... was lower that the lowest paid labourer. This was enforced to dissuade people from claiming benefits, so in the mid to late 1800's many workhouses were built to house the poor and thus forcing them to work, often in squalid conditions. This is a quote by the assistant poor law commissioner: "Our intention is to make the workhouses as like prisons as possible... our object is to establish therein a discipline so severe and repulsive as to make them a terror to the poor". (Thompson, 1963, p. 295). Although in previous years the able bodied would wander from parish to parish to gain more relief for themselves, the taxpayers wanted this to stop. They were very resentful of having to pay huge amounts of tax to supplement the poor. The idea of the workhouse was to ensure that the poor did not go in search of relief elsewhere. The way to stop this from ...

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