Chapter 17

Cockermouth Poor Law Union & the workhouse

For centuries the poor could find food and perhaps a ‘dole’ of money at the gate of a monastery and in giving such relief the monasteries were helped by the church and the merchant and craft guilds, who felt this an obligation laid upon them. By Tudor times the numbers needing help had become too great to be assisted in this way and gradually a proper system of poor relief, based upon compulsory rates, was evolved – the first such system in Europe.

There were a number of stages in this development. A compulsory poor rate was first introduced in 1572 and acts of 1598 and 1601 ordered the appointment by Justices of the Peace of overseers of the poor in every parish. They had to provide work for the poor and have “a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron and other stuff to set the poor to work“. Various measures during the 17th century were not very effective and in 1691 control was given to vestries and J.P.s, appointed overseers being empowered in 1723 to establish workhouses and to contract for the employment of the inmates, outdoor relief being prohibited. [1]

In consequence of this statute, we find the Cockermouth ministers and churchwardens meeting in 1746 to select a site for a workhouse, eventually choosing’

• “a certain house and dy houses of the property of Joseph Wain, Elizabeth Wain and Ann Wain, Widdow, … The premises to be conveyed to the minister, overseers, and Churchwardens, and their successors in trust.”[2]

See p81 Fig.41. Front elevation of the 18th-century poor house (based on an early 19th-century drawing).

This property was in Skinner Street, on the bank of Tom Rudd Beck, and the workhouse became known as ‘Three Brigs Hall’ from the three bridges close by. It was demolished in the early 1970s (Fig. 41).

In 1794 articles of agreement [3] were covenanted between John Simpson, Joseph Birkbeck and Thomas Hodgson, churchwardens, and Joseph Bowman, lames Williamson and Isaac Whitelock, overseers of the poor, on the one hand, and Joseph Smithson, weaver, Jno. Stoddart, manufacturer, and Robert Smithson, waller, all of Cockermouth, on the other, under which the last three should provide from the money allowed them for the maintenance of the poor in the poorhouse

• “sufficient meat drink washing, lodging, clean and wholesome clothes and wearing apparel, bed and bedding, Physick Medicine” and should “employ an experienced surgeon and apothecary” when necessary.

The agreement ran to eight large pages. The weekly amount allowed per person for all the above was Is-8d. [8p] The job of poor house master was no easy task. One Vestry minute declares

• “Hugh Cowperthwaite master of Poorhouse vindicated of a great many scandalous expressions thrown out against him.”

In 1800 the Vestry was again called to consider

• “the very alarming and enormous expense of the poor and to fix on some plan for meleorating the condition of the poor as well as lessening the expense thereof …. .It is therefore resolved to discontinue all house rents, all out pensioners and none allowed again unless by three directors. To take account of the workhouse master and to discontinue him. To find the paupers work and not to let them wander about the Town as heretofore …. “

The condition of the poor was very bad following the Napoleonic Wars, especially in farming communities, so prominent in the life of Cockermouth. There was increasingly frequent reference to the increase in the cost of looking after them. On 24 July 1816

• “At a Vestry held this day for taking into consideration the reliefof the numerous poor making application for relief owing to the reduced price of wages, it was resolved that a meeting be held in the Moot Hall to hear applications by those persons seeking relief.”

Earlier, in 1795, the Vestry had stopped assisting wages, but the practice had apparently developed again. We have already seen how enclosures and new road works provided some work and relief at this time.

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 divided the country’s 15,000 parishes into about 600 unions with elected boards of guardians. the whole under three Poor Law Commissioners. Cumberland was divided into nine unions – Alston, Bootle, Brampton, Carlisle, Cockermouth, Longtown, Penrith, Whitehaven and Wigton.[4] The Cockermouth Union, containing 50 townships, had four sub-districts – Cockermouth, Keswick, Maryport and Workington – and its boundaries were similar to those of the later rural district The Board of Guardians, elected by the ratepayers, replaced the Justices of the Peace in affairs relating to the poor. The Act aimed to reduce the number of persistent paupers living on relief and at the same time to diminish the burden of the rates, and it did in effect reduce the national poor rate by a half.

