Ancestry UK

Julia Varley — Life in the Casual Ward

In the summer of 1904, Julia Varley — a trade unionist, former member of the Bradford Union Board of Guardians (1901-4), and later a suffragette — decided to experience at first hand the treatment of women in workhouse casual wards. Disguised in dirty old clothes, and giving her name as Maggie Ann Thompson, she tramped between Leeds and Liverpool, staying at a number of casual wards en route. She subsequently published an account of her journey in a series of six articles in the Bradford Daily Argus (1904 publication dates listed below).


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Ancestry UK

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