The Workhouse System 1834-1929: The History of an English Social Institution

First published in 1981. Professor Crowther traces the history of the workhouse system from the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 to the Local Government Act of 1929.

At their outset the large residential institutions were seen by the Poor Law Commissioners as a cure for nearly all social ills. In fact these formidable, impersonal, prison-like buildings – housing all paupers under one roof – became institutionalised: places where routine came to be an end in itself. In the early twentieth cent...