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Birmingham Workhouse Dudley Road Western Road opened 1852

Was the workhouse in Western Road the only one in central Birmingham or were there others? Where was Western Road anyway?

Chris
 
Western Rd was just by Dudley Rd Hospital.........Reply in full a bit later
 
I can recall my Nan back in the early 1950s getting very adjitated when taken ill and being told she would have to go in to Dudley Road, she thought they ment Western Road, at the time I did not know what the relationship was with regards to the use that Western Road had been put in days of old.
Such stigma.
ASTON
 
Not sure when the Workhouse at Western Road closed but the building was still standing in the late 90's, the regime was prison like and was a vile system, but it saved people from starving (like prison)
The "Well Off" in the society of the time regarded people who were poor and could not support themselves as work shy............. poverty should be punished.
So really workhouses were places of punishment to stop people from asking for charity and to change the attitude of the poor asking for help.
In a time when their was no "State Aid" people literary starved to death unless they took to crime or got some kind of help. Charities and other organizations like Guardians of the Poor did a lot of good if someone's husband died and a women was left with 6 or 7 children they got help.........but if you did not quickly get back on you feet the help was withdrawn and you were sent to the workhouse...........
Whole families were sent to Western Road....... guards would meet them at the gate and that is were the heartbreak started.... Children were torn from their mothers arms.. all were stripped.. washed and given uniforms......the father went down one corridor the wife down another and the children separated ......the family was completely broken up and all made to work......to pay for their food and lodgings......if they did not they were beaten......husbands and wives were allowed to meet once a week only under close supervision (to stop anymore children from being born)........and the only way you could get out was to show that you could support yourself and your family........to some it was a life sentence and they died in the workhouse and when they died were buried in a paupers grave.
One of the things not talked about was the way that a man who had just lost his wife could go to the workhouse and pick out someone he needed to be his housekeeper or look after his kid's........My uncle did just that and they spent the rest of their lives together after getting married......
Employer's could also do the same...........
 
That's awful Crom. I could weep at the knowledge that my g-g-grandfather died there.

:'(
 
prior to the national health service some people who ill were taken to the workhouse infirmary for treatment, my great grandfather died in Weston road workhouse, he was in work at the time as a pearl button maker. His family lived in Clifford street and is wife who was a witness to is death still had a large family living at home, some of the sons and daughters were in full employment, so they were not destitute.
a fact Charlie Chaplin's early life was spent in the workhouse
summary not all people who died in the workhouse were out of work or in the need of shelter.
 
Why where they their then John, it was not a hotel , the infirmary was a hospital in later years
Old Chinny says Western rd was worse than Winson Green Prison
Pic shows Western Rd (from Chinny's Video)
 
AS I SAID IN MY REPY 34, MY NAN WAS PETRIFIED TO THINK SHE MY HAVE TO GO ITO WESTERN ROAD, IT HAD SUCH A NAME FROM THE OLD DAYS.
 
Maybe it's just the onsite infirmiry being used as a hospital for the poor prior to NHS, if you get my drift both?

From the pictures it resembles a prison?
 
I don't think I infered it was an Hotel.
check out the address on my great grandathers death certificate
 
My own aunt and her sister's never knew (Or would admit) that she was born in 'The Workhouse' in Tranmere.

My Mom and her eldest sister knew they had been put in what they called an orphanage for a while, when my Mom was about three and my eldest aunt about nine.

However I found out it was in fact The Workhouse at 56 Church Rd Tranmere, which in 1922 when my aunt was born was still a workhouse, it is now St Catherine's Hospital.

My Grandad had died earlier in my Nan's pregnancy in London, the family were then sent (By the powers that be! The Guardians of the Poor) up to Birkenhead to where Grandad was born (This was also common as an economic measure for each area, to send families who moved in to an area back to the place of birth of the Father). As they had nowhere to live up there and Nan couldn't work because of her condition. In those days pregnant woman without an husband were often turned away by employers and even landlords. So till she had had the baby and found somewhere for them all to live and could prove she was able to support the family on her own, it was the only place for them to go. Nan was separated form her two younger daughters while in there, as it was viewed as unseemly for pregnant women to mix with other inmates even their own children.

