“Among the public buildings in a certain city, which for many reasons it would be prudent not to name and to which I will not give any fictitious name, there is a building that has long been found in almost all cities, large and small, namely, the workhouse.”- this is how Charles Dickens begins his novel The Adventures of Oliver Twist. And although Oliver's request - "Please, sir, I want more" - was uttered in a weak, trembling voice, it was a fierce criticism of the entire workhouse system.
It should be noted that Oliver was very lucky. A doctor was present at his mother's birth, which was more a privilege than a common practice. Although Mr. Bumble frightened the boy by pinching hemp, Oliver was given an apprenticeship to an undertaker. But many of his peers tore off the skin on their fingers, tearing old ropes into fibers. But no matter how much Dickens’s novel stirred the hearts, most Englishmen remained confident that workhouses were a necessary measure to combat poverty. And the conditions there should be a little better than prison conditions. Still not a resort.
Workhouses appeared in England in the 17th century and were charitable institutions where the poor worked in exchange for food and shelter. Until 1834, workhouses were run by parishes. They also provided impoverished parishioners with another type of help - bread and meager amounts of money. Targeted assistance came in handy for workers and peasants who had lost their ability to work. In factories where safety rules were not followed, there were a thousand and one ways to get hurt, and frequent illnesses undermined health. But where will the funds come from to support the crippled, the poor, orphans and widows? Wealthy parishioners were charged a tax for the benefit of the parish, which, of course, did not make them happy. Moreover, in the 17th–18th centuries, the poor, left without a means of subsistence, had to return for help to the parish where they were born. At the sight of the dejected ragamuffins, and even with a brood of children, the parishioners began to grumble. Let's come in large numbers! Now they will hang around the parish's neck.
In the first half of the 19th century, the situation with poverty and unemployment became so acute that radical measures were required. Between 1801 and 1830 the population of England grew by two-thirds to 15 million. This trend worried economists, especially supporters of Thomas Malthus, who argued that uncontrolled population growth would lead to famine and disaster. According to him, the population grew in geometric progression, and food - in arithmetic progression. If it were not for temperance and the disasters that stop the growth of population, catastrophe would befall humanity. Simply put, the hungry hordes would eat all the food.
Malthus' followers did not like the practice of delivering bread to the homes of the poor. Otherwise, what the hell, they will begin to multiply uncontrollably. And in the 1820s and 1830s, Malthus’s prophecy seemed especially relevant. The Napoleonic Wars and trade blockade undermined the English economy, and the Corn Laws did not benefit farmers, but affected the family budgets of workers - bread became more expensive. Some counties were on the verge of ruin. In the mid-1830s, farmers breathed a sigh of relief, enjoying warm weather and bountiful harvests, but a three-day snowfall in the winter of 1836 marked the beginning of a prolonged cold spell. England faced the “hungry forties”, a period of crop failure, epidemics, unemployment, and economic stagnation.
How, in such conditions, to take care of the poor, who were becoming more and more numerous? Ominously, on August 13, 1834, Parliament passed a new Poor Law. The outdated system of parish charity was replaced by a new system based on workhouses. Individual parishes were united into unions for the care of the poor, and a workhouse was built in each union. This is where the poor went, turning from parishioners into national property. The workhouses were governed by a local board of trustees, which appointed a supervisor (Master) and a housekeeper (Matron), considered applications from the poor, was in charge of budget issues, and investigated cases of abuse. And there were a lot of them.
Ordinary people were hostile to the innovations. Rumors immediately spread that all the beggars would be forced into workhouses, and there they would be fed poisoned bread - no parasites, no problem. In reality, the poor were given a choice. They could live in semi-prison conditions, with meager food and grueling work, but with a roof over their heads. Or preserve freedom, but then take care of your own food. The conditions were tough, but there were no others at that time. No matter how much the Times criticized the new establishments, the middle and upper classes were pleased with the parliamentary initiative. There were fewer beggars, and the parish tax was reduced by 20%.
