Paupers' Brave New World

In the 1840s, the government began sparing Britain’s most deprived children the Dickensian hell of the workhouse and placing them in schools that promised good food, healthcare and an education. But did the reality live up to the ideal?

- Lesley Hulonce

A life of grime Children in Twine Court, east London in the 19th century. “The authorities feared that the ingrained immorality of the workhouse would turn child paupers into prostitutes and criminals,” says Lesley Hulonce

It’s one of the most enduring scenes in all of 19th-century literature. The pauper Oliver Twist – nine years old, orphaned and consigned to the workhouse – approaches the pompous parish beadle Mr Bumble and begs him for an extra helping of gruel.” “Please, sir,” he pleads. “I want some more.”

Thanks to his pitiless response, Mr Bumble has secured himself a place in literary infamy. Yet so too has the institution in which Oliver uttered his famous request: the workhouse.

By charting Oliver Twist’s travails, his creator, Charles Dickens, perhaps did more than anyone to highlight the neglect and crippling hunger that faced so many children consigned to Britain’s workhouses. And, by the time Dickens wrote his famous novel in the late 1830s, this fate awaited more and more real-life Olivers.

Workhouses had offered accommodation and employment to those too poor to support themselves since the 17th century. But in 1834, the government, eager to slash spending on the rising number of paupers, passed the Poor Law Amendment Act, declaring that poor relief would now only be offered in the workhouse. And so that was the destination for hundreds of deprived children – those, for example, deserted by their parents, or who had been orphaned at birth.