The Records of the Guardians

Sick and Dying in the Workhouse

This is an engraving that was used in The Illustrated London News in 1846. It shows the interiors of the workhouse with the sick and the dying lying on the beds, as the women and children look on. http://adminstaff.vassar.edu/sttaylor/FAMINE/index.html

Views of the Famine: Vassar College NY USA

Sick and Dying in the Workhouse
Views of the Famine: Vassar College NY USA

Sick and Dying in the Workhouse

This is an engraving that was used in The Illustrated London News in 1846. It shows the interiors of the workhouse with the sick and the dying lying on the beds, as the women and children look on. http://adminstaff.vassar.edu/sttaylor/FAMINE/index.html

Views of the Famine: Vassar College NY USA

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The records of the Guardians and their relations with the Commissioners might be subdivided into four sub classes: minute books, correspondence, accounts and statistics. Of these, the minute books act as sort of summary of the others. These records were kept on the instructions of the Commissioners and on the printed forms prescribed. This has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand the Victorian uniformity of the printed form makes it easy to compare the experience of two or more different Unions. On the other hand the strait-jacket which the form provides sometimes makes it hard to identify local peculiarities or special circumstances.

Young Pauper

This illustration of the young pauper girl in Cork is just one example of the many poor children who grew up in poverty on the streets of Cork. She is possibly an orphan, or the daughter of a widowed lady who is struggling with the upkeep of her children and herself in times of need. For many children like her, an application would have been made to the commissioners, to enter the poorhouse to earn a little food for her and her family. However, the unions became increasingly aware of how the poorhouse was not helping the poor out of poverty in the long term, but merely aiding them through the bad times. For his reason they began to send young paupers on apprenticeships, where they would learn a trade that would help them survive when they left the workhouse. In other instances young paupers were helped emigrate to America or Canada, where they would stand a better chance of surviving.

Young Pauper

This illustration of the young pauper girl in Cork is just one example of the many poor children who grew up in poverty on the streets of Cork. She is possibly an orphan, or the daughter of a widowed lady who is struggling with the upkeep of her children and herself in times of need. For many children like her, an application would have been made to the commissioners, to enter the poorhouse to earn a little food for her and her family. However, the unions became increasingly aware of how the poorhouse was not helping the poor out of poverty in the long term, but merely aiding them through the bad times. For his reason they began to send young paupers on apprenticeships, where they would learn a trade that would help them survive when they left the workhouse. In other instances young paupers were helped emigrate to America or Canada, where they would stand a better chance of surviving.

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Minute Books

The most commonly surviving records from the Boards of Guardians are the minute books of the main Board. Where these do not survive, mainly in the midlands, rough minute books sometimes provide a substitute. These constituted the legal record of the meetings of the Board. They take the form of printed volumes issued by the Poor Law Commissioners with hand written entries under the stipulated headings.

Much of the material is formal and statistical in nature. It includes weekly returns of the number of paupers admitted, discharged. It records the numbers of sick and those who died or who were born in the workhouse. However there are also details of requisitions by the Master of the workhouse and summaries of correspondence received. Decisions on tenders for supplies are also recorded.

In many ways this material is simply a summary of what was compiled in other parts of the record keeping process such as the letter books or statistical returns. In other cases the minutes contain information not easily findable elsewhere such as the provisions made for young paupers in finding them an apprenticeship or, in the case of some west of Ireland Unions, promoting emigration to Canada or the USA.

Linked with the minute books are two additional categories of documents relating to Boards of Guardians meetings: registers of attendance and agenda books. Neither of these are common although where they no longer survive it is still possible to reconstruct attendances either from newspaper accounts of meetings or from the minute books which also list attendance.

As the Boards of Guardians acquired more functions so sub-committees of the Board were established to deal with them. After 1850 there was a separate committee established to deal with the dispensary. When the boards became responsible for sanitation and the control of contagious diseases committees were established to deal with these areas and their activities were recorded in different minute books.

Seasonal Labour Force

This is an engraving that was used in The Illustrated London News during the famine in Ireland. It depicts a group of Irish peasants en route to England for seasonal harvest work. http://adminstaff.vassar.edu/sttaylor/FAMINE/index.html

Views of the Famine: Vassar College NY USA

Seasonal Labour Force
Views of the Famine: Vassar College NY USA

Seasonal Labour Force

This is an engraving that was used in The Illustrated London News during the famine in Ireland. It depicts a group of Irish peasants en route to England for seasonal harvest work. http://adminstaff.vassar.edu/sttaylor/FAMINE/index.html

Views of the Famine: Vassar College NY USA

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Correspondence

The abstracts of correspondence in the Boards of Guardians minutes were compiled from the inward and outward letter books which contain copies of all the correspondence issued and received by the local boards. A good deal of what local Boards of Guardians did was in reaction to correspondence either from the Poor Law Commissioners, and later the Local Government Board. Orders and circulars covering all aspects of the working of the Poor Law system from these bodies were kept in separate volumes for ease of reference. However correspondence ranged over the entire range of the Boards' duties. Contracts for the supply of food and fuel to the workhouse were also kept with correspondence. Contracts were subject to tender and were advertised in local newspapers.