Its easy to assume that the Workhouse was an ‘essential’ relic of the Victorian era. We all have images in our minds of Charles Dickens and poor old Oliver Twist. Most of us who have been conducting our family history will have discovered that as least one or even more members of our family were in the ‘care’ of this system.
But in reality the Workhouse is is much part of the 20th century as it was the 19th. Long before serious social and care reforms, the Beveridge Report (here) and of course The National Health Service the Workhouse was the only ‘care’ solution for many.
Here the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette – Saturday 24 January 1914 proudly reports:
“Four inmates of Bath Workhouse, whose ages total 372 years. Reading from left to right: Mary Webb (95 born 1819), Charles Hayward (09 born 1824), Elizabeth Rossiter (92 born 1826) and Mary Taylor (95 born 1819).”