A writer of the early 19th century says of Cockermouth

• “I would rather travel about and ask here and there for a penny, and lead a life of liberty, and breathe the fresh air of Heaven, than trust to the tender mercies of the master of the workhouse. It would be to me a far greater trial to be cooped up in a poor, miserable dwelling like Darwinside (his name for Cockermouth) workhouse, in that narrow, dirty street, than to go about and ask alms.” [5]

A Vestry meeting in 1828, before the new act, considered selling the workhouse and field and erecting a new one on land belonging to the town on Kirkgate Common near The Towers”, which had been recently built. George Cape was to prepare the plan and specification and a committee was formed to sell the old building and ascertain the cost of the new one. The formation of the Cockermouth Union resulted in the building of the new workhouse in Gallowbarrow in 1840-3, with the first part opened in June 1841. The basic cost was £4,000 but a further £500 was spent on improvements and £600 on an east wing and fever hospital addition in 1847. [6] The total number of indoor and outdoor paupers given relief in the quarter ending March 1846 was 1475, excluding 826 children whose parents claimed. Most of the outdoor relief would be to the aged or infirm, in accordance with the new act.

Fig. 42. The 19th.century workhouse and Fairfield School from Fairfield (from a photograph in Cousin Charley’s Magazine, November 1899).

The average number of inmates during 1846-7 was about 230 and Mannix and Whellan wrote

• “The classification of paupers here is admirable, and it is one of the most complete and best conducted workhouses in the north of England.”

Numbers rose to 260 by 1883 – 72 men, 70 women and 118 children, but fell to 139 in 1891. Of poorhouses in general G. E. Mingay writes

• “The union workhouse was a grim establishment, where the comfort and diet were of the sparsest and the discipline of the harshest. Strict rules, enforced by the ex-sergeant-majors who were often appointed to the post of workhouse master, prohibited the mixing of the sexes and enjoined silence at meal times. Families entering the workhouse were broken up, and the men put to the hard, dusty and humiliating work of breaking stones for the roads or crushing bones to make bone meal for the farmers. The prime object was to discourage pauperism.”

Mingay goes on to say that it was difficult to make life in the workhouse worse than in the lowest paid work outside and many guardians were too humane or too afraid of the consequences to enforce very bad conditions. A side effect in rural areas was that farmers tried to take on extra men to keep them out of the workhouse and so prevent rates increases. Outdoor relief persisted in help with rent or fuel to widows, even when otherwise banned. Towards the middle of the century the railway boom was a help, first in employing an average of 100,000 over the country for 20 years in laying track and then in providing more permanent employment as railway staff 65,000 in 1851, rising to 174,000 by 1881.[7] Cockermouth’s railways opened in 1847 and 1865 and there were several lines built to the west of the town in the latter half of the century. Economy appears to have been a matter of pride in Cockermouth. We have mentioned some meetings concerned with expenses and further objections about the cost of the poor in the town led to another one in 1835 for the purpose of

• “deciding on the propriety of reducing the expenses of the workhouse establishment by appointing another person in the room of the present assistant-overseer with a less salary and who may have a less family. It is resolved that the present assistant-overseer shall retain his situation at his present salary.”

Another attempt to save money was made by the overseers when in 1839 they decided to collect the rates themselves. The effort was not a success and after a year they agreed to revert to the previous method and appointed Archibald Brown as assistant overseer to collect the rates, at an annual salary of £25 plus all reasonable expenses when called away from home on the business of the town. [8]

Money was saved in the actual running costs of the workhouse. After the West Cumberland Times first appeared in 1874 it becomes easy to follow the workhouse numbers and expenses and one can sense a feeling of satisfaction that Cockermouth’s expenditure was low compared with most of the county. In the half year ending 25th March 1875 Cockermouth’s weekly average of 3s 2Y4d, [16p] per person was less than any other union in the district except White haven, which managed on 2s-5d. Wigton spent 4s-ld. and Bootle was as high as 4s-8d. -still low compared with the 5s 11 Y4d. of Saddleworth on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border. Cockermouth’s figure was made up of 2s 2Y4d. per person on provisions, 4Yzd. on clothing and 7Y4d. on coals, soap, cleaning materials, etc. The total was 3d. less than for the same period in the previous year. [9]

