“Peckham be damned, we’ll not go a step towards such a filthy place of confinement.”
From Mansion to Workhouse
David Johnston in his Autobiographical Reminiscences (1885) commented, apparently referring to about 1832, that “ln Peckham stands Marlborough House, the ancient seat of the hero of Blenheim, with all his deeds emblazoned on the walls, in good preservation.” This may have been somewhat of a glorification, for we know that the building was being used as a poor-house in 1800, and in 1829 it was being advertised as: “. . .pleasantly situated near the Chapel, Peckham, about three miles distant from the Bridges: the House is very dry, and has separate wards and grounds for male and female paupers. The aged, the sick, and the deserving poor, are treated with tenderness, those able to work are put to suitable employment.”
W. H. Blanch in Ye Parish of Camerwell (1875) has the following:
“Near the High Street, where Marlborough [now Marmont] Road now stands, stood Marlborough House, a fine old mansion, supposed at one time to have been the residence of some portions of the Marlborough family. It has not been pulled down many years, and before its demolition it was used as a workhouse where the city paupers were farmed. The building contained a noble entrance-hall and a fine oak staircase, and frescoes adorned the walls and ceilings. Blenheim House, in the High Street, now occupied by Mr. Balls, is thought to have been a minor building attached to the mansion.”
“…At the beginning of the present century it became the ‘casual’ workhouse of the City of London, and the respectable inhabitants of the neighbourhood were much annoyed by having about 300 of the casuals turned loose upon them every morning. The master of the workhouse received a given sum per head for ‘farming’ his disorderly crew.
The Contracts
As part of the Inquiry into Poor Laws (1834) various City of London parishes reported on their arrangements for paupers on similar lines to St Michael, Cornhill:
“A varying number… are farmed now principally at Marlborough House, Peckham, Mr. Richards’s, at 5s. per head per week, including, I believe, all charges: the effect, as far as it is put in operation or experienced, is l understand, satisfactory to the Parish.”
Following amendments to the Poor Law the City of London Union was formed by combining many small parishes. its new Board of Guardians reviewed the pauper placement arrangements in 1838 and concluded that “the only establishments which are decidedly eligible are Mr Richards’ Marlborough House, Peckham and Mr Deacon’s Stepney Green”. It was decided that the male paupers and married couples would go to Peckham, and the single females to Stepney. “Casuals”, or vagrants, who received overnight accommodation only were also sent to Marlborough House. The children were to go to the Norwood School run by Mr F. G. Aubin (who was in fact Mr Richards’ son-in-law). The adult rates were agreed at 5/4d per week. The City of London was a wealthy Union and preferred, against the wishes of the Poor Law Commission, to provide “outdoor relief” (food and money) and send the long-term poor to Peckham rather than build a workhouse within its limits. However, there were many problems.
Overcrowding
The demand for places could far exceed the supply and while Marlborough House in summer could just manage 300 casuals winters were difficult. In 1838 the Lord Mayor had personally made investigations at Marlborough House following the receipt of a petition from 176 pauper inmates, complaining of receiving less bread than their entitlement, of being overcrowded and of not being allowed out more than once a month. Mr Jopp, the Receiving Officer, responded that “many who got leave would return in a state of intoxication, and the women frequently misconducted themselves in other respects”. While the Lord Mayor considered it unfair to limit the liberty of the old and afflicted for the behaviour “he could not withhold his entire approbation of the care, and humanity, and judgment, of the master and mistress of the house in which they were domiciled”. In January 1841, “more than a thousand casuals besieged it every night, and were crammed three to a bed in temporary wooden huts”.
Disease
The death rate at Marlborough House appeared to be high; cholera, consumption and typhus were mentioned as issues. lt had a medical officer but not its own infirmary provision. In 1842 The Times reported an inquest into the death of a pauper who had “run away from Peckham Workhouse, because they had set him to break stones”. As a result he was sent to the House of Correction, where he died “from the effects of want of food” — however it was agreed that in prison both the diet and the medical care would have been better there than at the workhouse.
In 1845 Marlborough House was criticised on the grounds that “it is allowed to propagate or generate the most fatal disease by the absence of the commonest care for the cleanliness and comfort of its inmates — this alleged asylum for the poor is proved to be a hotbed of pestilential fever, supplying considerably more than one-fifth of its annual number of patients to a large public hospital. The Receiving Officer’s defence was that: “We are swamped with these ‘casuals’… We are afraid of fever in a house that is so full, and therefore send the sick to the Free Hospital, which has always kindly received them from us.”
