Few buildings in Swansea have a history as rich and complex as the Old Hospital in Mount Pleasant hill.
While the residents living in the Old Hospital today can enjoy the privileges of modern life – like hot showers, food deliveries and job opportunities – back in the day, conditions were certainly far bleaker.
The building was constructed in 1861 and it first opened in 1862 as a workhouse run by the Swansea Board of Poor Law Guardians.
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For many people, the word ‘workhouse’ conjures images of Oliver Twist scrubbing floors and asking for more food, and while reality was undoubtedly different from the exuberant life of the famous book and musical, Dickens wasn’t too far off.
Upon its opening, the workhouse was referred to as the ‘pauper palace’ and by 1866, it could house up to 366 paupers and 26 vagrants (tramps).
Local historian Bernard Lewis, author of the book ‘Swansea and the Workhouse’ (2003), said: “On its opening, the workhouse was often referred to as ‘the pauper palace’, an unfair description though many people living in the town of Swansea at that time did live in very poor conditions.”
The Board of Guardians who oversaw the construction and running of the workhouse at cost of nearly £16,000, dated 1895
(Image: West Glamorgan Archive Service)
The workhouse was designed to give the poorest in society lodging and board in exchange for work, but more often than not, work was scarce.
Bernard said: “The Poor Law Guardians did try to provide work for those inmates who were fit enough to undertake it. If a pauper had – in better times – been perhaps a stone mason, a barber or a seamstress etc then it is very likely that they would be required to perform those tasks for the benefit of the workhouse – repairing walls, cutting inmates’ hair, mending inmates’ uniforms etc without any pay. Beyond that it was often difficult to find jobs around the workhouse for inmates to do.”
Male inmates of Swansea workhouse would be assigned tasks such as ‘stone-breaking’ (breaking stones with a hammer to be given for road repairs), and for women, laundry or ‘oakum picking’ (unpicking the thick ropes used on ships) were popular tasks.
Bernard pointed out that many of these unsavoury jobs were there to discourage people from coming into the workhouse in the first place: “The workhouse was never a prison – it was built to keep people OUT not in as keeping people out – due to fear of the harsh regime – would reduce the cost burden on the taxpayer. Any pauper who – due to a change in circumstances, maybe the offer of a job or assistance from family and friends – felt able to leave, could do so by simply giving the Master a couple of hours’ notice.”
Yet, while it wasn’t officially a prison, many inmates simply had no other choice than to enter the labour of the workhouse:
“The reality was that, in the 19th century, poorly paid and erratic jobs, no system of unemployment or sickness benefit, no free medical care and no state pension, meant that for many people – the unemployed, the old, the abandoned, the mentally ill, the sick and the orphaned – entry to a workhouse was the only real option if starvation was to be avoided.”
Only the most desperate and helpless people in Swansea would have called these cobblestones home before 1929
(Image: Maggie Jones)
The Old Hospital building has stood strong over the years, enduring both World War I and II
(Image: Maggie Jones)
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries though, the workhouse became a refuge for the mentally ill, the physically infirm, the elderly, the orphaned and abandoned, as well as the destitute poor.
On the 1881 census of the Swansea workhouse, listed handicaps include ‘idiot’ (Catherine Davies, 16); ‘imbecile’ (Ernest Jones, 19, among others) and ‘lunatic’ (Ann Jenkins, 38).
You can view more pictures of the Swansea workhouse inmates here.
What was on the menu?
Inmates of the Swansea workhouse didn’t starve, but gruel, bread and watery soup were certainly part of the main menu.
Bernard said: “While today’s residents of the old workhouse might enjoy their Ocado deliveries or their Sainsbury’s food, the options in the workhouse were limited. Food options would differ depending on whether the inmate was male or female, elderly, able bodied or sick or a child, for example.”
Able-bodied male and female paupers could expect a “much-maligned gruel” (a thin water-based porridge) that was served each morning with bread – indeed, a stark contrast to the rich diets enjoyed by residents today.
Bernard added: “For the main meal of the day, cooked meat (5 oz) and potatoes (1lb) was served three times a week, with soup and bread being the main meal on another three days. Rice or suet pudding was served once a week.”
Outright cruelty and violence was forbidden in the workhouse, but a temporary diet of bread and water was frequently deployed to discourage troublesome behaviour.
When inmates Mary Ann Randall and William Jeremiah were found getting intimate in one of the lavatories back in 1885, both were punished with a reduced diet (as well as some time in a cell).
Dr Lesley Hulonce, a retired Swansea University lecturer who wrote her PhD thesis on children in the workhouse, colourfully added: “One assumes it was not the same cell.”
A secret place to give birth?
The workhouse often housed unmarried pregnant women who were destitute after being disowned by their families.
Lesley runs the Workhouse Tales blog, and she points out that up until 1910, there were four to five midwives listed on the salary roll of Swansea workhouse:
“For respectable people, the workhouse was a total humiliation, but records do show that there were up to five midwives on the salary roll of Swansea workhouse, as well as what we might call an obstetrician today (although the role would have been different back then).”
The midwives of the workhouse would also go out into the community to help mothers birth at home.
Many of the children in the workhouse were abandoned or orphaned (Crumpsall workhouse)
(Image: Lesley Hulonce)
Some inmates were more… adventurous, than others
Onlookers walking past the workhouse in 1863 might have recalled the spectacle of Harriet Nichols and Mary Rees putting on something of a show – ‘exposing their persons’ – as Lesley recalls in a blog post : “In 1863, passers-by outside Swansea Workhouse were treated to the spectacle of inmates Harriet Nichols and Mary Rees leaning out of a window, drunk and half naked. The workhouse master recorded that the women had been dancing around the bedroom late at night, singing obscene songs and annoying the other inmates.
“As the workhouse matron later testified in court, this culminated in ‘exposing their persons at the windows in a state of nudity’ for which Harriet was sentenced to 42 days hard labour and Mary 14 days.”
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After World War I, an influx of widowed women entered the workhouse after losing their husband as the key bread-winner. During this time, attitudes toward the workhouse and its system softened and the workhouse was renamed ‘Tawe Lodge’ – a move which Bernard argues was a “largely cosmetic exercise”.
As Tawe Lodge, part of the workhouse was used as a general infirmary, and in 1929 the workhouse was formally converted into a private hospital which joined the NHS in 1948, specialising in maternity and geriatric care.
Many Swansea residents were born in this hospital before the maternity ward in Singleton Hospital opened – certainly in better conditions than the birthing women in the workhouse before them.
The hospital closed down in 1995 and opened as student accommodation for a while (a prime location nearby the old Mount Pleasant campus), until it was refurbished into private housing around 2000.
Today, this beautiful old building sits quietly in the middle of Mount Pleasant hill with its neatly-kept gardens, and with walls that are ripe with untold stories.
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