Friday 28 June 2013

The workhouse.

Today, I visited the work house in Southwell, Nottingham. After watching the itv programme, the secrets of the workhouse, I was really interested to find out more about it. Basically, the work house was a last resort for the poor people, they went to the workhouse if they were homeless, starving or just extremely poor. Because there were no benefits, if you didn't have a good, well paid job, then you had nothing, Although it sounds like a nice place to go, the work house was feared. As soon as yo entered, all your clothes and personal belongs were taken away from you, you were separated from your loved ones and set to work for 10 hours a day. The women doing hours of grueling house work, cooking, cleaning, washing ect. Whilst the men decorated and broke stones. The children however got a good education and were taught life skills. The food wasn't very substantial or exciting. For breakfast they would normally have bread and gruel, gruel is a flour and oatmeal based liquid, sort of like porridge. For lunch it would be meat and potatoes and then for supper it would be some sort of broth. Doesn't sound very appetising but its certainly better than nothing.  Life was very hard in the workhouse and people would only go there if they really really had to. They say that an empty workhouse is a successful work house. That basically meant that people would do anything that they could to get themselves fed and watered and not have to go to the workhouse.



This is the workhouse, its huge!

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