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| THE WORKHOUSE |
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In Britain and Ireland, a workhouse was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment.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 (a preparation of tarred fibers used to seal gaps ). The Act for the Relief of the Poor made parishes legally responsible for the care of those within their boundaries who, through age or infirmity, were unable to work so every town or village had one. And so with little regulation conditions varied from bad to terrible, but one must remember the alternative was probably death. It was not until the 1830s with the New Poor Law that things began to improve and become regulated.
Education in the workhouse was very much secondary it cost money with little return for those running the show. Teachers were poorly paid, without any formal training, and facing large classes of unruly children with little or no interest in their lessons, few stayed in the job.] In an effort to force workhouses to offer at least a basic level of education, legislation was passed in 1845 requiring that all pauper apprentices should be able to read and sign their own indenture papers. Those workhouses in industrial areas formed links with the local industry were by children could be put out to work, unparticular the cotton mills . So needlework and samplers are particularly rare.
Portsea Workhouse samplers.
A nationally important group of needlework's collected by teacher or possibly a Nun come from the Portsea workhouse from the 1840s.
Initially built in 1764 and extended in 1835 & rebuilt in 1843-6 initially to hold 540 inmates. It is interesting that these were collected during the period before the rebuilding so possibly used as examples of the "Good Work" and high standards that were being made in the workhouse towards education and the need for the rebuilding of the old buildings.
It is a sobering thought that girls like Ester Roadley born in 1831 was in the workhouse certainly aged 9 to 11 but also aged 30; and Ann Sugg born 1832 we have her in the workhouse at the aged 9 & 12 also aged 70 in Islington workhouse . |
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