Strabane’s Union Workhouse 1841 - 1930
The 1836 Royal Commission, was actually aimed at helping the Irish poor, nonetheless said they brought "filth, neglect, confusion, discomfort and insalubrity".
The Irish Poor Law of 1838 introduced a relief system for poor, sick and the destitute. Before the Great Famine (1845-1852), workhouses generally remained three-quarters empty despite the fact there were an estimated 2.4 million Irish living in a state of poverty.
The term “pauper” was applied to a recipient of Poor Law relief, while they were often known as “inmates” once resident in a workhouse. By 1847 Ireland's workhouses were bursting at the seams with a nationwide average weekly number of 83,283 inmates.
Ireland was divided into 130 Poor Law Unions, with a workhouse established in each. Families were separated and given a cold bath to de-louse them. Men, women and children were confined to their own dormitories. During the day, they followed a strict regime and were expected to perform manual labour.
Tasks included breaking stones, working in the laundry, digging trenches, cooking, scrubbing floors, picking beaten or unbeaten oakum, a heavy used rope covered in tar, cut up into 2 foot lengths that was beaten with a hammer to remove the tar, the inmates unpicked the strands right down to teasing out the original hemp fibres. This was sold to the shipyard and used to seal the gaps between the ships planks, hence the term “money for old rope”.
Children were educated and taught a trade. Boys learned shoe making and tailoring, while girls were taught embroidery and cooking.
Prior to the famine, Strabane was a bustling market town of over 5000 people, connected to the Foyle by a canal and by the mid-1800s to neighbouring towns by rail like Derry, Newtownstewart, Omagh & Enniskillen.
The Strabane Poor Law Union was officially declared on 6 April 1839 and covered an area of 209 mi2
(541 km2).
The Strabane Union Workhouse was originally planned to be built at Magirr in the Bridge Street area of the town, on land owned by James Hamilton (b.1811 d.1885), Marquis of Abercorn. This site was rejected as unsuitable so the workhouse was planned to be built on a 5-acre site to the North of Strabane, on the east side of the Derry Road.
It was designed by the Poor Law Commisioner’s archetect George Wilkinson (b.1814 d.1890). The building was based on one of his standard plans to accomidate a maximum capacity of 800 inmates. An entrance and administrative block at the west contained porter’s room and waiting room at the centre with Guardians’ board room on the first floor above. Extensions were later added at each side to provide childrens accomidation and school rooms.
The main accommodation block had a Master’s Quarters at the centre, with male and female wings at each side. At the rear, a range of single-story utility rooms such as bake house and washrooms connected through to the infimary and idiots wards via a central spine containing a chapel and dining-hall. A burial ground was located to the north-east.
The Commissioners in Dublin had given Wilkinson instructions to design “a series of plans of different capacities, capable of holding from 330 to 1,300 inmates”.
The Commissioners selected Wilkinson because he had already erected workhouses in Wales, which they believed were similar to the environment in Ireland, and also because his building costs were considerably less than the buildings in England (at least in theory).
Despite the Irish workhouse being larger, compared to England, Wilkinson initially achieved savings of one third from the English buildings, a principal policy of the Poor Law. Expenditure was reduced by a lower standard of accommodation in Ireland, for example, his plans called for earthen floors instead of timber, considered suitable especially for the Irish inmates because, “both in point of economy and in being better adapted to their habits, most of whom did not have shoes and stockings, and were accustomed to floors of common earth”.
Wilkinson also introduced his own cost-saving, sleeping platforms instead of bedsteads in the dormitories, white-washed internal walls instead of plastered, bare rafters instead of ceilings.
The Strabane construction was carried out by Messers Patterson & Catcheside at a cost of £6,885, plus £1,355 for fittings etc, totaling £8,240. It was delcared fit for the reception of paupers on 18 November 1841 and admitted its first inmates the same day.
It’s operation was overseen by an elected Board of Guardians, 25 in number. The board also included 5 ex-officio Guardians, making a total of 30. The Guardians met each week on a Tuesday.
The nomination of Guardians for this Union took place on Thursday, 25 April 1839, before the Returning Officer, the Hon. Mr. Clements being also in attendance, besides several Magistrates of the town and neighbourhood, and others throughout the Union. The following rate payers were put in nomination as Guardians for the year ending 25 March 1840.
Nomination of Poor Law Guardians for the Strabane Union 1839.
Co.Tyrone divisions Nominees
Strabane: W. Ramsay, W. Stevenson, Samuel Morton, Thomas Smith (resigned), Robert Hamilton (resigned), Neal Doherty.
