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Work and Suffolk Workhouses |
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Work in the Workhouse
During a 14 hour workhouse day, between 6 am and 8 pm, the able-bodied paupers spent 10 hours, from 7 am – 12 pm and 1 – 6pm, at work. In Suffolk this was usually picking oakum, the tedious process of unraveling set lengths of tarred ship’s ropes into fibres, used for caulking ships. Other work included pumping water, or grinding corn, by hand crank wheels or by a tread-wheel, a devise common in prisons; gardening and farming the workhouse land to grow wheat, oats and potatoes.
Cosford workhouse site, c.1882
© Peter Higginbotham |
Women were given domestic work to do, including scrubbing floors, forms and tables with cold water and soda; laundering clothes; looking after the infants; and helping to nurse the sick.
Vagrants, or tramps, known as Casual Paupers, would be given a nights shelter in exchange for work the next morning. For men, this was picking 1lb of oakum and for women, 3 hours washing, scrubbing and cleaning.
Although designed mainly to provide work for the able-bodied poor, by the end of the 19th Century the workhouse had become a combination of hospital, lunatic asylum, old people’s home and school.
The last words go to James Reynolds a pauper in the Newmarket Union Workhouse in 1846:
We’ve skilly for breakfast; at night bread and cheese,
And we eat it and then go to bed if you please.
Two days in the week we have puddings for dinner,
And two, we have broth, so like water but thinner;
Two, meat and potatoes, of this none to spare;
One day, bread and cheese—and this is our fare.
Here are nine at a time that work on the mill;
We take it in turns so it never stands still:
A half hour each gang, so ‘tis not very hard,
And when we are off we can walk in the yard…
I sometimes look up to the bit of blue sky
High over my head, with a tear in my eye.
Surrounded by walls that are too tall too climb,
Confined like a felon without any crime;
Not a field not a house not a hedge can I see,
Not a plant, not a flower, nor a bush nor a tree...
Words: Clive Paine
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