Crime City: Manchester's Victorian Underworld (23 page)

The houses that remained after 1851 had to increase their prices to attain the new standards. Those who could not afford the new charges drifted to the casual wards in the workhouse or the refuges operated by charities, where the atmosphere was harsh with discipline and cold, improving air. Yet the great attraction of the lodging house remained: it was so cheap that all but the destitute could afford it. In the 1870s they charged no more than a penny a night and as late as 1900 it was possible to get a bed for 4d.

Not surprisingly many of the meanest lodgings remained no more than doss houses, where the beds were let for the night and residents enjoyed neither comfort nor decency. Usually the charge depended on how many shared a bed. Reliable accounts tell of houses in Manchester where up to six shared a bed. Others slept on the floor – shelter from wind and rain their only comfort. Buckets and a pump in the yard provided the only sanitation. The worst houses were in rookeries and the worst of these in Angel Meadow and Deansgate. There men, women and children slept in the same room. In many, people slept in the corridors. A survey of 1858 classified seventy per cent of them as ‘filthy’ and half of them had neither toilets nor water. The Irish ran many of them together with their linked pubs and brothels. The prostitutes who used them collected their clients in the pub and worked under the protection of the publican.

Germans and other foreigners tended to gather in a few lodgings where they could spend time with their countrymen. By all accounts their houses, and the ones favoured by Italian organ grinders, were far cleaner and altogether better than the norm. When Joseph Johnson, a local journalist, described the horrors of the city’s lodging houses, he excepted the one used by Germans, describing it as clean, homely and ‘full of good-natured foreigners’. The Italian house in Edge Street was also excellent. But these were the exception. Though few of the rest were as good as the workhouse, many of those who could not afford a lodging house refused to go ‘on the parish’. Instead they slept on one of the many brick-fields that littered the outskirts of the city where tramps and destitutes too sodden or broken for anything else lay their heads.

The respectable, however, swallowed their pride and entered the workhouse. In so doing they temporarily abandoned respectability – while keeping it within reach.

The Pauper Palace

‘The rooms are well lighted,’ one reporter stated, ‘well ventilated, and airy, while every modern appliance has been taken advantage of that would add to the comfort of the inmates.’ In fact some members of the public believed it was extravagantly sumptuous. Among these was one Mr James Cheetham, who used the letters page of the
Manchester Guardian
to protest at the drain on the public purse. He accused the Board of imprudent spending, claiming that the cost of maintaining one resident was twenty times the amount an honest, sober, industrious labourer earned.

Mr Cheetham was not the only one who was angry. The letters page of the
Manchester City News
also bristled with the indignation of incensed ratepayers. What was the reason for this outrage, these accusations of extravagance? Were the city fathers investing in accommodation for civic dignitaries or squandering money on pampered employees? Neither. It was the opening of the Prestwich workhouse that sparked such fury. It was not for nothing that people referred to such places as Pauper Palaces. Virtually every aspect of life within the workhouse – ‘the House’ – was better than a working man could ever hope to enjoy. In fact, by 1880 its ‘internal conveniences’ – heating, toilets, bathrooms and running water – were better than those of many middle class homes. The old image of the workhouse as a harsh and degrading institution was no longer relevant.

The Manchester Guardians, who were responsible for the city’s provision for the poor, were keen to build a workhouse nothing less than magnificent. There are many examples of the central board refusing to sanction such embellishments as encaustic tile paving in the entrance halls and a moulded Portland stone staircase to the chapel. This desire to impress is evident in the surviving workhouses, many of which – like that in Chorlton-cum-Hardy – later became hospitals. You have only to look at the pictures and surviving accounts of the splendours of the Swinton Industrial Schools to realise that Manchester’s poor law managers were anything but grubby penny-pinchers doing everything on the cheap.

The workhouse was the means by which the community provided for those who were unable to maintain themselves and their families. From 1834 parishes came together to form Poor Law Unions which built and maintained workhouses. In theory, only by entering the workhouse could a pauper receive support. The regime there was intended to keep out all but those who had no other means of supporting themselves. This was essential if it was to force down the cost of poor relief, which had been increasing rapidly. In practice, this did not happen. Manchester and Salford Poor Law Unions found it neither practical nor humane at this time to deny ‘outdoor relief’ to certain groups and many people continued to receive help in this way. Besides, to deny help to those in need would have contradicted the powerful Victorian philanthropic impulse. The poor were a highly visible part of society and for those who were only slightly better off, they afforded an opportunity to exercise Christian charity. The generosity of the many was an essential part of the life of the poor.

