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Workhouse

3:47

Voices from the Workhouse

1:32

Victorian Orphanages and Workhouses

2:57

Workhouse Museum

3:01

What is WORKHOUSE? What does WORKHOUSE mean? WORKHOUSE meaning, definition & explanation

3:50

Diary Of A Victorian Workhouse Child

In England and Wales a workhouse, colloquially known as a spike, was a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment. The earliest known use of the term dates from 1631, in an account by the mayor of Abingdon reporting that "wee haue erected wthn our borough a workehouse to sett poore people to worke".
  • Legal and social background 

  • Early Victorian workhouses 

  • Later developments and abolition 

  • Modern view 

  • In art and literature