Chapter 13

POOR LAW RECORDS

During the nineteenth century the Irish Poor Law was the British government’s main instrument of social policy for dealing with Ireland’s many social problems. The chief aim of this policy was to establish a system of indoor relief through a series of workhouses into which the destitute could be interned out of sight behind the workhouse walls. However, the Great Famine radically altered the system as laid down in 1838, establishing as it did the principle of outdoor relief, which ensured that the Poor Law would become the foundation of both Northern and Southern Ireland’s social services.

Ireland was divided into 137 Poor Law Unions. These ignored traditional divisions, such as the county, barony and parish, and were centred on a market town where a workhouse was built. The Boards of Guardians were instructed to discourage all but the most needy paupers from applying to the workhouse for assistance. The workhouse was administered on behalf of local rate payers by the local Boards of Guardians. In their Sixth Annual Report, the Poor Law Commissioners admitted that it was no easy task to make conditions in the workhouse sufficiently bleak that it would deter only the most destitute:

It must be obvious to anyone conversant with the habits and mode of living of the Irish people that to establish a dietary in the workhouse inferior to the ordinary diet of the poor classes would be difficult, if not, in many cases, impossible; and hence it has been contended that the workhouse system of relief is inapplicable to Ireland.

The harshness of the conditions within the workhouse can also be seen in the records. It was a fundamental rule of the workhouse system that ‘no individual capable of exertion must ever be permitted to be idle in a workhouse and to allow none who are capable of employment to be idle at any time’. The men were employed breaking stones, grinding corn, working on the land attached to the workhouse or at other manual work about the house; the women at house duties, mending clothes, washing, attending the children and the sick, as well as manual work including breaking stones. The Master of the workhouse was empowered to punish any pauper for a whole range of misdemeanours, which included ‘Making any noise when silence is ordered’, ‘Not duly cleansing his person’ and ‘Playing at cards or any game of chance’. Punishments included breaking stones for a week, going without shoes for a week and being flogged. More serious offences were dealt with by the civil authorities. According to the regulations workhouse food ‘must on no account be superior or even equal to the ordinary mode of subsistence of the labouring classes of the neighbourhood’.

They were forced to rely on the ‘regularity, order, strict enforcement of cleanliness, constant occupation, the preservation of decency and decorum, and exclusion of any of the irregular habits and tempting excitements of life’ to deter only the most desperate from seeking refuge within the workhouse.

The shadow of the workhouse loomed over most members of the working class and even some of the middle class. Orphaned families and foundling children as well as women with large families who were suddenly widowed were probably the most common estimates. Delicate children or those suffering from epilepsy or disabilities were also likely to end up in the workhouse, particularly during economic downturn or famine.

The Poor Law system was barely in operation before the catastrophe of the Great Famine hit Ireland. As famine and fever spread the government permitted Poor Law Commissioners to authorise boards to give food to the able-bodied poor for limited periods. The Ulster Guardians, in general, proved to be less willing to grant outdoor relief to the unemployed than their southern counterparts. In July 1847 the Belfast Guardians made it clear that outdoor relief would be granted in only the most extreme cases:

When the workhouse accommodation becomes insufficient, outdoor relief to be afforded to destitute poor persons permanently disabled from labour by old age or bodily or mental infirmity, and who have been resident in the union for not less than the last three years, the relief to be given food only and this cooked and to be issued by relieving officers at suitable depots. Able-bodied persons applying for relief on the grounds of destitution and inability to support themselves by labour to be relieved within the workhouse only where the means will be provided for keeping them fully employed at stone-breaking, grinding corn or other task work calculated to repay the cost of their maintenance …

Various charitable organisations tried to help by establishing soup kitchens in Belfast and feeding as many as 15,000 a day. The Guardians feared that soup kitchens, such as those at Howard Street and York Street, only exasperated the problem by encouraging vagrants to flock to Belfast:

It being notorious that a large majority of the poor born in this union have flocked into it from other and distant counties, attracted by the reputation of the local charities, and have thus become the means of importing disease and demoralisation, adding very considerably to the local taxation and threatening to increase it to a still larger amount, it will now become the duty of the ratepayers and inhabitants of the union to discourage the influx of vagrants from other localities …

Ejectment, Illustrated London News, 1848.

