Hello Everyone - What a great site!

[Home Girl]

Hi all

Just a brief note to introduce myself. I've been researching my family history for about a year now but oddly, have only recently found this site. How I wish I'd found it sooner. I've learned so much just from looking around these forums.

I've primarily focussed on my paternal family (WILLOWS from LINCOLNSHIRE) as when I first started there was the possibility of meeting and talking to a very elderly relative but frustratingly, she died between me finding her address and my letter reaching her. |banghead| However, by that time I was hooked and so that's where my focus has remained. I have a real bee in my bonnet about my gr gr gr grandfather (born 1798) as he spent the last 15-20 years of his life in Spalding Union Workhouse. Prior to this he was a freeholder and his family were still living together, although at a different address, on the first census where he appears in the workhouse. Addmission records no longer exist and I'm very curious about why he would have been there and what sort of life he had.

I'm sure I'll be plaguing you all with loads of questions in the not too distant future. Looking forward to getting to know you all.

Best wishes

Helen

[Geoffers]

I have a real bee in my bonnet about my gr gr gr grandfather (born 1798) as he spent the last 15-20 years of his life in Spalding Union Workhouse.

Welcome to the forums, if you haven't already come across it, the following is a good site to read about workhouses

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

[Home Girl]

Hi Geoffers and Bo Peep

Thanks for the welcome and for the link Geoffers. No, I hadn't found it before. I think perhaps my focus specifically on Spalding Union Workhouse had been too narrow. Sometimes, you just don't see the wood for the trees I guess. What an incredible amount of information there is on there.

I'm beginning to think that my inmate ancestor (Dennis Willows) must have done something to make his family disown him or he was too ill (perhaps mentally?) for them to care for him. Apart from those who married, his family stayed together and it's hard to imagine any other reason for just one member of the family to go into the workhouse. One of his daughters seems to have been living a very comfortable existance (large house, servants, husband who was a newspaper proprietor) so I'm sure if she wanted to help him out she could have. Perhaps I'll never know. What would I give for a quick trip back in time?

Anyhow, I fear this is straying from the purpose of this particular forum so perhaps I'll hop over to Institutions later on.

Cheers

Helen

[tony vines]

Hi Helen

I suspect that the circumstances you describe are not uncommon for that time. I have a distant relative who earned his living as a boot and shoe operative for 20-30 years , married and had a family. However in the 1901 census he was in the local workhouse despite the fact that his family still lived in a house elsewhere. He was described as epileptic and I imagine that without modern drugs that would have made earning a living in any industry involving tools pretty hard, so no doubt he had lost his job.

Perhaps someone else more expert than I can comment on the rationale for placing only one member of the family in the workhouse?

[Jan1954]

It's not just workhouses wher people were sent inappropriately.

I had a great aunt who, in the 1930s, collected things. Okay, this was a little excessive - she wouldn't throw away a paper bag "in case it came in handy" (early recycling...) - and treatment then wasn't what it is today.

In the end, she became institutionalised and would never have coped in the outside world.

When she was 80, in 1980, the authorities wanted her to move to an old people's home. She refused to go, saying "I didn't want to come here 50 years ago but was made to. Now you've got me, you can *** well keep me!"

An incredible woman, whom I remember with very fond memories.

In the 19th century, the "Mental Hospitals" were not as widely available as they were at the beginning of the 20th century and it may be that this relative of yours, Tony, was incarcerated in lieu of one. Epilepsy was treated as a mental illness in those days. Sad.