The dark days when Worcester had a workhouse

Workhouses had been commonplace in Worcester ever since 1703, when an Act of Parliament allowed for the establishment of the first in the old Foregate gate house. By the end of the century, the city had five, one in each of its parishes at the time. The system allowed for a “court” of elected guardians to “thereby administer relief to the poor” and on that basis it had merit.

This wonderful old property stood where St Peter’s  Street met Sidbury with Bladders on the corner. It was demolished in the 1950s

However, it became an ugly world, for mixed up with the flotsam and jetsam of the slums and the streets were the insane. Mental health was not understood and those suffering were sent to the workhouse as there was nowhere else to go.

And so it was that in 1746, when a workhouse was created in St Peter’s parish in Worcester, a man called Strayne, found himself committed there. Condemned as a lunatic, the parish records showed: “Paid for necessaries for Strayne. A man to help chain him, with expenses 3s. Two staples a chain and a lock 8d. Two hopsacks for a bed tick for him 3s 4d. Straw for him 6d.”

St Peter’s Street, Worcester, with its church at the end. Full of character, but long gone

St Peter’s workhouse was set up in an old half-timbered building in St Peter’s Street, a thoroughfare which is changed beyond all measure now.

In those days it formed part of a warren of narrow streets on the south side of Sidbury in the shadow of Worcester Cathedral, the scene of a slum clearance programme in the 20th century.

Today the road is still there, but the houses long gone and it enters Sidbury where Skellerns Motorcycles stands on the junction.

Worcester Union Workhouse on Tallow Hill, now mainly covered by housing

The workhouse existed well into the early 1900s and the aforementioned parish records show the kind of treatment commonplace at the time. In 1739 Leonard Darke was to have “the badche put on his sleeve before the churchwarden relieves him or his wife”. This was a reference to Darke being made to wear a large “P” badge on his arm to show a person in receipt of parish assistance.

Widening of the canal bridge in Sidbury in 1957

There was also reference to a “shotgun marriage” in 1780: “Paid to Ann Williams, examination and oath touching the father of the child 2s. A warrant to apprehend father and expenses of constables and assistants in taking him £1 18s.”

However there was a wedding, presumably between two residents, which was rather more joyous: “Paid for the ring 4s, licence £1 87s, parson, clerk and sexton 8s, for the wedding dinner and drink 11s 6s.”

The rambling complex of Powick Hospital, now covered by housing, which eventually took Worcester’s mentally ill

Worcester’s main workhouse was the Worcester Union Workhouse on Tallow Hill, which was built in 1794 to cater for 200 workers.

Used before but one of my favourite old photos, a neighbourhood shop in Sidbury in 1912

It was later renamed the Worcester Poor Law Institution and eventually the mentally ill patients were transferred to Worcester County Pauper and Lunatic Asylum at Powick, which had opened in 1847. After serving as Shrub Hill Infirmary, the hospital on Tallow Hill became Hillborough home for the aged.

This closed in 1978 and many of the buildings were demolished to be replaced by housing.