This fascinating, fully illustrated volume is the definitive guide to every aspect of the workhouse and of the poor relief system in which it played a pivotal part. Compiled by Peter Higginbotham, one of Britain's best-known experts on the subject, this A-Z cornucopia covers everything from the 1725 publication An Account of Several Work-houses to the South African Zulu admitted to Fulham Road Workhouse in 1880. With hundreds of fascinating anecdotes, plus priceless information for researchers including workhouse locations throughout the British Isles, useful websites and archive repository details, maps, plans, original workhouse publications and an extensive bibliography, it will delight family historians and general readers alike. Where was my local workhouse? What records did they keep? What is gruel and is it really what inmates lived on? How did you get out of a workhouse? What famous people were once workhouse inmates? Are there any workhouse buildings I can visit? If these are the kinds of questions you've ever wanted to know the answer to, then this is the book for you.

Voices from the Workhouse tells the real inside story of the workhouse - in the words of those who experienced the institution at first hand, either as inmates or through some other connection with the institution. Using a wide variety of sources — letters, poems, graffiti, autobiography, official reports, testimony at official inquiries, and oral history, Peter Higginbotham creates a vivid portrait of what really went on behind the doors of the workhouse — all the sights, sounds and smells of the place, and the effect it had on those whose lives it touched. Was the workhouse the cruel and inhospitable place as which it's often presented, or was there more to it than that? This book lets those who knew the place provide the answer.

What was it like in a Victorian Workhouse? Was the food really as bad as we imagine? Take a step back in time with Alan Gallop and ask yourself if you could have survived in such harsh conditions.

For two centuries, the shadow of the workhouse hung over Britain. The recourse of only the most desperate, dark, and terrible tales of malnutrition, misery, mistreatment, and murder ran like wildfire through the poorer classes, who lived in terror of being forced inside the institution's towering walls--and, as this collection proves, all of them were true! This book contains 365 incredible tales of fires, drownings, explosions, and disasters, infamous scandals such as the Andover affair--where inmates were forced to eat the bones they were supposed to be crushing to ward off starvation--and sickening tales of abuse, assault, bodysnatching, poisonings, post mortems, and murder. Accompanied by 70 rare and wonderful illustrations, this book will thrill, fascinate, sadden, and unnerve in equal measure.

The British workhouse is the stuff of literature and legend. But what exactly was it? Surprisingly, no full-scale history of the workhouse has ever been written. Here, historian Norman Longmate tells the full story, from its beginnings in Elizabethan times until its demise in the 1940s, though mainly concentrating on the Victorian workhouse in the years of its tarnished glory. He describes the circumstances in the 1830s that led to the opening of 600 new workhouses--an event that met with astonishingly little opposition among reformers. He also records the riots, the protests, and the pleadings with which the poor challenged their virtual enslavement, and the misery of their daily lives when they were finally incarcerated within the workhouse walls.

'On the Road' makes available in a single volume three major first-hand accounts of visits to the casual wards (overnight accommodation for tramps, vagrants and other wayfarers) at dozens of English workhouses between 1928 and 1935. Its shocking revelations about the treatment of the inmates of these institutions led to material improvements in conditions. The book includes an introduction to the casual ward by Peter Higginbotham, a well-known author and researcher on the the workhouse system.

This wonderfully evocative read explores every aspect of life - and diet - in the workhouse. Including a complete reprint of the 1901 Manual of Workhouse Cookery, and with more than 100 photographs, recipes, plans and dietary tables, it is a shocking, surprising and utterly unique guide to one of the most notorious establishments of the past.The dark history of the institution - scandals, riots and, on occasion, the near starvation of the inmates - is explored in depth. With sections on subjects as varied as the special diets for children, the elderly and the sick, the treatment of troublemakers, life in the Scottish and Irish equivalents, and Christmas Day in the workhouse - including how to make Christmas pudding for 300 - this book will delight cooks, epicureans and lovers of history everywhere.