If you didn’t have money and a way to support yourself and your family in the 1800s you might be forced to go into the workhouse. Find out what life was really like for the men, women and children who ended up there.

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
JAMES GRASBY (00:53):
Hello and welcome to the National Trust podcast.
I'm James Grasby and today I'min Nottinghamshire to visit a
very grand building capable ofsleeping a lot of people.
But despite the number of bedsin the property, I'm visiting
today and a huge kitchen garden,this is not somewhere you'd have
wanted to visit in its heyday.
In fact, if you turned up at theWorkhouse, you'd have fallen

(01:15):
nearly as low as you could. Andin the Victorian era, that
wasn't a very nice place to be.
I'm, I'm slightly bewildered Ihave to say looking at this
great Georgian building, brick,three stories slate roof, very

(01:40):
handsome front door painted inblue, casement windows prettily
arranged. This doesn't look tome like doom and gloom.

FIONA LEWIN (01:48):
Hello, James, I'm Fiona Lewin and I'm the Senior
Collections and House Officerhere at the Workhouse infirmary
in Southwell, or Southwell asthe locals like to call it.

Fiona it's a pleasure to meet you. I've come
up a leaf line lane through thiswhat looks like an ornamental
garden and in the background,this great Georgian building.

It would have felt very desperate actually, if you
were stood in this spot 200years ago, people who came here
were rock bottom destitute. Youcan imagine yourself walking up
this path, not quite knowingwhat's going to happen to you,
but knowing that your futurecould be quite bleak here.

Fiona, history is clearly woven out of documents
and places, tangible places, andthis great building has now
become really a monument, amemorial, to people whose lives
could have vanished intooblivion.

Yes. It really does stand as a testament to the,
probably, thousands of peoplewho would have lived in this
building and buildings like itall up and down the country. And
many more of us can trace ourfamily history back to
institutions like this asopposed to the grand country
houses, unfortunately.
But by the end of the day,James, you'll have a much
clearer idea of the types ofpeople who lived in the

(02:56):
Workhouse. To begin with yourtour, we're going to discover
what it would have been like foryou as a single man coming to
the Workhouse back then. Sowe're going to wizz you back to
1871 which is a census year. Sowe know there was an inmate
called William Antcliffe andyou're going to be him.

Fiona. I'll be pleased to get out of this rain.
But did you say an inmate.

That's what you'd be known as when you arrived at
the Workhouse. So I'm going totake you around now to the
entrance where the paupersarrived. I'm going to go and
take you to meet the master whoin 1871 was a man called George
Shaw.

I feel a heavy feeling coming over me.

That's probably fair, yes.

Fiona, I think I can hear him coming.

MASTER OF THE HOUSE (03:43):
Porter. Porter. Where is that man? Who
are you?

Good morning, George, I'm William

George?

Master. I'm so sorry, master.

Why are you here?

Fiona? Help me out? Why am I here?

You've got no work and nowhere to go.

Mr Shaw. Master. I've got no work and I've got
nowhere to go.

And what authority have you got if any to
come here?

Master. I've been to see the relieving officer and
he's asked me to come here toask for your help.

You people, you people. How old are you?

Master, I'm 51.

What skills if any of you got?

Farmhand

Farmhand. I'm a farmhand.

Why are you not working at the moment?

Master there's no more work on the fields for me
this year.

My God, you got lice in your hair.
You will have your head shavenand you will be bathed. You will
have a medical inspection tomake sure that you're not
bringing any diseases into myWorkhouse.

It is astonishing, isn't it? The sudden
institutionalisation of anindividual from walking in
having no work to suddenly beingtreated like a criminal.

It's a loss of freedom and a strict regime as
soon as you enter the Workhouse.

It's Antcliffe isn't it?.

It is master. Yes, it is.

You are going to convert this rope into
this oakum. You do it with yourfingernails and you pick each
thread and put it in the bin.
I will see you later.

What is in front of me is a, a natural fibre
cable. It is about 4 to 5 inchesacross. It's full of tar and
quite honestly with afingernail, it is impenetrable
and with my already creaky oldhands, I don't think I'm going
to get very far with this.Fiona, what am I doing? I've
been set this dreary task.

