Tag: Hungerford

In the workhouse

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
– Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander

This, the third verse of the still popular hymn, All things bright and beautiful, is never sung today. When the hymn was first published in 1848, it was a prevalent view that God had ordained your position in life and if you were poor, that was because it was God’s will. This view persisted for much of the nineteenth century.

For the poor of Kintbury and the surrounding villages, the only option for those who had lost all means of self- support – through job loss, through unavoidable incapacity or loss of the main bread winner – was to enter the dreaded workhouse.

Conditions in the workhouse were deliberately unpleasant to deter the poor from turning to this very last resort unnecessarily. If people knew they could turn to the workhouse, so the prevailing mind set ran, they would not bother to save against hard times or support other family members in their times of need. And so conditions were harsh, food minimal and the enforced labour hard.

Following the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, villages were grouped into unions around a larger town which is why Kintbury’s destitute were housed in Hungerford Union Workhouse in what is now Park Street.

Hungerford Union Workhouse was opened in 1848; it was three storeys high and of the “Stratton” design after the workhouse in Stratton, Wiltshire. 

Inmates were set to work picking oakum – that is to say beating with a mallet then unpicking by hand the tar coated hemp fibres that had been twisted into industrial rope. The finished product – the oakum -was used for such things as  waterproofing the joints in wooden piping and between the planks of wooden ships. It was hard and unpleasant work and oakum pickers suffered from bleeding hands and heavy scarring as well as other more serious conditions.

Typically, workhouses were imposing, prison-like buildings

According to the 1881 census, there were ten Kintbury people in the Hungerford workhouse at that time. This number included Henry Randall, a 44 year old farm labourer and his wife, Ann, 44.

In 1871, Henry – an agricultural labourer – and Ann had been living in Kintbury with their children William 8, Eliza, 6, Lucy 2 and Mary 2 months. What happened to the family in the following ten years we do not know but by 1881 Henry and Ann are inmates of the Hungerford Workhouse.

The eldest son, William, by now 18, is a ploughboy working – and most likely living – on a farm at Radley, to the north of the Bath Road. However his sister, Eliza, now 16, is in the workhouse with her parents and described as a “scholar” which seems somewhat unusual as at that time a young working class woman of 16 might be expected to have entered domestic service. Also there, is 12 year old Lucy.  Mary, who would have been 10 by 1881, is not listed at all so it has to be likely that she has died. Three more children have been born to the Randalls since 1871: Lizzie, now 8, Louisa now 6, and Martha, now 3 and these are all in the workhouse with their parents.

Perhaps the arrival of more children was too much for the Randalls’ household economy or perhaps Henry had lost his job on the farm.

The Randalls of school age are listed on the census as scholars. Although the workhouse originally employed its own teacher, it seems that by 1881 the boys would have walked to the National School in the High Street, to comply, I expect, with Forster’s Education Act which had made universal education compulsory.  The girls, however, received instruction from an “industrial trainer” at the workhouse.

There were 26 other children in the workhouse, all separated from their parents. Similarly, the men were separated from the women.

Twenty nine of the inmates are described as servants and twenty seven as labourers or farm labourers

What I find most surprising, however, is that several of the inmates are listed as having had a trade which might have given them a better chance of supporting themselves but clearly this was not the whole story.

One inmate, Mary Elizabeth Felford, born in Marlborough in 1834, is described as a dressmaker. In 1871 she is living in Wantage with her husband, Edmund, a saddler. However by 1881, Mary is a widow and, one presumes, unable to support herself and her two children so her only option is the workhouse. Why Hungerford, we have no way of knowing but perhaps Mary travelled there in the hope of finding more work but it did not work out.  I can find absolutely no positive trace of Mary or her children after the 1881 census

John Waterhouse is an 18 year old tailor from Newhaven. Why, despite having a trade, he was an inmate of the dreaded workhouse, it is impossible to say but after 1881 he disappears completely from the census records.

Kintbury’s Charles Garlick is a widowed tailor in 1881. In 1841 he had been living with his mother Mary and 16 year old sister Rosa in Kintbury, where, interestingly, Mary is described as “Ind” usually an abbreviation for “Independent means”, suggesting that she was well off enough to support herself. What had happened in the following forty years it is impossible to find out, and both Rosa and Mary disappear from later censuses.

Jacob Brooks is a retired blacksmith of 55 who had, ten years earlier, been working on a farm and lodging at a cottage in Hungerford Church Street. However, by 1881 he is an inmate of the workhouse, most likely because he is too infirmed or otherwise unable to support himself. The workhouse would have been his only option.

But even sadder is the case of William Vincent, 39 from Little Bedwyn. He is deaf and dumb and, it seems, only appears on the 1881 census.

So what became of Kintbury’s Randall family? By 1891, William – the son who did not accompany his parents into the workhouse – is an agricultural labourer in Hungerford Newtown where his sisters, Lizzie, now 18 and Martha, now 13, are living with him.

Louisa is a servant in the family of Eli Brown at the Queen’s Arms, East Garston.

