged into doing the work and most of them, you know, were illiterate. They couldn't read or write, you know, certainly couldn't read a label on the bottle or read some instructions left by the medical officer, and often they were drunk most of the time. You know seriously, they often got given a ration of beer in the morning, you know, for doing the job. You know and you know kind of buy a bet at eight o'clock in the morning. They'd be rolling around sort of you know, and sometimes so they know the difference between arsenic and something else.
Speaker 2:Some of the things, a lot of the stuff that in those days that was prescribed for people in the infirmary were alcohol based, you know, like brandy for example. Yeah, the reason for that is that often the drugs or any drugs prescribed by the medical officer had to be paid for out of his salary. However, if you prescribed things like brandy or you know beer to the sick that came out of the food bill, it was quite attractive. Actually, alcohol based stimulants. They were often referred to, as you know, sort of because the patients were happy, made them feel better and you know it didn't dig into the poor docs. You know salary, but a lot of the medical care was very dodgy, you might say. You know trained paid nurses were very, very rare until the 1860s.
Speaker 2:There was a big outcry in 1860s in London because the medical journal the Lancet did lots of sort of on the spot exposays of some of the really dire conditions. As a result of that there were really big push to improve workhouse medical care and that kind of filtered across the country. But the thing that really changed was that from the 1870s onwards, roughly, if you were sick and poor but not so poor, you needed to go into the workhouse but you just couldn't afford a doctor, you would increasingly be referred to the workhouse in the infirmary for care and treatment. So you would be in the workhouse in the infirmary, not because you were ultra poor, because it would effectively become the local hospital in many cases.
Speaker 2:So my great-great grandfather, for example I know from the census that you know not that long before he died in the workhouse in the infirmary. You know he was at home with his family, apparently, he was living okay, but he died in the workhouse, in the infirmary. I suspect I don't know because the records haven't survived that he went into the workhouse in the infirmary very close to the end of his life because his family couldn't really care for him anymore and that was really the only option, an alternative form of care that existed in those days. There were things called voluntary hospitals, charity hospitals, but they didn't touch the elderly or chronic cases. You know, if you were elderly and needed you're elderly and poor and needed care the workhouse infirmary had effectively become the local, you know, the local hospital or hospice, almost you might say so. A lot of people died in workhouse infirmaries.
Speaker 1:I was going to say yeah, I know my great, great, I think great grandfather. He died in the workhouse infirmary and I know that there's going to be people listening whose relatives, ancestors, have died in a workhouse infirmary. So it's interesting that you've actually brought that up and sort of clarified. I think for most of us that you know that these people weren't necessarily inmates of the workhouse and they've got sick there. They were probably just ill, couldn't afford a doctor. And therefore, like what you said, that was, the local hospital for poor people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you might find you know that people appear in workhouse infirmary records but not in the sort of the general workhouse admission records.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so it's sort of it may not be the sort of quite such a depressing discovery if you're in that situation as it might initially seem to be that you know, really they were just making use of the only provision that existed for poorer people in those days, particularly in terms of end of life care.
Speaker 2:But just to follow on from that, really that as a result of all this extra business, if you like, the workhouse infirmary, there was a big expansion of workhouse medical facilities and in case lots of new buildings and in some cases the kind of the medical provision, particularly in the larger sort of town city workhouses, almost outgrew the care for the basic poor. If you look at the old maps of, you know, the ordinary survey maps of workhouse sites, all the new expansion around the original workhouse is often hospital blocks and that is really why eventually, you know, workhouse infirmaries became largely hospitals. And in 1948, the NHS was launched. A very big proportion of NHS real estate was what was former workhouse sites which you know, which had morphed into, you know, hospitals for the poor.
Speaker 1:How did the treatment of children change pizza over this period from like obviously, when I know from my with my historians, hats on. You know, if we start at the beginning of the 19th century, children are very much seen as many, many adults, you know. They are there to help provide and put food on the table and they're sent out to work. So how did, as you know, as we get sort of education acts introduced as the 19th century progresses, how did that reflect in the treatment of children within the workhouse?
