Workhouses

Wolverhampton Union Workhouse, Bilston Road c.1900

Workhouses were built from around 1722 as an alternative to providing outdoor relief for the poor in their own homes. A workhouse master was appointed to administer to the poor with a limited amount of money to spend. As well as paupers, workhouses also took in the sick, lunatics, and pregnant women.

After 1834 parishes were formed into unions, each building at least one workhouse. The regime was deliberately harsh, becoming known as the 'workhouse test'. The sexes were divided once they entered the workhouse and expected to work to earn money for the institution.

Wolverhampton's first workhouse was built in 1700 at Horseley Fields. The building became a temporary barracks after the
New Union Workhouse on the Bilston Road was opened in 1840. For a transcript of the Master's Journal 1842-1845, Click here

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Wolverhampton Union Workhouse buildings (later used by Chubb lockmakers) Illustrated London News, 1870, page 648 (WMO52)

The new building could house approximately 750 people but chronic overcrowding eventually led to the building of a new workhouse at New Cross. This building opened on 24 September 1903 and could accommodate 1,242 inmates. Some of the buildings still remain on the same site, which is now New Cross hospital. Under the Local Government Act of 1929 local authorities were encouraged to take over poor law institutions (as they were known from 1913) as hospitals.

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Wolverhampton Workhouse, Bilston Road 1871