Workhouse Literature and Arts

The poor laws and the workhouse inspired their own genre of literature and art. Popular songs and poems ranged from the sentimental (e.g. In the Workhouse: Christmas day), through the satirical (e.g. The New Poor Law in Force), to the sheer gruesome (e.g. The Vorkhouse Boy). James Greenwood's lurid account of A Night in a Workhouse spawned a whole line of undercover exposés of workhouse life by numerous "social explorers" including Jack London (The People of the Abyss) and George Orwell (The Spike) and the less well-known but equally significant Mary Higgs (Glimpses of the Abyss) and Olive Malvery (The Soul Market). In more recent times, commemoration of the Irish Famine has produced some remarkable works of sculpture.

Broadside Ballads

Sold in the streets for a penny or halfpenny between the 16th and early 20th centuries, broadside ballads were popular songs of the day, often anonymous, and were performed in taverns, homes, or fairs. The examples below, relating to the poor-law and workhouse, are from the Bodleian Library's collection. A Bodleian shelfmark follows each title.

Queer, boys, queer Firth b.27(147))
The poor law Bastile Firth b.34(283a))
Pauper's Drive (Firth c.16(307))
The Workhouse Door (Firth c.16(308))
Lines on the death of a most cruel, hard-hearted overseer of the poor (Firth c.16(309))
A flare up amongst the Lambeth Guardians (Firth c.16(310))
The vorkhouse boy (Firth c.16(311))
The St. Pancras prigging overseers (Firth c.16(312))
Workhouse girl (Firth c.16(313))
The Tooting tragedy (Firth c.16(314))
Eat, ye paupers, eat (Firth c.16(315))
Pauper and the minister (Firth c.16(316))
The women flogger's lament of Marylebone workhouse! (Firth c.16(317))
Joe Bradley, the runaway workhous boy (Firth c.16(318))
A night in a London workhouse (Harding B 13(154))
A night's repose in Lambeth workhouse (Harding B 13(155))
The new poor law bill in force (Johnson Ballads 1148)
The new Poor law bill (Johnson Ballads 1529)

Music

You can listen to a recording (MP3) of The Workhouse Boy (a variation on The Vorkhouse Boy above) performed by the Seven Dials Band (by kind permission of Beautiful Jo Records).

In the early 1900s, collectors of English folk songs such Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams, used workhouse inmates and casuals as one of the sources for their material. One of these (name unknown) was photographed at St Marylebone.

Cecil Sharp's Marylebone Man
© English Folk Dance and Song Society.

The American folk song collector James Madison Carpenter visited Britain in 1928 and recorded singers at the Ely the Insch parish poorhouse in Aberdeenshire. He also collected songs from the Ely workhouse in Cambridgeshire. The colllection has an online catalogue.

The workhouse was occasionally the subject of maudlin ballads such as Standing at the Workhouse Gate by B.K. Aungur in around 1908.

Standing at the Workhouse Gate

Modern songs by Peter Higginbotham.

The Ballad of Captain Swing — Captain Swing was the mythical leader of the agricultural riots in southern England in 1829-30
The Archway of Tears — The Archway of Tears was the local name for the entrance to the Birmingham workhouse.

Poetry

'A Country Parson' (1832) The Village Poor-House
Crabbe, George (1783) The Village
Craven, James (1887) Dirty Days Hath September
Kipling, Rudyard (1891) The Last of the Light Brigade
Linton, William James (1845) The Life and Adventure of Bob Thin; or, The Poor-House Fugitive
Petrucci, Mario (2006) Fearnought (Poems for Southwell Workhouse)
Sims, George R (1879) In the Workhouse: Christmas Day

Withers, James Reynolds (1846) Written From Newmarket Union

Art

Charles, James Chelsea Workhouse: A Bible Reading (Our Poor) (1877) - in this unusually lyrical portrayal of a workhouse, a group of elderly female inmates sit at a table, bathed in sunshine. Some drink tea while one of their number reads from the bible.
Cope, Charles West Poor Law Guardians: Board Day Application for Bread (1841), was based on a visit to a meeting of the Staines Board of Guardians. It, shows a young widow pleading for relief for her four children.
Luke Fildes Houseless and Hungry and Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward
Clement Flower Sunday Music for the Indigent Poor
Hubert von Herkomer Old Age — A Study at the Westminster Union and Eventide
Hubert von Herkomer Christmas In A Workhouse
Thomas Rowlandson St James Workhouse, 1809.
The Lurgan Workhouse Mural, 2006.