Speaker 2:Well, surprisingly, children actually, on the whole were the one group that were treated more amenably by the system than the adults. Really, as early as the 1840s there were attempts being made to get children out of workhouses into separate accommodation. So children who'd entered the workhouse system with their parents, they were increasingly housed on a separate site. The belief was that if children were mixing with adult paupers they would pick up bad habits, bad ways and be tainted was the phrase that was sometimes used by being exposed to adults in workhouses. So originally, the 1840s onwards, there were what were called district schools being set up in some places, particularly in London and some of the big northern cities Manchester, leeds and Liverpool had quite big schools where children were taken from the workhouse I suppose you would call the workhouses for children. They were quite monolithic, big buildings and the children there were given, educated. They were also given what was called industrial training, trying to equip them for later life. So for the girls it was domestic training. I expected to end up as domestic servants. So they were taught the basics of cookery, sewing, cleaning, all those kind of things, and the boys were taught various sort of manual crafts, you know, carpentry, tailoring, shoe making, all those kind of things. The hope was that if you gave them those skills when they reached 15 or whatever, left the workhouse they would be employable and therefore they wouldn't turn into paupers like their parents had done.
Speaker 2:These district schools which also there's barracks schools by people who thought they were not such a good thing they were succeeded in the 1870s 1880s by a whole new system inherited from Europe, actually called the Cottage Homes system. The idea was that children, rather than being in these massive institutions, really needed to be in a more family style environment. So Cottage Homes villages, as they were usually known, were literally many villages, often out in the countryside, and typically there'd be, I'd say, a dozen or 15, quote Cottage is usually quite substantial houses, each of which would have 15 or 20 children living there under the care of either a house mother or house parents, usually the case with boys, and they would be sort of they would be. They'd have a school, they'd have a chapel, they'd have workshops, basically like self-contained little villages. They'd have a bakery and laundry and so on, and again, a lot of the work of running the place would be done by the older children. So the laundry they had the girls helping there and the boys I say would be doing the carpentry, shoe making or whatever. And I say that quite a few of these were set up. Some are actually still around and again it's always interesting to go and find the buildings and then wander around because they were quite well constructed buildings and often now quite desirable residences, usually set around nice village green style set up.
Speaker 2:Cottage Homes in their turn started to get criticized in the 1890s as being a bit sort of never never land. Although they had good aims, they weren't really equipping children for real life, particularly city life. They weren't becoming street wise. The idea was modified, starting in Sheffield but again spread around the country, of having the same style of family, little groups, 15, 20 children under the care of house parents, but in an ordinary house in the city suburb. So big cities like Leeds, bradford, sheffield and so on, around the outskirts of the city, they were dotted these scattered homes as they were known.
Speaker 2:The children went to local schools and really mixed in. The idea was that they would be better equipped in that situation. So some poor law unions adopted the cottage home system and some adopted the scattered home system, some had hybrid systems and so on. It varied quite a bit around the country. But generally the children would take it out of the horrors, if you like, of the workhouse and given relatively comfortable and well educated upbringings. And you always have to compare it with what's going on outside. So even with the 1870 Education Act and its successes and so on, a lot of children outside the workhouse would have been quite sort of a degree of poverty completely free education, public education, as they didn't come in until the 1880s I think, if I remember rightly. So children in the workhouse system actually arguably fared reasonably well compared to a lot of children outside, they say really the one group that you could say had in its own way a positive outcome from their time in the poor relief system.
Speaker 1:Now you've mentioned how people went into the workhouse and the process of how people got admitted into the workhouse. How did people get out then?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. Well, in the same way that you weren't forced into the workhouse, you weren't forced to stay there. If you did go into the workhouse you could leave any time you wanted, was the theory. In fact you couldn't just waltz out the door any time you want, because if you left a workhouse site wearing your workhouse clothing without permission you were stealing workhouse property. So there was quite a sort of subtle control over people's movements and if you were guilty of that you could get a month's hard labor. So it was quite sort of a useful way of controlling. You had to give notice of your intention to discharge yourself is kind of probably how you would phrase it in a formal way Typically three hours notice. So that gave the workhouse master or matron time to go and dig out your clothing, do the necessary paperwork, and you would then be reunited with your family if that was the case and you would then go on your way. But essentially I think you could leave any time you wanted. In fact some people took full advantage of that.