Homeless. Drawing by Gustave Doré from the book Pilgrimage. 1877
Journalist James Grant described the plight of the poor this way: “When they enter the gates of the workhouse, it begins to seem to them that they are in a huge prison, from where only death will rescue them... Many inmates of the workhouse consider it a tomb in which they were buried alive. This is the grave of all their earthly hopes.". What awaited the poor family in the workhouse, the mere mention of which sent a chill down the spine?
The workhouse was a massive building with living and working areas and courtyards for exercise. Add a stone fence here, and the picture paints a gloomy one. Sick and healthy, men and women, old people and children - all these categories lived separately. Once in the workhouse, the husband was sent to one wing, the wife to another, and children over two years old to the third. First, the new guests were examined by a doctor, then they were thoroughly washed and given a gray uniform. As a sign of shame, unmarried mothers had a yellow stripe sewn onto their dresses.
The day in the workhouse was scheduled by the hour. Its inhabitants went to bed at 9 pm and woke up in the dark. The ringing of a bell informed them of a change in activity: get up, get dressed, read prayers, eat breakfast in silence, and work, work, work! Young children also worked alongside adults in their free time from school. In addition, children were sent as apprentices, as in the case of Oliver Twist, or they tried to get them into service.
If the harsh life did not suit someone, well, good riddance, just don’t forget your wife and children. They left the workhouse the same way they arrived, the whole family. In theory, husbands and wives were allowed to see each other during the day, although they had to sleep separately so as not to breed poverty. In fact, it was very difficult for the spouses to see each other during the day. The same applied to mothers with children, and newborns were taken away from unmarried mothers.
A terrible but revealing story took place in the Eton Workhouse, which was headed by former Major Joseph Howe (military men were taken as overseers). One of his employees, Elizabeth Wise, asked permission to take her two-and-a-half-year-old child overnight. The baby had frostbitten legs, and his mother wanted to console him and heal him. Just before Christmas, Mr Howe announced that from now on the child must sleep with other children. The mother retained the right to visit him during the day. But when the warden found her in the children's department, where she was washing the baby's feet and changing his bandages, he became angry and ordered her to leave. The woman refused to comply, and the guard dragged her out of the room, dragged her up the stairs and locked her in a punishment cell.
The punishment cell was a dark room with a barred window without glass. Elizabeth had to spend 24 hours there - without warm clothes, food, water, straw to lie down on, and even without a chamber pot. The temperature outside was –6 ºС. At the end of the term, Elizabeth was fed cold oatmeal left over from breakfast and again driven into the cell so that she could wash the floor after herself (the absence of a potty made itself felt). The woman did not have enough strength for wet cleaning - her hands were numb. Then the sufferer was locked in a punishment cell for another 7 hours. Fortunately, rumors of the warden's cruelty leaked to The Times, and then another incident surfaced: at a previous place of duty, Mr. Howe maimed a child by dousing him with boiling water. Despite this incident, Howe was calmly accepted into his new position. However, after the scandal with Elizabeth Wise, he was expelled in disgrace.
Compulsory workhouses were often combined with prisons, and voluntary ones with almshouses, shelters, educational and educational institutions.
Initially, workhouses were aimed at reducing the financial costs of maintaining prisoners, suggesting that they could not only be self-sustaining, but also cost-effective, generating a profit.
However, in most cases, workhouses were subsidized institutions.
Workhouses were created by both state authorities and private individuals.
They were financed from the treasury and/or donations.
With the development of social security in the 20th century, the workhouse system became largely irrelevant. The last workhouse in Britain closed in 1941.
In some countries, such establishments have been abolished at the legislative level.
Nevertheless, essentially similar private and public institutions under different names still exist.
At the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, institutions similar to voluntary workhouses began to be classified as a form of social entrepreneurship.
Story
In the 16th century, the idea of creating institutions to combat petty thieves and professional beggars began to spread widely in Europe, since they created a fairly serious problem for the authorities in ensuring law and order and the rule of law.
On the one hand, this idea stemmed from humanistic considerations, since juvenile offenders were sentenced to the same severe punishment as adults.
