Life+in+a+workhouse!

Whatever the regime inside the workhouse entering, it will bee a distressing experience. New inmates will offen bee through a period of severe hardship. Admission into the workhouse first and requiring an interviewing to establish the applicant’s circumstances. There are mostly undertaken by a Relieving Officer who will visiting each part of the union on a regular basis. However, the workhouse Master can also intervewing anyone in urgent of admission. Formal admission into the workhouse proper is authoristing by the Bord of Guardians at their weekly meetings, where an applicant can summoning to justify their application. Prior to heir formal admission into the main workhouse, new arrivals will be placed in a probationary ward. Where the workhouse medical officer will examining them to check on their state of health. I will also write a little bit about the uniform in the workhouse.Original, the Poor Law Commissioners expecting that workhouse inmates will make their own clothes and shoes, providing a useful work task and a cost saving. However, they probably failing to realise the level of skill requiring to perform this and uniforms is more usually bought-in. Uniforms is usually made from fairly coarse materials with the emphasis being on hard- wearing rather than on comfort and fitting.



For the men this consisting of jackets of strong “Fernought” cloth, breeches or trouses, striped cotton shirts, cloth cap and shoes. For ladies, it is a strong “grogram” growns, calico shifts, petticoats of Lindsey- Whoolsey material, Gingham dresses day cap, worsted stockings and weaving slippers.

The uniforms for able-bodies women is generally a shapeless, waistless, blue- and- white- striped frock reaching to the ankles, with a smock over.

I will also tell you about the life inside the workhouse. The workhouse is looking like a small self- containing village. Apart from the basic room such as a dinning- hall for eating, and dormitories for sleeping, workhouses have offen their own bakery, laundry, tailors and shoe- makers, vegetable gardens and orchards, and even a piggery for rearing pigs. They also have schoolrooms, nurseries, fever- wards for the sick, a chapel, and a dead- room or mortuary. Inside the workhouse, an inmate’s, only possessions is their uniforms and the bed they have in the large dormitory. The beds are simply constructing in wood or iron- frame, and can be as little as two feet across.