Talk by Chas Townley in December 2021. Report by Stephen Griffiths.
To my mind, a perfect Christmas morning is watching Oliver on TV while the family fight over their presents in another room. Nothing gets the tastebuds tantalised like a hearty rendition by bonny workhouse cherubs of ‘Food, Glorious Food’. And if the chipolatas turn out to be mouldy, then the sole remedy is to ‘shut up and drink yer gin’. How apposite then, for the December meeting of the Society (back on Zoom again) to be on the subject of Stroud Workhouse, a sort of ‘Cider with Oliver’ hybrid.
On a less frivolous note, Laurie Lee painted a very moving picture of Stroud Workhouse when, in Cider with Rosie, he wrote of an old couple in a tiny Slad cottage who became too frail to cope with living. They were removed into the workhouse, ‘for the best’, by the parish. After 50 years of being inseparable, they spent their last week divided. It’s a sad fact that segregation was one of the crueller aspects of the workhouse regime, but we should not forget that many workhouse staff were caring people, and that for a significant fraction of the population the workhouse was their only means of basic care.
Stroud Workhouse was built in 1837 in response to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, when individual parish responsibility was handed to borough councils in a centralizing (and cost-cutting) efficiency drive. As well as providing food and shelter for out-of-work cloth workers, Stroud Workhouse provided care for disabled people, blind, infirm, and people with a mental or learning disability. In the Stroud records are several temporary admissions of young women to be cared for while they give birth. Oliver Twist may have been a fiction of Dickens, but the fact is that many people were born in the Victorian workhouse.
When I watch the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, I’m never surprised when some ancestor or other finds themselves in the workhouse. The Victorian Charles Booth found that generally more than 25% of the population required some poor relief at some time. But the problem with the workhouse was that, like any institution, its occupants became institutionalized, and children especially were in danger of falling into the clutches of a ‘Fagin’.
Later in the Victorian period, orphanages and children’s homes were established to provide a better environment for children than the workhouse. In 1937 Stroud Workhouse had a population of 170 but only 8 were children. By this time the majority of occupants were chronically sick, infirm or disabled. It was more recognizable as a basic hospital, with a matron. There were even three maternity beds. Many workhouses of this period were soon to be incorporated into the NHS, but the fear and stigma of the workhouse often remained in the minds of the older generation.
In 1938 Stroud Workhouse was declared ‘unfit’ by the County Medical Officer. It was vacated in 1939 and the occupants were moved to other infirmaries in the county, including Thornbury. There were proposals to redevelop the site but these were superseded by the War Office who requisitioned it for the Territorial Army. The building lay empty for 40 years after the war until they were converted into residential apartments.