Speaker 2:There was an interesting group of people known as the ins and outs who treated the workhouse like a sort of free DOS house really. They would come in on a Monday, go through all the admission procedure and by Wednesday they'd be fed up with the place and they'd discharge themselves, spend a couple of nights outside somewhere, either sleeping rough or it might be relative. They could sponge on for a couple of days, you know. On Friday morning they'd be back on the workhouse sort of doorstep again, going round and round. It actually became such a problem for the workhouse officials having to do all this admission procedure, discharge procedure, admission procedure, discharge they actually got the power to detain people. It's one of the few instances in which the workhouse could detain people if they discharged themselves recently and come back straight in again. But so generally, as I say, you can leave anytime you wanted.
Speaker 1:How did you get interested in workhouses? What is the connection that led you to just have this amazing database?
Speaker 2:Well, it was the family history, I believe it or not, and sending off certificates. And I sent off for the death certificate of my great-great-grandfather, timothy, timothy Higgin Bottom. Spelling's sort of changed over the years. It's sort of a various you know times, as you know they do, and it had his place of death as the Birmingham Workhouse Infirmary. I thought, ooh, workhouse in a workhouse. I vaguely heard of workhouses. I wonder what that's all about.
Speaker 2:So I looked around and we're talking about, ooh, 1992 now, I mean you know quite a long time ago now, and it didn't seem to be very much around. Actually, the only thing I could find there was a lovely book by a gentleman called Norman Longmate, called the Workhouse. I'm a lovely book and I thought, oh, okay, but it didn't really. I mean, it's a very great book but it doesn't really go into sort of wait a minute, call the sort of family histories and so much kind of stuff, or into these buildings and it kind of gave the impression that all the buildings were sort of long gone. You know, like you know, stonehenge, almost. You know it's all at the distant past. And I kind of got, you know, looked around a bit more Well, and there was a lovely program on. I was off work one day and watching Daytime TV and there was this little half hour documentary made by oh ATV, as it was in those days, about the Birmingham Workhouse. I think they're about to knock it down and they've sneaked inside and done some filming, and I always wanted to see this again. Actually, you know, sort of as time has gone on and that kind of got me more interested.
Speaker 2:The thing, though, that really took it they took it to a whole new level was that in 1999, english Heritage or the National Monuments Record, I think it was called then they were doing a project documenting old hospitals that were all being knocked down all over the country, and someone there sort of spotted that a lot of these old, these hospital buildings had originally been work houses, and they actually spun off a really interesting project, and there was a book came out of this by a lady called Catherine Morrison, and it kind of laid out the whole history of work houses, really from an architectural point of view, but woven in with lots of other stuff, really going back to sort of, you know, 17th century, really 1600s, and in the back of this book there was a list of every work house in the country and exactly, you know it's kind of a good reference. And I thought, wow, oh, and also you could go to the National Monuments Archives in Swindon and each of these places they'd compile a little dossier. Catherine Morrison and her colleagues have been around a lot of these work houses and, you know, taken pictures and got the plans and written on the plans. You know this used to be the mortuary or the dining hall or whatever. And suddenly this brought this to life. You know there are all these buildings and a lot were obviously still standing and I thought, oh well, I could actually go to places like Birmingham and actually see the place where my great-great-grandfather ended up, which is exactly. Who do you think you are in pregnancy? Do they take you to the actual places? It brings it all to life.
