200 years ago the Wiltshire farm labourer had virtually no rights. He had lost his land under the enclosure awards and although he might have an allotment he would not be able to make a living from it. You will remember from Thomas Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge, set in the early 1800s, how farm labourers had to stand in line at the Michaelmas market to be chosen by a farmer to work for, and be housed by him for the next year. The unlucky ones and their families would become vagrants, having no house to go back to.
The first Poor Laws had been passed in about 1730 and each parish had a responsibility towards people within their boundaries who were unemployed, destitute and homeless. The funds had to be provided within the parish itself and local residents had to foot the bill. You could imagine that no parish wanted vagrants to stay within their bounds for very long.
Gradually the larger parishes started to build what were called workhouses to provide roofs over heads. There was one at Semley and one at Tisbury, the latter since at least 1733. The parishes found it very difficult to cope with this problem individually and on 4 October 1830 The Tisbury Poor Law Union was founded as one of 17 Unions covering all the Wiltshire parishes. It combined 20 parishes all feeding into the old Tisbury workhouse which was on the site of the present brewery, just east of the parish church. There was a Board of Guardians made up of one person from each of the 20 parishes with an extra one from Donhead St Mary parish which was very populous at that time. In 1831 census revealed that 9763 people lived in the 20 parishes and the amount available for the relief of the poor was £8250 a year costing the inhabitants 85p each.
An excellent website has been recently established by Peter Higginbotham with photos by Peter Goodhugh. There is a most damning report of 1866 with details of the accommodation in the old workhouse but by that time the new workhouse on Union Hill, which later became known as Monmouth House, was being built and opened on 11 November 1868. The architect was Christopher Creeke who also designed the workhouses at Chippenham and Blandford.
There is a link in the website to the 1881 census where the details of the 91 “inmates” and their places of birth can be found. Some were no doubt vagrants moving through and housed for a short time. Several are described as imbeciles and one as deaf and dumb. People used to hide their meager belongings in the roadside hedges before they were admitted and some local lads used to rifle through their bags and refill them with stones. There were 29 children resident aged four and over, described as scholars, and 6 children under four. The men and women were separated and there would be a tragic story behind each person there.
Six were retired farm labourers. I recognized over 20 surnames of families who still live in our community.
The vagrants had to carry out work the next day to play for their overnight stay and Walt Fry of Totterdale Farm is recorded in our archives as seeing as many as 38 men cracking stones on the road towards Mere in payment for their lodgings. If they skipped the allotted task and were caught by the constable the penalty was usually seven days in prison. One cannot be sure whether the conditions were better in the prison or in the workhouse!
The workhouse also dispensed charity to the local population. Mont Abbott recalls how his mother, her husband being sick, trudged five miles to Chipping Norton to appeal for help from the Board of Guardians at the workhouse there. A local miller was the Guardian on duty that day and awarded the mother of three one loaf of bread a week. When the father was back at work again he determined that never again would his family be reduced to begging in this way. He subscribed to “The Club”, the Ancient Order of Forester's Friendly Society. A small weekly subscription meant that if he was ever out of work again the Club would give him a very small income so the family would not starve.
I could go on but it was not until the Beveridge report after the last war that the state started funding unemployment benefit at a reasonable rate. It was much later that the agricultural worker could claim security of tenure to remain in his cottage if he lost his job.
Tisbury workhouse, "The Union" was closed in 1935 and was empty until the war. Mr Warby had bought it and it was occupied temporarily by the military and then non-combatants: conscientious objectors and German Jews. I can remember following the scuttling Mr Warby along endless corridors to view the amazing second-hand furniture that he had collected from dockyards and elsewhere after the war. Eventually the old buildings, which included a padded cell, were demolished in 1967. The houses of Castle Mount and High View Close were built on the site and part of the perimeter wall remains. The website contains many photographs of the building as demolition was starting.
Martin Shallcross