Pity the poor Pauper! Tales from the Faversham Workhouse

In the early years of the nineteenth century the well-off began to feel uncomfortable. Trade was not good, farming was suffering from competition overseas and as a result the number of paupers was increasing dramatically. Above all this was taking money from the pockets of the well-off. What were they to do? Faversham’s 170 paupers trudged through the snow to the new workhouse on Wednesday 13 January 1836. It had been built for less than £5,000. “The workhouse should be a place of hardship, of coarse fare, of degradation and humility”, wrote the Reverend Henry Hart Milman. Families were separated into different wards, wives from husbands, children from their mothers. Dean Ramsden will relate some of the trials and tribulations of those incarcerated in Faversham’s workhouse.