Even though my Mom was very young she never forgot the experience of, how she put it "Being put away".  
 
this is the 1881 census note the data
Institution: "Parish Of Birmingham Workhouse"Western Road
Census Place: Birmingham, Warwick, England
Source: FHL Film 1341719 PRO Ref RG11 Piece 3011 Folio 46 Page 1
Marr Age Sex Birthplace
Adam B. SIMPSON U 45 M Ireland
Rel: Officer
Occ: Head Surgeon L.R.C.S. L.A.H
Charles Joseph C. MITCHELL U 30 M Kempston, Bedford, England
Rel: Officer
Occ: Asst Surgeon M.R.C.S L.S.H.M
Alexander C. SUFFERN U 23 M Ireland
Rel: Officer
Occ: Asst Surgeon M.D M.C.L.M
Henry FINCHAM U 28 M Colchester, Essex, England
Rel: Officer
Occ: Asst Master Of Workhouse (Mun)
Anne CLUES U 59 F Birmingham, Warwick, England
Rel: Officer
Occ: Asst Matron Of Workhouse
Frederick R. BEELEY U 29 M Newton, Cheshire, England
Rel: Officer
Occ: Storekeeper (Mun)
Kate NICHOLSON U 29 F York, York, England
Rel: Officer
Occ: Superintendant Of Nurses(M)
 
:angel: From Post #13 on this thread:
Strange how life can be ... One side of my family ran a "Workhouse" in Cheshire in the 1880's and another side of my family in the 1920's were living in one for a short while also in Cheshire.
Click to expand...

And now from what John H has just posted, my family were also involved in running Western Rd as well as the one in Cheshire too.

Thanx another piece of my family puzzle found that I knew nothing about. O0
 
The original workhouse was built in 1733 in Lichfield Street round about were the Victoria Law Courts are today.The Picture shown in Reply 3 the wing on the left (built 1766)was the Infirmary and the wing on the right (built 1779)was a place for labour,both of the wings built at a later date.
Hutton wrote "The stranger would rather suppose it was the residence of a gentleman than of Six Hundred paupers"
This was knocked down when the new workhouse was built at Western Rd (Dudley Rd) in 1852 in 1889 the Infirmary was built.
Marston Green Orphanage was part of the Birmingham Workhouse and opened in 1880 which could house 466 children drafted from the Birmingham Workhouse, the boys learnt a trade and the girls household work. It was erected by the Birmingham Board of Guardians which ran the Workhouse till 1929 were it was transferred to the local authority and transferred to Regional Hospital in 1946
 
I wonder if my great great grandad was just taken to the workhouse because he was ill, I was so upset when I received his death certificate I could imagine him dying in poor conditions. But on the certificate there is also the address 6 Wharton street so perhaps he didn't die poor I hope not anyway.
 
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The surprising thing about a lot of the inmates shown on the census is that they were skilled tradesmen, but no doubt poorly paid and living "hand to mouth" thus when illness or crisis hit the family they ended up in the dreaded workhouse.
 
I have got the will of his wife susannh broomfield and she left a business called hucksters & grocers 22 whartons street plus £303:13:9 and I think that was quite a bit of money in 1928, so I am a little puzzled as to how my great great grandad died in the workhouse, I suppose some things we will never know.
 
