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Newington St Mary, Surrey, London

[Up to 1834] [After 1834] [Staff] [Inmates] [Records] [Bibliography] [Links]

Up to 1834

The parish of St Mary Newington opened its first workhouse in around 1734. A parliamentary report of 1777 recorded a workhouse at Newington able to accommodate up to 200 inmates.

In 1814, the parish obtained a local Act of parliament allowing it to establish a body known as the Governors and Guardians of the Poor for collecting and administering the poor rate and raise money for "rebuilding or repairing the workhouse" which was "insufficient for the accommodation and proper employment of the poor". An 1830 map shows the layout of the workhouse which was located at the west side of Walworth Road, adjacent to the Camberwell Toll House.

Newington workhouse site, 1830.

After 1834

St Mary, Newington, including the hamlet of Walworth, was constituted as a Poor Law Parish on 9th May, 1836. Its operation was to be overseen by an elected Board of 18 Guardians. The population falling within the Parish at the 1831 census had been 44,526. The average annual poor-rate expenditure for the period 1833-35 had been £18,348 or 8s.3d. per head of the population. Following a legal ruling in January 1837, however, the parish's Local Act was judged to place it outside the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act and it continued to operate as a Local Act Parish and using the old Walworth Road workhouse.

In 1849, the Guardians purchased a two-acre site, known as the the Walworth Villa Estate, at the south side of Westmoreland Road, Walworth. Initially, the building erected by the parish in 1850 was intended to be a "House for thr Infant Poor", or industrial school, accommodating up to 300 children. It was designed by Henry Jarvis and a tender of £8,910 for its construction was accepted from by Mr Wilson of Great Suffolk Street. On 1 July 1850, the foundation stone was laid by the Rector of the Parish. According to the Guardians' minutes, there was a procession of poor children from the old Workhouse to the Villa site, led by "the Beadles of the Parish with their staves of Office". The children sang a hymn specially composed by the Rector, the stone was laid and at 5 o'clock, and the gentlemen "dined together at the Elephant and Castle tavern at their own expense. However, by March 1851, when the building was nearly ready, the Guardians were already contemplating its use for the adult poor as well. In August 1851, the Poor Law Board approved revised plans for adapting the Infirmary for up to 100 adult sick poor, and the main bnilding for about 460 other paupers. The first 30 inmates were moved in early in 1852 and the first meeting of the Guardians in their new Board Room at Newington took place on the 4th August, 1852. The children, for whom the building was originally intended, were instead sent to the new District School at North Surrey District School at Anerley.

The workhouse layout in 1876 is shown on the map below.

Newington workhouse site, 1876.

The main building, at the south of the site, was 280 feet in length and had with a T-shaped layout, with male inmates housed at the west and females at the east. At the centre were the dining-hall (with chapel above added in 1862) and kitchens, with a laundry to the rear on the female side. A bakehouse and work-rooms lay at the rear on the male side A smaller complex of buildings to the north-west contained further sick wards and lock (venereal) wards, together with a mortuary and casual wards for the overnight accommodation of vagrants.

In October, 1852, the Board decided that the inmates of the Workhouse should be forbidden to smoke except on the production of a certificate from the Medical Officer "stating the nature of his disease and that smoking is necessary for his health or that the nature of his occupation is such as to justify granting his permission to smoke".

In May 1853, the Board advertised that it desired to place out several boys of 14 years and up as apprentices to respectable tradesmen.. Whoever took them on got two suits of clothes for the boy and a premium of £5 in two instalments.

In December 1861, an unidentified inmate of the workhouse wrote to a local newspaper, listing a number of complaints about the establishment:

We have only (when we get our weight) 6 ounces of bread and 1 pint of gruel for breakfast, and 5 ounces of meat and 12 ounces of potatoes for dinner, and the same for supper as we have for breakfast. On Sunday and Monday we have 6 ounces of bread and one pint of gruel for breakfast and one pint of soup (if you can call hot water coloured with a few peas soup) and 5 ounces of meat for dinner; and for supper 6 ounces of bread and 1½ ounces of cheese with a pint of very thin water gruel. On Tuesday, 5 ounces of meat and 12 ounces of potatoes for dinner; 6 ounces of bread and 1 pint of gruel for supper. On Wednesday the same for breakfast; and for dinner 14 ounces of hard pudding, with 6 ounces of bread and 1½ ounces of cheese for supper, and a pint of water gruel, very thin, Thursday the same as Sunday. Friday the same as Monday. Saturday, 6 ounces of bread and 1 pint of gruel for breakfast, 14 ounces of pudding for dinner, and the same for supper as we have for breakfast. Sir, to show you further how we are treated, some of us, after being kept in, and our liberty stopped for four weeks (those over 60 years of age go out on Sundays from 9 a.m. till 6 p.m.) were one day last week a little behind in getting into the dining hall, and we had only six ounces of bread and butter instead of a meat dinner, and our liberty stopped for two weeks more. Many of us are 70 years and more of age and some are hard can hardly walk. Some are suffering from asthma and bronchitis. We have to come down at 7 o'clock a.m., two pairs of cold stone stairs and across a large yard, at this time of year, to wash, which gives us such colds that we have to be placed under the doctor's hands, and some are sent into the sick ward. At the same time there is every convenience to wash within the building, but it has been kept locked up since the middle of summer. There has been a sad accident to one of the inmates of the infirm ward, through falling down an unprotected flight of stone cellar steps in the yard, near the water-tap which would have been prevented if the gas lamp, which is in the middle of the yard had been lighted; and the worst part of it is that this is not the first accident by two or three that has happened through there being no light. Not wanting to trouble you too much with our complaints, we hope you will be kind enough to insert this, as we have no other means of redress for our grievances, and you will confer a favour on those who cannot help themselves.

