Editing Workhouse (section)

==Legal and social background==
===Medieval to Early Modern period===
The [[Statute of Cambridge 1388]] was an attempt to address the labour shortage caused by the [[Black Death]], a devastating [[pandemic]] that killed about one-third of England's population.  The new law fixed wages and restricted the movement of labourers, as it was anticipated that if they were allowed to leave their [[civil parish|parishes]] for higher-paid work elsewhere then wages would inevitably rise.  According to historian Derek Fraser, the fear of social disorder following the plague ultimately resulted in the state, and not a "personal Christian charity", becoming responsible for the support of the poor.  The resulting laws against [[Vagrancy (people)|vagrancy]] were the origins of state-funded relief for the poor. From the 16th century onwards a distinction was legally enshrined between those who were willing to work but could not, and those who were able to work but would not: between "the genuinely unemployed and the idler".  Supporting the destitute was a problem exacerbated by King [[Henry VIII of England|Henry VIII]]'s [[Dissolution of the Monasteries]], which began in 1536.  They had been a significant source of charitable relief, and provided a good deal of direct and indirect employment.{{sfnp|Higginbotham|2006|p=9|ps=none}} The [[Poor Act 1575]] went on to establish the principle that if the able-bodied poor needed support, they had to work for it.{{sfnp|Fraser|2009|p=39|ps=none}}

The [[Act for the Relief of the Poor 1601]] made parishes legally responsible for the care of those within their boundaries who, through age or infirmity, were unable to work.  The Act essentially classified the poor into one of three groups.  It proposed that the able-bodied be offered work in a [[house of correction]] (the precursor of the workhouse), where the "persistent idler" was to be punished.{{sfnp|Fraser|2009|p=40|ps=none}}  It also proposed the construction of housing for the [[Classifications of poor used in the Poor Law system|impotent poor]], the old and the infirm, although most assistance was granted through a form of [[poor relief]] known as [[outdoor relief]]&nbsp;– money, food, or other necessities given to those living in their own homes, funded by a local [[poor rate|tax]] on the property of the wealthiest in the parish.<ref name=HigginbothamIntroduction/>

===Georgian era===
[[File:Framlingham Castle -poor house-6.jpg|thumb|The 'Red House' at [[Framlingham Castle]] in Suffolk was founded as a workhouse in 1664.{{sfnp|Cole|Morrison|2016|p=3}}]]
[[File:Microcosm of London Plate 096 - Workroom at St James Workhouse.jpg|thumb|"The workroom at St James's workhouse", from ''The Microcosm of London'' (1808)]]
The workhouse system evolved in the 17th century, allowing parishes to reduce the cost to ratepayers of providing poor relief. The first authoritative figure for numbers of workhouses comes in the next century from ''The Abstract of Returns made by the Overseers of the Poor'', which was drawn up following a government survey in 1776. It put the number of parish workhouses in England and Wales at more than 1800 (about one parish in seven), with a total capacity of more than 90,000 places.<ref>{{cite web |last=Higginbotham |first=Peter |title=Parish Workhouses |url=http://www.workhouses.org.uk/parishes/ |access-date=16 October 2011}}</ref> This growth in the number of workhouses was prompted by the [[Workhouse Test Act 1723]]; by obliging anyone seeking poor relief to enter a workhouse and undertake a set amount of work, usually for no pay (a system called indoor relief), the Act helped prevent irresponsible claims on a parish's poor rate.{{sfnp|Nixon|2011|p=57|ps=none}}

The growth was also bolstered by the [[Relief of the Poor Act 1782]], proposed by [[Thomas Gilbert (politician)|Thomas Gilbert]]. Gilbert's Act was intended to allow parishes to share the cost of poor relief by joining together to form unions, known as Gilbert Unions, to build and maintain even larger workhouses to accommodate the elderly and infirm.{{sfnp|Nixon|2011|p=63|ps=none}} The able-bodied poor were instead either given outdoor relief or found employment locally.{{sfnp|Fowler|2007|p=47|ps=none}} Relatively few Gilbert Unions were set up,{{sfnp|Fowler|2007|p=28|ps=none}} but the supplementing of inadequate wages under the [[Speenhamland system]] did become established towards the end of the 18th century.{{sfnp|May|1987|p=89|ps=none}} So keen were some [[English Poor Laws|Poor Law]] authorities to cut costs wherever possible that cases were reported of husbands being forced to [[wife selling (English custom)|sell their wives]], to avoid them becoming a financial burden on the parish. In one such case in 1814 the wife and child of Henry Cook, who were living in [[Effingham, Surrey|Effingham]] workhouse, were sold at [[Croydon]] market for one shilling (5p); the parish paid for the cost of the journey and a "wedding dinner".{{sfnp|Gibson|1993|p=51|ps=none}}

By the 1830s most parishes had at least one workhouse,{{sfnp|Fowler|2007|p=18|ps=none}} but many were badly managed. In his 1797 work, ''The State of the Poor'', [[Sir Frederick Eden, 2nd Baronet|Sir Frederick Eden]], wrote:

{{blockquote|The workhouse is an inconvenient building, with small windows, low rooms and dark staircases. It is surrounded by a high wall, that gives it the appearance of a prison, and prevents free circulation of air. There are 8 or 10 beds in each room, chiefly of flocks, and consequently retentive of all scents and very productive of vermin. The passages are in great want of whitewashing. No regular account is kept of births and deaths, but when [[smallpox]], [[measles]] or malignant fevers make their appearance in the house, the mortality is very great.  Of 131 inmates in the house, 60 are children.{{sfnp|Hopkins|1994|pp=163–164|ps=none}}}}

