The Victorian Workhouse

Look up information about the workhouses of Victorian times and write a blog entry about what you learned. Answer this question in your blog: Do you think Scrooge really understood what it would be like for people to be in a workhouse?

Workhouse was for people who were aged, unemployed, vagrant, orphaned, disabled, and unmarried and old women during the Victorian era. The workhouse was a place where the poor could live, work, and support themselves. It provided basic supplies, such as free medical care, food, clothes, and free education (besides reading and writing) for children and training for a job. There were dining-hall, dormitories, chapel, clinic and many other stores inside the workhouse. The poor and old were afraid of the workhouse because the government made sure they feared the workhouse so lazy people won't depend on the workhouse for everything and did nothing. Unfortunately, families were split up inside the workhouse according to gender and age. The poor had to wear uniforms so everyone outside knew they worked in the workhouse. The food was tasteless and people often did unpleasant jobs. Stone crushing (break the rocks into small pieces for building roads) and oakum picking (undo ropes covered with tar, which rub the fingers raw) were typical terrible jobs in the workhouse. I don't think Scrooge really understood what it would be like for people to be in a workhouse because he wasn't extremely poor and vagrant. Though Scrooge had a miserable childhood, he was merely isolated in school but he still received education. He was rich after he became a successful accountant. He didn't undergo and understand the poor situation in the workhouse and thought that the poor could live, work, and depend on the workhouse for everything. The truth was that the workhouse was even more horrible than the prison and people feared and wanted to get rid of the workhouse immediately.