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The Dreaded Workhouse System

During the Great Irish Famine – an Overview

By Michelle O Mahony
O Mahony Society Member, Author and Consulting Historian, OM History Consultant

The Cork Union Workhouse today forms part
of the Irish Health Service Executive and is
known locally as Saint Finbarr’s Hospital; it
was and still is typical of a famine-era workhouse. Conditions
within its walls, like all workhouses, were horrific. For most
inmates, it offered misery rather than relief and assistance,
whether it be during the years of the Great Hunger or afterwards.

Workhouses were an integral part of the Poor Law (Ireland) Act
1838. When that Act was being devised by Sir George Nicholls and the workhouse blueprints drafted by George
Wilkinson, neither man could have expected that the system would have to respond to a famine. A famine that
by modern standards was a huge humanitarian crisis. Yet, within a decade, the calamity that engulfed Ireland
(1845-51) would see the workhouse system straining to cope, then and for some years thereafter.

Demand for workhouse assistance was, ironically, a concept which the Poor Law at its inception tried to avoid.
The system was established with the explicit aim of being a deterrent – paupers were supposed to perceive life
within a workhouse to be so undesirable that the mere thought of seeking admission would spur them on to
improve their lot.

To enter a workhouse was to make a public admission of one’s destitution. The famine caused a huge shift in
public perceptions of the workhouse. It then became a place of potential sanctuary, where meagre assistance
was better than nothing at all. That people were driven into the workhouse by the most instinctual of urges,
survival is clearly apparent from the Cork records.

The Cork Board of Guardians held their first meeting on 4 June 1839 in the contemporary workhouse (in the
old House of Industry – a type of precursor to the workhouse institutions) which was maintained and utilised
as a workhouse until the permanent workhouse was completed and fitted out. Built in 1841 on Wilkinson’s
imposing blueprint, the Cork workhouse was designed to accommodate 2,000 paupers. Each workhouse was
designed to facilitate the population of the union/area it served. Some workhouses had capacity for 400 - 800
inmates, proportionate in size to the local population.

Despite its size, studying evidence from the workhouse gives a tangible sense of the cramped, overcrowded,
disease-ridden conditions. Ultimately, a deadly atmosphere prevailed inside its walls. If only the walls of these
institutions could talk, what would they reveal of life beyond the workhouse gates?
Was there a tradition of assisting the paupers and less well-off prior to the Poor Law of 1838? Prior to the
enactment of the Irish Poor Law Act of 1838, the pauper class of society found refuge in alms-houses, poor
houses, houses of industry etc. All of these also existed for a while after the establishment of the poor law.

Benevolent agencies particularly linked to religious groups such as the Quakers were common then also. There
is even a tradition dating back to monastic times of benevolent houses and churches. The House of Industry
would have been a precursor to some extent to the workhouse system, and in many places the existing House
of Industry provided the site for the first workhouse during the early implementation of the Poor Law until the
new purpose-built workhouses were built.

The Irish Famine generated a greater awareness of these feared institutions – their social, medical, historical
and cultural aspects are often missing from the history books which discuss the Irish Famine- The Great

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