By 1901, William , Lizzie and Martha are all living with Lucy and her husband, Samuel Harding, a GWR railway worker. They were lucky, I think, to have  an in-law who was able to have them lodge with him – it must have made for cramped living conditions as no artisans’ cottages at this time were spacious, but the extra income must have been welcomed.

It makes me very sad not to have found a really positive outcome for any of the Workhouse inmates I have researched here. Not everyone was a permanent resident; I know from my own family history that a set of 2x great grandparents spent sometime in the Chipping Norton workhouse. However, they survived and were able to move on with their lives – otherwise, I suppose, I would not be writing this.

I hope the Randalls’ family story had a happy ending that I have not, so far, been able to find.

(C) Theresa Lock April 2024

Olive Emma Witt

Should you turn to look to your left as you walk up the path to St Mary’s Church, Kintbury, you will see a rather unusual grave marker.

Should you turn to look to your left as you walk up the path to St Mary’s, Kintbury, you will see a rather unusual grave marker. Rather than being stone, as are the great majority of grave markers, this one, standing little over three feet high, is of metal, probably tin, and enclosed in a five-sided wooden frame. From a distance it looks a little like a larger version of a Victorian schoolchild’s slate; perhaps this was deliberate , because the person commemorated was  six year old Olive Emma Witt, who died in 1896.

Olive Emma Witt’s grave marker in Kintbury church yard

The Witts were not originally of Kintbury. Olive’s father, Tom, had been born in 1846 at Braemore, Hampshire, where his father, Charles had been an agricultural labourer. Emma Witt had been born in Salisbury in 1850.

At the time of the 1871 census, Tom was working as a gardener in Salisbury and it has to be likely that it was around this time that he met Emma Skeet, the local girl who would become his wife.

By 1881, the Witts had moved north out of Wiltshire to west Berkshire where Tom now worked as a gardener at Elcot. The family had grown: Walter had been born in 1877 and Herbert in 1880.

It would seem that Tom Witt was an ambitious young man – by the census of 1891 he is a farm bailiff at Inlease Farm on the Hungerford Road out of Kintbury where they have been living for at least six years now. Two more children had been born: Charles in 1885 and Olive in 1890. The household must have been a busy and possibly crowded one as the Witts had four young men lodgers: two carters and two ploughboys, all working on the farm.

Some time within the following six years, Tom progressed from being a bailiff at Inlease to a farmer in his own right at Cullamores Farm on the road out of Kintbury towards Inkpen. Very sadly, however, it was here that, on June 10th, 1896, little Olive died. The grieving family put an announcement in the Newbury Weekly News.

The census of 1901 shows Tom & Emma still at Cullamores with Tom described as an “Employer”. The distinction between “Employed” and “Employer” was particularly significant in an age of increasing social mobility, particularly for someone like Tom whose father had been an agricultural labourer like so many thousands of men in the middle of the century. Tom & Emma were coming up in the world.

Herbert, now 20, was working on the farm. Charles, however, had turned his back on farming and at 16 was a carpenter’s apprentice. Walter had left Kintbury altogether, and was now a police constable at Rochester Row Police Station in London.

The end of the nineteenth century saw decreasing numbers of workers employed in agriculture and this national trend seems to have been reflected in the family experience of the Witts. By 1911, Walter was married with a daughter and living in Harrow, Middlesex. He was still with the Metropolitan Police. Herbert, who had previously been working on the family farm, had followed his elder brother into the police force, but for him a force not so far from home as he was in Wantage.

By 1911, Tom was 64 and no longer working in agriculture and no longer himself an employer. Furthermore, he and Emma have left Kintbury and were now living in Newland, Cogges, close to Witney in Oxfordshire. He has returned to his first occupation, that of gardener and on the census is identified as a “worker”.  

The trajectory of Tom Witt’s life experiences would have mirrored those of many of his contemporaries. Born into an agricultural labourer’s family, Tom had improved his life chances becoming upwardly mobile until he could describe himself as a farmer and employer – a distinction which mattered in this ultra class conscious time. By the time Tom and Emma’s sons had been born, universal education would have given them a far better start in life than that experienced by their grandfather Witt in Hampshire, enabling them to join the police force and ensuring their place in the lower middle classes.

We do not know exactly why Tom & Emma left Cullamores farm but it has to be likely that the slump in agriculture had something to do with it. This was a time when many thousands were still leaving the countryside for the growing towns whilst others were emigrating overseas. For Tom & Emma, perhaps the move northwards to Witney was a fresh start away from the world – and the social status – they had lost.

I wonder if they ever returned to Kintbury and to the little grave in St Mary’s churchyard -the journey back then from Witney would have required three changes of train on the Great Western Railway. The forty mile journey across the downs by road would have been slow and unlikely to be completed easily within a day.

Why Olive’s grave marker was of tin rather than stone I do not know. Iron crosses are not unknown in churchyards but a grave marker of tin is something I have seen nowhere else.

But then, any exploration of family history – any family – raises far more questions than it ever answers.

Tessa Lock