The New Poor Laws - post 1834: Talk this Thursday at GSV
Huge new workhouses were built across England and Wales after 1834 to accommodate and control the poor in accordance with the Government's new poor law regime. The regime was introduced in Ireland, and on a modified basis in Scotland, from the 1840s. The workhouses and laws were deliberately harsh - and the impressions left by Charles Dickens and others attest to the living and working conditions of our ancestors who were inmates, workers or officers.
A talk at GSV this coming Thursday 31 January - 12 - 1 PM - will introduce you to the New Poor Laws and the workhouses. See all details on our website NEW POOR LAW TALK.
Stephen Hawke will describe the harsh laws, rules and living conditions that broke up families and institutionalised children; the scandals and lax government response; and what it was like to live, work and die in a workhouse. Find out how to use the records and resources at the GSV to discover if your ancestors were involved.
Children at Crumpsall workhouse 1897
The Book of the Bastiles (G Baxter, 1841) provides first hand testimony from inmates and others and records that families suffer the greatest destitution rather than submit to go into the workhouse. Tens of thousands were admitted each year. The Governor of Bath gaol reflected that former workhouse inmates far preferred prison residence, discipline and food to that in the workhouse. In too many workhouses the gross overcrowding, maltreatment, starvation diets and corrupt practices by some workhouse managers compounded the misery for inmates. In the 1840s a series of appalling workhouse scandals and deaths in Hampshire, Surrey and Yorkshire embedded a fear of the workhouses which prevailed until they were closed in the 20th century.
The New Poor Laws are important social history and for many of our ancestors the workhouses were a major factor in their departure for the Australian colonies.
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David's career has covered over three decades of genealogical and historical research, by way of the study of classics and University lecturing, and he has written three books on Kentish records and the guide 'Tracing your Kent Ancestors'. He lectures widely on genealogy and allied subjects and has taught classical and mediaeval Latin and palaeography at the City Literary Instituteand, at both University College, Londonand the School of History at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He has been a member of the Kent Family History Society almost from its inception in the 1970s. In 2009, after nearly forty years’ membership, he was awarded a prestigious fellowship of the Society of Genealogists, and in November 2017 was honoured by being invited to sign the Fellows' Register of the Society of Antiquaries, London.