Poor Law Legislation dates from as long ago as 1388, and in 1562 the first compulsory assessment of property for the relief of the poor was enforced by enactment. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1601) an Act was passed which may be taken as the real beginning of the Poor Law, This Act laid down the principle that every destitute person should be either relieved or provided with work. It was from the operation of this Act that the idea of workhouses germinated, and in 1624, workhouses, as then understood, were first established. Following a report of a Royal Commission appointed in 1833, the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 was passed. This Act provided:
(1) For the constitution of a Central Body (now the Ministry of Health).
(2) For the formation of Unions by grouping of Parishes.
(3) For the relief of able-bodied persons in workhouses only.
Although subsequently amended and supplemented, this Act is, with the Act of 1601 the foundation of the present Law system.
Workhouses were primarily the only means by which anyone could receive indoor relief. Whatever the age of the applicant or the cause of the application there was but one institution - the workhouse.
By separate stages, different accommodation was provided for selected classes. For instance, the separation of the children from the bulk of the indoor population was imminently called for, and so arose the Cottage Homes of the Poor Law. Then came the setting aside of separate wards for the treatment of the infirm and sick, the provision of separate blocks for the sick, and ultimately came the Poor Law Hospitals which were such an asset in dealing with the acute sick. At a still later stage-but in a comparatively few instances-came the establishment of colonies, in which the mentally defective could be segregated. But all these changes, with the consequent removal of cases from the "Houses" (the modern term for Workhouses), still left the bulk of indoor poor to be dealt with therein, and they still retain their important place in the chain of Public Assistance.
For more than one hundred years prior to the 1st April, 1930, the Guardians of the Poor were responsible for the administration of Public Assistance to the destitute poor, but by the operation of the Local Government Act, 1929,these functions were transferred to County and County Borough Councils. From that date, the Birmingham City Council became responsible for the maintenance, in institutions, of approximately 8,000 persons and for the domiciliary relief of upwards of 15,000 persons.
In the 1930's the Birmingham Public Assistance Committee consists of forty-eight members (thirty-two being members of the Council and sixteen being additional or co-opted members) and is responsible for the administration of two general or mixed Institutions (known in a different era as "Workhouses"). In addition the Committee was charged with the responsibility of administering two large Homes for aged and infirm men and one Home for aged and infirm women. The Public Assistance Committee was also entrusted with the administration of domiciliary relief, which in itself was a weighty responsibility, the relief of vagrants and the migration of suitable persons.
This Institution the old Birmingham Workhouse, which was opened in 1852. Large sums had been spent on modernizing the Institution and accommodation was provided for the able-bodied, aged and infirm, bedridden, venereal and cutaneous cases, and nursery children. The accommodation at the Institution, providing 1,929 beds was at times taxed to its utmost and for some time the Committee continued the arrangements found necessary by the former Guardians of-boarding out certain classes of cases at Institutions belonging to other Authorities. By reason of the extensions at Quinton Hall, however, The type of patient admitted to the Birmingham Infirmary has undergone a marked change in those years, so much so that its former name "Western House" was considered not the most appropriate, being apt to give a misleading impression to the sick patients and their relatives. The number of beds reserved for sick cases was approximately 1,000, and was increased. It was felt to call an Institution so equipped a "House" was a misnomer, and hence the name was changed to the "Birmingham Infirmary"
The wards for casual poor (vagrants) were comprised in separate buildings within the curtilage of the Infirmary and provide accommodation in cubicles and wards for 98 men, 18 women, and 6 children. The Council was constituent member of the South Midland Joint Vagrancy Committee, was a combination of two County Councils (Warwickshire and Worcestershire) and four County Borough Councils (Birmingham, Coventry, Smethwick and Worcester). These Authorities were combined for the purpose of the better administration of the relief of vagrants within the combined area.
(took from a Government report in the 30's)
 
Thanks for such an in depth explanation, I am learning more and more through this website thanks to all of you lovely brainy people, before I joined here I thought my great great grandad died poor in the workhouse but thanks to all of you I now know he owed a shop and only went to the workhouse for treatment but unfortunatly died, then his wife took over the shop. I only joined to find out about where my ancestors came from but I have learnt so much more. THANK YOU.
 
Yes thanks for that, Crom. My great-grandfather was a skilled worker but died in a workhouse in 1907, although he had family, i.e. his son etc also living in Birmingham more or less a matter of yards away.