On the other hand, in developed European cities, where the industrial sector was intensively developing, an abundance of low-skilled vacancies appeared, allowing experimentation with labor.
The main principles of their activities were isolation and forced labor.
Michel Foucault, in his monograph “The History of Madness in the Classical Age,” noted that under capitalism, poverty was a burden that had its price: “A beggar can be put in front of a machine and he will make it work.” Therefore, benefactors of the Victorian era were interested in the healthy poor, who were disposed of by the workhouse authorities. Sometimes they did not even know that they were being paid for their work, since it did not reach them.
Bridewell
From that moment on, several reports, projects and treatises were written about what goals to pursue, what kind of prisoners to provide, what to look for and how they should be equipped.
In particular, Sebastian Egberts (Dutch. Sebastiaan Egberts) noted that the creation of such institutions would not require large expenses to ensure their activities, and the maintenance of persons imprisoned in them should not become a financial burden, since they would work, which in the future could allow such institutions to become profitable and even make a profit.
Unlike Bridewell, petty criminals were initially placed there as well. It combined three institutions - a workhouse for the capable poor, a disciplinary institution for those who did not want to work voluntarily, and a charity home for the disabled, the elderly, the poor and minors. There was an edifying sign on the gate: “Don’t be afraid, I don’t take revenge on the immoral, I force kindness.”
The men's disciplinary house began to be called Rusphuis, and the female one that appeared later - Spinhuis .
Within a few years of the appearance of Amsterdams Tuchthuis, many Dutch cities built similar disciplinary houses.
England
In the 17th century, England's own experience in the development of the Netherlands was widely developed in a new form. Mendicants were provided with paid work in exchange for mandatory residence in such a house and obedience to internal regulations. According to the beggary laws of the time, insolvent poor people were placed in workhouses where they were forced to work.
The new residents were examined by a doctor, separating the healthy from the sick. Then the new arrivals were washed under a strong stream of cold water, their heads were shaved and they were given a gray uniform. Unmarried mothers had a yellow stripe sewn onto their clothes as a sign of shame. After this, families were separated, not allowing mothers to see their children or even communicate with brothers and sisters.
Conditions in workhouses have repeatedly caused scandals (for example, the Andover scandal and the Huddersfield scandal).
Midwife and nurse Jennifer Worth, who worked with the poorest Londoners, spoke of widespread cases of rickets in children from workhouses: “The bones of the body were deformed, the long bones of the legs gave way and bent under the weight of the upper body. In adolescence, when growth stopped, the bones froze in this position. Even today, in the 20th century, you can still see short ancient old men hobbling on their legs turned outward. These are the few brave survivors who spent their entire lives overcoming the consequences of poverty and deprivation of their childhood almost a century ago."
At the end of the 19th century, the family of Charles Chaplin ended up in a workhouse: his mother, himself and his brother Sidney. Their mother thought that she would soon be able to get out, but under difficult conditions she went crazy and was placed in a psychiatric hospital. Chaplin was able to rescue her from there only in 1921.
Russia
Following Moscow, workhouses in Russia appeared in Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk and existed until 1853.
A Senate decree of January 31, 1783 ordered the opening of workhouses in all provinces and sending there “those convicted of theft, robbery and fraud.”
In 1785, the Moscow workhouse was combined with a restraint house for “violent sloths,” on the basis of which the city correctional prison “Matrosskaya Tishina” arose in 1870.
In 1836, with the donation of the merchant Chizhov, a spacious “theater” house was purchased opposite the Yusupov Palace in Bolshoi Kharitonyevsky Lane, No. 24, in which the so-called “Yusupov Workhouse” was created in 1837.
The approach to workhouses in Russia has changed several times in the direction of tightening and easing.