Altaclady: Daniel Patton, J.R. Auchinleck.
East Urney: Charles Hamilton, Robert Porter.
Church Lands: Arthur Foster, John Smith.
Douglas Burn: William Dick, James Tynan.
Baronscourt: Oliver Stewart (elected), John Kyle (resigned).
West Urney: James McCurdy (elected).
Glenmornan: James Sinclair (resigned), W. Segerson (elected).
Ballymagorry: Thomas Brown (elected).
Camus: G. Lowther (resigned), Robert Smyth (elected).
Ballyneanor: James Craig, A. Woods, A. Edie (resigned).
Mountcastle: Francis O’Neil (elected).
Dunemanagh: W. McCrea (elected), A. Edie (resigned).
Newtownstewart: A. Edie (elected).
Donnelong: A. Edie (resigned), Robert Alexander, Robert McCrea.
Co.Donegal divisions Nominees
Clonleigh North: Robert Montgomery, John Kerr, Tasker Keys (resigned).
Clonleigh South: George Knox (elected), James Ball (resigned), Andrew Clark (resigned).
St. Johnston: S. Hamilton (elected).
Figart: Charles Hamilton (resigned), Robert Montgomery, William Witherow.
Raphoe: Robert Montgomery, Samuel Ramsay, Robert Kincaid, W. Hamilton.
Castlefin: Walter Jones, William Sims.
Feddyglass: John Lowery (elected).
Trentamucklagh: Robert Gregg (elected).
They represented the 24 electoral divisions listed as follows:
Co.Tyrone: Altaclady, Ballymagorry, Ballyneaner, Barron's Court, Caums, Church Lands, Douglas Burn, Dunnalong, Dunnamanagh, Glenmornan, Mountcastle, Newtown Stewart, Strabane, and East Urney.
Co. Donegal: Castle Finn, Cloghard, North Conleigh, South Conleigh, Feddyglass, Figgart, Raphoe, St Johnstown, Treantamucklagh, and West Urney.
In 1845 the Great Famine (An Gorta Mór) began and hundreds went to the workhouse to receive aid. Food in the workhouse was prepared in two 400 gallon boilers, with a further 100 gallon boiler used for “stirabout”. It has been estimated that on the eve of the famine 30% of Irish people were largely or wholly dependant on potatoes as the primary diet.
The initial workhouse diet was a breakfast of stirabout (a weak oatmeal porridge) and milk with a dinner of potatoes and milk. When the potato blight struck, this diet was substituted by white bread and Indian meal.
Breakfast: 7 oz Stirabout & 1 pint Buttermilk or 1/2 pint new-milk.
Dinner: 3 1/2 lb. Potatoes weighed raw & 1 pint Buttermilk or 1/2 pint new-milk.
The workhouse was run in a very disciplined way and there were penalties for not following the rules.
The Belfast Newsletter, 1851 recorded the following: A female inmate in Strabane was sentenced to six months hard labour for attacking the matron.
The following punishments were recorded in the 1840s.
a. Refusing work: 12 stripes of a rod.
b. Stealing money: 14 stripes and 8 cold baths over 4 weeks.
c. Throwing stones and annoying a lunatic: 20 stripes, or 12 hours confinement, loss of a meal, and cold shower.
d. Running away from the warehouse: No milk for 14 days.
e. Stealing food: No milk for 2 days.
The estimated numbers of the destitute from the Strabane and District parishes were recorded in 1846-47 as follows: Camus: 2047, Urney: 1533, Leckpatrick: 1134 and Donagheady: 2025.
The town was slow to recover from the famine and the workhouse played a big part in times of desperation.
Strabane death records suggest that Typhus fever (a group of diseases caused by bacteria that are spread to humans by fleas, lice, and chiggers) patients were brought to Strabane workhouse to facilitate isolation and receive any possible treatment. The population of the town dropped from 7,000 pre Famine (1845), to 4,000 in 1889 a period of 44 years.
During the Great Famine in 1845, a 70 bed fever hospital was erected at the south-east of the workhouse, on the hill behind, which in 1922 became the Strabane District Hospital and later became Strabane Hospital. Also a house was hired to accommodate 36 inmates.
A million people in Ireland are estimated to have died of starvation and epidemic disease between 1846 and 1851, and some two million emigrated in a period of a little more than a decade.