By 1847 almost every person admitted into workhouses was a patient suffering from either dysentery, fever or were in the early stages of disease. In June 1847 the Board of Guardians received a deputation from the Board of Health that urged that some provision should be made for the burial of the poor dying in the town. According to the minutes:

The ground which the Charitable Society have granted for the purpose cannot admit of any fresh burials after 1st July if the present rate of mortality continues. The Shankill burying ground is full; a month more will completely fill that of Friar’s Bush. There are no other nor is there any public body in the town having the power to purchase or appropriate ground for the purpose and the Board of Health expressly state that after the period above-mentioned the bodies of the poor must lie unburied unless a burying ground can be provided by the Board of Guardians or the Poor Law Commissioners under the powers of the act for the relief of the poor already passed.

The Guardians were answerable to local ratepayers and were expected to account for all monies spent in the administration of the workhouse. This can be seen in the account book that has survived for Lurgan Board of Guardians. This volume provides a detailed record of the inmates who were admitted to the workhouse during the 1840s. It appears to be the only volume of its kind to have survived in the massive Board of Guardian archive deposited at PRONI and gives invaluable information about the local poor and destitute, sick and elderly, who are not usually found in tithe or valuation records. The following extract demonstrates the calibre of information contained in this one, rather battered volume:

Electoral Division of Maralin 18 Inmates. Week Ending 17 August 1844

Between November 1846 and March 1847, the number of paupers in Enniskillen workhouse doubled. Numbers reached a peak in May 1847 when it was recorded that ‘there are 1,433 paupers in a building designed to house 1,000’. Local newspapers reported the distressing conditions faced by inmates in the neighbouring workhouses. The Impartial Reporter recorded events on 4 May 1847 when 351 men, women and children, who had been waiting in the grounds of the workhouse all day as the Guardians met, forced their way inside:

Children appeared to be dying in the act of endeavouring to extract sustenance from the dried up breast of their parents, others more mature in years were propped up by some relative or acquaintance who was fast hastening to a similar state of weakness. The general appearance was truly sickening. An endeavour was made to enter the names when, some fearing they might be excluded, another rush was made and put hors de combat the guardians at the board. The horrors of the black hole of Calcutta were endured by them for a time – they rushed to the window and gasped for breath.

As a direct result of the extraordinary circumstances brought about by the Famine, exceptional measures were introduced in Ireland in order to prevent the complete breakdown of the workhouse system. In June 1847 a separate Irish Poor Law Commission was set up and put in charge of further assistance under the Poor Relief (Ireland) Act. The 1847 Act also permitted the Board of Guardians to grant outdoor relief to the aged, infirm and sick poor, and to poor widows with two or more dependant children. The Enniskillen Board of Guardians welcomed the fact that the Poor Law Commissioners had declared that able-bodied paupers were still to go to the workhouse which they felt sure would ‘prevent imposition from idle able-bodied persons’. Nevertheless, they were concerned that the granting of outdoor relief would be an ever increasing burden upon the rate payers of the Union.

As a means of reducing the numbers of destitute persons and lessening the burden of the crippling poor rate on the landowners the government gave its wholehearted support to assisted emigration schemes. The Poor Relief Acts of 1838, 1843, 1847 and 1849 empowered the Boards of Guardians to raise such sums ‘not exceeding the proceeds of one shilling in the pound’ of the annual poor rate to ‘assist poor persons who would otherwise have to be accommodated in the workhouse’ to emigrate, preferably to the British colonies. The Colonial Land and Emigration Commission was set up in England in 1840, under the control of the British Colonial Office, to organise and supervise emigration from both Britain and Ireland. The availability of emigration was constantly brought to the attention of the Boards of Guardians in circular letters issued by the Poor Law Commissioners. The representative of the Emigration Commission visited every workhouse in Ireland to inspect and select persons for emigration and those chosen were offered a free passage and supplied before departure with clothing and a little money to support themselves on arrival.

