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Ending Up In The Union


History dude

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Thanks to those nice people who have uploaded records of BMD to the Sheffield Indexers site, I have been able to track some of my ancestors. However two of them ended their days at Ecclesall Union. From what I can gather this was the workhouse with all the horrible implications for them it implies. :unsure: However since they died in the 20th century - one in 1910 and the other in 1920, maybe they are not as bad as what I imagine they were. :mellow:

I hope members can fill me in as to what they were like at that time?

Perhaps different types of inmates were treated in different ways?

So my first must be old age people, how would my Great Great Grandfather Joesph Appleyard who died there in 1910 aged 75, have been treated? I suspect he wasn't in the place long, perhaps not being able to look after himself, his wife having died in 1892. He could have had some money at one time as he was a cabinet maker, as he lived in Dobbin Hill Road in 1881, not a poor part of Sheffield. He was intered in a family plot with others from his family.

The other I suspect was less "deserving". :( Ada Appleyard my Great Grandmother, died at the same place but now called the Union, in 1920 (aged53). It seems she went into a mass grave of people all from the same place. I suspect that even her son and the same one who is in another thread about his millatary envolment to fight during WW2 - John did not go to the funeral.

It would also be nice to see what others have found out from having found relations there :)

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I have also found that a number of my ancestors finished their days in various workhouses, in Sheffield, Chesterfield and Doncaster.

Although I have not researched this particular aspect of my family history in any especial detail, I have gathered that by the start of the 20th Century that workhouses were gradually becoming transformed into the kind of hospital-social care facilities that we have today.

It is very probable that we would not have recognised them as such, but neither do I believe that they would have been seen in quite the same manner as those institutes of dread portrayed in "Dickensian" Novels.

There is a very good site about workhouses and I have attached the link below.

http://www.workhouses.org.uk/EcclesallBierlow/

Kind regards;

N

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I've a problem with the cottages at Workhouse Green in the Porter Valley. I've read that people were 'outposted' there to grow fruit and vegetables. But the workhouse itself had extensive vegetable gardens, so why would they place people way out there?

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I've a problem with the cottages at Workhouse Green in the Porter Valley. I've read that people were 'outposted' there to grow fruit and vegetables. But the workhouse itself had extensive vegetable gardens, so why would they place people way out there?

What's the timeframe for this? It could be due to the level of 'smog' in Sheffield. Ideas about treating sickness tend to be about fresh air, working the land and eating fresh vegetables. Treatment of chronic lung conditions were often delt with in this way. Before antibiotics came into being that is.

Thanks Unitedite Returns, that was very interesting.

I'm just wondering if I would be able to see the admissions record in archives (if I ever get a chance to go there) for Ada inparticular, as records often have an embargo rules for viewing. Would they be all open to public viewing seeing as it closed down many years ago?

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I've a problem with the cottages at Workhouse Green in the Porter Valley. I've read that people were 'outposted' there to grow fruit and vegetables. But the workhouse itself had extensive vegetable gardens, so why would they place people way out there?

I have absolutely no idea what so ever and without some indepth research, the answer will probably remain elusive.

However, ideas about treatment and therapy at the turn of the 20th Century were no doubt very different to those of today and it is very possible that a stay in a cottage in some rural location was considered beneficial to the patient.

However, whether such secondment would have been considered as a "reward", or as a "chastisement" I could not say.

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