Strabane Poor Law Union Returns for the week ending 18 November 1848
Remaining in the house last week: 520, Admitted during the week: 62, Born: 0, Total: 584, Died: 4, Discharged: 30, Remaining in house: 551, In the house in the corresponding week last year: 623.
Extract from the Tyrone Constitution - Omagh Friday 19 March 1847
An inquest was held in Strabane, on the same day on the bodies of two sisters, named Mary Jane and Anna HARKIN, one 12 years old and the other six. Their father had brought them from Castlefin to Strabane, when he was forced from destitution to leave them and go to the harvest in Scotland. They were taken into Strabane workhouse, where they remained until the return of their father, who took them out, finding them in a sickly and declining state of health. They were exposed to cold by being carried about, and, strange to say, both died on the 12th instant, at the same hour. Verdict - died from exposure to cold, being ins a ?diseased? state when leaving the workhouse.
In Feburary 1922 there was a failed attempt by the IRA to burn down the Strabane Workhouse. The intention, as was with the burning of many Workhouses further south, was to prevent the buildings from being used by the British military.
Extract from the Tyrone Constitution Titled: Nurse’s Terrifying Ordeal.
Much excitement was created in Strabane and district when it was learned early on Thursday morning that an attempt had been made to burn the Strabane workhouse, either late on Wednesday night or on Thursday morning.
The building had been guarded by a force of the constabularly: but at the back, which is in rural distruct, it appears that five or six men entered through a gate and made their way to the quarters of the matron (Miss O’Keefe). They were armed, and five of them were masked. They ordered the matron to leave the room, and marched her down one of the corridors in charge of a guard who was armed with a revolver, afterwards, placing her in a room. The sixth man was neither masked nor disguised, but was able to be identified.
The entire building, which, they suspected the military would occupy, was saturated with petrol and the place was strewn with empty tins. Those using the petrol would appear to have been inexperienced, as the heads of the tins were knocked off instead of the screw being used. Four empty tins were found afterwards. The petrol was carefully placed in all quarters especially about the stairs. The police were alarmed by the nurse, and on arrival they were unable to light even a match so great were the petrol fumes. Luckily, those who perperated the outrage forgot that in ever corner of the building were fire extinguishers, and it was the expert use of these by the police that saved the premises.
The woodwork on the stairs of all the rooms was covered with petrol and blankets hanging around the building were also saturated, as were the nurses’ rooms, after the occupants had been evicted, particular attention being given to the various quarters which would have been occupied by the military.
On thursday evening the military arrived and took over the building, They were a detachment of the Dorsets, and this is their first arrival in Strabane, They were fully equipped, including machine guns. Immediately before their arrival the patients in the District Hospital were removed in ambulances to Castlederg and Londonderry.
In the 1930s, part of the dinning hall block was used as for Mass by Catholics from the north side of Strabane. During the Second World War the workhouse was also used by service personnel as a Navy, Army, and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI) and for staff billets.
The Poor Law Commission was replaced by the Poor Law Board in 1847, with the intention of improving accountability to Parliament. Workhouses and Boards of Guardians were abolished in 1930 by the Local Government Act 1929, and their powers and responsibilities were passed to local and national government bodies.
The entrance block of the building can now be seen as the Derry City & Strabane District Council Offices located at 41, Derry Road, Strabane, BT82 8DY
Tragic Deaths from Starvation at Strabane Thomas Gilroy
The Londonderry Journal, Saturday, 11 December 1847.
A most melancholy case of the death of a father and son from starvation occurred in Strabane during last week. From the evidence adduced at the inquest held on the bodies on Saturday last, it appeared that a man named THOMAS GILROY, with his wife and six children from Manor Hamilton, County Leitrim, went to Scotland sometime in August last, with the hope of bettering their condition by procuring employment. They lived in Glasgow until about November, when the wife and three of the children were seized by fever, and removed to the infirmary. On her recovery, she learned that her husband and the three other children had also been attacked with the same fatal disease – two of the children had died, and that the husband, though partially recovered and pronounced out of danger, was still very weak and unable to work.
In this helpless and enfeebled state, the Glasgow authorities provided a free ticket for their passage to Derry, as the nearest Irish port, and giving them two shillings and sixpence, the husband, wife and four children, were conveyed by the steamer to that city, where they arrived on Thursday, the 25th of November. On arriving in Derry, they applied at the workhouse for relief which they were told could not be granted without a line from a relieving officer, for whom they proceeded to make enquiry, but not being immediately successful, and being exhausted with cold and fatigue, they took a lodging and procured some food with the money which had been given them. They proceeded to Strabane on the following morning, hoping to get relief in the workhouse in that town, but being half starved and enfeebled from their relentless illness, they were merely able to crawl along, endeavouring to support nature on raw turnips and cabbages, which formed their sole food for the three or four days during which they were on the road.