Chelsea Workhouse: A Bible Reading.

The Lurgan Workhouse Mural.

Novels

Bennett, Arnold (1910) Clayhanger (Book 1, Chapter 5)
Dickens, Charles (1837-9) Oliver Twist (Chapter II)
Eliot, George (1857) Scenes from Clerical Life (Chapter 2)
Hardy, Thomas (1874) Far from the Madding Crowd (Chapters XL-XLII)
Law, John [Margaret Harkness] (1888) Captain Lobe (Chapter XVII)
Mayhew, Augustus (1858) Paved with Gold, Or, The Romance and Reality of the London Streets: An Unfashionable Novel
Moore, George (1899) Esther Waters
Orwell, George (1931) The Spike (later reused in Down and Out in Paris and London)
Trollope, Frances (1843) Jessie Phillips

"Deep Brook Union" (from Jessie Phillips)

Plays

A Beckett, Gilbert Abbott (1834) The Revolt of the Workhouse — A Burlesque Ballet in One Act
Gregory, Lady Augusta (1908) The Workhouse Ward
Nevinson, Margaret Wynne (1911) In the Workhouse - a Play
Smith, John Owen (1993) Riot Or This Bloody Crew - A Play Based on the Selborne and Headley Workhouse Riots of 1830
Anon. (1847) Revolt, or The Workhouse or, A Night's Hullabaloo! (A "Grand Comic Interlude" presented at the Royal Standard Theatre, Shoreditch

Shoreditch theatre poster, 1847.
© Hackney Archives, 2nd floor, Dalston CLR James Library and Hackney Archives, Dalston Square, London E8 3BQ.

Journalism / Documentary

Anonymous (1871) A Day in the Withington Workhouse
Anonymous (1867) A Workhouse Probe (Hursley workhouse)
Anonymous (1867) A Workhouse Probe (Leek workhouse)
Dickens, Charles (1849) The Paradise at Tooting
Dickens, Charles (1849) The Tooting Farm
Dickens, Charles (1849) A Recorder's Charge
Dickens, Charles (1849) The Verdict for Drouet
Dickens, Charles (1850) A Walk in a Workhouse
Dickens, Charles (1850) London Pauper Children
Dickens, Charles (1861) The Uncommercial Traveller — Wapping Workhouse
Dickens, Charles (1863) The Uncommercial Traveller — The Short-Timers
Michael Dube (1999) How Charles Dickens' Fiction and Journalism Work Together
Hastings, Rev. Frederick (1889) Workhouse Worries (from The Quiver magazine)
Kohl, J.K. (1844) A German traveller visits the North Dublin workhouse
Pask, Arthur T. (1889) A Workhouse Farm
S.L.B. (1866) Description of a visit to an unnamed District School in the London area.
Wills, WH & Taylor, Philip (1850) A Day in a Pauper Palace

Social Explorers

'Crane, Denis' [Cranfield, Walter Thomas] (1910) A Vicarious Vagabond
Edwards, Rev. George Z (1910) A Vicar as Vagrant (PS King, London)
Craven, CW (1887) A Night in the Workhouse
Gray, Frank (1931) The Tramp: his Meaning and Being (Dent, London)
Greenwood, James (1866) A Night in a Workhouse

Cover of A Night in a Workhouse (pamphlet reprinted from Pall Mall Gazette)
Higgs, Mary (1904) Five Days and Five Nights as a Tramp Among Tramps — Social Investigation by a Lady
Higgs, Mary (1904) The Tramp Ward
Higgs, Mary (1904) London Investigations
Higgs, Mary (1905) A Night in a Salvation Army Shelter
Higgs, Mary (1906) Glimpses into the Abyss (London: P.S. King)
London, Jack (1903) The People of the Abyss
Malvery, Olive Christian (1907) The Soul Market
Sims, George R (1883) How the Poor Live
Stallard, JH (1866) The Female Casual and her Lodging
Wyrall, Everard (1910) The Spike