The average cost of relief given both indoor and outdoor at Cockermouth was in 1876 2s-61f4d., the lowest of the seven unions in the county, which averaged 2s-1 Od. with 3s-7d. the highest figure. [10] The salaries at this time of the workhouse master and matron, husband and wife appointments, were £70 and £40 per year and those of the schoolmaster and schoolmistress £35 and £20, towards which the government granted £30-2s. and £12 respectively. A new porter and tailor was appointed in 1874 at a yearly salary of £25. [11]

• “The union workhouse was a grim establishment, where the comfort and diet were of the sparsest and the discipline of the harshest. Strict rules, enforced by the ex-sergeant-majors who were often appointed to the post of workhouse master, prohibited the mixing of the sexes and enjoined silence at meal times. Families entering the workhouse were broken up, and the men put to the hard, dusty and humiliating work of breaking stones for the roads or crushing bones to make bone meal for the farmers. The prime object was to discourage pauperism.”

Mingay goes on to say that it was difficult to make life in the workhouse worse than in the lowest paid work outside and many guardians were too humane or too afraid of the consequences to enforce very bad conditions. A side effect in rural areas was that farmers tried to take on extra men to keep them out of the workhouse and so prevent rates increases. Outdoor relief persisted in help with rent or fuel to widows, even when otherwise banned. Towards the middle of the century the railway boom was a help, first in employing an average of 100,000 over the country for 20 years in laying track and then in providing more permanent employment as railway staff 65,000 in 1851, rising to 174,000 by 1881.[7] Cockermouth’s railways opened in 1847 and 1865 and there were several lines built to the west of the town in the latter half of the century. Economy appears to have been a matter of pride in Cockermouth. We have mentioned some meetings concerned with expenses and further objections about the cost of the poor in the town led to another one in 1835 for the purpose of

• “deciding on the propriety of reducing the expenses of the workhouse establishment by appointing another person in the room of the present assistant-overseer with a less salary and who may have a less family. It is resolved that the present assistant-overseer shall retain his situation at his present salary.”

Another attempt to save money was made by the overseers when in 1839 they decided to collect the rates themselves. The effort was not a success and after a year they agreed to revert to the previous method and appointed Archibald Brown as assistant overseer to collect the rates, at an annual salary of £25 plus all reasonable expenses when called away from home on the business of the town. [8]

Money was saved in the actual running costs of the workhouse. After the West Cumberland Times first appeared in 1874 it becomes easy to follow the workhouse numbers and expenses and one can sense a feeling of satisfaction that Cockermouth’s expenditure was low compared with most of the county. In the half year ending 25th March 1875 Cockermouth’s weekly average of 3s 2’i4d, [16p] per person was less than any other union in the district except Whitehaven, which managed on 2s-5d. Wigton spent 4s-1d. and Bootle was as high as 4s-8d. – still low compared with the 5s 11 ‘i4d. of Saddleworth on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border. Cockermouth’s figure was made up of 2s 2¼d. per person on provisions, 4 ½ d. on clothing and 7 ¼ d. on coals, soap, cleaning materials, etc. The total was 3d. less than for the same period in the previous year. [9]

The average cost of relief given both indoor and outdoor at Cockermouth was in 1876 2s-6 ¼ d, the lowest of the seven unions in the county, which averaged 2s-10d with 3s-7d the highest figure. [10]

The salaries at this time of the workhouse master and matron, husband and wife appointments, were £70 and £40 per year and those of the schoolmaster and schoolmistress £35 and £20, towards which the government granted £30-2s. and £12 respectively. A new porter and tailor was appointed in 1874 at a yearly salary of £25. [11]

The nation-wide attitude to workhouse children was to get rid of them as soon as possible, by placing them in apprenticeship, sending them to the colonies (often without the parents’ consent), etc. Cockermouth boys would sail to a new life from Whitehaven. In some areas waifs and strays were put out to tender, to find work in weaving sheds, etc., sometimes when as young as six years. The articles of agreement mentioned above, dated 1794, enjoined the three men responsible to ensure that