Workhouse inmates and even prison inmates would
have done this task and you'd bedoing this potentially for hours
on end and it might ruin yourhands for when you wanted to go
back into the farm work, so nota very pleasant task.
The workhouses sold the endproduct of the oakum back to the
shipyards for caulking theboards of the ship and that's

(06:22):
where the phrase'money for oldrope' comes from. You don't get
to keep any money. All youreceive is a roof over your head
and three meals a day.

And would I be doing it normally in a room full
of other people doing the samething? Would there be some
conviviality at least that youmight be talking to people?

That could well be the case, but you'd be looking
out for the master coming tocheck on you?

Because if I was chatting and idling I guess the
master might come over master.

How are you getting on Antcliffe?

What is the likelihood Master of having
something to eat or indeedhaving the temperature raised a
little bit.

If you're not warm enough, work harder.

I have to say it's good to see the back of, back of
him. What a formidable anddomineering character he is.

If you want to come down these steps, we're going to
come out into this yard.
This is the exercise yard thatwe're in now. You can see in the
corner we've got the privies.But what I really wanted to show
you was this windowsill overhere.

You brought me up to the wall of the principal
facade of the building justadjacent to this casement window
I can see some marks on thewall. What's this about?

So, this is one of the best records we've got left
of the individuals who were atthe Workhouse. Can you see this
grid?

Yes, I can.

Yes. It's not immediately obvious what it is.
However, when we get a shadowcast off of the windowsill, it
creates a vertical line andintersects this grid here.

It's a sundial.

The inmates wouldn't know what time it was,
they would be told what to doand when. Maybe there'd be a
bell. But as part of wanting totake some agency back for
themselves, they've createdtheir own sundials. They must
have done a lot of calculationsfor that.
It also had a lot of risk withit because if they've been
caught doing this, it would havebeen quite a severe punishment.
You can also see at the otherend of this windowsill, we have

(08:27):
a second sun dial here as welland this one is for the
afternoon and it's a reallyspecial moment, very poignant I
think on days when it is sunny,when we can see that shadow, to
think that people were stoodhere like that maybe 200 years
ago, certainly over 100 yearsago, trying to work out a simple
thing like what time of day itwas, is something really quite

(08:48):
special.

That is extraordinary with the
inevitable rhythm of the sunthrough the skies the same today
as it was when those marks weremade. That's very poignant.

It really shows the intelligence and the
resourcefulness of the inmatesthat were here.

Time goes very slow when you're having a dreary
time. Doesn't it drag? This hasechoes and recalls prison life
to me.

You can definitely see how it felt like that to
some inmates at times.

STEVEN KING (09:23):
This is about the poor breeding. It's about the
poor failing to work when theycould. And suddenly there's a
narrative of the need forcontrol and containment and
restraint and that's going to beachieved through institutions
like the Southwell Workhouse.
I'm Steve King. I'm Professor ofeconomic and social history at

(09:45):
Nottingham Trent University.
Southwell Workhouse was thebrainchild of the the Reverend
John Beecher. So he's AngloIrish. He arrives in 1792 into
Southwell and he gets very earlyinto this question of poor
relief because he's right therein the 1790's at the same time

(10:05):
as poor relief is spiralling outof control because of harvest
failure and Napoleonic wars.
He rapidly sees a systemicproblem in the management of
poor people and that systemicproblem is that the they're
always increasing the number andthe bills are always increasing.
It's his idea to found theWorkhouse up Upton which is now

(10:30):
Southwell Workhouse, in 1824.
This was all about two things.First of all saving money and
the second thing was about themoral control of poor people.
The intent of the poor law wasto educate children not to

(10:54):
become like the parents thatgenerated them.
The New Poor Law Workhousesoften involve educational spaces
and initially education iscarried out in many places by
more literate paupers than thepeople they're teaching. But
very soon we start to getschoolmasters and some of them

(11:17):
are badly qualified, some ofthem are well qualified. There
are plenty of scandals ininvolving schoolmasters.

So you can probably hear the school children here
today. Shall we have a wanderdown to the classroom and have a
look?

Yes please Fiona, lead the way.

And I was thinking you could be James Grasby for
the second part of our tourbecause where we going next into
the classroom and into thewomen's dormitory, William
Antcliffe wouldn't have beenallowed.

Before I leave William Antcliffe behind, what's
the end of his story? Does heever leave?

We think that he died in 1887, aged 69. So that
means he spent the last 20 yearsof his life here.