Chris
 
An interesting article which appeared in the Birmingham Daily Post Just after the New Infirmary opened which makes good reading and a better understanding ….
About New Infirmary is graphically described. The writer says: — There is only one way, officially speaking, into the infirmary, and that way lies through the workhouse gate, for it is only as an adjunct to the workhouse that the infirmary is recognised by the Poor Law. A patient who is not an inmate of the older institution must be seen by the workhouse doctor, and formally relegated by him to the infirmary. Then the ambulance is despatched along the infirmary drive and stops under the archway of the receiving-house, which stands on the boundary between the grounds of the two establishments. At the receiving-house the patients exchange their own clothes for those which the Infirmary Committee provides, and, after a medical examination, are allocated according to their ailments to the different wards in the main building. The clothing taken from the patient is carefully disinfected and stored to await the owner's discharge from the institution. Of course, in urgent cases the reception of the patient is much less formal, but in all cases every possible precaution against the importation of infection is observed. Persons suffering from smallpox, scarlet fever, and similar complaints are not allowed to pass the receiving-house, but are sent on to the City Infectious Hospital; while those afflicted with contagious diseases, such as erysipelas, ophthalmia, and the minor infectious diseases, such as measles, are transferred at once to wards in a detached building in the infirmary grounds. Midwifery cases also are treated in a special building. In a doubtful case the patient remains at the receiving-house pending the development of distinctive symptoms. The receiving wards of the infirmary proper are on the ground floor of the building. They comprise two male and two female medical wards, two male surgical wards, one female surgical ward, and two children's wards. Patients, whose illness is likely to be chronic or of long duration, are drafted to the wards on the upper floors as soon as the acute symptoms have begun to yield to the hospital treatment, The strictly acute cases are dealt with as far as possible in the lower wards. A patient when convalescent may go home or to a convalescent ward in the workhouse. The infirmary is not used for cases of mere senility or chronic insanity; its wards are reserved for those which can be benefited or relieved by medical or surgical attendance and skilled nursing. True, the epileptic patients have been transferred to the care of the infirmary committee, but this involves no change in the locale, the unfortunate inmates of this class still occupying the building provided for them under the old regime.
The staff of the infirmary immediately concerned with the treatment of the patients consists of four resident and two visiting medical officers, and seventy-nine nurses. This does not appear to be an extravagant provision when it is remembered that the-sick population of the institution this week numbers 1,186, and that during last winter it ran up to about 1600. The nursing staff includes seven pupil nurses, each of whom pays a fee of £20, and gives her services for twelve months. The impecunious ratepayer will be glad to know that the number of these fee-paying nurses is increasing, and that it is hoped that before long half the staff will be of this class. This, which would mean an income of about £600 a year from fees and the saving of half the present amount of nurses' salaries, would be a small but gratifying set-off against the sins of extravagance which are laid to the charge of the Infirmary Committee. The nurses all take their turn at night duty, for which about twenty-two are required. Nearly all the remainder are required for day duty, which lasts from seven in the morning till nine in the evening. The nurses, however, are allowed three-quarters of an hour for lunch, an hour for dinner, and two hours for recreation each day, and each has the privilege of going out from four till ten once a week. None of the nurses take their meals in or near the wards, a pleasant messroom being provided on the ground floor of the infirmary and the Nurses' Home, where the matron and her assistants reside, is a distinct building. A very cosy place is this home. Each nurse has a small but comfortably furnished cubicle to herself for a sleeping apartment; there is an elegantly appointed common sitting room, and a thoughtful provision in the shape of a visitors' room is made for the reception of friends of the nurses. The matron and assistant matron of course have private apartments of their own. There is a large staff of male and female attendants for the administrative and domestic work of the infirmary, very little of which is allowed to take up the more valuable time of the nursing staff.