• “the Poor Children which shall be in the sd. Poorhouse are taught to read English and their Catechism as far as their capacities will admit and to Work as far as their Ability will Extend in a Sufft. Manner for their Instruction and Benefit…. And in case any of the sd. Poor Children shall be put or placed out Apprentices by the sd. Churchwardens and Overseers or their successors during the sd. Term that the sd. Jos. Smithson, Jno. Stoddart and Robt. Smithson or some or one of them .. shall and will at his or their own Expense give to each of such Children such Change of Clothes as has usually been given or allowed on such occasion.”[12]

In March 1887 the workhouse schools at Flimby were opened for 80 boys and girls and the schoolmaster and schoolmistress moved there with the children.[13] This may account for the fall in numbers in Cockermouth workhouse between 1883 and 1891. Later Petworth House, nos 1 and 3 Henry Street, was bought as a children’s home, replacing the use of Flimby for boys in 1929.[14] Some children were boarded out and one report to the Board of Guardians on 21 such children stated

• “The children were found in a satisfactory condition. The foster parents were much attached to the children, and none of the children were willing to return to the workhouse, nor were their foster parents willing to part with them. “[15]

The medical officer’s report in 1874 deplored the fact that there was no accommodation for sick children separate from the adults and that the only nursing care given to the sick was provided by other inmates, mostly aged or infirm. In reply the chairman of the Board of Guardians said he had never seen the necessity of having paid nurses in this department and their medical officer always reported insufficient nurses. One Board member rudely added that men who were well paid and had nothing to do always liked to make some suggestion, after which the subject was dropped! The medical officer did gain something by his persistent efforts, for it was decided to convert two rooms of the fever ward in the workhouse into accommodation for sick children at a cost of £5 for the necessary alterations, but he made no progress regarding the nursing. [17] In 1903 a Local Government Inspector reported on what he found in Cockermouth. One nurse had to cope with 62 patients in the sick wards by day and one by night. The next worst authority was West Derby with 1 to 29 and the best provided 1 to 7. Ideally Cockermouth should have had a superintendent nurse and four assistant nurses. He did not blame the new master and matron, who were doing their best, but he told the Guardians that ‘Cockermouth stands absolutely alone” and accused them of being morally and legally responsible for patients dying earlier than they need. One point in favour of the Board was their reaction to a suggestion in 1874 by the Wycombe Guardians that a petition be submitted to Parliament for it to be made compulsory for workhouse children of 10 to 12 years to do farm work during the day and in the evening attend school “under a properly certificated teacher and subject to the same compulsory clauses as day scholars”. This the Board refused to support, maintaining that agricultural work was hard and such a scheme would be too much for the children. [18]

The town felt a responsibility towards the workhouse people and organised events to raise money for outings and Christmas treats and groups gave entertainments in the workhouse itself. To take two examples from 120 years ago, – in June 1875 the annual trip to Maryport took place, organised by the Popular Entertainment Society. The workhouse people were given dinner in the Maryport market hall; spent the afternoon on the shore, the pier and inspecting the lifeboat; and finished with tea and dancing in Netherhall Park. The same society visited the workhouse to entertain the residents and gave them delicacies, tobacco and snuff. The second example – a trip to Workington of 12 boys, 10 girls and a teacher to the band contest. These are not isolated instances, a number of treats and outings taking place each year. The press report of th!? Christmas of 1877 reads:

• “The inmates of the workhouse had their customary Christmas dinner of roast beef and plum pudding. Mrs. Watson, of the City and District Bank, also treated the old women lodged in the sick wards to a quarter of a pound of tea and a pound of sugar each; and Miss Benson, of St. Helens, sent tea and sugar to all the other old women who are inmates of the house. The Rev. W. Williams, vicar of Christ Church, who is chaplain to the workhouse, gave snuff and tobacco to those of the old inmates who use these articles. To the children he also presented oranges, and Mr. J. B. Banks furnished them with a supply of marbles.” [19]

To take one later example, in 1927 the Huntsman Lodge of the Rechabites, with the help of voluntary gifts, took 60 aged residents to Silloth, where they were given tea and each a shilling to spend. [20]

Workhouse statistics reflected events – decreasing outdoor relief signalled the approach of summer and outdoor relief figures for the Union of £34,000, £84,000 and £46,000 in successive years resulted from the coal strike of the mid-1920s.

