My night in the workhouse

A hundred years ago, a travelling journalist arrived at the offices of The Craven Herald. The peripatetic journalist, who is not named by the paper, had set himself a challenge – to live for nine days on just a halfpenny a day and with just a small, threepenny loaf to keep him going.

It was no mean feat – the Craven Herald at the time cost a penny.

Indeed, someone today matching the challenge would have to set off with around £3.37 for the whole nine days.

Anything else he needed, he had to earn the money for, and for lodgings he relied on district workhouses.

To make it even more interesting – they were obviously made of sterner stuff in those days – he arrived in Skipton having walked the 33 miles from Leeds in just one day.

Part of his challenge was to earn money wherever he went, so having written an account of his night spent in the Skipton Union Workhouse, he sold it to The Craven Herald and went on his merry way.

His account of his night on the Tramp Ward – for vagrants – was not the most comfortable. His dreams – mostly of predatory women – may well indicate why he was on the road in the first place.

He appeared to be less than impressed with the food, but he was full of praise for the man in charge, the workhouse master, who he called “a very good-natured fellow”.

And at the end of his challenge, he had a message to convey – that even then people ate far more than they needed.

“To my surprise, I got into Skipton quite fresh. I was capable of another 20 miles and if it were not for the necessity of earning a few shillings by means of this article, I should have walked on through the night,” he wrote.

“But as it was, I sought the casual ward and was directed by a young man in a voice out of all proportion to his size.”

He revealed that those working at the workhouse, ordering people about, were “inmates in workhouse garb” and he was told he had arrived too late to be admitted for the night.

“I replied that I was much earlier than I had expected to be and that, after all, considering the stoppages I had to make, 33 miles in nine hours was not bad.”

His explanation must have worked, because after giving his name and saying where he came from and where he was going, he was admitted.

“Another inmate was in charge of the casual ward. I met him coming away after having locked up for the night and he did not seem at all pleased to see me,” he wrote.

“Neither did he grumble much. He made me take a bath and gave me some dry bread and cold tea and my clothes I had to leave in a heap on the floor outside the cell.

“One would think that the guardians would not be ruined by putting up a hook outside each door.”

The bed itself was a “wide meshed, wire affair of about two feet wide”.

“The bed clothes consist of three rugs, one for a pillow, another for an overlay, the third for a blanket.”

And for a man who had done a lot of walking, it was not the most comfortable of beds, which might also explain his wild dreams.

“The best way of resting after a long walk is to lie on the side and draw up the knees,” he wrote.

“But the bed was not quite wide enough for this and the only way I could get any comfort was by lying on my back, drawing up my legs and letting my feet rest flat.

“But this was not the position my feet needed. They were blazing hot and the touch of the rug made them worse.”

When he did fall asleep, the dreams began.

“After a couple of hours, I fell asleep and did not wake till a very big woman with a long nose and very thin lips took me up in her arms and made me marry her against my wish,” he recalled.

“The ceremony over, she carried me to her home where I found nine young children bawling in chorus.

“It was the horror of this that wakened me and then the children turned out to be railway engines, letting the people of Skipton know how industrious they were and how very early they were up.”

He fell asleep again, but shortly later another woman appeared.

“This woman began to creep up like a fly, along the 20ft of whitewashed wall, to close the window,” he wrote.

“I was so mad at her for attempting to shut out the air that I hoped she might fall and then I brought about a far-reaching, but much revived, reform by inventing a method by which the police could open at once all the bedroom windows in a street without entering the houses – and keep them open.”

The next morning, he had breakfast and left to continue his challenge.

“I got a big slice of bread and a mug of warm water for my breakfast. As it was the kind of fare I had been living on for nine days, it did not come amiss, but I know what I would have thought of it a fortnight before and I can guess what those who have to break 13cwt of stones in return for such a sumptuous breakfast must think of it,” he wrote.

“But the official in charge is a very good-natured fellow and looks it. As I had never been there before, I was favoured.

“But the moral I wish to draw is this. We all eat three times as much as is good for us. I have never felt stronger than I do at this moment after living on a halfpenny a day for nine days.”

There were regular meetings of the Skipton Guardians when matters surrounding the workhouse were discussed.

Around the time that the journalist spent his night there, another inmate was causing problems for the Master, Mr AE Booth.

John Henderson, a homeless labourer, had refused to do the work required of him in exchange for his board and lodgings.

Having spent the night on the casual ward, he was set the task of breaking stones.

Henderson refused and, when asked why after being hauled before the court, he responded: “When a man is compelled to go to the ’house owing to the weather, has he to break 13cwts of stone for a slice of dry bread and water?”

He was taken to court and Mr Booth told the hearing that Henderson had got the regular allowance and, if he had completed the stone breaking, he would have received dinner and tea and breakfast the next morning. Punishment was swift and Henderson was sent to prison for a week.

Skipton Union Workhouse went on to become Raikeswood Hospital. It was closed in the 1990s and was eventually converted into flats.