Genealogy Chat

on Who do you think you are, they mentioned that husbands were not allowed to stay with their families in the Workhouses is that right

There is a very good website with stacks of info on the workhouses: http://www.workhouses.org.uk/ According to this, yes it is true that men & women were separated. The following is lifted from the introduction on the above site: "Life inside the workhouse was was intended to be as off-putting as possible. Men, women, children, and the infirm and the able-bodied were housed separately and given very basic and monotonous food such as watery porridge called gruel. All inmates had to wear the rough workhouse uniform and sleep in communal dormitories. Supervised baths were given once a week. The able-bodied were given hard work such as stone-breaking or picking apart old ropes called oakum. The elderly and infirm sat around in the day-rooms or sick-wards with little opportunity for visitors. Parents were only allowed limited contact with their children — perhaps for an hour or so a week on Sunday afternoon."

That's what I was told in A Level history, the men were separated from the women and children Regards Ann

On "Who do you think you are " To night they said that if you ended up in the poor house (same place) you where

thanks for your answers isnt it sad? I found out my grandfather was in prison for stealing bread for his family wish I could find out where that was

what is the difference between workhouse and poor house I thought it was the same ???????

Yes, its quite true, husbands, wives and children were all separated in the Workhouse. (I think children under one year of age were allowed to stay with the mother). The reason for this was very simple - the aim of Workhouses everywhere were to discourage the "idle" from attempting to live the life of Riley at the expense of the Parish. So Workhouses deliberately had worse conditions than those of the poorest person NOT in a workhouse. There are many instances of children aged as young as three or four in the workhouse, who were put to work in Factories etc. In the early 1800s, the Workhouse at Andover was the subject of a scandal. A visitor to the workhouse, which processed the carcasses of dead animals for glue manufacture, noted that the inmates of this Workhouse were starving, and were actually eating the putrid remains of these animals. This became the subject of a Parliamentary debate and Andover Workhouse was closed - but no doubt reopened! However, this did lead to a system of inspection and the Workhouse Masters, who had until that time been pretty much a law unto themselves, were supervised. But the regime in Workhouses remained harsh in the extreme until at least the 1920s. Hope this clarifies things a bit.

thanks Marjorie it must have been awful not like the scroungers today shame they dont have to live like that instead of better than some people who go out to work makes you think doesnt it ?????????

Actually, I don't think that the passing of the workhouse era is a bad thing at all. One thing about this hobby is that you get to realise that the "good old days" were not so good at all - at least not for the 99% of people who weren't in the priveleged top end of society. Could you honestly live in a society where people were being treated as described above, for whatever reason?

Patricia I do hope you did not think I meant everybody I know some people cannot work I was talking about the ones who are quite capable but choose not to for most of their lives Val