page_title: Workhouse
section_title: Diet
hierarchical_section_title: Workhouse / Early Victorian workhouses / Diet
caption_attribution_description: English: Dinner time in St Pancras Workhouse, London
context_page_description: In Britain, a workhouse was a total institution where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment. The earliest known use of the term workhouse is from 1631, in an account by the mayor of Abingdon reporting that "we have erected with'n our borough a workhouse to set poorer people to work".
  The origins of the workhouse can be traced to the Poor Law Act of 1388, which attempted to address the labour shortages following the Black Death in England by restricting the movement of labourers, and ultimately led to the state becoming responsible for the support of the poor. However, mass unemployment following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the introduction of new technology to replace agricultural workers in particular, and a series of bad harvests, meant that by the early 1830s the established system of poor relief was proving to be unsustainable. The New Poor Law of 1834 attempted to reverse the economic trend by discouraging the provision of relief to anyone who refused to enter a workhouse. Some Poor Law authorities hoped to run workhouses at a profit by utilising the free labour of their inmates.
context_section_description: In 1836 the Poor Law Commission distributed six diets for workhouse inmates, one of which was to be chosen by each Poor Law Union depending on its local circumstances.  Although dreary, the food was generally nutritionally adequate, and according to contemporary records was prepared with great care.  Issues such as training staff to serve and weigh portions were well understood.  The diets included general guidance, as well as schedules for each class of inmate.  They were laid out on a weekly rotation, the various meals selected on a daily basis, from a list of foodstuffs.  For instance, a breakfast of bread and gruel was followed by dinner, which might consist of cooked meats, pickled pork or bacon with vegetables, potatoes, yeast dumpling, soup and suet, or rice pudding.  Supper was normally bread, cheese and broth, and sometimes butter or potatoes.
  The larger workhouses had separate dining rooms for males and females; workhouses without separate dining rooms would stagger the meal times to avoid any contact between the sexes.
caption: Dinnertime at St Pancras Workhouse, London, 1911
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