Speaker 2:So I started, you know, sort of with these lists of places and I'm going to. You know I used to go to Swindon to the archives, the English Heritage Archives, and every week order up about 20 of these dossiers. I mean, some of them were really thick, you know, and it took me all day. I announced that today and I kind of got to know me. I used to be called the Workhouse man, that sort of always the air game, the Workhouse man, all this stuff. And I started going around the country, like you know they had, and in fact some of them they hadn't been to, and it was just amazing, I say you could literally with these, this stuff, you could stand in front of all these places and say, oh, that was the women's side and that was, you know, the dining hall, and that was you know the refactory cell where they sort of stuff the miscreants for a day or two, and it was just like living history. And I thought, well, this is wonderful, you know taking photos.
Speaker 2:And so I thought, because I worked in IT at the time, I thought, oh, you know, workhouses were just sorry, websites were just starting to proliferate. I thought I should actually make a little workhouse website. So first of all, I did. I was living in a place called Abingdon which had a workhouse. In fact, when I was just getting going, I went to the local library in Abingdon and said what have you got on the workhouse? And they said, oh, the workhouse. Oh, and they fished around and they brought out this press cutting of Christmas dinner in the workhouse in 1883. And that was it and I thought you know there was this enormous building, you know housed 300 people or thereabouts and been there for the best part of a century, and you know it was virtually unrecorded. They had books on the Abbey and the parish church and the railway you know the defunct railway and the river and the anything you think of almost had been lovingly documented apart from the workhouse, and I thought, oh, that's very strange.
Speaker 1:So I was gonna say why do you think that was then, Peter? Do you think it was because people weren't that interested in the workhouse at that time?
Speaker 2:Yeah, in fact. Yeah, if you mentioned this to people you know you're interested in the workhouse, they say oh hi on Earth. Do you want to know about the workhouse? Oh horrible places, best forgotten. I always think it's a bit like showing an interest in the local. You know VD clinic or something they would say oh my God on Earth, what do you want to know about that place? You know, oh gosh.
Speaker 1:So I kind of I researched cemeteries right, so I totally understand where you're coming from. I get people all the time going to me why, you know? Why are you a historian of death? You know why are you a historian of death.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I think people who look at me as if I was a bit you know, off the wall sort of, you know it's like showing it I say it's really weird. How could you possibly be into this rather disgusting you know old thing Anyway. So I thought, okay, I'll start off, do a little web page about having to workhouse. And then I visited a few more in the area Oxfordshire, barkshire, and I thought, oh, I could extend this to Oxfordshire. You know have half a dozen web pages. And then it kind of became a, I would say, an obsession, a passion, I think is the word. So I went further and further afield and eventually you almost got the whole of England and I thought, well, wales, you know, would be interesting.
Speaker 2:I spent a couple of weekends going around Wales. And then Scotland, you know, they're slightly different system, they're poor houses and it was in a slightly different administration. And then Ireland, of course. So eventually over the years they ended up, you know, sort of really get a whole British Isles, from Shetland down to Cornwall and West of Ireland over to East Anglia. And it kind of every time I found a new location and visited, it was always a great pleasure to see this really interesting building looming up. You know that was possibly a hospital annex or something. They turned into something. Most people there had no idea what it had once been, and you know, and actually I thought, well, you know, let's put this all together into a website. That's kind of really how it grew. It kind of grew like topsy, as they say, and then it moved on to the older, the more historical little parish workhouses, not so well sort of documented, a bit hard to sort of track down quite often. So that's it really.
Speaker 1:How many, I don't know if you're going to know this, so how? Many workhouses have you now got on your website.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know. Well, in the Victorian era there were sort of 600 nods. What we think of is the big Victorian workhouse. There were hundreds and hundreds of little parish workhouses. Yeah, I mean some of those. You just know they existed, that's all you know is that there once was no parish house in Little Fiddleton or whatever. Sometimes you know a bit more. You know when it was opened or you know in some cases they still be there and you can go and see it. Sometimes they even have a little plaque on the wall or you know a kind of memorial stone, you know when it was set up, if, for some reason, I think that's been put into place. You know, I've certainly a couple of thousand, I suppose.
Speaker 1:Easy, yeah, yeah, if you haven't, by the way, checked out Pieces website. Pieces website, workhousesorguk, isn't it, peter? I think it is.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right, yeah.