Charity was a major preoccupation of the Victorians. It was their Christian duty to help the unfortunate. The hordes of beggars who clogged the street of every city and town depended on this instinctive kindliness for their livelihood. In times of general hardship – such as the cotton famine of the 1860s, when private donations amounted to over a million pounds – public generosity was magnificent. Nor was parish provision for the poor stingy. The workhouse was never as bad as its reputation. The local Boards of Guardians who ran the institutions seldom consisted of heartless bankers and industrialists concerned only to keep down rates. There is no evidence the Salford or Manchester Guardians wanted to humiliate the old and disabled or any of the deserving poor. Quite the contrary. For instance, until 1875 outdoor relief not only continued but remained the principal means of help for the poor. In fact, the generosity of the Manchester poor law unions made the city a magnet for beggars and scroungers of all sorts.

It is not, however, true to say that entering the workhouse was a matter of indifference. It shattered the self-image of the respectable poor. The head of the household could no longer pretend he was fulfilling his role as a provider. Charity shattered the ideal of self-sufficiency as it was a public admission of failure. Worse still, the workhouse separated families – men and women lived apart – and imposed rules that controlled every aspect of life. They were supposed to eat their meals in silence. Restriction made visits difficult. Respectable people fallen on hard times lived with imbeciles, consumptives, syphilitics, single pregnant women and abandoned mothers.

This applied to all of Manchester’s four workhouses – New Bridge Street, Crumpsall, Chorlton-cum-Hardy and Prestwich – and indeed all workhouses, as a nationally determined set of rules designed to control every aspect of life regulated them.

We know a great deal about life in the Manchester workhouses. This is because of Major Robert Ballentine who, for the twenty-six years from 1878 to 1904, was the master of the Crumpsall workhouse. During this period he made it the best workhouse in Britain, the model towards which all others strived. Ballentine was the only workhouse master to give evidence to the Royal Commission on the aged poor in 1894, by which time Crumpsall workhouse and infirmary, with 3,000 inmates, was the largest in the country. Long before Ballentine’s era the Manchester Board of Guardians was at the forefront of the campaign after 1870 to reduce the amount of outdoor relief. In 1875 they introduced the so-called ‘Manchester Rules’ by which single people, widows with one child, deserted wives with or without families and the wives of prisoners and soldiers could no longer claim outdoor relief. This was a severe blow to the city’s criminals who detested the rigorous regime of the workhouse. All those seeking outdoor relief in times of high unemployment had to take a ‘labour test’. In order to qualify for relief women had to do washing and scrubbing at the New Bridge workhouse and men had to dig in the grounds of the Crumpsall workhouse. Both received half their relief in kind. Those in furnished lodgings, with less than six months residence in the Union and those whose destitution was deemed to be their own fault, were not entitled to relief. Instead, they were set to work in the parish stone yard.

The Bridge Street building had workshops for joiners, tailors, shoemakers, hemp workers and weavers. The Crumpsall site opened in 1858 and was designed for 1,660 inmates. It was to hold 745 able-bodied men and women; 152 women with infants; 238 idiots, imbeciles and epileptics; 255 children under the age of sixteen; sixty probationers and 200 sick. This provision proved totally inadequate during the ‘cotton famine’ of 1861 to 1865. The American Civil War choked off the raw cotton that fed Lancashire’s mills. Closures and layoffs reduced 2,000,000 cotton workers to abject poverty. Yet as far as possible the able-bodied worked for their living and received payment in kind. It was essential, the Guardians believed, that assistance did not become an absolute right and that the distinction between deserving and undeserving poor be maintained.

