4 - Workhouse Medical Care from Working-Class Autobiographies, 1750–1834

Summary

Historians of the workhouse under England's Old Poor Law who wish to move beyond the generalities of returns to Parliament and examine the daily lived experience of workhouse life must generally turn to one of two sources. The policy intentions at the time a parish workhouse was opened are occasionally accessible in vestry minutes, workhouse rules, dietaries, or daily schedules. Alternatively, there are the entries in parish overseers' accounts, which show the practical result of accommodating the poor and sometimes generated itemized shopping lists of goods and services supplied to the house. At their best, the latter might include the bills submitted by surgeon-apothecaries for treatments supplied to named workhouse inmates. Fortuitous survivals of both types of material for the same place and period can yield valuable insights. Pauper letters constitute an exciting source for English poor relief, and their potential has been elaborated of late, but these are not likely to augment the options substantially for research on workhouse life, since few or no letters were written by paupers while they were inmates.

The working-class autobiography comprises one further, plausible genre for evidence of workhouse treatment. Autobiographies per se have secured extensive scholarly attention, at first from John Burnett, and then with David Vincent and David Mayall, who published their collective Bibliography in 1985. While other texts have come to light since 1985, the Vincent-Mayall Bibliography remains indispensable for two reasons.