Workhouse Records

A major focus of my genealogical research has been on Workhouses, the 19^th century institutions that took in thousands of people in various stages of despair and destitution.

Copyright: National Archives

Often, the Workhouse rears its head when you are trying to obtain information on where an ancestor was born or died. If either event occurred in the Workhouse, then the Workhouse will be recorded on the certificate, but not much other information will be given. You might want to know:

• How long were they in the Workhouse?
• On what date did they enter?
• Did they go in alone?
• What was the reason for entering?

Depending on the period of time you are looking at, there can be different answers for each of the above questions, so what I want to focus on is how you can best navigate the multitude of records that survive for the Workhouse, and making sure that you use all that is available to you.

In the case of the Belfast Workhouse, I started my quest at PRONI on the eCatalogue Search. A simple search for ‘Workhouse’ brings up over 1100 results, so you can save yourself some time that I didn’t by browsing instead for the Belfast Board of Guardians index (if you are searching for another Workhouse in Northern Ireland, then refer to this index page instead.)

From here, you will get an overview of every type of record that is held on that Workhouse, including:

• Indoor Registers.
• Minute Books.
• Record of Operations.
• Return of Births.
• Return of Deaths.

This is where it falls to you to connect the dots.

To use myself as an example again, I tend to start with the Returns of Births/Deaths if I have a specific event in mind to research. These are ordered by the months that they cover and are easy to order up (assuming the event occurred more than 100 years ago – otherwise you are looking at a Freedom of Information request.)

Once you have located the event in the register book, you should see a reference number in the far-left column and/or in an ‘Observation’ column further along. The number on the left is typically to reflect a person’s chronological entry in the current book, while the other number is typically to reflect a person’s entry in another book – likely the Indoor Register.

In this case, order up the Indoor Registers (same procedure) and browse chronologically until you come to the person’s number and it could tell you:

• Age and date when he/she first entered the Workhouse.
• If he/she came with family.
• Where he/she had been living.
• His/her occupation.
• When he/she left the Workhouse (or died there.)

My 2x-great-grandmther's Indoor Register entry.

Even if this gives you all of the information that you sought, it is still worth your time looking through the Minute Books in case any reference is made to your ancestor. Honestly, this can be a long shot, but if you do find a reference then it can give some depth to his/her situation.

As I mentioned earlier, reasons for entering the Workhouse varied as time went on. Where illegitimate pregnancy might have been the cause of a 6-month stay in the 1890's, a short-term medical emergency could have been the reason in the 1930's (as was the case with two separate ancestors of mine.)

So, if you hear/see 'Workhouse' and feel alarm bells going off, just seek out your local public record office and start putting together the pieces of the puzzle.

If you have any problems in that regard or have questions about anything I have discussed here, then please get in touch. Always happy to help.

Everything Old is New Again

See, my Mum had a granny.

A 4ft-something, iron-fisted, Catholic matriarch. She lived to be 85 and died almost 30 years ago, but has has enjoyed something of a second wind since my search for her parents’ names sent me on a journey that would last years and end up on this blog.

Mary Tilson, c.1940.

This lady – my great-grandmother – was named Mary. She was born in 1900, married a man, had a family, and died an old lady. That was the whole story as far as Mum, her siblings (and hell, even her own mother) were led to believe.

But, Mum always wondered. In fact, this little lady left such a mark on her descendants that the mystery of her life was still casting as much of a shadow now as it had then.

To give the full story from my end, I have to go back  to March 2011 when I had what would be my final conversation with Mary's last surviving child. We were sitting in her front living room and talking about everything & anything when - for reasons neither of us can recall now - Mum asked:

“What was your Mummy’s last name?”
“Tilson. Why?”

To a seasoned genealogist, a maternal surname is a holy grail of a breadcrumb, but to this novice, it was something I quickly made note of in my iPhone and never looked at until two years later.

The note from this encounter has remained on my phone ever since.

Little did I know the sheer whirlwind of revelations and reverberations in which this conversation would result. 

So, flash forward again to March 2013. The subject of conversation somehow turned to family histories and I asked:

“Is there anything you’ve always wanted to know?”
“I guess where my granny came from.”
“Alright, let me have a look.”

I said this with absolutely no idea of how or where to find out this information. See, at this point there was no online GRONI to pull up a full scan of a birth certificate for just £2.

Luckily, there was Ancestry.co.uk. I did a search on its Birth, Marriage, and Death Index and found two likely hits that referred to a Mary Tilson being born in Belfast around April/May/June of 1900. Mum always remembered 31^st May as being Mary’s birthday, so this seemed like a promising start.

The problem was that Ancestry didn’t (and still doesn't) provide actual birth certificates or even transcribed details, such as: parents’ names, address, or place of birth. You might get lucky and find those on one a Baptism catalogue, but - as we'll get to next time - such a source would not have helped in this particular case.

So, I started reaching again, trying half a dozen different sites before finding RootsIreland.ie. Now, if you tried Roots today, you would have to subscribe before getting the slightest piece of intel. In 2013, however, I was luckier: by entering the information I had into the site's Baptism/Birth database, I was able to find the two records that Ancestry.co.uk had pointed towards. Except, on Roots, I was able to purchase the full birth record(s) for £5.00 each.

This seemed like a decent enough investment to give my Mum in order to answer her long-burning question, plus I knew that there was nothing else about Mary that I needed to know beyond whatever was contained in this £5.00 birth record.

I paid the £5.00, opened up the first of the two recorda, and saw that Mum was indeed correct about 31^st May 1900 being Mary’s birthday. My eyes ran through the record and lit up at seeing the name of Mary’s mother: Julia Tilson. Julia! A lovely name. Not all that common in our family, but Mum’s favourite movie was Pretty Woman, so she’d probably like this ever-so tangential connection to Ms. Roberts.

As I mentally played through all of this in about 0.3 seconds, my brain started to catch up with my eyes as it noticed the blank space staring back at me next to “Father’s name.” It then began to process other words, namely:

“Illegitimate."

“Workhouse."

You never forget your first record.

Now, despite having done some surface-level into Victorian society while at university, all I knew about those terms was from whatever I had picked up during the odd Catherine Cookson adaptation.

  
But, instantly, I was consumed. I needed to know more: about Mary, Julia, and about this Workhouse. But where and how was I to find those records? Did they even exist anymore?
__________

I eventually found the answers to these questions (though my ancestors did not make it easy)  and I will share some of those answers here. But what I want to do with this blog is to help new family researchers (especially those seeking out Irish records) by discussing my experiences with various organisations, archivists, and the learning curve that comes with making the kinds of educated guesses that can lead you to new places, new people, and new understandings of your family.

If you would like me to help you directly/privately with your research, then please leave a comment below.