To achieve this, the Manchester Poor Law Guardians combined with their Chorlton counterparts to construct a purpose-built institution, the only place where the undeserving poor could get relief. The Tame Street Able-bodied Test Workhouse opened in 1897. What’s more, the Guardians made every effort to make the workhouse self-sufficient. The paupers grew vegetables and kept pigs to feed the inmates. They worked as joiners, shoemakers and tailors and wove hemp ropes and sacks. Women worked in the kitchens, laundry and sewing room and after the infirmary opened in 1876 they provided the cleaning and most of the nursing staff. These ‘scrubbers’, as they were known, were penniless women, often mothers of illegitimate children. Even today ‘scrubber’ is a derogatory Manchester term for a woman of loose morals.

In 1880, thirty-three of the imbeciles and epileptics worked as farm labourers while many more cleaned the wards. Three were responsible for the ash pits, three made mats and one had the task of replacing the straw mattresses. Though enlightened and humane, the workhouse managers were adamant that inmates should work for their keep. The idea that the parish should keep someone who was not prepared to work was regarded as blatant insanity. Sometimes, however, managers carried this to extremes.

In 1882 an inspector complained that a patient recovering on the surgical ward had to pick oakum. The chairman of the Guardians was not prepared to meekly accept such criticism. ‘The patients referred to,’ he explained, ‘were recovering but obliged to lie in bed. It was thought it would be much more agreeable to them to find them a little something to do, than that they should idle their time away entirely.’

Nor was illness sufficient reason to relax the visiting regulations. From 1879 regulations restricted visits for the sick and infirm to one hour on the first Sunday of the month. It was this rigidity of the workhouse regime that made it intolerable to criminals of all types. The tolling bell announced breakfast, as it did every event in the life of the workhouse. And the rules governing behaviour covered every eventuality that might arise, allocating a designated penalty to each. Most offences rendered an inmate ‘disorderly’. More serious misdemeanours, or repeated ‘disorderly’ offences, rendered him ‘refractory’. Common disorderly offences included making noise during periods of prescribed silence, using obscene or profane language, insulting other inmates, neglecting work, disobeying a workhouse official and misbehaving on the way to or from church.

Refractory offences included insulting officials, repeatedly disobeying instructions, striking anyone, damaging the institution’s property, being drunk and behaving in an indecent manner.

The master generally punished disorderly behaviour by withholding privileges or by withholding the normal dinner for two days and substituting eight ounces of bread, a pound of potatoes or a pound of rice. Refractory inmates might suffer both these and in addition be locked in isolation for twenty-four hours. We know about this punishment because, unlike lesser sanctions, the master recorded it in the minute book.

Inmates’ clothing illustrates the drive for uniformity. Paupers wore a uniform. Men wore a corduroy suit with a waistcoat and belt, a red spotted handkerchief and hobnailed boots. When working in the rain they wrapped a sack around their shoulders. The women’s uniform was a white blouse with leg of mutton sleeves, a long dark skirt and a large white apron of unbleached calico. Children’s uniforms were similar to the adults’ and they wore their hair cropped. Imbeciles wore calico suits.

Detailed regulations controlled the paupers’ diet and each inmate’s food matched his particular needs. The aged and infirm, for instance, enjoyed a diet far better than they could afford outside. It was certainly better balanced and healthier than that of the average British adult in the affluent twenty-first century. Those on a special diet, including the old and sick, breakfasted on bread and porridge with treacle. On Sundays they ate bread, margarine and coffee.

They took their main meal at midday. On Sunday it consisted of bread with potatoes, vegetables and boiled bacon; Monday and Thursday, boiled beef instead of bacon, with lentil soup in winter and barley soup in summer. On other days they ate Irish stew, potato pie or meat stew. The aged and infirm did not get the Tuesday treat of roly-poly pudding in winter or bread pudding in summer, which was allowed to able-bodied men, women and children from the age of three to sixteen. Supper consisted of bread and gruel on weekdays and bread, margarine and tea on Sundays. In addition, the able bodied got plain cake on Sunday as did the children on Thursday. Children also got milk, cocoa made with half milk, or tea, with seed cake on Tuesdays, syrup on Saturdays and jam on Sundays. The doctor prescribed the customary diet for the sick. Generally he ordered fewer potatoes and more rice pudding, bread and milk. If the doctor prescribed a fluid diet, it consisted of milk variously thickened and flavoured with rice, arrowroot and sago, believed to strengthen the sickly.