Parish Workhouses
*****************

Prior to 1834, under the original Poor Laws, the primary responsibility for poor relief, including the 
operation of workhouses, was placed with the parish. Examples of early parish workhouses can be seen 
at places such as Chichester (from about 1681), Witham (1714), and Mildenhall (1720)

A significant impetus to the provision of parish workhouses was Knatchbull's 1723 Act which introduced 
the 'workhouse test' whereby a pauper would only be granted poor relief through being admitted to a 
workhouse. In the wake of Knatchbull's Act, several hundred parish workhouses were set up.

Unlike the large union workhouses erected following the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, parish workhouses 
were generally small establishments, and often in rented existing buildings rather than specially built 
premises. The running of workhouses was often handed over to a contractor who would, for an agreed price, 
feed and house the poor. He would also provide the inmates with work and benefit from any income 
generated. This system was known as 'farming' the poor.

Sometimes a parish might run a workhouse for a few years, then give up on the practice, only to try 
it again a decade or two later in different premises. It is therefore difficult to give any definitive 
list of where parish workhouses operated.

An Account of Several Work-houses for Employing and Maintaining the Poor published, anonymously, by 
SPCK (the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) was one of the earliest directories of parish 
workhouses in England. In the early 18th century, SPCK was a small but influential London-based 
organisation which strongly promoted the use of workhouses. SPCK published a variety of resources such
as recommendations for masters, guides to rules and diets etc. In many respects, their 'An Account of 
Several Work-houses...' was a practical guide to the setting up and running of a workhouse.

The first edition of 1725 listed 126 establishments, while an enlarged edition of 1732 added a further 
55. (According to Slack (1990), the total number of workhouses in operation nationwide by 1732 may have 
been more than 700.)

The list included a total of 1,978 workhouses (approximately one parish in seven) with a total capacity 
of over 90,000 places. Workhouse capacities range in size from 1 (Hougham in Kent) to 700 (St George, 
Hanover Square, and St Martin in the Fields, both in Westminster). Outside of London, Liverpool operated 
the largest workhouse with room for 600. Workhouse provision in Wales was almost non-existent although, 
somewhat curiously, Pembrokeshire had more workhouses than the rest of Wales put together.

The survey also reported that the total expenditure on poor relief in England and Wales in the year 
ending at Easter 1776 was just over £1.55 million of which only £80,000 (about five per cent) was spent 
on workhouse provision.

As well as parish workhouses, the survey of 1776-7 included a small number of other establishments 
including those run by the county Hundreds of: Blything; Bosmere and Claydon; Colneis and Carlford; 
Loddon and Clavering; Loes and Wilford; Mutford and Lothingland; Samford; Wangford. The cities of 
Bristol, Canterbury, Chester, Chichester, Exeter, Gloucester, and Norwich organised their own poor 
relief under Local Acts of Parliament. The survey noted that no returns had been received relating to 
the Local Act workhouses at Shaftesbury, the City of Hereford, Launceston, and the City of Worcester.

A further parliamentary survey in 1815 found that 4,094 parishes and townships in England and Wales 
were now 'maintaining the greater part of their poor' in workhouses. Since the sharing of workhouses 
was increasing, either under local acts, or under the terms of Gilbert's Act of 1782, the actual number 
of workhouses in operation was probably somewhat less than this figure. In the same report, the number 
of parishes in Wales making use of workhouses had gone up to 59.

From the end of the seventeenth century, the Society of Friends (the Quakers) operated workhouses for 
the Benefit of the Quaker poor at at Clerkenwell in London and at Bristol.

Records
*******

Records from the workhouse mostly relating to those created after the introduction of the Poor Law 
Amendment Act (New Poor Law) of 1834. The Act established poor law unions composed of about six parishes. 
Each union had to set up a workhouse to house the poor administered by a Boards of Guardians elected 
by ratepayers. The workhouse was headed by the master and matron and employed medical officers, nurses, 
teachers and other staff. Workhouse documents of most interest to the genealogist include admission 
and discharge registers, creed books and birth and death registers.

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1868 stipulated that the workhouse authorities should record in Creed 
Books each inmate's religious affiliation as a way of ensuring that each person's religious instruction 
could be met and adhered to. The books are arranged alphabetically noting their religious affiliation 
along with their dates of admission and discharge or death and other personal details such as an occupation, 
previous address and year of birth or age. Although the books began in 1868 many existing inmates were 
recorded. Please note that an admission date could be misleading as it could be the date carried over 
from a previous book. The Creed Books, gradually replaced the admission and discharge registers, can 
be found in County Record Offices. The records of various poor law institutions held at the London 
Metropolitan Archives including Creed Registers are available on-line at www.ancestry.co.uk. Bromley 
Archives has created The Creed Register Project which provides transcribed entries from their collection 
of registers.

The use of workhouses to house the poor began with the introduction of the Poor Law Act of 1601 (Old 
Poor Law) and witnessed a rapid growth in the 18th century. The poorhouses prior to 1834 were supervised 
by the Overseer of the Poor, but were under no legal requirement to keep records of those housed. 
References to inmates are most likely to be found amongst the papers of the Overseer.

Records of births (sometimes illegitimate) within the workhouse chapel are often recorded that otherwise 
might not appear in the parish register or even in the GRO civil registers after 1837. Deaths are also 
recorded in the workhouse registers which included the vaccination officer's 'Return of Deaths of Infants 
under Twelve Months of Age' which contains the child's full name, the date and place of death and the 
father's name and occupation or the mother's name if the child was illegitimate. Look for board meetings 
minutes which often include the names of those admitted and discharged and other information on named 
individuals. This could include whether the inmate was in receipt of charitable relief or a pension, 
the reason for seeking workhouse relief and by whose order he or she was admitted. Many illegitimate 
children were born in the workhouse and the weekly newspaper 'The Poor Law Union Gazette' carried many 
adverts for missing mothers. Runs of the Gazette are housed at the British Library Newspapers in Colindale 
with digital on-line editions available at the British Newspaper Archive covering 1857 to 1865.

Also consult the records of the workhouse infirmary and the lunatic asylum boards. The staff and inmates 
should be listed from at least the 1861 census. From the 1780s, the poor were sent to workhouses within 
a ten mile radius of their parish of settlement which narrows down potential parishes for further research. 

Eden's The State of the Poor, published in 1797, is an invaluable resource which documents poor law 
and workhouse operation in over 170 individual towns and parishes.





Bibliography:

    Department of Employment and Productivity:
    Historical Abstracts from 1886-1968, 1971
    Hart, Roger:
    English Life in the Nineteenth Century, 1971
    Eden, Sir Frederic Morton: 
    The State of the Poor: A History of the Labouring Classes in England, with Parochial Reports, 1797.
    Hitchcock, Tim: 
    Paupers and Preachers: The SPCK and the Parochial Workhouse Movement in Lee Davison et al (eds)
    Alan Sutton: 
    Stilling the Grumbling Hive: The Response to Social and Economic Problems, 1688-1750.
    Slack, Paul:
    The English Poor Law, 1531-1782.

Sources:

www.genguide.co.uk
www.victorianweb.org/
www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ukwales2/hicks3.html
www.british-history.ac.uk/
familysearch.org/
www.encyclopedia.com/
www.longparish.org.uk
www.projectbook.co.uk/
www.workhouses.org.uk
winsomegriffin.com/
en.wikipedia.org