W HISTORY
W
L
L
Catholics go out to chapel at eight every Sunday
morning, and return at ten. Thus, one condition of
entering this workhouse is submission to constant
confinement, except for a few hours every month.”
Whether the inmates of the Clatterbridge Workhouse
were allowed out for the same purpose is not known.
One source of insight into life in the workhouse
comes from the lists of rules under which workhouse
operated. These were often printed and prominently
displayed in the workhouse, and also read out aloud
each week so that illiterate inmates could have no
excuse for disobeying them.
Life inside the workhouse was intended to be as
off-putting as possible. Men, women, children, the
infirm, and the able-bodied were housed separately
and given very basic and monotonous food such as
watery porridge called gruel, or bread and cheese. All
inmates had to wear the rough workhouse uniform
and sleep in communal dormitories. Supervised
baths were given once a week. The able-bodied
were given hard work such as stone-breaking or
picking apart old ropes called oakum. (tarred fibre
used in shipbuilding for caulking or packing the
joints of timbers in wooden vessels and the deck
planking of iron and steel ships. Sometimes inmates
– particularly children – were cruelly treated. It
was uncommon but some people guilty of cruelty
in the workhouses were brought to justice. One
female member of staff in a different workhouse
was sentenced to five years penal servitude for
mistreating workhouse children. She had whipped
them with stinging nettles, forced them to kneel on
the wire netting that covered the hot-water pipes and
deprived them of water for so long that they resorted
to drinking from the toilet bowls.
with their children - perhaps for an hour or so a
week on Sunday afternoon. When the conditions
in Workhouses became publicly known, the laws
supposedly to protect Britain’s poorest citizens were
overhauled.
The 1881 Census recorded that the staff of the
Clatterbridge Workhouse were the Master,
Theophilus Tuck, his wife Olivia the Matron,
Louisa Frith the Schoolmistress, Pheobie Jeffries
the Assistant Schoolmistress, Mary Anne Fallon
the Nurse, and George and Elizabeth Errington,
the Porter and Portress. There was a total of 108
residents, some of whom were described as scholars,
labourers, fishermen, bakers, sailors, weavers, a
tinker, a quarryman, a tinker, a ch