The Legacy of the Workhouse

It wasn’t just in Oliver Twist that Charles Dickens attacked the workhouses. In a later novel, Our Mutual Friend, an elderly character named Betty Higden lost everything she owned. So fearful was she of the workhouse that she set out to try to sell her needlework, traveling from place to place on foot, even in the worst of weather. When she died from this hardship, it was discovered that she had sewn money into her clothing to be used for a proper burial so she wouldn’t end up in an unmarked pauper’s grave.

Even with Dickens’ influence, the workhouses were never satisfactory. The last ones did not close until 1930. By then England had created public assistance to aid the poor, including programs to help struggling families stay together. Orphanages cared for homeless children, and adoption became more commonplace.

 

Male residents of a county poor farm in America wait in line for their noon meal in this 1940s photograph.

 

In the United States before 1800, needy people relied on charity for help. When their numbers became overwhelming, local governments took on their care. Officials realized it would be cheapest and most efficient to put charity cases together in one place, just as it was done in England. The American versions of the workhouse were the poorhouse and poor farm. They could be anything from cramped houses to large institutions. At poor farms, anyone capable of working helped raise food to feed all the inmates. Throughout the rest of the 1800s and as late as the end of World War II in 1945, young and old, poor and sick, lived together in these dismal, depressing places.

 

These boys in India are at work helping to clear a construction site. It’s common in India for children as young as six to work as rag pickers, searching through mountains of trash for any items they can sell.

 

The existence of poorhouses and poor farms in America is sometimes referred to as a “hidden” history—one that people want to forget. As in England, abuses of all types were rampant. Counties in some states actually auctioned off the poor to the lowest bidder to work for specified lengths of time. The bidder was supposed to supply shelter, clothing, and medical care in exchange for labor. As with everything pertaining to the welfare of the poor, conditions varied greatly.

 

For a long time, the Foundling Hospital in Paris had a wheel with a basket where a mother could secretly put her infant, then turn the wheel, placing the baby safely inside the Foundling walls.

 

Today a variety of government programs assist the poor and disabled with medical care, food, and other benefits. Many are able to live in government-subsidized housing. Towns and cities have shelters for the homeless and protective services for people in abusive situations. The government oversees the welfare of orphans and children whose families cannot care for them. Most live in small group homes and foster homes. If adoption becomes an option for them, they join their new families with the government’s blessing.