In 1865, the charter of the “Society for the Encouragement of Diligence” was approved, the founders of which were Alexandra Strekalova, S. D. Mertvago, E. G. Torletskaya, S. S. Strekalov, S. P. Yakovlev, P. M. Khrushchov. Alexandra Strekalova (nee Princess Kasatkina-Rostovskaya; 1821-1904) was chosen as the chairman. Since 1868, the Society for the Encouragement of Diligence became part of the Department of the Imperial Humane Society. Subsequently, the “Society for the Encouragement of Diligence” was reorganized into the first correctional and educational children's shelter in Russia, whose director was Nikolai Rukavishnikov.
On October 10, 1882, the rector of St. Andrew's Cathedral, Father John, and the Lutheran Baron Otto Buxhoeveden opened the House of Industriousness in Kronstadt, which became one of the most striking examples that changed the approach to similar institutions in Russia, actually leading to the spread of a new practice throughout the country in the form of houses of industriousness.
In 1893, Alexandra Strekalova founded the Moscow Anthill charity society, the purpose of which was to help the poorest women by providing them with work.
After the “Society for the Encouragement of Industriousness”, “House of Industriousness in Kronstadt” and “Moscow Anthill”, the phrase “workhouse” to describe “labor charity” in Russia began to go out of circulation and was replaced by the concept “house of industriousness”. Nevertheless, the “second Moscow workhouse” created before, which pursued largely humanitarian goals, retained its name until the 20th century.
see also
Notes
- Anastasia LOTAREVA. "My hand is heavy, but my heart is full of love"(Russian) (undefined) . Mercy. Mercy.ru (January 12, 2017). Retrieved March 17, 2019.
Social education has become one of the leading principles for the development of the vocational education system in both Russia and France, but in this matter Russia was significantly inferior to France. The government of the Third Republic introduced compulsory primary education in France in 1882 (Jules Ferry Law). In Russia, leading educators, starting from the mid-1860s, more than once raised the issue of introducing universal primary education, but it was never resolved. As a result, 85% of the French and 21.1% of the Russians were literate in 1897. “Without this necessary foundation,” wrote the famous teacher N.F. Bunakov, - no matter how many vocational schools we set up, technical, agricultural, crafts, etc., we will still only have poor technicians, artisans, farmers, capable only of menial crowbar work, according to ancient legends, but not capable of leading the business forward , improve, coordinate with the requirements of the time and modern cultural society."
The extreme lack of trained specialists and the low professional qualifications of many production managers hampered the country's industrial development. According to data for 1885, 11,472 production managers worked in mechanical production, which united more than 10,700 factories and plants with a workforce of 474.7 thousand people, of which 920 (8%) were foreign specialists. Had a technical education: Russian subjects - 4%, foreigners - 28%. The situation was the same in other industries. The low educational level of the country's population also influenced the structure of vocational educational institutions. Thus, as of January 1, 1910, out of 3036 vocational and technical educational institutions, there were 355 secondary ones, and 2661 lower ones (almost 88%).
The limit of Russian-French rapprochement was indicated by
personal approaches to the issue of professionalization of secondary schools. In Russia, attempts to include elements of professionalization in primary school were rejected by the All-Russian Congress on Public Education in 1913. In France, on the contrary, this idea found wide support. The author of the Pedagogical Dictionary, F. Buisson, argued that “the best school for vocational training is a higher primary school, where vocational training is within the framework of general education.” This pedagogical idea was the basis for the creation of a vocational training system and predetermined the subsequent differences between the “French model” and the Russian one.
Literature
1. VesselN.H. Professional education. - M., 1895.
2. History of vocational education in Russia. - M., 2003.
3. Kuzmin N.N. Lower and secondary specialized education in pre-revolutionary Russia. - Chelyabinsk, 1971.
4. People's Encyclopedia of Scientific and Applied Knowledge, vol. X. Public education in Russia. - M., 1912.
5. Essays on the history of school and pedagogical thought of the peoples of the USSR: the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. - M., 1991.
6. Draft general normal plan for industrial education in Russia. Collection of materials on technical and vocational education. Vol. II. - St. Petersburg, 1895.
