THE ORIGIN OF THE WORKHOUSE

“The parish poorhouse and the Union House of Industry…were distinct in origin and purpose, but it is from the pair of them that has sprung the ubiquitous modern workhouse”, says an eminent authority. “The parish poorhouse, as it existed from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, was at the outset nothing that could be termed an institution. It consisted usually of a cottage, or several cottages, used indiscriminately as free lodgings for some of the parish pensioners, as an occasional receptacle for the disabled and sick, and as a temporary shelter for tramps and for paupers awaiting removal to other parishes. We are told that ‘no regular provision for the diet is made, and little order or discipline is maintained in them. Some of the paupers who are placed there work for private employers and maintain themselves; others receive pay from the parish and also provide their own food’.”

The poorhouse, thus differentiated from the workhouse, was the type of building most commonly to be found in the parishes of Cambridgeshire before 1723, and in the parishes outside the franchise of Ely for more than a century after that date. There were, however, institutions intermediate in character. The old gildhall at-Whittlesford, under the direction of a resident master, served both as workhouse and poorhouse during the early seventeenth century.