This book details offences by ‘inmates’ at Newcastle Workhouse and vagrants ward, ranging from assault and vandalism to being drunk or tearing up clothes. The workhouse was a distressing and frustrating place but the response to misbehaviour was extremely harsh and often resulted in a prison sentence.
Newcastle Workhouse was opened in 1839 on the site of the current General Hospital. The idea at the time was that those in poverty could be ‘punished’ out of ‘idleness’. For able-bodied people in poverty their only option was to leave their home and enter the workhouse where conditions were intentionally brutal, families were split up and inmates had to work at menial tasks like stone-breaking. For people already homeless a ‘vagrants ward’ was set up in which conditions were even worse.
We found this book at Tyne and Wear Archives (reference number PU.NC/4/6/1)
The ‘vagrants wards’ continued to be used under the name of ‘reception centres’ right up until 1985. In the below article from the Newcastle Journal (6 October 1949) a reporter claims to have gone undercover to find out what life was like in the reception centres. The piece is full of the stereotypes and biases of the time.