A peep into one or two of the wards is a very pleasant experience. Those who have not Visited the infirmary, and who have heard some of the talk about the expensiveness of the structure, may be surprised to learn that the interior walls consist mostly of plain whitewashed bricks, relieved with a modest dado in colour. Those who have visited the institution probably will have been almost as much surprised to see how cheerful and cosy such a place may be made to look. The plain D-end bedsteads, set off by clean white sheets and bright coverlets, the neat furniture, the polished wood-block floors, and the contented looks of most of the patients the men, whether in bed or sitting up, looking quite picturesque in their piratical red nightcaps, or the women wearing quite unworkhouse-like little white headdresses, and the nurses in their neat uniform form the elements of a scene of comfort which in itself must be refreshing to those accustomed to the sordid homes from which the inmates come. But this is not all. The members of the Kyrle Society have left traces of their visits in the shape of pictures and screens and wall decorations, and some of the nurses have beguiled not only hours of watching for themselves, but for their patients, by similar efforts. The ground-glass of the doors and screens has been utilised in many cases for the painting of transparencies representing birds and flowers; decorated drain-pipes and flower-pots, and other bits of amateur art, are beginning to find their way into unoccupied spaces, and foliage plants, thriving here and there, show the purity of the air in the wards. A children's ward in the Infirmary is a very pretty sight. In the iron cots wisely painted a bright blue or vermilion may be seen some faces betokening privation and patient suffering; others, however, full of the roguish-ness of returning health. One of these wards has been furnished by the Kyrle Society with a frieze of coloured Kate Greenaway pictures, and in. all there is evidence of a loving care quite out of keeping with old-fashioned notions of workhouse nursing. Miss Gibson evidently is an excellent organiser. A spirit of strict but kindly discipline seems to pervade the institution, and order, cleanliness, and cheerfulness reign throughout
The thing that strikes the visitor most is the immense scale on which everything has to be done. There are the kitchens with their immense steam and gas cooking ranges, in which yesterday were prepared three hundredweight of meat, a hundred gallons of gruel, three sacks of potatoes, sixty gallons of tea, besides thirty or forty gallons of beef-tea, and innumerable special items of sick diet. In the steam laundry about 20,000 articles are washed, wrung, and mangled, or ironed all by machinery every week Communication between the different departments is kept up by means of fifteen miles of telephone-wire, and there are twenty-five miles of gas, steam, and hot and cold-water piping. The wards, if placed end to end, would make a passage a mile long and 26ft. wide, and making the tour of the corridors means a walk of a mile and a quarter. The staircases, if placed one above another, would go up 1,000 feet, overtopping the Eiffel Tower, and there is not far short of half a mile in the total length of the open-air bridges which connect the wing's, and which in the summer will form excellent airing places for the patients. At present the patients who can take the air walk or are wheeled about the grounds, which will be very pleasant when the laying-out and planting are completed. The main corridor one of the finest architectural vistas to be seen anywhere would not leave much change out of a quarter of a mile. Under it is a passage of corresponding length, in which all the main supply pipes are suspended, and on either side of which are the boiler-houses calorifers, workshops, and other engineering and mechanical adjuncts necessary to keep so vast an establishment going. Along this passage are wheeled the baskets containing the supplies of food for the patients, to be hoisted by the lifts to the different levels at which the distribution takes place. The lifts are large enough to take a patient up and down on an ambulance or bed. And if a patient, in spite of all that doctors and nurses can do, takes his discharge at once from the infirmary, and from this world of care, his body is removed, without the necessity for shocking the other sufferers, by means of the lift and the underground passage, to the mortuary. This account does not exhaust the wonders and merits of this unique institution, which are shown twice or thrice every week to deputations of guardians and other authorities from distant places. Apart from the financial aspect of the question with which it is not our business in the present article to deal one cannot but feel admiration for the skill of the architect, and Mr Ward has brought more than professional zeal and thought to bear on the work for the administrative power displayed in working the establishment by the superintendent and matron; and, above all for the voluntary and self-denying work of the chairman of the committee, Mr. E. J. Stout, who has watched over the development of the scheme with unremitting care, and who still exercises a close and most efficient supervision over every detail of its management.
 
I am Totally blown away by the ages of these poor folk, starving, penniless, alone, dejected, aged. What a way to live, lets hope that they found some salvation in these homes.
 
Re Birmingham Workhouse

I received this copy of the death certificate for my ggg grandmother Louisa (Priestland) widow of my ggg grandfather William Underhill. It comes at such a surprise though I guessed she may have fallen on bad times, since she and John were living seperately in 1891 she as a domestic servant nurse for a family in Harborne and he living in 9 Greens Building Graham Street occupation Jeweller.
 
Sorry it didn't scan very well but she died in Aston Union Workhouse Erdington Municipal of Natural Decay from Age she was 73 years old.
 
Plan of the entrance to Western Rd workhouse.....as soon as I work out how to put the lot on and still show the detail ...I will
Might have to do it in sections
 
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