They did not arrive at the Workhouse until Thursday evening, and applying at the gate, they were spoken to by a boy who told them, as at Derry, that they must get a line from a relieving officer before they could be admitted. They remained at the gate in a state of utter exhaustion and despair for a considerable time, still hoping that the workhouse functionaries would take pity on their wretched condition, and at length the porter made his appearance, and without deigning to speak to them, or to listen to their solicitations, beckoned them to leave the place! The husband then told the wife that he was unable to proceed, from weakness, she had better to go on to Strabane with the children, try and procure some place of shelter and if he got stronger he would follow them.
The wife complied, but failing in procuring either lodging or food, she returned and found that her husband had left the place. After a long search and many fruitless enquiries she found him at length in a cabin near Melmount on the Urney side of the river. Some warm milk was given to the husband by the people, but still they were refused lodgings. They at length obtained shelter in the house of a poor woman who was herself without fire, and having procured a coal or two from one of the neighbouring houses, and cooked their last grain of meal, they lay down on the damp wet floor of the fireless cabin. Before morning the man was dead, and one of the boys died on the same day. A verdict was returned in both cases, of “death from starvation”, and a strong feeling was expressed regarding the conduct of the porter of the Strabane workhouse. The remaining son died in the workhouse on Monday.
Owing to the disclosures at the inquest, and the remarks of the coroner’s jury, the case was investigated by the board of guardians of the Strabane union, at their meeting on Tuesday, when the case was fully stated by Mr Robert McCrea. The porter was severely censured for his inhumanity and neglect of duty, in not having personally attended to the application of the starving family, and not taking them to the relieving officer. The following resolutions were also adopted: “That the master shall, in future, exercise his own discretion in admitting casual paupers, not of the union, in cases of extreme distress.”
“From the statement made by the foreman of the coroner’s jury, it is of the opinion of this board, however deeply they regret the neglect of the duty of the porter, whereby the application of the poor family for admission was not brought under consideration, that it is to be equally deplored that the Gilroy’s were sent from Glasgow in a state when they lives were endangered by travelling”.
On the suggestion of Mr. Robert McCrea, a subscription was got up for the poor woman who had shown humanity to the sufferers, by affording them shelter when it had been refused by all others, and who is herself in a state of extreme destitution. When no one could be found to touch the corpses, this poor woman washed them – Mr. McCrea put them in the coffin with his own hands, got them interred, and conducted the surviving portion of this bereaved family to the workhouse infirmary. Conduct such as this is deserving of the highest praise.
George Wilkinson, FRIBA
was an English architect, who practised largely in Ireland. Architect to the Poor Law Commissioners in Ireland from 1839 until 1855. George Wilkinson was born in 1814, a son of W.A. Wilkinson, carpenter and builder of Witney, Oxfordshire. His younger brother William Wilkinson was also an architect. In 1835, following the Poor Law Amendment Act of August 1834, which provided for the construction of 350 workhouses in England and Wales, Wilkinson won the competition for designing the workhouse at Thame, Oxfordshire. During the next three years, while he was still in his early twenties, he designed many other workhouses in Oxfordshire and elsewhere in England and Wales.
In July 1838 with the passing of the Act for the More Effectual Relief of the Destitute Poor in Ireland the workhouse system was extended to Ireland. According to the provisions of the act, 130 workhouses were to be built. Whereas different architects had been able to compete for workhouse commissions in England and Wales, the Poor Law Commissioners proposed that in Ireland the Board of Works should be given sole responsibility for all the workhouses. When this proved impossible for legal reasons, they invited Wilkinson and two other architects to submit designs for a prototype Irish workhouse. On the strength of his experience in Wales under circumstances, and with materials not very dissimilar from what exist in Ireland', in January 1839 Wilkinson was appointed the Commissioners' architect in Ireland, responsible for the design and erection of all 130 Irish workhouses. He was to be paid a salary of £500 per annum and provided with a full-time assistant and a clerk, to be paid £150 and £100 per annum respectively.
George married Mary Clinch in Witney on 18 December 1850. Mary was a daughter of John Williams Clinch (1788–1871) the Witney brewer, banker and landowner. They had four daughters, Alice, Florence, Annie Elizabeth, and Edith.
He was made a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1878.