Product Description

This powerful and poignant book takes you behind the workhouse doors to explore all aspects of institutional life. It reveals the real experiences of inmates, including the scandals that rocked society, and the guardians and staff who governed inmates lives. Reports and novels, ballads and graffiti, as well as rarely seen images from The National Archives, bring workhouses across the country vividly to life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #92028 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
This poignant account... draws powerfully on letters from The National Archives...(It) brings out the horror, but is fair-minded to those struggling to be humane within an inhumane system. --The Independent

I cannot praise this book enough --School Librarian

Mark Crail for Ancestors magazine
This is an ideal read for any family historian wanting a proper,
rounded understanding of the workhouse system.

From the Inside Flap
Workhouses cast deep shadows over Victorian Britain and
terrified the poor for generations. Known for their soul-numbing routines,
deprivation and cruelty, they were after 1834 almost the sole source of
relief for paupers across the land. For old couples and orphans, starving
families and single mothers, these institutional monsters became what the
New Poor Law Act intended - the last resort of the desperate.

This compelling book takes you through the workhouse doors to reveal the
reality behind the legend. It explores all aspects of institutional life,
from everyday details of food, uniform and the daily grind to the scandals
that shocked society and were an impetus for change. It traces the
experiences of the guardians and staff who governed inmates' fates and
celebrates the men and women who tried to improve on the official regime.
The narrative describes how workhouses preoccupied literary giants such as
Charles Dickens and George Orwell, were condemned by celebrities like
Florence Nightingale, and yet became deeply rooted in their communities.

The many personal stories told range from that of the anonymous 'Indoor
Pauper' to accounts from famous figures like Charlie Chaplin. Reports and
complaints, ballads and graffiti, as well as rarely-seen images from the
National Archives and local sources, bring workhouses across England and
Wales vividly to life.

Customer Reviews

An outstanding volume on one of the aspect of life, we want to forget.
This excellent book will fascinate a wide range of readers and should help local, social and family history researchers.

Simon Fowler looks at the whole experience of the pauper in the workhouse and clearly explains the reasons why they were so treated.

The author's style is excellent, his narrative is easy to read and is quite often amusing with some very useful and humorous anecdotes that make it different from other titles on the subject.

Although the workhouse often had a bad name, which was not helped by a number of scandals in the 1830s and 1840s as well as novels such as Oliver Twist. Some good often came out of it and, as the author points out, many children did in fact receive a better lifestyle and education in these institutions, than they would have done had they remained with their parents or extended family in the hovels of the poorer areas of the country.

There is no doubt that this book has been well researched. It provides the reader with a good insight into how these establishments came about and also how they were managed and run too. The best chapters relate to children and the sick and elderly which really gives an idea of how they were treated and the fact that in most places conditions improved during the 19th century.

I read a previous review and can agree this is a not a volume aimed at academics, yes there are one or two spelling mistakes here and there, but for the general reader it is fascinating -so much so a history lecturer friend of mine has already borrowed it and one or two others have asked where they can get it from!

Get more stocks in Amazon - this will be a success.

An entertaining and illuminating read
This book explores, in an easy and amusing style, how and why the workhouse came to be a byword for last place you would wish to find yourself in the nineteenth century (and well into the twentieth). On the other hand it also shows how sometimes the workhouse was able to do some good. I hadn't known, for instance, that before universal education workhouse children often got a better one than the children of the "respectable poor" outside it, nor that workhouse hospitals eventually started to provide what was sometimes the best medical attention in some areas. The food however, always an interest of mine, seems to have been quite as dreadful as you might imagine!

This is an impressively well-researched book. It gives a very good picture of how and why the workhouse came into being, what it was like inside it for those running it and for the inmates and the gradual changes that took place.
There are some typos but these don't detract from the author's convincing arguments. I would have liked too to be able to tie some of what is said to a particular source (of which there are many) but there are no footnotes. The book is clearly aimed at the general reader though, and not the academic one, so perhaps the editors were to blame for the decision not to have any.

Thoroughly recommended.

A Curate's Egg
Simon Fowler's book contains much of interest, particularly in its bringing together of extracts from a wide variety of contemporary accounts of the workhouse and what went on behind its doors. It includes material from such diverse sources as official publications, newspapers, biographies and autobiographies, diaries, poor law correspondence and so on.

The book is at its weakest when the author strays away from these sources. For example, the dust-jacket proclaims that "[workhouses] were after 1834 almost the sole source of relief for paupers across the land", yet on page 37 we learn that "the poor had a bewildering choice of charities from which to seek assistance".

Surprisingly for a work published by The National Archives, the book contains a great many errors and innaccuracies. Even the front-cover illustration is wrongly credited as "Halifax workhouse" when it is in fact the Halifax union's poor-law infirmary, a rather different class of establishment located a couple of miles from the workhouse. [NB in the Amazon details, the cover image and subtitle for the book are not the ones used in the published book.]

Typical of the book's sloppiness is the dating of Sir Frederic (not "Frederick" as spelt by Fowler) Eden's description of Louth workhouse (p.150) to 1791 rather than the correct date of 1795 - the former year is actually the date of the building's construction.

More seriously, Fowler makes the incredible claim that "in 1900 about 30 per cent of the population over 70 were in the workhouse" (p.171). According to the 1901 census returns, the real figure was around 4 per cent.