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Hunger- An Gorta Mor. My research has always focused on the experience
of the inmate, their individual as well as collective experiences during
confinement. A more in-depth analysis can be found in my book, Famine
in Cork City. (Bill O Badz – editor of this Journal – kindly reviewed my book
in the November 2024 Newsletter.)

George Nicholls was tasked to investigate if the poor law of England
and Wales could be introduced to Ireland. Nicholls arrived in 1836 to
investigate if the Poor Law legislation of England and Wales was suitable,
and how it could be adapted and introduced into Ireland. He travelled
the country and recommended the implementation of the Poor Law
Amendment Act of 1834 (of England and Wales) into Ireland, this became
the Poor Law Ireland Act, July 1838.
In adopting the system of Poor Law Relief, Ireland was divided into 130
Unions (parish-like divisions); each Union was then subdivided into
electoral districts , usually with a market town at their centre. In Pre-
Famine Ireland (1838-’45), at the commencement of the Poor Law 1838,
County Cork (of which much of this article will reference) was divided into
11 Poor Law Unions.
Following the Famine (post-1851) and much societal change, additional unions were added to County Cork. By
the early 1850s, 18 Unions were in the county, more than a 50% increase. Many of these workhouses were
to be the foundations for the Irish Health Service, becoming County Homes in 1919, Cottage Hospitals, and
formed today's HSE sites. One of the first decisions of the First Dáil in 1919 was to abolish the term workhouse
and re-designate the workhouses as county homes and cottage hospitals.
Wondering how the poor law was funded? A rate was levied on the rate payers of each Union, known as the
poor rate. The finance raised then supported each Union and each workhouse was built with additional fiscal
loans from provincial banks in Ireland.

Workhouses were cold, austere buildings, modelled on George Wilkinson’s penal design and H-Block
concept, just like the English and Welsh Workhouses. However, there was a caveat in the design of the Irish
Workhouse. It was to be far more cost efficient and instructions were given that the cost of each workhouse
was to be one-third less than their English or Welsh counterparts. To this end, many interiors remained un-
plastered and just white- washed. In some instances, construction shortcuts and ventilation louvres were
left unfinished to save costs.
Commentators have brandished workhouses using the following terms: a chamber of horrors, grim bastilles
of despair, and institutions of penal servitude. All these terms have undertones of a prison-penal system. The
residents were called inmates, and the registers that recorded the weekly figures were standard issue books to
all workhouses; they refer to the Inmates and not residents.

The workhouse system had all the trappings of a penal system, complete with punishment for transgression
of house rules. Rule breaking had dire consequences, and some workhouses had a room known as a “Black
Hole” for solitary confinement of inmates. This room was approximately 6 feet square and often partially
exposed to the elements.

Transgression of house rules included simple acts of vandalism, damaging the workhouse uniform, smoking
tobacco or trying to abscond the facility, all of which were punished severely. Who made the decision on the
punishment? The Master or Matron of the house usually decided on the punishment and sometimes conferred
with other authoritarian figures in the running of each Union.

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