Sad, sad story.
Happy the child whose tenderyears receive instruction well,
who hates the sinner's path andfears the road that leads to
hell.

You can see the 19th century morals and values
there. This idea that if you cantrain the child well, then
they'll be self sufficient whenthey're older and they won't end
up back at the Workhouse asadults and falling back on the
system and costing money.

So, reading, writing and arithmetic.

Yes. And also geography for the boys as well.
Not for the girls becausethey're not going to require
that. But religious educationfor all.

Why would a girl not require geography?

I suppose in her line of work it's not necessary.

My goodness, it's possible that a child who was
admitted into the Workhouse wasreceiving an education which
perhaps they wouldn't have gotnormally outside the Workhouse.

From the very start education was being offered at a
time where it wouldn't beuniversally available for
another 50 years.

What happened to the children the end of the
school day?

Well, if the weather was nice, they'd likely
get to go and play outsidebriefly. But then it'd be
upstairs to their dormitories.Children were separated from
parents when they arrived in theWorkhouse. But we know that they
would have had an opportunity tosee their parents once a week on
a Sunday.

So fleeting, agonising glimpses and maybe
children hearing their parentsand not being able to see them
and these enforced separations.

That was a big feature for any family coming
into the Workhouse. The dilemmais, do you struggle to survive
on the outside together or doyou come into the Workhouse
knowing that you'll have shelterand food and medical care, but
you also know that you'll besegregated. It's a very
difficult choice to make.

We've just left the that main entrance hallway
towards the back of thebuilding.

We stop and look through this window, we're
overlooking the men's work yardand straight in front of us is
one of the features of Beecher'soriginal design, which is a
small infirmary. Inevitably,people are going to need medical
care, particularly the age andinfirm and that's what the
infirmary originally was for.
And again, that is quite forwardthinking because the labouring

(14:28):
classes at this time would havereally struggled to afford their
own medical care.

John Beecher is ahead of his time. Beecher has
basically founded a regime andbuilt a Workhouse that looks
like the majority of New PoorLaw workhouses will become after
1834.
You have both building that isfit for purpose and a whole
regime which is all aboutdissuading people from claiming

(14:55):
relief, where they could standon their own two feet.
Beecher also had a a sort ofmore compassionate side. A
Workhouse might also be the bestplace for the truly old, truly
sick.
So this sense of the 1834 poorlaw, both as a a relatively
flexible compassionate place, areceptacle for those who
genuinely needed it and as aform of discipline for those who

(15:17):
didn't.

GENERIC (15:24):
You see? I named my orphans according to a little...

I think Oliver Twist and other contemporary
representations became very,very etched onto the
contemporary public imagination.
But these things are notrepresentative in terms of
medical care, clothing, diet,education. In in terms of all of
those things there is no doubtat all in my mind, based upon my

(15:51):
research, that people in theWorkhouse were better served in
the Workhouse than they wouldhave been outside.

So Fiona, when did the Workhouse finally close?

Well, strictly speaking, that was when the Poor
law ended in 1929 and theybecame known as public
assistance institutions and werethen administered by the local
authority.
This particular Workhouse wasgiven a different name in the
early 20th century. The earliestreference we can find to it is
1904 when the guardians chosethe name, Greet House, named
after the nearby River Greet.

(16:25):
This meant that for babies beingborn on site and for people
dying here, their birth anddeath certificates would have
that name Greet House instead ofthe feared Workhouse term.

What you're suggesting is that stigma
prevailed for a long time abouthaving the Workhouse in your
history.

The deterrent system that we talked about from
the 19th century. It was done sowell that that reputation
persisted into the 20th century.And even now on the edge of
living memory, there are peopletoday who can remember the
Workhouse system and still feelthat stigma today.

(17:10):
There's one more thing I want toshow you,
I'm taking you to see one of thedormitories we heard about
earlier and it's actually onethat the age and infirm women
would have used in the 1800's.

So we come to the end of a corridor, a little
partition through a door.

And you'll see, it looks a little bit different
now.

Now, Fiona, I was not expecting this.
It's a bedsit with a prettystraightforward gas stove over
the little sideboard with amincing machine, a surface to
prepare food. There's a tablewith a teapot laid for tea and a
row of beds. One, two, three,four, five. Five iron frame

(17:50):
beds. It's a sort of seventiesbedsit.

That is absolutely what it is.

What's it doing here Fiona?