During the later part of the nineteenth century the Boards of Guardians played an important role in the administration of local government. In 1872, the Boards of Guardians came under the control of the Local Government Board, which became one of the most important departments of the Irish administration. To its original functions of supervising the Poor Law and the dispensary system, the government added many others including responsibility for public health. From 1856 Boards of Guardians acted as burial boards and from 1865 as sewer authorities for those areas of the counties that were outside the responsibility of the Town Commissioners. The Guardians’ powers were further increased by the Public Health Acts of 1874 and 1878 which made the Poor Law Boards rural sanitary authorities giving them power to destroy unsound food, supervise slaughter houses and deal with infectious diseases in hospitals. The Guardians later were made responsible for the supervision of the hospitals set up under the Tuberculosis Prevention (Ireland) Act of 1908 and the Board also became the central authority under the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908.

In 1898, when the Local Government Act was introduced, the power of the Irish Boards of Guardians began its steady decline. This Act confined the duties of the Boards of Guardians to poor relief, while their other functions were taken over by the county councils. By this time the workhouse was the last refuge for the old, the sick and children. The Poor Law system remained largely intact in Northern Ireland until 1948, by which time the health and welfare functions of the Boards of Guardians were transferred to local health authorities and county councils.

Potato dinner, Pictorial Times, 28 February 1846.

The records

The Poor Law Unions kept a number of different types of records. The National Archive lists fifteen classes: Minute books, Correspondence, Accounts, Statistics, Out-Relief, Workhouse Administration, Workhouse Inmates, Workhouse Infirmary, Boarding Out, Dispensary, Returns of Births and Deaths, Vaccination, Contagious Diseases, Assessment and Miscellaneous. These were then divided into sub-classes, and even this classification does not cover every type of record one might possibly find.

Of all the records, the Registers of Admission and Discharge are the most valuable. Unfortunately, the registers have not survived as well as other Poor Law Union records. Of all the classes, the minute books are probably the best preserved. They contain miscellaneous information about the administration of the Poor Law Unions, and often include details of staff employed by the Poor Law Union.

The surviving records of the twenty-seven Poor Law Unions in the counties of Northern Ireland are held by PRONI as listed below. For details of the records which have survived for each Union, researchers should consult the grey calendars, which are available on the shelves of the Public Search Room.

BG/1	Antrim, County Antrim
BG/2	Armagh, County Armagh
BG/3	Ballycastle, County Antrim
BG/4	Ballymena, County Antrim
BG/5	Ballymoney, County Antrim
BG/6	Banbridge, County Down
BG/7	Belfast, Counties Antrim and Down
BG/8	Castlederg, County Tyrone
BG/9	Clogher, County Tyrone
BG/10	Coleraine, County Londonderry
BG/11	Cookstown, County Tyrone
BG/12	Downpatrick, County Down
BG/13	Dungannon, County Tyrone
BG/14	Enniskillen, County Fermanagh
BG/15	Irvinestown, County Fermanagh
BG/16	Kilkeel, County Down
BG/17	Larne, County Antrim
BG/18	(Newton) Limavady, County Londonderry
BG/19	Lisburn, County Antrim
BG/20	Lisnaskea, County Fermanagh
BG/21	Londonderry, County Londonderry
BG/22	Lurgan, County Armagh
BG/23	Magherafelt, County Londonderry
BG/24	Newry, County Down
BG/25	Newtownards, County Down
BG/26	Omagh, County Tyrone
BG/27	Strabane, County Tyrone
BG/28	Gortin, County Tyrone (united to Omagh c. 1870)

It is important to note that most Board of Guardian records are closed for 100 years from the latest date in each volume. As in the rest of the UK, criteria exist for the extended closure (i.e., beyond 30 years) of certain categories of records. The relevant category in relation to the Board of Guardian records is ‘documents containing information about individuals, the disclosure of which would cause distress or danger to living persons or their descendants’. Unfortunately for the family historian, most classes of the BG records contain sensitive information relating to the boarding out or fostering of children. The workhouse was the chief residence of unmarried pregnant girls and orphaned or foundling children. Understandably, in a place as small as Northern Ireland, individuals are anxious that such details are not available to the general public.