Workhouse

[OE. weorchús: f. WORK sb. + HOUSE sb.¹ Cf. MDu. werchuus, Du. werkhuis, MHG. werchûs (G. werkhaus), ON. verkhús (in comb.).]

  1.  A house, shop or room in which work is regularly performed; a workshop or factory. Obs. or Hist.

a. 1100.  in Wr.-Wülcker, Voc., 185/3. Officina, smiðþe uel weorchus. Ibid., 186/27. Ergasterium uel operatorium, weorchus.

1350.  in Riley, Mem. London (1868), 262. In the werkhous … 12,000 of plaunche-nail … 3000 of dornail.

1387.  Trevisa, Higden (Rolls), VII. 307. Þe werkhous þere þey dooþ here werkes.

1431–40.  in Glasscock, Rec. St. Michael’s, Bp.’s Stortford (1882), 6. Le Werkhous latomorum juxta cimiterium.

1497.  Naval Acc. Hen. VII. (1896), 324. The Grounde wher as the seid Ship was made & the Workehouse Belongyng to the same.

1575.  in Plomer, Abstr. Wills Engl. Printers (1903), 23. My workehowse of printing.

1601.  Holland, Pliny, III. vi. I. 61. The worke houses and furnaces of potters.

1697.  Lond. Gaz., No. 3260/3. There were taken with him several Pairs of Stockins wet, as if they had been taken out of a Dyers Work-House.

1752.  Hume, Ess. & Treat. (1777), I. 445. His workhouse, of 20 cabinet-makers, is said to be a very considerable manufactory.

1881.  S. R. Macphail, Relig. House of Pluscardyn, Introd. 7. The court by which we first entered is occupied with stables and work-houses.

  b.  fig.

1548.  Udall, Erasm. Par. Luke i. 34–35. The holy ghoste … in thy wombe, (as it wer in an heauenly workehouse) shall accomplishe the workyng of this holy babe.

1581.  Mulcaster, Positions, vi. (1888), 48. The liuer … the workhouse of thicke and grosse blood.

1645.  Rutherford, Tryal & Tri. Faith, 125. Christ being the very worke-house, and shop of the Devil, in which he wrought.

1684.  trans. Bonet’s Merc. Compit., III. 112. The Heart is the Workhouse of life and heat.

a. 1761.  W. Law, Comf. Weary Pilgr. (1809), 81. The works of the devil are all wrought in self, it is his peculiar workhouse.

  2.  spec. orig. A house established for the provision of work for the unemployed poor of a parish; later, an institution, administered by Guardians of the Poor, in which paupers are lodged and the able-bodied set to work. The official name is now poor-law institution.

  Earlier (and obs.) names were † house of work (1552, see HOUSE sb.¹ 2), WORKING-HOUSE (1597–8, etc.); names of later introduction are † house of industry (1771–2 Irish Act 11 § 12 Geo. III. c. 39, see INDUSTRY 4 b), POOR-HOUSE (1782); for union workhouse, abbreviated to union, see UNION sb.¹ 10 b, 12.

1652.  in W. Cotton & H. Woollcombe, Glean. Munic. Rec. Exeter (1877), 156. The said house to bee converted for a workhouse for the poore of this cittye and also a house of correction for the vagrant and disorderly people within this cittye.

1653.  Act Commw., c. 13 (1658), 259. If he hath not wherewith to satisfie such Fine, the said Judges may adjudge him to the Pillory or a Work-house, or both.

1670–1.  Act 22 & 23 Chas. II., c. 18 (title), An Act for the better regulateing of Workhouses for setting the Poore on Worke.

1702.  Post Man, 10–13 Jan., 2/1. The President and Governours for the Poor of the City of London, having enlarged their Work-house without Bishops-gate.

1731.  Flying Post, 12 Aug., 2/2. His Mother, who was maintain’d by his Labour, being come upon the Parish, is sent to the Work-house at Wandsworth.

1782.  Act 22 Geo. III., c. 83 § 18. The several Poor Houses or Workhouses to be built … under the Authority of this Act, shall be situate within the Parish or Township for which they shall be used.

1797.  Mrs. Berkeley, Poems G. M. Berkeley, Pref. p. cccx. Most well-regulated Bridewells are Paradises compared to the Oxford Work-house.

1836.  Dickens, Sk. Boz, First of May. He believed he’d been born in the vurkis, but he’d never know’d his father.

1856.  Emerson, Engl. Traits, Wealth, Wks. (Bohn), II. 71. Hargreaves invented the spinning-jenny, and died in a workhouse.

1922.  J. J. Clarke, Soc. Administr., 83. The workhouse or institution is the representative institution of the Union, and is the foundation of all indoor relief.

  allusively.  1690.  C. Nesse, O. & N. Test., I. 58. Through Adams fall the world was become a work-house, an house of correction for mans sin.

  3.  A prison or house of correction for petty offenders. U.S.

1888.  Cassell’s Encycl. Dict.

  4.  attrib. and Comb.: † a. in sense 1, as workhouse stable.

1569.  Richmond Wills (Surtees), 218. In the warkhouse stable, sadles, haltars.

  b.  in sense 2, as workhouse brat, cough, fever, inmate, master, system; workhouse-bred, clearing adjs.; workhouse sheeting, strong twilled unbleached cotton material used for sheeting, curtains, etc.; workhouse test, the test of good faith put to an applicant for poor relief by which he was obliged to consent, as a condition of relief, to go to the workhouse if required.

1810.  Crabbe, Borough, xxii. 60. Workhouse-clearing men, Who, undisturb’d by feelings just or kind, Would parish-boys to needy tradesmen bind.

1834.  E. Lytton Bulwer, in Hansard’s Parl. Debates, Ser. III. XXII. 891. In those states [of America] where a strict workhouse discipline was kept up.

1838.  Dickens, O. Twist, v. Then I’ll whop yer when I get in,… my work’us brat! Ibid., xxxvii. Admiration at the workhouse-master’s humility.

1846.  Blackw. Mag., LX. Nov., 560/2. The Utopian expectations of many, that a strict work-house test would destroy pauperism.

1850.  Carlyle, Latter-day Pamph., i. 49. This brutish Workhouse Scheme of ours.

1857.  Borrow, Romany Rye, xlii. He would rob … a workhouse child of its breakfast, as the saying is.

1859.  H. Kingsley, G. Hamlyn, xlii. Base-born, workhouse-bred!

1889.  Conan Doyle, Sign of Four, ix. You would have made an actor, and a rare one. You had the proper workhouse cough.

1891.  C. Creighton, Hist. Epidem. Brit., 538. There was no gaol-fever, workhouse-fever, or domestic typhus in general.

1894.  Oakeshott, Humanising of Poor Law (1897), 14. Nearly one-third of the workhouse inmates are sixty-five years old or over.

1925.  J. J. Clarke, Local Govt., 316. Workhouse infirmaries.

  Hence Workhoused a., lodged in, or habituated to, a workhouse.

1837.  New Monthly Mag., LI. 115. Comfort be with them, poor, workhoused wretches, ‘wheresoe’er they are—wherever they abide!’

1895.  in H. Begbie, Life Gen. W. Booth (1920), II. 189. The parishes can send people to us before they have become workhoused.