Ripon Workhouse Museum

Under the English "New Poor Law" of 1834, civil parishes in England were required to join together  to form workhouse  unions with the aim of housing two classes of poor people, the poor and destitute of the areas served by the union, who were given long term, often permanent, but very frugal  accommodation with a requirement  to work 12 hours per day for 6 days a week, and vagrants , just passing through  the district, who were housed for 2 nights, giving a full day for them to provide 8 hours of hard labour in return for food.  Both classes were given a very restricted diet but the vagrants' diet was very frugal and hardly adequate. Essentially prison conditions were imposed for the crime of being poor.

Vagrants were searched for money on admittance and their own clothes were fumigated in an SO2 fumigation cabinet with the vagrants  wearing workhouse  uniform for their period of residence. Those seeking long term residence had to prove both their need and willingness to work and in addition a link to the locality. Without that the "Guardians" of the workhouse would send them on their way with instructions to seek relief in their own neighbourhood, both for economic reasons and as a throwback to the laws which were established to reduce mobility of labour after the Black Death, several centuries earlier.

At Ripon the workhouse for the  permanent  residents  was in a separate,  purpose built, block within the enclosed courtyard  and the vagrants were housed in separate accommodation  in the form of a row of "cells" in one of the wings of the gatehouse block. The main work carried out by vagrants at Ripon was breaking stones to small "pebbles" for road mending and cutting firewood, both illustrated here in the work-yard display.

The main workhouse block also contained  the accommodation  for the Master and his wife the Matron, jointly  responsible  for day to day running  of the workhouse, with the "inmates" housed in separate  single sex wings either side. Separation of the sexes, including  married couples and children, was enforced  rigorously. All these features are starkly illustrated by this fine museum.

Although formally abolished in 1929 many workhouses remained in use until the National Assistance Act of 1948 mainly because they were satisfying an unfilled need.