In a change to the advertised programme, the November meeting welcomed Dr. Mark Carroll from Epping to talk about ‘Life and Death in the Workhouse’, as reflected in his family history researches.
After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the responsibility for looking after the poor was transferred to the local parishes, with the first Poor Law being passed in 1606. In 1834, a new Poor Law required local parishes to form Unions and provide a centralised facility for the area. Thus began the building of the large Victorian Workhouses, as immortalised in Dicken’s writing. In researching family history, it tends to be the Death Certificates that indicate someone was in the Workhouse and then, if Admission Registers are available, you can gain an understanding of how often a person was resident or duration of stay. The Death Certificate gives useful information on age, place of death and cause of death – with descriptions ranging from Doctors formal medical terms to a Managers pragmatic ‘Decay of Nature’. Dr Carroll mentioned three Workhouses that his researches touched on, each with their own facet of understanding. Leytonstone Workhouse was renamed Central Home Leytonstone to counter the stigma of the workhouse branding and in 1926 was costing about £100,000 pa to the local rate payers. At Haverhill in Suffolk, the Risbridge Poor Law Union straddled the Essex/ Suffolk boundary and a search result was initially ignored as he was expecting a London or South Essex location and not Suffolk. He eventually found a connection of a married daughter living in a village close to the workhouse in question. His final workhouse was at Stanway near Colchester where the daughter of the Workhouse Manager wrote of her memories of growing up in the building, with details of the routines and meals. An interesting talk and showing a different perspective of the Workhouse system that can become of interest when researching family history. …………………………………………………………. Quentin Spear Please Note: There are no meetings of the History Society in January or February.
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