When Workhouses in Nineteenth Century Ireland and Britain Punished the Poor

By Donna Wichelman

Though you may never have read Charles Dickens’ famous 1843 novella A Christmas Carol or seen the movie or theatrical production based on the book, you have no doubt heard the phrase humbug and know about the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge. He was a miserly man of wealth in Victorian England who disparaged anything related to charity or goodwill. So, when two portly gentlemen approach Scrooge, raising funds to help the poor and destitute, Scrooge is not impressed with their desire to provide for the hundreds of thousands “… in want of common comforts …”

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.
“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman.
“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”
“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”
“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I am very glad to hear it.”

In the course of the rest of the dialogue, the gentleman tells Scrooge that those who are told they must go to the workhouses would rather die than be sent there, and Scrooge, in his miserly manner, says they had better do so, as it would decrease the surplus population.

Cover of the Classic Novel

In a recent trip to Kilkenny, Ireland, I had the opportunity to walk the hallways of a former workhouse-turned-shopping-mall. The irony was not lost on me as I contemplated the streams of local holiday shoppers buying up their baubles and toys, and wondered if any of them heard the echoes of extreme depravity that once shuffled through there. Unfortunately, the back-street tours were closed for the Christmas season, but remnants are there if you look for them.

The lid of a Wooden Travel Trunk Displayed at the Shopping Mall: Donna's Gallery, December 2025

Actual Trunk on Display at the Mall: Donna's Gallery, December 2025

A Stop On One of the Back-street Tours: Kilkenny Shopping Mall: Donna's Gallery, December 2025

A Former Courtyard Where Workhouse "Inmates" Would Gather, now an Outdoor Food Court. The Stone Walls of the Workhouse Seen in the Background: Donna's Gallery, December 2025

Why would a pauper say that he'd rather die than be sent to one of the workhouses?

In my historical romance, A Song of Deliverance, my protagonist Anna reflects on her life as a young child in Ireland during the famine years, “possessing only vague, watery impressions of hunger that never ceased to gnaw at her stomach and a dank, dingy workhouse her parents had called the pathway to the dead. As it was, her older brother Ryan died of dysentery in the wretched conditions. The resounding consequences had left Da impoverished in mind and spirit, and Ma picking up the pieces of a broken and fettered man.”

Ireland had been under British rule since the sixteenth century, including the English Poor Laws, a system of poor relief in England and Wales that had developed from late Medieval law (see Wikipedia: English Poor Laws). The idea of the workhouse emerged as early as the fourteenth century, during the Black Death, to address labor shortages. But it wasn’t until much later, and after several iterations of the Poor Laws over the centuries, that the concept of the workhouse took shape.

By the nineteenth century, several factors converged to bring about the English New Poor Law of 1834. The end of the Napoleonic Wars saw mass unemployment, new technologies replaced agricultural workers, and a series of bad harvests brought about an economic decline. This made the old system of poor relief untenable. Thus, the New Poor Law was designed to reverse the economic trend by discouraging the provision of relief to anyone who refused to enter a workhouse. By 1838, the same law had been enacted in Ireland.

Unfortunately, making entering a workhouse compulsory to receive relief spawned unethical practices among owners of for-profit institutions, like using workers as slave labor for back-breaking jobs and putting them in dangerous situations. But one’s refusal to enter the workhouse indicated that he or she could support oneself. Thus, as the potato famine struck Ireland and people were starving, many had little choice but to enter the workhouses.

A common layout of workhouses resembled a prison, with four three-story buildings surrounded by an outer wall and four separate courtyards. The “inmates” were segregated into four distinct groups—the aged and impotent, children, able-bodied males, and able-bodied females, thus separating families from one another. Separating them out this way during the famine would supposedly direct treatment to those who needed it most, prevent the spread of disease (mental and physical), and provide a deterrent from pauperism.

Workhouse Design

Architect Sampson Kempthorne (1809–1873), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In practice, the workhouses were like prisons for the poor, with cold and dank sub-standard living conditions and providing poor-quality food, leaving residents bereft of nutrition and a substantive ability to fight off diseases. Statistics show that most workhouses were ill-equipped to meet the demands placed on them, and one-quarter of all famine mortality occurred within their walls.

Eventually, as the century came to a close, workhouses became places for the elderly and the sick rather than the able-bodied poor. Legislation was passed in 1929, allowing local authorities to convert workhouses into municipal hospitals. But it wasn’t until 1948, with the passage of the National Assistance Act, that the Poor Law finally disappeared and with it the last of the wretched workhouses.

In an excerpt from an article in the Current Archaeology Magazine, The Kilknenny Workhouse Mass Burials: an archaeology of the Irish Potato Famine, April 4, 2013, the author quotes Frenchman Gustave de Beaumont's statement in 1835: I have seen the Indian in his forests, and the Negro in his chains, and thought, as I contemplated their pitiable condition, that I saw the very extreme of human wretchedness; but I did not then know the condition of unfortunate Ireland … In all countries, more or less, paupers may be discovered; but an entire nation of paupers is what was never seen until it was shown in Ireland.’  See the entire article in the Current Archaeology Magazine. 

Donna is an Angel-award-winning author of Historical fiction for A Song of Deliverance. Book Two in the Silver Singing Mine series, Rhythms of the Heart, was released in November 2025. Weaving history and faith into stories of intrigue and redemption grew out of Donna's love of travel, history, and literature as a young adult while attending an international college in Wales, U.K. She enjoys developing plots that show how God's love abounds even in the profoundly difficult circumstances of our lives. Her stories reflect the hunger in all of us for love, belonging, and forgiveness.

Donna was a communications professional before becoming a full-time writer. Her short stories and articles have appeared in inspirational publications. She has two indie-published romantic suspense novels, Light Out of Darkness and Undaunted Valor, in her Waldensian Series. 

Donna and her husband of forty-one years participate in ministry at their local church in Colorado. They love spending time with their grandchildren and bike, kayak, and travel whenever possible.