Even after the Workhouse era had ended, this
building was still used toaccommodate homeless families
while they were waiting forfurther help. One of the last
residents was here as late as1977 which is why you see the
room as it is.

This is within my living memory, my experience. So
I presume that there are peoplestill alive who lived here.

We're actually in touch with some people who have
lived in these rooms.
So today James, we have MrPerkins who's come to meet you
to tell you about his story ofwhen he used to live in one of
these rooms.
Michael. Thank you very much forcoming today. Can I introduce
you to James?

It's a pleasure to meet you. Tell me a little bit
about the time that you arrivedhere and the sort of the age you
were at.

MR PERKINS (18:47):
I would have been here with my mother and five or
six of my siblings when I wasfour years old because I believe
my mother was struggling becausemy father was in prison. I
remember being here in thisroom, there was no heating.
There was only, as I remember,two beds.

Do you recall how long you were here for?

MR PERKINS (19:07):
Probably months. It would have been November because
there'd been a big bonfire thenight before. I spent my time
collecting the spent fireworks,which I found quite amusing.

And it was one room living really? I mean,
everything happened in here bythe look of it. You, you slept,
you cooked. And tell me you saidthere were two beds for how many
of you?

MR PERKINS (19:30):
Six of us, six children and my mother.

And your bed was a pretty primitive affair?

MR PERKINS (19:35):
Yes, mine was the two chairs with an overcoat over
me. It was more comfortable thansleeping on the floor. It was
just a little bit softer.

It was barely enough, in hindsight., do you
feel?

MR PERKINS (19:49):
Yes, I do. But, I had to make do with it.
I do remember being very hungry.
On one occasion I was so hungryI ventured out of the door and
went down these stone steps,turned right at the bottom,

(20:10):
opening the door into thekitchen. There was nobody in
there. And of course, with mebeing so small, I was reaching
up on to the top of the worksurfaces, exploring, trying to
find something to eat.
But unfortunately, I couldn'tfind anything, went out, closed
the door and climbed the stairs,back up to the room. Still very

(20:34):
cold and very hungry.

You were very little at the time and in
hindsight, how do you look backat that time you spent here?

MR PERKINS (20:48):
It gave us a roof over our heads. Unfortunately,
the onward move took me intocare and then on to being
fostered.

When you walk through the same door just a
moment ago. I see a sparkly eyedman. How are things subsequent
to your time here?

MR PERKINS (21:08):
I like to think that I succeeded quite well. I went
on to be quite successful in theprint trade. I've also run a pub
for seven years with my wife andretired on my 65th birthday and
I'm living quite a comfortablelife now, and enjoyable.

Wonderful. It's been an absolute pleasure to
meet you here and thank you verymuch for sharing your story.

MR PERKINS (21:38):
My pleasure.

Thank you. Thank you very much,
Fiona. That was extraordinary,extraordinary to hear that
story. It's a very powerfulthing, isn't it?

It's always a special moment to meet anyone
with a connection here and likeyou say, to stand in, in the
room with a person who'sactually lived here.
We do have a number of visitorswho are local, who have
connections here and even staffand volunteers as well, so I've
actually discovered my ownpersonal connection.

Have you?

Through using our birth and death register in our
collection here, combined withthe 1921 census, I have found
distant cousins of mine wholived and eventually died here.
So it can be surprising just howmany of us have got that
personal connection to Workhousehistory.

I mean, what you're saying and what you've
explained to me is this greatbuilding is not just an
architectural monument to an erain our history, but it is a
nexus sort of meeting point forhistorians, family historians,
for real people, and evenmembers of staff to find deep
connections, not only with aplace, but to other people in

(22:55):
their family lines or otherpeople who have been associated
with you in history.
That's extraordinary. What awonderful inspiring story.

Well, James, thank you very much for coming along
today and it's been a pleasureto show you around the
Workhouse.

It's been an absolute delight. I've been
bowled over not only by theplace but by the very emotional,
deep stories and deeply rootedhistories here. It's an
extraordinary place. Thank you.

(25:40):
Thanks for listening to thisepisode of the National Trust
podcast. If you've enjoyed itand would like to hear about how
we make the National Trustpodcast I'll be appearing at the
Chalk History Festival in Junealong with the producers behind
the show. We'll be back soonwith another episode. But for
now from me, James Grasby.Goodbye.

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