Difficult inmates
“Difficult” vagrants were often sent on by other parishes and many ended up in the City, but the private contractors had fewer powers to enforce good behaviour than the public workhouses. For instance in 1836: “A healthy strong-looking young woman was brought before Mr Jeremy by the master of a workhouse at Peckham, denominated Marlborough-house, on a charge of pawning the clothes found her by the parish, and getting drunk with the proceeds…” In 1839 the Board of Guardians went to the Lord Mayor to bring a charge that six able-bodied paupers from the workhouse had refused to do their appointed labour; this “had excited a most dangerous spirit of insubordination”. The men, in defence, claimed that they had been asked to do the work of others, and that the butter allowance had been reduced. The master of the workhouse claimed that reduction of the butter allowance was the only form of punishment open to him. On this occasion the Lord Mayor sent the defendants to the House of Correction, “to work at the treadmill for 14 days”.
Problems increase
William Richards, born about 1780, and the Master of Marlborough House Workhouse, died in 1843 of “mortification of the foot”. His wife, Mrs Mary Ann Richards née Hammond, born about 1784, was a key figure also in the running of the establishment, and continued after her husband’s death with the help of one of her sons.
However, The Times began a sustained attack on Marlborough House, which did indeed seem to be getting out of control. It reported in 1844 that three boys broke the windows of the Mansion House, as “all they wanted was to be supported without going to such a place as Peckham workhouse, the accommodations of which they did not by any means relish”. The Times commented that “the prime source of offence was the Peckham workhouse, an institution dreaded and hated by the destitute, who often expressed a preference for gaol.” And in 1846 it reported:
“In the course of an inquiry at the Lambeth police-court… a girl was proved to have been savagely beaten to death at Marlborough-house, Peckham [this turned out later not to be the case] …we do not hesitate to denounce the criminal and inhuman conduct of the people in charge of the place where the alleged murder was committed. The answers of the person who acts as nurse or matron at Marlborough-house are sufficient to show that scenes of outrage are of everyday occurrence in this vile establishment…When asked why she did not send for a constable, the creature in charge of the place remarked, that “if she were to send for a constable for every little affair that takes place, she would have nothing else to do.”. ..
Eventually, the City of London Union gave way and agreed to build its own workhouse at Bow Road, and Marlborough House closed. Mrs Richards died in 1847 of heart disease, at Westow Hill. She was presumably staying with her daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law, Mr Aubin.
Other family institutional connections
Elizabeth (1803-1848), the Richards’ second daughter, married Frederick George Aubin (1807-1860). He seems to have been an astute businessman and became the proprietor of Aubin’s Norwood School of Industry, which took in all the pauper children of the City of London, and was reasonably well thought of, even by Dickens. The City of London Union took over the establishment, keeping Aubin as head, eventually moving the institution to larger premises at Hanwell.
The Aubins had three children who grew to adulthood: Mary Ann (1828-1898), Frederick George (1832-1906), and William (1834-1884). Their daughter Mary Ann married Dr John Hayball Paul (1816-1899), with whom Frederick George Aubin set up Cambenwell House Asylum in 1846. Aubin’s place was taken later by Alfred Richards (1821-1887), the Richards’ youngest son, a lawyer, and the private lunatic asylum enterprise was an extremely successful one.
The Richards’ oldest son, John (1805-1853), was at age 34 the Governor of Gloucester Union Workhouse in Stroud, and by 1841 was the Master of the confusingly named Marlborough Street Workhouse, also known as the St Saviour Union Workhouse or Christchurch Workhouse. This had been built in 1834, and the site is now occupied by Southwark College buildings on The Cut, Waterloo. He may not have remained there long as his wife and oldest son died in 1842, and he seems to have emigrated to Australia with his other son, William (1839-1922).
Joseph Richards, born in 1813, another son of William and Mary, was by 1841 the Master of Saffron Walden Union Workhouse until his death in 1859. One of his children, Mary Elizabeth Richards (1836-1893), married Edward Henry Buckeridge who became head of Mile End Old Town Industrial School. Being a “head’s wife” usually carried duties with it, and indeed Mary Elizabeth is named as “the matron” in the censuses — a similar role having been undertaken by several women in the family.
To complete the circle, Dr John Hayball Paul’s father, John Paul (about 1795-?), was Assistant Clerk to the City of London Union at least in 1849-1851, though little else is known about him. This would have been an important post, and a source of knowledge about and probably of influence on the awarding of contracts. More research is likely to shed light both on him and indeed Marlborough House Workhouse at Peckham.
Sources
Ancestry.co.uk
City of London Union minute books, London Metropolitan Archives.
Higginbotham, Peter. The History of the Workhouse, http://www.workhouses.org.uk/
Tanner, Andrea. “The Casual Poor and the City pf London Poor Law
Union, 1837-1869″, The Historical Journal, 42, 1 (1999), pp. 183-206.
Dr. Fiona Subotsky
Reprinted from Peckham Society News, Issue 135 (Winter 2013)
