Billericay Workhouse - the stories of those who lived there

We may be facing economic hardships now, but the unfortunate souls who found themselves knocking on the workhouse door some 150 years ago were in a league of their own when it came to destitution and hopelessness.

Unfortunate souls like poor William Judd. He was just 37 when he was admitted to the workhouse in the autumn of 1900 in an exhausted state.

He died three hours later. Judd had been sleeping rough for a few months, kipping down on hay in different barns. His only solace in life was the few dregs of whisky he managed to get his hands on now and again.

He died in the workhouse infirmary at 9pm, three hours after he arrived.

Or there’s the two young boys who were living at the workhouse but were sent to the Brentwood Lunatic Asylum because they were deemed to be ‘troublesome’. In other words they were a bit too boisterous. Their parents weren’t even told they had been taken away. Who knows if they ever made it out?

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Mary Fewell certainly never made it out of the workhouse. When she died in March of 1926 at the age of 95 she had spent almost her entire life living in the Billericay poorhouse. She’s been there since she was 17. To be fair, she admitted she quite liked the life inside the imposing brick building in Norsey Road and said she preferred it to working on the outside. What could she have achieved, however, had she’d not become institutionalised?

Battle of Waterloo veteran Bernard Mace had acquired a number of prestigious war medals during his life. However, he found himself facing hard times in his later years and died in the workhouse, all alone, also at the age of 95. Nobody knew of his notable past in the military until after his death.

Not many people really cared about you if you were in the unlucky position to be desperate enough to be sent to the workhouse- or if you found yourself there after being deserted by your spouse or losing your job. And not many really cared about you once you left.

In June of 1850 a young girl named Eliza Atkins was sent out from the Billericay workhouse to work as a servant for a local farmer.

Her new master Joseph Boreham and his wife were not welcoming hosts. They stripped Eliza of her clothes, beat her with their hands and then assaulted her with a riding whip.

Eliza had 54 bloody wounds on her body. The couple admitted meting out the beating but said Eliza had been ‘insubordinate’. They were given a fine.

Then there was William Taylor, who was just 16 when he apprenticed out by the workhouse to a steam trawling company. He went missing. His body turned up a few months later in Grimsby. He could barely be recognised, such was the extent of his injuries. It seemed he had been attacked then drowned. He was forgotten as quickly as he had disappeared.

Despite the horrors of having to live in a Victorian workhouse, for some time Billericay was considered better than most of its counterparts, including the neighbouring Rochford Workhouse which we have covered previously in Memories.

In the 1880s the Billericay Union Workhouse was known as the ‘tramps favourite’ due to the light work its inmates had to carry out and the excellent fare it served up. This was to change, however.

In April of 1904 inmates at the workhouse went on strike over the state of food they were given.

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The high cost of food served up to the inmates, compared to other workhouses, had raised eyebrows so a new, cheaper, diet plan was brought in.

Suffice to say, it didn’t go down well. At dinner time on the first day of the new menu a young labourer named Greenhill threw his meat pudding in the swill tub. Others soon joined in the protest.

Under the new food plan the inmates were to receive a pint and half of a gruel dish named ‘skilly’ for breakfast, along side some bread. But the weak broth of oatmeal mixed with water was just too bland to bear. Eleven men, ranging in age from 24 to 45, refused to touch the food and when they were supposed to start their day’s labour they point blank refused to perform their tasks. Being put on bread and water rations as a punishment swiftly helped changed their minds, however, and the next day they were back to work.

Two years later women living at the workhouse refused to eat the soup because it tasted so bad. Overseers who ran the workhouse asked for the soup to be sent to them at a meeting so they could try it, but it never arrived so they got out of having to try it.

Some inmates took matters into their own hands. In 1900 a ‘food burglar’ broke into the locked cellar belonging to the workhouse master Walter Needham.

The culprit made off with 3lbs of Mr Needham’s cheese as well as food for the inmates’ dinner the next day.

The bungling thief somehow stepped into a pile of treacle while they were running amok in the cellar, resulting in sticky footsteps being left around the crime scene.

“The burglar had the misfortune to step into a pan of treacle and his further movements were marked by footprints of the sweet and sticky substance,” a newspaper report into the incident revealed.

“It might have been possible to trace him through the treacle, but he seems to have avoided this possibility by removing his boots before leaving the cellar. The police have been looking for the treacly boots, but have not yet found them.”

Despite the threat of harsh punishments it seems inmates weren’t scared to rebel at the workhouse on occasion. Workhouse residents had to work in order to pay for their keep. There was little choice over what jobs they were given.

In 1908 John Taylor was sent to prison for seven days after refusing to carry out his tasks. He was upset that he had to wash in cold water and complained the water at the workhouse was never hot.

Albert Simmons, a labour aged 25 exhibited his outrage at having to pick oakum at the workhouse (untwisting rope) by setting fire to the entire equipment room.

Upon being arrested he said he didn’t care about what he’d done and ‘wanted to get a Christmas dinner in prison’. He got his wish. Although some called for him to be flogged he was instead sentenced to a year behind bars.

Like all workhouses at the time Billericay Workhouse was there top provide sanctuary for the many poor, and homeless people of the age.

Some were over-nighter tramps who, for shelter and supper, were expected to chop logs and help out generally, while others could end up living there long term.

One such ‘tramp’ was Jane Carpenter. She was always in and out of the workhouse. She’d come from Wales and clearly had a hard life. At one point she had been sent to prison for seven years for stealing two jackets.

In September of 1905, Jane was 75 and penniless. She limped because she had a broken leg that had not been set properly. One night she left the workhouse and laid herself down on a bench, after having a few drinks, when a police officer stopped her.

The encounter ended up with her being kicked so hard she was bleeding heavily. She accused the police sergeant of attacking her and of bellowing at her: “If you scream again I’ll give you a dab in the mouth.” The officer, Walter Peters, denied the charge and said he had only ‘poked’ her on the arm to see if she were dead or alive. He was acquitted and Jane’s desolate existence continued.

Children were also to be found living in the workhouse. When they went out to school they were often teased by the village children due to the distinctive blue stockings they had to wear. It got so bad that in 1895, the workhouse overseers passed a motion to end the humiliation of the children by buying in stockings of all different colours.

The workhouse was gradually reformed and modernised and eventually became the site of St Andrew’s Hospital.

It is said that the composer Dr Ralph Vaughan Williams once visited the hospital to record and notate folk songs from some of the inmates.

Today the workhouse building still stands and has been developed into deluxe apartments. Little of its original usage is obvious, though its dark history remains intriguing to many.