March 2017 – Edition 144

Introduction

Above is a photo of a quaint Poor House at Framlingham Castle, Suffolk.

Some years ago one of our readers, Brian Harrison, related to me the story of Sarah, the great great great great grandmother of his wife Denise. Sarah spent the last 40 years of her life in an Alms House in Suffolk after her husband William died.

This set me thinking as to how and why Sarah could have spent such a long time in an Alms House.

In my research on the Jerrems families living in the 19th Century I had seen references to institutions like orphanages and Poor Houses (which had been set up in places like Gainsborough and Wappenham) without really understanding their significance to our forbears, so it was high time that I researched the subject!

In this article I will give an outline of the institutions and some examples of their application to the Jerrems families and other readers.

My article is general in nature because there were variations between Australia, England and the United States which I cannot cover in an article for the Journal.

The previous haphazard methods of funding were overcome in England under the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, which provided for the appointment of “Poor-Law Commissioners” and the setting up of administrative areas called Unions. Rates were raised in these areas to fund the building and running of poor houses. An example was the Boston Union (Boston being on the east coast of England), where some Jerrems relatives lived.

Boston Poor House

Boston is in Lincolnshire County on the east coast of England. Jerrems families lived there. It was very prosperous up to the early 1800s

Here is an extract from the The Parliamentary Gazetteer’s Summary of Boston, 1843, which said:

“Pop. In 1801, 5,926; in 1831, 11,240. Houses 2,437. Acres 5,220. Poor rates, in 1837, £5,051. – A workhouse has been erected here for the union of Boston by the poor-law commissioners. The Boston poor-law union comprehends 27 parishes, embracing an area of 168 square miles; with a population returned, in 1831, at 29,941. The average annual expenditure on the poor of this district, during the three years preceding the formation of the union, was £16,705. Expenditure in 1838, £10,161.”

This shows, amongst other things, that a large amount of money was allocated to helping the poor (the current day value of £16,705 would be well over $1,000,000).

The obvious advantage of the English system was that the Unions could compulsorily levy rates from landholders.

Here is another sad photo, of boys in a Work House in the industrial city of Manchester, taken in1895.

The standard of treatment of inmates of the Poor Houses and Work Houses varied considerably, ranging from some where the inmates were exploited (treating them as cheap labour) to others which were run along well-meaning welfare principles.

Typically, residents of Poor Houses and Work Houses lived in dormitories with no privacy. In cities the buildings were often large, presumably because this was the most economical method of construction, and the buildings used up the least amount of land per capita of inmates.

The standard of the buildings varied considerably also. Some of the city Poor Houses and Work Houses were grim-looking old two storey buildings which may previously have been factories. On the other hand many of the buildings in the rural areas looked far more inviting. Occasionally we see a quite modern building, such as the Gainsborough Poor House, located very close to all Saints Church which the Jerrems attended almost a century earlier.

Food standards

The standard of the food varied considerably also. In rural areas, where the inmates could tend vegetable gardens, raise poultry and stock etc the diet would be good, but in the cities the standard of the food could be mediocre, relying heavily on bulky food like potatoes and tapioca. However, although the food may have been monotonous and stodgy it should be borne in mind that most poor people were used to this sort of food in those days.

The case of the missing Christmas Dinner

In one classic case at the Parramatta Mens’ Home (near Sydney), reported by the NSW Royal Commission on Public Charities (1873), a former inmate stated that “Last Christmas Day (1872) there were 270 men left there without a bit of breakfast at all. Mr Dennis goes down the Bay in his yacht and never gives us a bit of bread and meat. He goes away with his two sons and two boatmen, and he leaves 270 men there without a bit of bread.”

Mr Dennis was the overseer of the Mens’ Home and presumably took the keys of the store room with him on his boat trip. The Commission Report included the damning comments that “Dennis’s attitude to his inmates was callous and harsh, often bordering on brutality. He was insensitive to their needs and they had no redress”.

Here is a photo of the imposing building now known as Hyde Park Barracks, in the middle of Sydney. Designed by Francis Greenway, Sydney’s most famous colonial architect, it was originally built in 1817 to house soldiers, later becoming a Womens’ Asylum. It is now a museum which houses historic displays and documents.

As with all major institutions of the time, the Poor Houses were run along strict daily timetables, as occurred with the Sydney Hyde Park Women’s Asylum (effectively a Poor House) where the day started at 6 am and lights went out at 9pm. The only recreation breaks were of three quarters of an hour or an hour after breakfast, dinner and tea, and one hour rest at 5 pm. The inmates slept in dormitories on mattresses, stretchers or hammocks which rolled up or folded up in the daytime, did the cooking, laundry and cleaning on a roster, and looked after the children, the aged and the infirm. Alcohol was not permitted, and inmates often had to be signed out and in. Gifts to inmates required the matron’s consent.

On a lighter note, at the Hyde Park Women’s Asylum baths were to be taken weekly, either hot or cold as decided by the matron!

Poor behaviour

In Poor Houses disorderly conduct among the men and women inmates could make them liable for a week in the refractory ward on a bread and water diet. Behaviour problems among the younger children were usually dealt with by “withholding the treacle or butter which made more palatable their portion of ‘seconds’ bread” (I must say that in my case the withholding of treacle would not have worried me at all!).

There was strict segregation of the sexes, even to the extent of raising the dividing walls between their respective airing yards to above head height so they could not see each other.

Surrender of possessions

This was probably the most heart-rending requirement.

Before entering such institutions people would have had very few assets and little money anyway, but in most cases I have researched they were required to hand over most of their possessions and money to the institution as a condition of entry.

Indicative of the almost universal requirement that inmates had to surrender their worldly goods was the establishment of the House of the Good Shepherd in Utica (New York State) in 1872, which (contrary to the usual requirements) was to “provide a permanent home for the infirm and a temporary shelter for the friendless, neglected and destitute without making their surrender to the institution a prerequisite to their admission.” (my emphasis).

Most (if not all) of the proceeds of the inmates’ work went towards the upkeep of the House.

Here is a photo of a reconstruction of the dormitory in Hyde Park Barracks.

The surrender of possessions, combined with the fact that inmates did not receive the proceeds of their work, or only received a small amount, limited the inmates long term options. Older inmates, particularly older women (possibly widows) who had no marriage prospects, were virtually committed to staying in institutions for the rest of their lives.

In England there was an additional cause of loss of mobility. Inmates could not move to a different Poor Union District unless they obtained Court consent. This was probably designed to control the overloading of the more popular districts.

The prospects for young women inmates (compared with older women) were better because they could possibly get employment outside and leave the Poor House or Work House. A classic case of this arose when orphaned Irish girls were fleeing from the Great Potato Famine in the 1840s and later “troubles”. In Sydney the doors of the Hyde Park Women’s Asylum were thrown open to accommodate ship loads of Irish orphan girls, who were snapped up by employers for domestic work.

Conclusion

At last I know something about these institutions, but I cannot seriously say that I would like to stay in one of them for more than a few days. How about you?

In a future article I will tell you about more types of institutions, particularly orphanages.