Tales from Golcar Workhouse by Elaine Wortley  August 2014

The Huddersfield Chronicle of 18th May, 1850 was understandably shocked by the Poor Law Board’s inspection report of its Golcar Workhouse, along with two other workhouses in the area. It declared “it must deeply concern the ratepayers of Huddersfield and the neighbourhood embraced in this Union”. Yet, Golcar’s workhouse, “deemed unfit for the poor of any kind” on inspection, somehow managed to muddle along almost a further twenty years, simply because it was needed.
High above Golcar village at Pike Law, the workhouse consisted of two low-ceilinged, old cottages, accommodating 22 inmates. With 25 acres of land, in a country setting, enjoying breathtaking Colne Valley views, it appears to have opened in 1839, with an advertisement appearing in the Leeds Mercury for master and matron.

This provision, in Golcar, of shelter and work for the poor, infirm and aged, likely followed the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which had reformed the relief system. However, there is said to have been a workhouse there, as far back as 1815.

Annual salary for the new Master and Matron was to be £25.  Subject to character references and “without incumbrances”, applicants needed “knowledge of farming”. Duties were “to attend to the instructions and orders of the Guardians of this Union”. “The Guardians” were elected local businessmen, professionals and gentry, who met regularly, to manage the workhouses.

Eleven years later, that 1850 report, of such concern to the Huddersfield Chronicle, described Golcar Workhouse as “dirty and disorderly”. The only yard had cows turned into it and was dirty. There was no room for separation of male and female inmates and children mixed with adults. Children slept in rooms occupied by adults and sometimes slept with them.

Sick inmates remained in bed throughout the day, in poorly ventilated rooms, serving as both the women’s and men’s day rooms. The women’s day room also served as the wash house, their workplace. There were insufficient sheets to put two to a bed. One bed was found to be wet and dirty. On several beds, sacks and old clothing were used for warmth.

Fowls, kept by the Master, went in and out the house, occasioning dirt. Hens nested in a cupboard under a dresser in the dining room, also serving as a kitchen and the master’s sitting room.

There were no baths, two children failed to attend school, nor did they receive instruction in the workhouse. There was no assigned chaplain and prayers were not read “before breakfast and after supper”. Inmates were not provided with workhouse dress and smoked inside, without the medical officer’s permission.

Over the following years, newspaper court reports and Huddersfield Union’s Guardians’ meetings, give glimpses of the inmates’ world. Golcar Workhouse abounded with characters, who, sometimes, would describe themselves quaintly, as “as weak as a wood louse” or “as fit as a hare”.

It provided sanctuary in 1864 to impoverished cotton operatives, affected by the Cotton Famine.
It served as a makeshift hospital. An old man, badly injured in a pub accident, was taken there by cart, only to find a lack of facilities.  An  inmate of almost 80,  felt it a privilege to push a wheelbarrow, four miles into Huddersfield and  back uphill “with very heavy burdens”, while an 82 year old, the Guardians proudly reported, was still reaping oats.

Disobedience such as getting drunk, refusing work, or fighting resulted in court appearances, with  newspapers often describing defendants as “refractory” or “idle paupers”
Inmate Garside, was summonsed for assaulting another inmate in 1855. The 77 year old victim said he had been trying to get an old smock-frock on, in front of the kitchen fire, when Garside had attacked him, by kicking his legs. The magistrates told the men to become friends and discharged the summons.

In contrast, inmate Kaye was imprisoned for one month in 1866, charged with assaulting the Master.  Returning from fetching grains, “partially intoxicated”, when remonstrated with, he had thrown the Master against the wall and struck him on the back.  Likewise, that year, inmate Cartwright threatened a small child and the Master, with a poker. His punishment was one month in Wakefield’s House of Correction.

Occasionally, tragedy struck. Toddler, William Battye, accidentally drowned in the workhouse well, in 1864. His mother, had left him cared for by frail fellow inmate Betty Hoyle and 15 minutes later, she found her child, drowned in the two feet deep well.

Male inmates farmed the land or maintained the buildings, with the workhouse surgeon identifying the “able bodied”. The workhouse had a brew house, and a beer and  tobacco allowance. One inmate was taken to court for refusing to clean “nasty and dirty closets”. There was no beer allowance and he thought that particular job merited one.

The weekly diet consisted of two meat meals, three of suet puddings and two of dumplings, until 1865 when an extra meat meal was incorporated. Porridge was served each evening until 1861, when inmates began receiving tea, bread and butter, on Sundays.

Golcar Workhouse wasn’t home or anything like it. In court, in 1869, inmate Benjamin Schofield, feeling domineered and disillusioned, said “I have neither father nor mother ; I go there for a homestead”.  In summer the door was locked from 8pm to 6am. One inmate was summonsed for breaking the workhouse lock at dawn, simply “to avail himself of the convenience”.  Individuals’ lives were not their own.

Mr and Mrs Charles Lee had followed Mr and Mrs Joseph Haigh, as Golcar’s Master and Matron in 1853. It was the death of Mrs Lee, in January 1869, combined with the 1868 Poor Law Inspector’s report, that finally closed Golcar Workhouse on 25th March 1869.

Master Charles Lee, then widowed and ill, prompted a decision by the Guardians. The land and buildings were subsequently let and the workhouse later demolished. Some workhouse belongings were auctioned off.  Despite a petition, led by the vicar of Golcar, proposing superannuation for Mr. Lee, the retiring Master received only one gratuity of £10  from the Guardians. The couple’s final combined salary had been £35 per annum and they had been required to be on constant duty.

The 1868 final Inspection had noted 14 men, slept two to one bed, in one small room, describing “the building as wholly unfit for a workhouse.” Five children and seven women occupied four beds in one small room, which was also where confinements took place and used as “a lying-in ward.”, for new mothers.

Reported widely in the Press, was the Inspector’s worrying discovery that “puddings were boiled in the same pan as foul linen is boiled and washed  in”. The Guardians afterwards discovered, the pan was used for these two purposes, on different days of the week and on days between, it was used for boiling the cattle’s water, but that made no significant difference. They authorised purchase of a second boiler, in response, but it was too late to avoid considerable embarrassment.

They had debated Golcar Workhouse’s closure in July1867, the previous year, but “because they got more from it than they lost”, the motion had narrowly failed.

In 1868, William Shaw, an elderly Golcar inmate, complained in court, he “was stalled of being yonder” and his woeful, dissatisfied sentiments came to be echoed by Guardians and   inmates alike. Golcar Workhouse, not before time, had reached its inevitable end.

Elaine Wortley ,

August 2014