work in famine era workhouses

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matthewmacnamara
Posts: 139
Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2011 6:38 pm

work in famine era workhouses

Post by matthewmacnamara » Sun Dec 08, 2013 9:06 pm

Can anyone tell me if inmates of Famine era workhouses in the Clare/Limerick area were compelled to work?
Was the breaking of stones a common form of work in the workhouse?
Were children made work?

mcreed
Posts: 118
Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2008 9:47 am

Re: work in famine era workhouses

Post by mcreed » Mon Dec 09, 2013 11:06 am

Quotes below from a few websites.

It was a rule of the workhouse that everybody had to work. The women did domestic jobs such as cleaning or helping in the kitchen or laundry and looking after the sick. Older inmates were put to work mending clothes and spinning wool. Girls were trained for domestic service. The men broke stones, ground corn, limewashed the interior of the buildings, worked on the workhouse lands and did other manual work. Inmates wore the coarse workhouse uniform.
http://irishworkhousecentre.ie/the-workhouse-story/

Conditions of entry into the workhouse were strict and entry was seen as the very last resort of a destitute person. Once inside the inmates were forced to work, food was poor, and accommodation cold, damp and cramped. A typical day inside the workhouse was to rise at 6am, breakfast at 6.30am, work until 12 noon, lunch break and then work until 6pm. Supper was served at 7pm, with final lights out at 8pm. A roll call was carried out each morning. Meal breaks were in the communal dining room and held in silence.
http://www.abandonedireland.com/Workhouse.html

Women were put to work washing, sewing, mending, cleaning, minding children. In the Ennistymon Union in 1857 the female paupers were engaged in the manufacturing of outfits for 400 inmates ... [Elsewhere] dresses, petticoats, shirts and chemises had to be made for each individual ... the repair and upkeep of inmates' clothes ... the repair of the houses' mattresses ... lace-making, embroidery, crochet, the knitting of stockings and the flowering of muslin.
http://www.scoilnet.ie/womeninhistory/c ... ouses.html

The most common work in the first era or years of these workhouses saw stone breaking being the most common daytime activity. It was called a workhouse and the people had to work for their upkeep. This was the same for Britain and Ireland although conditions were worse in Ireland.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthre ... 2056468257

A workhouse was not a prison. It was not a boarding-house, it was not a boarding-school. It was not a homeless shelter or a work-camp…it was all of these things. And of course, in a workhouse, the main thing you had to do…was work! But what kind of work were you expected to do? The main chores associated with workhouses were the picking of oakum, the breaking of stones and the grinding up of old bones, along with various other jobs. But…why, why, and…why? Mainly just to give the inmates something to do. They were a cheap, disposable form of labour which could be forced to do all the lowest and most menial of jobs which had to be done, but which nobody else but a completely down-on-his-luck pauper would ever do. But what kind of work?
Oakum Picking
All the jobs inside workhouses were incredibly boring. And repetitive. They might also be dangerous, but mostly, they were just boring. Oakum-picking was one of the most boring ever. It is also the most famous of all workhouse jobs. It’s really the stereotypical workhouse job, you might say. Long, boring, pointless…
But what is ‘oakum’ anyway?
Oakum is rope. Or more precisely, rope-fibres. If you were in a workhouse and you were given the task of picking oakum, you were given a hunk of old rope which once belonged to a sailing-ship, and you were told to ‘pick’ it. This meant ripping the rope apart, breaking it down from the cable to the rope to the yarn to thread, right down to the tiny, itsy-bitsy little fibres of hemp! While on the surface, this sounds pretty easy, it gets trickier the smaller you go, since you need to dig your nails into the rope-fibres to pull them apart. Once the rope was all broken down, you were given a new piece to start on.
The picked oakum was collected and then sent to the docks or the harbour. Oakum was a crucial material in shipbuilding in the 18th and 19th centuries; the oakum was hammered into the seams between the planks on ship’s hulls to fill in the gaps. The oakum swelled up when it came in contact with water, and so created a relatively watertight seal.
Stone-breaking
Stone-breaking involved smashing and hitting lumps of rock such as limestone, with sledgehammers and pickaxes. The stones were smashed, pummelled and whacked until they shattered into tiny pieces, each one about the size of a small to medium-sized pebble. The smashed rocks were used in roadbuilding and the smashed rock-fragments were passed through a mesh or a grille in a special storage-room in the workhouse, to determine whether the smashed rocks were of the correct size. If the pebbles didn’t pass through the mesh, they had to be smashed again and again until they did. Stone-breaking was a job performed by male inmates due to the physically demanding nature of the task. Vagrants and wanderers (travellers, in other words) might be forced to do stone-breaking in return for a night’s bed and board at a workhouse, on their journey.
Bone-grinding
Another common workhouse chore was bone-grinding or bone-breaking. Bones, typically from cattle or sheep, were delivered to the workhouse where the inmates smashed them up over and over and ground them up until they were a powdery consistency. The grinding and crushing of the bones was necessary because the ‘bonemeal’ powder was used to manufacture fertilisers for farmers to use on their crops. In one particular workhouse in Andover, England, in 1846, the mishandling of funds and the general brutality of the workhouse master had reduced many of the paupers to sucking the marrow out of the bones that they were supposed to be crushing for fertiliser. The master, a man named M’Dougal, was fired for his treatment of his charges. Bone-crushing was banned as a workhouse chore shortly after the Andover Scandal.
Wood-chopping
Before gas-stoves, before electricity, before central heating, firewood was essential to everyday life. This being the case, it’s probably not surprising that one of the other main jobs in the workhouse was the splitting and chopping of firewood.
http://scheong.wordpress.com/2010/01/31 ... orkhouses/

matthewmacnamara
Posts: 139
Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2011 6:38 pm

Re: work in famine era workhouses

Post by matthewmacnamara » Mon Dec 09, 2013 12:13 pm

Many thanks MCreed for such a comprehensive reply.

My query arose from an item in the Limerick Chronicle of August 1, 1849
reporting a contract by the Limerick Board of Guardians with a John Doherty
'to have the use of his quarry at Ballynanty for quarrying stones for the use of
the workhouse'
I surmised that these pieces of stone were going to be broken up in the Limerick workhouse.
Ballynanty was a townland in the North Liberties of Limerick lying
less than a mile away from the Shelbourne Road Workhouse.

The Limerick Reporter of December 3, 1847 has an item about 'a number of boys
at the Poor House' producing 'broken stones' purchased at the rate of 1 shilling
and 2 pence per ton by Limerick Corporation.

mick o
Posts: 50
Joined: Wed Jan 20, 2010 4:39 pm

Re: work in famine era workhouses

Post by mick o » Mon Dec 09, 2013 12:21 pm

michael oloughlin
hello matthew

a recent book on the Irish famine.
the Irish famine a documentary
author Neil Tobin and diarmaid ferriter.
a very good book and information on the famine in the co Clare area.
regards Michael oloughlin

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