Towards the end of the Union’s existence the change in meetings from fortnightly to monthly showed its work was less needed. Old age pensions were introduced in 1908, a first step towards reducing the number of elderly people in the workhouses. As far back as 1909 a commission suggested the end of the Poor Law system and of workhouses, replacing them with unemployment insurance, a social services system and a national health scheme. Unemployment benefits and health insurance came in t911, but Poor relief continued alongside these and later developments. Then in 1929 Poor Law Unions and Boards of Guardians were abolished, Cockermouth’s responsibilities passing to the County CounciL The ‘overseers of the poor’ officially vanished after more than 300 years. The National Health Service Act came in t946 and in 1948 the National Assistance Act removed the last traces of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act.

Before turning to the last days of the Gallowbarrow building there is one further aspect of life there to be considered – the insane. To quote a report of one of the Commissioners in Lunacy who visited the workhouse on 18 February 1874

• “The males and females respectively on the insane list are now thirteen and ten, altogether 23. These I have spoken to. They are in charge of paupers who receive extra rations. The imbeciles are tolerably clean and fairly well dressed. Elizabeth Ritson, referred to by my colleague at last visit, has been discharged. His recommendation as to the removal of partitions in the dormitories has been complied with and these rooms are now more commodious. The beds also are now supplied with two sheets, but they are not changed it seems more often than once in three weeks. I think they should be changed more frequently. Some improvements have been effected in the women’s bathroom, … but blinds are wanting at the windows. All sleep on straw and have straw pillows …. Means of amusement were most scanty in the day rooms. A few do domestic work, pick oakum, and beat sand, and one makes himself useful as a shoemaker.” [21]

A month later it was reported to the Guardians that the blind was fixed; sheets were to be changed once a fortnight; and a draughtboard and other small games had been supplied. [22] Two months later it was mentioned that there were illustrated weekly papers and dominoes provided and the Guardians agreed to the inmates having caged birds and to normal residents being allowed to talk to the insane members.[23]

A visit at the end of the next year (December 1875) showed that the lot of the 11 insane men and 11 women at that time could still be improved. The men’s clothes were reported as worn and ragged, although the women’s were better, and several residents were pale and thin, to remedy which malt liquor was suggested. Beds and rooms were in a proper state, but one man was in a stone-floored cell because of his dirty habits and the matron promised to look into his case. They were all bathed once a week, but the same water was used for four or five and it was suggested that it be changed more often. All the cases were quiet and not likely to benefit by asylum treatment, though some were dirty and destructive – and there was no paid nurse. [24]

We have travelled a long way to the present methods of general hospital psychiatric departments and of Dovenby Hall, bought for conversion to a mental hospital in 1930. Developments regarding the workhouse building followed the formation by the County Council of the Mid-Cumberland Area Guardian Committee, an area including Workington Borough, Cockermouth, Maryport and Keswick Urban Districts, and Cockermouth and Wigton Rural Districts.[25] In May 1933 the Committee proposed selling the Cockermouth workhouse or Poor Law Institution, to give it the proper title. There were objections from Cockermouth and Keswick Councils that there was no other institution near, but it was closed and advertised for sale in August 1935, and again advertised unsuccessfully 14 months later. [26] .

During the war the still vacant building was used by the Royal Army Service Corps and then in the late summer of 1949 demolition of the unwanted premises began. The Institution Bell, which came from the forecastle of the wooden frigate ‘Lord Etdon of Sunderland’, grounded at Allonby after a fire, found a home in the Council Hall in Grecian Villa, and is now in Wordsworth House. [27] The orchard had by now been plundered and the lead on the buildings had gone, but the timber was reported in excellent condition by the demolition contractor, J. B. Mossop of Whitehaven. Some of the walls were found to be almost a yard thick. Still in good condition in the entrance and dining hall were mural paintings, presumed to have been done by a resident, of Cockermouth Castle, Cockermouth Viaduct, Cockermouth Castle Gateway, Friar’s Crag, etc.[28]

So disappeared, with few regrets, a feature which had been part of the Cockermouth landscape and the town’s life for over a hundred years.