Clearly encouraged by the publication of the letter's publication, a second one followed a few weeks later:

Upon the admission of a person into this house he is placed in the receiving ward till inspected by the medical officer, and then previous to putting on the house clothes he is bathed; but, Sir, you will be surprised when we tell you that by order of the master, no matter how many are in the receiving ward, they are all bathed in the same water, one after another, dirty or clean. And this to a clean person is most disgusting; And woe to the poor unfortunate who enters this house infected with the itch. He is placed in a ward in beds so dirty and between blankets so thick with the ointment with which they are rubbed, that, to use the words of one ex-wardsman, they are so thick and matted together with grease that it was as much as he could do to separate them, and during this winter the accommodation has been so scanty that two men in a state of nudity have been placed in the same bed together; and to show further how cleanliness is studied in this house only three towels per week are allowed for about 150 men to dry upon, therefore it is not to be wondered at that we can pick vermin off them, which we often do, and the wash house is only open about 10 minutes each morning, and in fact no clean person washes himself in the wash-house but on a Sunday morning, when he can use his dirty shirt in the place of the towels to dry himself. But, Sir, the worst of all is the accommodation provided for the sick. For the inmates and the out-door poor there are only about 40 beds, and at the present time we have men lying about in the damp day halls because there is no room for them in the sick wards, and it is only a few nights since one of the inmates was taken ill during the night the attention of the nurse was called to him and she ordered him into the sick ward, and to make room for him a poor old man, 70 years of age, was turned out of his warm bed and hurried across two cold yards into the body of the house, in order that attention might be paid to the man suddenly taken ill, and I leave it to your readers to judge what the effect of this might be upon an old man at this inclement season of the year. Many of our men are suffering from rheumatics, bad legs and bronchitis, are confined in a damp shed used for chopping firewood This place is built upon the edge of a ditch at the back of the Albany-Road and the fearfully damp state is shown by the rust on the choppers in the morning after their use the previous day. It has no flooring but the damp earth 18 inches below the level of the yard and the men are locked in this place daily. So fearfully cold is it in the winter that the men are cramped and almost perish; and in the summer, what with the smell from the ditch outside and the privy in, it is a wonder that some infection has not broken out over this, but this being within the gates, the attention of the sanitary officer is never called to it. Again, Sir, upon the death of every person four young men are selected to bring down the carpet, and to their disgust they have to put the body in the coffin almost in a state of nudity, except a bit of calico about 4 feet long and 12 or 13 inches wide which is put over the front of the body, which often gets displaced in shifting it from the bed to the coffin, so that the whole person of the corpse, male of female, is exposed to view, no matter of what disease they die. And, in order that we may be made to feel where we are, the master has threatened everyone found smoking in any place in the building to punish them, and it is too cold this weather for old men to smoke in the yard, this being the only comfort we poor creatures have here and we little thought in our days of prosperity, when we paid rates, that we should ever be subject to such treatment in our old days, our only crime being poverty; and there is no wonder that many prefer a prison to such a place as this.

See the separate page for more on the subject of pauper letters.

In 1868, the recently formed Metropolitan Asylums Board set up six new Sick Asylum Districts for the purposes of providing hospital care for the poor on separate sites from workhouses. One of the new Districts, named Newington, comprised the St Saviour Union and the parishes of St George-the-Martyr, Southwark, and St Mary, Newington. However, the new hospital required by the new scheme was felt to be too expensive and, instead, the Newington Sick Asylum District was reconstituted as an enlarged St Saviour Poor Law Union of which St Mary, Newington, then became part.

The enlarged union redeployed its existing sites to provide the separate workhouse and hospital accommodation that was required. The Westmoreland Road site was initially used as an infirmary.

In 1896, future star of the silent screen Charles Chaplin (then aged seven) briefly became an inmate of the Newington workhouse, together with his mother, Hannah, and his older half-brother Sydney. They went through the usual admissions procedure of being separated from their mother, the children having their hair cut short, and the workhouse uniform replacing their own clothes which were steamed and put into store. After three weeks, the two children were then transferred to the Central London District School at Hanwell. Two months later, the children were returned to the workhouse where they were met at the gate by Hannah, dressed in her own clothes. In desperation to see them, she had discharged herself from the workhouse, along with the children. After a day spent playing in Kennington park and visiting a coffee-shop, they returned to the workhouse and had to go through the whole admissions procedure once more, with the children again staying there for a probationary period before returning to Hanwell.

Some of neighbouring properties were gradually absorbed into the site as shown on the 1916 map below.

Newington workhouse site, 1916.

After 1930, the workhouse became Newington Lodge Public Assistance Institution under the control of the London County Council. The premises were later used as short-term accommodation for homeless families and appeared in the 1966 television play Cathy Come Home. The buildings no longer exist.

Staff

Inmates

Records

Note: many repositories impose a closure period of up to 100 years for records identifying individuals. Before travelling a long distance, always check that the records you want to consult will be available.

Bibliography

Links

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Unless otherwise indicated, this page () is copyright Peter Higginbotham. Contents may not be reproduced without permission.