Instead of a workhouse, some sparsely populated parishes placed homeless paupers into rented accommodation, and provided others with relief in their own homes. Those entering a workhouse might join anywhere from a handful to several hundred other inmates; for instance, between 1782 and 1794 [[Liverpool]]'s workhouse accommodated 900–1200 indigent men, women and children. The larger workhouses such as the Gressenhall House of Industry generally served a number of communities, in [[Gressenhall]]'s case 50 parishes.{{sfnp|Hopkins|1994|pp=163–164|ps=none}} Writing in 1854, Poor Law commissioner [[George Nicholls (commissioner)|George Nicholls]] viewed many of them as little more than factories:

{{blockquote|These workhouses were established, and mainly conducted, with a view to deriving profit from the labour of the inmates, and not as being the safest means of affording relief by at the same time testing the reality of their destitution. The workhouse was in truth at that time a kind of manufactory, carried on at the risk and cost of the poor-rate, employing the worst description of the people, and helping to pauperise the best.{{sfnp|Nicholls|1854|p=18|ps=none}}}}

===1834 Act===
[[File:Cleveland Street Work House London.jpg|left|thumb|Former [[Cleveland Street workhouse]], London W1, photographed in 1930. It later became part of the Middlesex Hospital.]]
By 1832 the amount spent on poor relief nationally had risen to £7&nbsp;million a year, more than 10&nbsp;[[Shilling (British coin)|shillings]] (£{{£sd|s=10}}) per head of population,{{sfnp|Fraser|2009|p=50|ps=none}} up from £2&nbsp;million in 1784.{{sfnp|May|1987|p=121|ps=none}}{{efn|Britain's [[gross national income]] in 1830 was £400&nbsp;million, of which the £7&nbsp;million spent on poor relief represents 2%, not a great deal by modern standards according to the historian Trevor May. He further observes that "As poor relief was the only social service provided by the state this might seem to be a small price to pay for saving Britain from the revolution that must have seemed so imminent during the [[Swing Riots|Swing riots]].{{sfnp|May|1987|p=121|ps=none}}}} The large number of those seeking assistance was pushing the system to "the verge of collapse".{{sfnp|Fowler|2007|p=103|ps=none}}{{efn|It has been estimated that there were 1.5&nbsp;million paupers in Britain in 1832, about 12% of the population of 13&nbsp;million.{{sfnp|May|1987|p=121|ps=none}}}} The economic downturn following the end of the [[Napoleonic Wars]] in the early 19th century resulted in increasing numbers of unemployed. Coupled with developments in agriculture that meant less labour was needed on the land,<ref name=FowlerPP14-16/> along with three successive bad harvests beginning in 1828 and the [[Swing Riots]] of 1830, reform was inevitable.{{sfnp|Knott|1986|p=51|ps=none}}

Many suspected that the system of poor relief was being widely abused. In 1832 the government established a [[Royal Commission]] to investigate and recommend how relief could best be given to the poor.<ref name=FowlerPP14-16>{{Harvnb|Fowler|2007|pp=14–16}}</ref> The result was the establishment of a centralised Poor Law Commission in England and Wales under the [[Poor Law Amendment Act 1834]], also known as the New Poor Law, which discouraged the allocation of outdoor relief to the able-bodied; "all cases were to be 'offered the house', and nothing else".{{sfnp|Fowler|2007|p=242|ps=none}} Individual parishes were grouped into [[Poor Law Union]]s, each of which was to have a union workhouse. More than 500 of these were built during the next 50 years, two-thirds of them by 1840.{{sfnp|Fraser|2009|pp=63–64|ps=none}} In certain parts of the country there was a good deal of resistance to these new buildings, some of it violent, particularly in the industrial north. Many workers lost their jobs during the major economic depression of 1837, and there was a strong feeling that what the unemployed needed was not the workhouse but short-term relief to tide them over. By 1838, 573 Poor Law Unions had been formed in England and Wales, incorporating 13,427&nbsp;parishes, but it was not until 1868 that unions were established across the entire country:{{sfnp|May|1987|p=124|ps=none}} the same year that the New Poor Law was applied to the Gilbert Unions.{{sfnp|Fowler|2007|p=42|ps=none}}

Despite the intentions behind the 1834 Act, relief of the poor remained the responsibility of local taxpayers, and there was thus a powerful economic incentive to use loopholes such as sickness in the family to continue with outdoor relief; the weekly cost per person was about half that of providing workhouse accommodation.{{efn|In 1860 the weekly cost of maintaining a pauper in a workhouse in the east of England was 3s 0½d (£0.152) a week, as opposed to 1s 9d (£0.088) a week for outdoor relief.{{sfnp|May|1987|p=125|ps=none}}}}  Outdoor relief was further restricted by the terms of the [[Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order|1844 Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order]], which aimed to end it altogether for the able-bodied poor.{{sfnp|Fraser|2009|pp=63–64|ps=none}} In 1846, of 1.33&nbsp;million paupers only 199,000 were maintained in workhouses, of whom 82,000 were considered to be able-bodied, leaving an estimated 375,000 of the able-bodied on outdoor relief.{{sfnp|May|1987|pp=124–125|ps=none}} Excluding periods of extreme economic distress, it has been estimated that about 6.5% of the British population may have been accommodated in workhouses at any given time.{{sfnp|Fraser|2009|p=67|ps=none}}{{efn|Official twice-yearly headcounts, taken on 1 January and 1 July, suggest that between 2.5% and 4.5% of the population was accommodated in workhouses at any given time.{{sfnp|Fraser|2009|p=67|ps=none}}}}