Page 27 - O Mahony Journal 2025

The staff of the workhouse were as follows :
● the clerk – admitted and registered each inmate and documented their status and observations on
each at registration
● the Master – oversaw all male inmates be they adult or child
● the Matron – oversaw the female inmates both adult and female child
● a schoolmaster and schoolmistress – instructed the respective male and female children; education was
part of the ethos of the workhouse system (stemming from the aim to reduce vagrancy and encourage
self-reliance)
● a physician – appointed to visit and oversee the inmate’s health and welfare
● Usually two chaplains , one Roman Catholic and another Church of Ireland – appointed to see after the
spiritual welfare of the inmates and conduct religious services in the workhouses
● a few nurses and nurse tenders/aides, cooks and cleaners– also part of the workhouse staff

The most prominent figures in the day-to-day regimental life of the inmates were the Master and the Matron
of the Workhouse. They in turn were answerable to a Board of Guardians, elected annually and who attended
weekly meetings to oversee the workhouse and the entire local Union. They met in the boardroom each
Saturday in every workhouse in Ireland. Some were large local landlords while others were magistrates.
They fixed the poor rate, secured finance, and relayed information to and from the Poor Law Commissioners
in Dublin, who were in turn the superiors of each Union and Board of Guardians. There was a little more
officialdom to all the above but for the purposes of this article, this is the simplified version.

By September 1845, the potato blight arrived on the land, and the blight firmly established its grip in Ireland.
The blight later was identified officially as Phytophthora Infestans, a fungus, following a royal commission of
scientific enquiry.
In October 1845, Prime Minister Robert Peel established a Scientific Commission to ascertain the cause of crop
failure and to formulate solutions. Historians have frequently observed how this group were mistaken in their
conclusions on the cause of the blight, which was only established as fungal in nature in the 1890s. Though
blights had appeared previously, this one was particularly ominous.
Many believed the crisis would last a single season and, thus, the workhouses of Ireland did not witness a huge
influx of paupers in that year. Of course there were food shortages in 1845, but the Irish used up any resources
available to them in that year, 1845. It was not until the second potato failure in the autumn of 1846 that the
workhouse came to the fore as an institution of survival. The over reliance on the potato as a food source, and
the subsequent lack of potatoes really came to a head in the winter of 1846.
Statistical analysis of workhouse records and minute books highlight the stress that the second crop failure
caused. Increased admissions to the workhouse started to become noticeable from late October 1846,
and this trend continued until late 1849 and even into 1850. Though by then the blight was long gone, the
devastating effects of malnutrition, disease (especially cholera), and a lack of seed potatoes all created a
domino effect that ensured the great hunger continued until early 1850s.
As paupers rushed to the workhouse to seek assistance, one can only imagine the sense of dread, of
foreboding that they felt, entering a place of last resort, only then to be segregated and separated from family.
What happened to people once they went inside those walls? What if those walls could talk – what life stories
would they reveal concerning their diet, their treatment, their confinement, and their welfare?

Rising admissions during October 1846 meant that 2,358 were accommodated within the Cork workhouse,
breaching its intended capacity of 2,000. Each pauper had to fulfil a Destitute Rule to seek admission to the
workhouse; once destitution was ascertained, so began the admission process.

Was it easy to gain access to a workhouse? To enter a workhouse, one had to prove one’s destitution and fulfil

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