If you were poor and destitute then your choices in life were very limited before the creation of the welfare state. If you became ill and could not work, there was no sickness or unemployment benefit to cover you till you got better. If you wanted a holiday, you didn’t get paid for it so you generally didn’t take one. If you or a family member became ill or needed care and medicine, it could potentially cost you half of your weekly pay packet. In short, apart from the odd help from the church or charity you were basically lost once you stopped being a productive unit.
If you needed care, then there was only one place left to go. This was the workhouse. It wasn’t populated with trained staff like those that apply for Care Jobs Gloucester based company https://takefivehealthcare.co.uk/candidates/job-search/care-assistant-jobs-gloucestershire/. They were bruisers and enforcers. Their ideas of what care was, along with the trustees that ran the places, was that the people in the workhouse were their own fault. They were lazy and feckless and this was the way to repay the burden that they now were on society.
The family was split up and allowed to meet on Sundays. Otherwise their lives revolved around menial tasks. However, it did mean that their children got a basic education and that any illness was treated in a small infirmary. It was the only option many of them had.
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