Grim doesn’t cover just how bad conditions were in Charity Hall, as our Dickensian template correspondent Angus Young reports.
In his book Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens starts his story with the young orphan of the title being raised in a workhouse in the fictional town of Mudfog. The children working there are poorly fed and eventually lots are drawn between them to find someone to ask for another portion of gruel. Oliver loses out in the draw, forcing him to approach the workhouse master and utter the famous words: “Please, sir, I want some more.” Dickens’ Mudfog was based on Chatham in Kent but his workhouse could have easily been inspired by one in Hull which was built in 1698 off Whitefriargate.
Constructed in a quadrangle, Charity Hall featured four-storey blocks with an open yard facing onto Whitefriargate. Today the HMV music store stands where that entrance used to be while another entrance onto Parliament Street was also later built on when a new police station was constructed in Alfred Gelder Street.
The surviving part of the old station still sticks out like a sore thumb between Parliament Street’s stylish Georgian town houses. The workhouse was originally the result of a parliamentary act incorporating two local parishes – Holy Trinity and St. Mary’s. The legislation gave them powers to provide a building to manage their own system of poor relief.
It’s probably worth noting that Dickens also used an alternative title for his novel – The Parish Boy’s Progress, reflecting the influence of the church in the operation of such workhouses at the time. Hull’s Charity Hall initially housed destitute children – usually orphans – who were fed and received a basic religious education as well as learning to read and write until the age of six. Those aged six and over were required to work. Later adults were also admitted and a report written in 1798 records 41 men, 84 women and 82 children living there.
Two rooms in the hall were equipped for spinning and this seems to have been the main work activity. All the inmates young and old were also required to attend regular Sunday church services and an additional Thursday afternoon service held in the main dining hall where a visiting clergyman from one Hull’s churches would preach.
Other rules in the workhouse were strict. Anyone caught swearing or “in liquor” was immediately shackled in a wooden pillory in the main yard for up to four hours. Other punishments for rule-breaking included reduced food rations, extra work and a requirement to wear coarse yellow coats or gowns to signify their status.
Another rule stated: “The children shall not take God’s name in vain or use any profane language. Those who shall be guilty of such crimes shall stand on a stool in the dining hall with the crime written in large letters on a paper which shall be pinned on their breasts and they shall only have bread and water that day. Such as are convicted of lying shall stand in the like manner, with the words ‘Infamous Liar’ on their breasts.”
The gruel Oliver Twist lived on in the Mudfog workhouse was also on the menu in Hull. Porridge and bread was served daily for breakfast, rice milk was the dinner dish on three days a week and supper usually consisted of more porridge. Some dinners also featured herring, beef or ox stew.
A bell was sounded at 5am each morning during the summer to signal the start of the working day and rang again at 5pm when it ended. In the winter, the hours switched to 7am and 6pm. All lights – usually candles – had to be out by 9pm during the summer and 8pm in the winter. Entrance gates to the workhouse were locked at the same time. Charity Hall operated as a workhouse for an incredible 154 years until 1852 when it was replaced by a new building for 600 inmates in Anlaby Road.
Conditions in the hall were regularly criticised in its later years and a series of incidents hastened its eventual closure. One involved a heavily-pregnant woman seeking admission being brutally assaulted while waiting to be interviewed in an office at the workhouse. The other also featured a pregnant woman who was refused entry and then promptly gave birth on the workhouse steps.
Today, apart from the odd-looking disruption to the western terrace of Georgian town houses in Parliament Street, there’s no trace left of Hull’s first major workhouse.