The origins of the workhouse in Britain come from attempts to restrict the rights, wages and mobility of the labouring classes and the poor, and this remained the ultimate aim of the workhouse system.
The original Poor Law Act of 1388 was one in a succession of Acts of parliament attempting to address the labour shortages following the Black Death in England by restricting the movement of labourers. A by-product of this was that local parishes and eventually the local state became responsible for the support of those too poor to survive independently.
Successive Poor Laws until the early 19th century tended to emphasise ‘outdoor relief’ – financial support or work granted from the parish to the poor still living in their homes. However, a parallel system of workhouses began to emerge, often based on the Bridewell, the London institution which gradually came to act as a weapon of social control against the capital’s shifting lower orders, especially those considered feckless, immoral, workshy, or rebellious. The disciplining of these ‘groups’ slowly came to be seen as of paramount importance to prevent their ‘contagion’ influencing other more orderly and obedient plebs.
Before 1834 the workhouse system was sporadic and inconsistent. But mass unemployment following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the introduction of new technology to replace many trades, leading to rebellion among textile and agricultural workers in particular, and a series of bad harvests, meant that by the early 1830s the established system of poor relief was proving to be unsustainable. It was also hideously expensive, and the now dominant and confident bourgeoisie didn’t see why it should pay to support the unwashed.
The New Poor Law of 1834 was a radical attempt to reshape social policy. Outdoor relief was to be refused wherever possible, and any applicants for help from the local state were to be confined in the workhouses, and made to undergo hard labour, in conditions so unpleasant and vicious that anyone would think twice about even applying.
Families were to be split up. Food was mass produced and of poor quality, to keep costs down. Staff were generally incompetent, bullying, and encouraged to impose harsh and degrading treatment to drive inmates back out. The Entering the Workhouse became feared and hated and a matter of last resort for the working class.
Some Poor Law authorities hoped to run workhouses at a profit by utilising the free labour of their inmates, who generally lacked the skills or motivation to compete in the open market. Most were employed on tasks such as breaking stones, crushing bones to produce fertiliser, or picking oakum using a large metal nail known as a spike, perhaps the origin of the workhouse’s nickname of the “spike”.
Resistance, collective resistance, to the workhouse system, was hard to organise, partly because of the extreme atomisation and humiliation the way of life imposed on the inmates, who were already in many cases desperate, physically weak and demoralised. The crap food and hard labour also left many too exhausted to even think about fighting back.
But resistance did take place. There were strikes.
And there was the Belmont Workhouse Riot.
The buildings of Belmont Hospital were originally an orphanage, established in 1853 on Brighton Road, Sutton. Then known as the South Metropolitan District Schools, they provided industrial training for 1500 poor children from Greenwich, Camberwell and Woolwich.
In 1882 the Schools acquired a site on Banstead Road (later renamed Cotswold Road) from the Sutton Lodge estate and a separate girls’ school was established there. It comprised six blocks, each with accommodation for 100 girls (these later became the Downs Hospital and some still survive today as part of the Sutton Hospital).
In 1902 the Schools closed and, in 1908, the buildings became the Belmont Workhouse.
Belmont was a spill over workhouse serving a number of Poor law Unions and held more than 1300 people. Conditions were so harsh in the workhouse that, in 1910, 300 inmates rioted. Inmates found eating the watery porridge that formed their only food so disgusting that they rebelled, demanding the porridge be removed from the menu…
In November 1910 officials visiting the workhouse were told by some inmates that there would be bloodshed by Christmas if they did not get what they wanted. Early evening on December 14th 1910, in the dining hall, the inmates collectively refused to eat the porridge. On being told their demands would be considered by the Workhouse committee, which would meet the following week, they became ‘boisterous’, and began “shouting and rattling their cutlery on their plates.”
“At 8pm, the regulation time for going to bed, the inmates remained seated and consistently refused to leave the dining hall.
The police were called and arrived to a scene of great disorder: men were found standing on benches, shouting and swearing.” An attempt to arrest a dozen ‘ringleaders’ was met with a shout of “Come on boys, up with your plates!”, and the cops were pelted with a shower of crockery. Inspector Sommerville was hit on the chest with an iron plate.
Some were armed with knives… “the mob’s attitude was very threatening. The 30 policemen drew their truncheons and a scuffle ensued, and order was eventually restored”.
350 men were involved in the riot. 86 inmates were arrested. Most were shipped to Carshalton, Sutton and Banstead police stations in cabs, and appeared in Sutton magistrates court the next day. Two – Jeffreys and O’Brien – were committed for trial for assaulting the ‘labour-masters’ Swan and Rylance. Five prisoners were discharged and several others sentenced to 3 months hard labour.
Belmont continued to function effectively as a prison in several future incarnations; and the 1910 riot was not the last protest staged here.
During WW1 the workhouse was used as a hospital for German prisoners of war, with 92 beds for officers, and 1,175 for other ranks. It was also an internment camp with 90 beds for civilian enemy aliens awaiting repatriation.
After the war, in 1922, the buildings reverted to being a workhouse for unemployed men and was renamed the London Industrial Colony. Conditions remained very poor – the buildings were said to be filthy and rat-infested.
In 1930 the Industrial Colony was taken over by the London County Council (LCC) and became a ‘training centre’ for the unemployed.
London’s unemployed were pressurised into ‘voluntarily’ signing up to be sent there to work, usually as an alternative to having ‘relief’ cut completely. In November 1931, 41 unemployed inmates of Belmont held a sit in protest against bad food and conditions. The LCC had generously allowed the unemployed inmates to take five days holiday for Christmas – which provoked some of their to elect a deputation to demand an extra day’s rest.
Some of the men sent to the camp in the 1930s seem to have been members or sympathisers of the National Unemployed Workers Movement. The NUWM organised and supported boycotts of other camps nationally (most notably at the Hollesley Bay camp), Strikes, walkouts, meetings, protests characterised life at several unemployed training camps through the 1930s.
A year after the sitdown strike, tensions still existed in the Belmont camp, as a deputation left to join the November 1932 Hunger march rally in Hyde Park, being greeted by a huge roar from the crowd.
During WW2 Belmont became the Sutton Emergency Hospital. It had been feared that there would be mass hysteria at the beginning of the war, so Belmont was designated a neurosis unit – the Sutton Neurosis Centre – in preparation for a flood of expected cases. However, as these fears proved unfounded, the Hospital was used to treat trauma patients and war casualties. Over the war years the distinctive buildings, being quite noticeable from the air, sustained bomb damage.
In 1946 it was renamed the Belmont Hospital, specialising in psychiatric medicine.
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An entry in the
2017 London Rebel History Calendar – check it out online.
LONDON RADICAL HISTORIES 
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