The explicit rationale of the workhouse was that you’d be prepared to put up with just about any kind of living hell rather than go there. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 – the most radical restructuring of welfare support that Britain had seen – envisioned the workhouse as the ultimate deterrent.

Whether or not this was fair to the so-called ‘able-bodied’ poor – those who, given sufficient incentive, might be able to support themselves – is debatable. But it was the infirm and helpless – the elderly, the mentally ill and the disabled – who were perhaps the victims of the greater injustice, even though it was never originally intended that this second group be served by the workhouse. In theory, these people should have continued to receive ‘outdoor relief’; that is, financial assistance to continue living in the community with the help of friends and family.

The workhouse was not necessarily cheaper for the parish, per head, than outdoor relief. Often it was more expensive. But as the evil reputation of the workhouse grew and more and more of those who had any choice shunned it, the unions (parishes grouped into administrative units) discovered they still had expensive buildings to run and maintain. This, coupled with a lack of more appropriate institutions and strong public opinion against the use of public money for outdoor poor relief, meant that the workhouse became a dumping ground for just about any person for whom the parish had an obligation of care. By the beginning of the 20th century, a large proportion of workhouse inmates were not the able-bodied poor the institutions had been designed for.

People with cognitive disabilities were often among those who found themselves in the workhouse. These days we might use terms such as ‘genetic condition’ or ‘learning disability’ or a specific diagnosis such as ‘Down’s syndrome’. Documents of the time, however, were more likely to use indiscriminate and pejorative terms such as ‘imbecile’, ‘feeble-minded’, ‘idiot’ and ‘mental defective’ and to lump this group together with those with mental illnesses (‘lunatics’) even though their needs were often very different. The use of language, sadly, reflected public attitudes towards such conditions.

There are many horror stories about the treatment of people with cognitive or other disabilities. One bleak tale tells of a five-year-old child named Jonathan Cooke, described as weak in intellect and suffering from double incontinence. This child was malnourished, forced on a long journey in an open cart without outdoor clothing, housed for a time in an outhouse, and severely abused at an institution that routinely flogged children and imprisoned them in a stocks in the schoolroom. Such stories reflect the lack of appropriate provisions for inmates with disabilities. The deficiencies of the schoolroom might lead to a child with learning difficulties being restrained or beaten to prevent that child from becoming a disruption, and a person having difficulties keeping him or herself clean might well be punished for it.

Even when reform finally came about, it did not quickly improve the lot of people with cognitive disabilities. The Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 legislated that people with intellectual disabilities should be provided for by more appropriate institutions. But workhouses (now officially known as Poor Law Institutions) often tried to keep hold of inmates with disabilities, if they were otherwise healthy, because they formed an indispensable source of free labour. People with learning difficulties would be put to work as cleaners, cooks and even nurses, and the institutions they served were not able to function without them. In this way did workhouses continue to exercise their terrible influence over society’s most vulnerable members well into the 20th century.