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Jackson's Journal, 1871.
The Board of Guardians for the Abingdon Union regularly published Invitations to tender in the local press, in order to obtain supplies for the workhouse at competitive prices.
Food in the workhouse was always a contentious issue.
Life inside the workhouse had to be unattractive, for fear able-bodied men should become dependent on relief. So the Poor Law Commissioners ordered that the food available to workhouse inmates should be no better than what the poor generally ate. The Commissioners’ priority was frugality and to prevent idleness: they were more concerned with the quantity of food available than its quality and nutritional value.
By the 1840s, developments in the field of nutrition indicated that poorly fed inmates had less energy, strength and stamina and were unable to work effectively, and suffered more frequent illnesses. This led to gradual changes in food provision, but this was not a universal improvement.
For the inmates, their diet depended on their behaviour: disobedience or speaking at meals might be punished by the withdrawal of food – either ‘treat’ elements (like tea or margarine) or entire meals.
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The Dietaries
The Dietaries
The Poor Law Commission prepared 6 dietaries – menus from which workhouses could choose – in 1835. The most basic one, dietary No 3, provided bread and gruel every day for breakfast, and bread and cheese every evening for supper. The midday meal consisted of more bread and cheese on 4 days of the week, meat and potatoes (or other vegetables) on 2 days, and soup and bread on one day. Other dietaries included rice or suet puddings or yeast dumplings.
In later years inmates were classified into several groups (children under 7, girls 7 to 16, infirm women, able-bodied women over 16, boys 7 to 16, infirm men, able-bodied men over 16). Each group, as well as the sick inmates, had different allocations of food.
In 1836 the Abingdon Workhouse diet was based on Dietary 3, with a little more variety:
Breakfast every day was 2 pints (1 litre) gruel and 7 ounces (200 g) bread for an able-bodied man.
Dinner on three days a week was meat and vegetables - either 5 ounces (142 g) meat or 4 ounces (113 g) bacon; on two days it was 2 pints soup and 7 ounces bread; and on one day it was 7 ounces bread and 2 ounces (57 g) cheese.
Supper every day was 7 ounces bread and 2 ounces cheese.
Women received about 25% less food than men.
Around 1929–31, dinner on Saturday was bread and cheese, followed by suet pudding with treacle. Laurie Liddiard liked it so much that although his ‘staff’ dinner was better, he asked the cook to save him some of the inmates’ pudding.
Although not mentioned in the dietaries, beer featured in the diet: the Abingdon workhouse had a brewhouse. However, this did not mean that much alcohol was being consumed. In the past 'small beer' was drunk by adults and children alike, and it was very weak. Water quality could be poor in the days before its widespread treatment, and beer (which was made with boiling water) was a safe alternative.
The elderly could be allowed one ounce of tea, 5 ounces of butter and 7 ounces of sugar a week instead of gruel. Children under 9 years of age were given bread and milk (or gruel) for breakfast and supper, and a smaller portion of the adult food for dinner. Dickens’s Oliver Twist should not have had only gruel for his meal, as children over 9 years were fed the same diet as women (which was around 25% less than the men).
Public Domain Mark. Wellcome Collection.
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Christmas dinner
Christmas dinner
In 1835, Commissioners banned workhouses from providing Christmas dinners and other special meals to inmates, but often local philanthropists chose to pay for these. They considered that sharing in a celebratory meal at Christmas, coronations and royal weddings included the poor as citizens of the realm. They also saw it as an opportunity to exercise Christian charity, encourage patriotism and foster good relations between social classes.
Not all workhouses took this view, and many stuck rigidly to the prescribed Dietary. By 1930 Abingdon workhouse was serving inmates with a cooked breakfast on Christmas Day, and a roast dinner with turkey and roast beef.
Casuals
Casuals
The 'casuals' (the vagrants who spent one night in the workhouse before moving on) were given the same food as the inmates. When they left, the next day, their clothes were returned to them along with some bread and margarine and some tea-leaves and sugar. They used to cross the road to the Convent opposite and beg for some hot water with which to make their tea.
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