Speaker 1:Workhouseorguk. Honestly, you must check it out. I know for a fact. If you have an ancestor that has been in a workhouse, I guarantee you have been on Peter's website. You may not have known it was Peter's website. Let me tell you you have been on Peter's website. It is so full, packed full of information about workhouses. There's even a quiz on there. I will wrap it up now because I've noticed that we're just getting towards the hour mark, but I do have my final question, and it's the question that I ask all my guests when they come on the show. Peter, if you could invite somebody around for dinner tonight, either somebody from your family history or somebody who's researched, who would it be and why and what would you cook?
Speaker 2:Gosh, that's the interesting question. I suppose one character who always kind of leaps out at me in the history which I actually did some work on recently for another kind of project, was Dr Joseph Rogers who was the medical officer of the Strand Workhouse on Cleveland Street in London. In fact this did that particular one. It's got a strong association with Charles Dickens who lived about five doors away for part of his youth and it's often said that's the workhouse it was based on. But Joseph Rogers first of all, well, first of all he's got one of the few detailed accounts of workhouse experiences in his autobiography, which was published after he died actually, but and his encounter with the battles with the workhouse master and the Board of Guardians trying to improve the place. When he arrived it was a terrible state, as I mentioned, the drunken nurses. They had carpet beating going on outside the windows of all the wards creating dust and noise. There was a huge laundry in the basement producing lots of smells and stuff, and he was very instrumental actually in these changes in the 1860s. I mentioned about improving the life of workhouse inmates and his battles with the workhouse master, and really an awful ex-policeman called George Catch makes fascinating readings. I'd love to sort of hear more about that.
Speaker 2:What side cook him? Oh, that's a good question. Well, I suppose I'm vegetarian actually, so I'm not sure what he might find. I probably did get my workhouse cookbook and say, you know, actually try some of these more interesting things After the diet improved enormously in the early 1900s. So there's a pudding I've made a couple of times as a demonstration thing called golden pudding, which is like a sort of a sponge pudding flavored with ginger and a gold syrup and treacle. And yeah, we could relive the workhouse experience with a plateful of golden pudding.
Speaker 1:Peter, thank you so much. Peter Higgybottom, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Honestly, I am, you know, one of your biggest fans, as Voronee mentioned.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Mikaela, it's been, you know. As you know, I love talking about the workhouses and oh, I see you've got one of my books to mention I also have to say is that the books always contain more that's on the website. People always think it's just a book on the website, because there's always a lot more research in the books than is on the website.
Speaker 1:So I remember many years ago you wrote a grim or an almanac, sorry of the workhouse and I wrote a grim almanac of Manchester. I don't actually in the same series, yeah.
Speaker 2:That was a lot of interesting tales. I always remember the one about the lady who in the bed in the workhouse who was being regularly brought sort of supplies of Lord and the Malopian by, you know, people sneaking in and just smuggling into the workhouse. And again, it's interesting. Just one thing I know we've passed our time. I just want to say anyway, the thing I was trying to remind people is that workhouse inmates were a community of living people who used to kind of try and undercut the system and break the rules, and it's a fascinating community to snuck at actually. And again, smuggling illicit goods into the workhouse was one of those sort of things they got up to, and all sorts of men and women sneaking over the wall in midnight to have little acid nations oh gosh, it would make a wonderful soap opera.
Speaker 1:I know I must admit you've sold it really well, peter, I think you've had my time again, just kidding me in the workhouse. If you do want to see our episode of the Great British Dig at Oswestry Workhouse, I will check. The new series of the Great British Dig is on now. If you in fact tell the light, it's actually just finished. But if you've missed it, I know you can get it on Channel 4's version of you know version of Catch Up. I will see if the Oswestry one is still available and if it is, I'll put a link to it in the description below. Thank you very much for listening. Apologies that this week's podcast is slightly late. I normally try and get them out on a Monday, but this was most definitely worth the wait. Thank you very much for listening, folks, and I shall see you again next week. Ambition meat testimony also you.