The Birkenhead Workhouse was “a glaring violation of decency and propriety” where inmates shivered on freezing floors
The site of the former Birkenhead Workhouse today(Image: Andrew Teebay)
The shadow of Birkenhead Workhouse would once have loomed menacingly over the lives of Merseyside’s poor and infirm. As work dried up and pennies dwindled, the workhouse was often the last resort for Britain’s working classes in the 19th century.
Cold, cramped and poorly-lit, these miserable institutions were hotbeds of malnutrition and disease. Inmates worked in factory lines in perilous conditions, and were frequently subjected to abuse at the hands of their workhouse masters.
Workhouses sprung up all over Britain in the early 1800s as poverty, starvation and disease plagued the country’s working poor. In 1834, the Poor Law Amendment Act combined parishes into Poor Law Unions, which assessed the needs of each person applying for help. The Wirral Poor Law Union was formed in 1836 from 54 constituent parishes, and a workhouse was built in Bebington, where Clatterbridge Hospital now stands.
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The growth of Birkenhead led to the establishment of the Birkenhead Poor Law Union in 1861, and work began on the new Birkenhead Workhouse. This opened in 1863 on Derby Road, Tranmere, where St Catherine’s Health Centre stands today.
Once enrolled in one of these institutions, inmates could find it difficult to leave, as they were required to earn their beds through hard labour, wheeling dirt, breaking stones and picking oakum – separating the fibres from old rope. This meant that able-bodied people who might find paying work elsewhere often missed their chance, as by the time they had finished their back-breaking workhouse shift, the day’s opportunities for labour (usually offered in the mornings) had already dried up.
It was a poverty trap in the simplest sense. Workhouses, it was said, provided relief for the destitute – but destitution was required for such places to exist. Without a steady supply of desperate, starving people willing to provide free labour in exchange for a bowl of gruel and a filthy, flea-bitten mattress in a chilly dorm, the workhouse, that well-oiled machine, would quickly fall into disrepair. And so the institution which was intended to rescue the people of Merseyside from poverty often served only to condemn them to it, with no way out – and no hope.
St Catherine’s Health Centre was built on the former workhouse site(Image: Andrew Teebay)
A census taken in 1881, documented by the Wirral Archives and workhouses.org, gives us a glimpse into the lives of the 382 inmates who resided within the walls of Birkenhead Workhouse that year. Most of them came from the Merseyside area, but the institution also housed a sizeable Irish population, probably due to the large numbers of Irish immigrants landing at Liverpool Docks seeking work during the Industrial Revolution. Others hailed from further afield, such as 30-year-old Frances Kaney, a British subject born in France, Henry Conway, a seaman from the United States, Frederick Beswick from Jamaica, and 40-year-old Thomas Phillips, whose place of birth was broadly listed as “at sea”.
The census also listed the occupations of some inmates, most of them labourers. Many women earned their livings as “charwomen”, part-time cleaners often employed to do the work even the servants didn’t want to do. Paid a mere pittance, and without the benefit of an education to allow them to seek better employment, this work was scarcely enough to support a single woman – let alone provide for her children.
Indeed, it is no surprise that many of the female inmates at Birkenhead Workhouse were widows, often with children in tow. The workhouse school, in 1881, had 213 pupils on its books and eight teachers.
Other inmates were disabled, but still able to perform necessary manual tasks. 19 were listed as “imbecile” or “idiot” (meaning they had moderate to severe learning disabilities), five were “lunatic” (had mental health problems), four were blind, one deaf and dumb, and one dumb. Disabled people unable to work were not permitted to enter the workhouse and were simply abandoned, supported by payments of “outdoor relief”.
Whole families packed into the workhouse – not only inmates, but staff as well. As most daily chores were carried out by the inmates themselves (cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc), Birkenhead Workhouse had just nine paid employees in 1881 – eight of these being married couples. Thomas Williams was the workhouse master – the man in charge – and his wife Annie was the matron. John and Annie Seale were nurses, John Dobson was a porter and his wife Annie a laundress. James Allen was the labour master, overseeing the male inmates, and his wife Helena was a nurse.
After being admitted to the workhouse, inmates were allowed to take a bath, but as social campaigner Joseph Rowntree remarked upon his visit in 1866: “It is stated that the same water has generally to suffice for whatever number may be admitted that evening.” Rowntree, a fierce advocate for the poor, was outraged by this rule, saying: “If such continue to be the state of things at Birkenhead, it is a glaring violation of decency and propriety.”
Inmates were served a beige-coloured diet of thin skilly (watered down oats) and “workhouse Scouse” – a tasteless concoction of chopped, boiled potatoes with a rare morsel of beef. They were not given beds, but “boards only to sleep on, with a blanket and rug for covering, and the poor wayfarers are compelled to strip off every article of their clothing and remain all night without it.”
A recipe for “workhouse Scouse”, served in Birkenhead Workhouse in 1864
Rowntree urged the workhouse to at least provide the poor inmates with nightclothes, but it is not known if this was ever done. The workhouse system was formally abolished in 1930. However, Birkenhead continued as a newly-designated “Public Assistance Institution” until 1948, when all remaining workhouses finally closed with the introduction of the National Assistance Act.
The relic of the workhouse remained off Derby Road for 62 years after its closure, when it became St Catherine’s Hospital. The main building was demolished in 2010, with the last remnants coming down in 2012, to be replaced with the modern facility we see today.
St Catherine’s Church is one of the few old buildings which still remains on the site(Image: Andrew Teebay)
Nothing remains of the once-dreaded Birkenhead Workhouse, where many hundreds of poverty-stricken Merseyside people slaved, shared bread, shivered on freezing floors, lived and died. Houses cover part of the old site on St Catherine’s Gardens. Where a sanatorium once stood, now a patient car park. Only St Catherine’s Church, erected in 1831, can still be seen fulfilling much the same role as it did almost two centuries ago.