7. Technical education. - 1907. - No. 4.
8. Technical and commercial education. - St. Petersburg, 1912. - No. 2; No. 6.
9. Ushinsky K.D. Collection Op.: (in 6 volumes). - M., 1988.
10. Bodé G. Credo de l'enseignement technique.
11. Brucy G. Histoire des diplômes de l'enseignement technique et professionnel (1880-1965). - Paris, 1997.
UDC 94 (420) BBK T3 (0) 5
WORKHOUSES IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH SOCIAL POLICY Yu.E. Barlova, candidate of historical sciences, doctoral student, associate professor of the department of general history of YSPU named after. K.D. Ushinsky, [email protected]
The article analyzes the history, evolution and dynamics of development of the institution of workhouses as a historical phenomenon and an integral component of social policy. The author associates the relevance of studying this range of issues with the severity and sensitivity of the problems of poverty, unemployment and exclusion from public life. The author traces the history of workhouses in England from the 14th century until the beginning of the 20th century, when the “era of workhouses” came to its logical end. The article attempts to explain changes in the purposes, nature and mechanisms of functioning of these institutions in the early modern and modern times, linking them with the dynamics of the political and socio-cultural climate in the country.
Key words: England, history, social policy, poverty, workhouse, paupers, reform of 1834.
WORKHOUSES IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH SOCIAL POLICY
The article examines the history, evolution and development of a workhouse as a historical phenomenon and an institution of British social policy. The author traces its history from the 14th century and up to the beginning of the 20th century, when the "era of the workhouses" came to its end, she raises and analyzes questions concerning, primarily, the alteration in the aims, nature and the mechanisms of functioning of the British workhouses throughout the Early Modern and Modern era, reflecting on how this alteration depended on the dynamics and fluctuations of social, political and cultural climate and discourse. The author emphasizes the importance of this problem for modern Russia, where poverty, unemployment and exclusion from social life are becoming topical and sensitive issues.
Keywords: England, history, social policy, poverty, workhouse, paupers, 1834 reform.
The history of social policy is a relatively new study of egregious violations of human rights in world history. In Ros-sv.
Vatel's field in Russian historiography. In most dictionaries of the era of socialism, the very concept of social policy was absent, instead of which the terms “social legislation” or “social struggle” were used. Today, social policy is understood as a system of measures aimed, first of all, at maintaining incomes and living standards of the population, ensuring employment, helping the poor and disadvantaged - in other words, at solving issues that are extremely relevant for modern Russia. Great Britain is a country where the history of social policy has been full of bold decisions, successful and failed experiments, and dramatic turns. Many English laws on social support, as well as institutions for helping the poor, which originated in England at different times, became examples for other European countries. Among such institutions are workhouses, which the British themselves consider a stain on their historical reputation and are classified as so-called. “museums of conscience” - that is, places reminiscent of
These workhouses have not become the object of separate research at all (with the exception, perhaps, of a number of publications about the famous Moscow workhouse of the late 19th - early 20th centuries) and are known to a wide audience primarily as citadels of cruelty and inhumanity, the gloomy picture of which is painted in the famous novel Charles Dickens "Oliver Twist".
Meanwhile, the history of this “British invention” is not so clear-cut; its chronological scope is not limited to the 19th century, which established the workhouse’s reputation as a prison, and initially the introduction of workhouses into the system of measures to combat poverty and unemployment among the working population did not set punitive goals. It can be said that the preconditions for the emergence of workhouses in Britain were laid in 1564, when parish officials received the right to establish places “convenient for the accommodation and stay of able-bodied paupers.” The famous “Elizabethan Poor Law” of 1601 allowed to help people without property,
profession and livelihood, if they work off the assistance they receive for the benefit of the parish. During the 17th century, thus, a new type of institution for Britain gradually took shape, differing both from “houses of charity”, where the old, sick, and infirm were placed, and from “houses of correction” - peculiar prisons for beggars and vagabonds. Often 17th-century workhouses took the form of "dispersed manufactories", with paupers working from home under the supervision of local merchants. But later, in certain areas of England and Wales, special buildings began to be built in which the parish’s material reserves were stored and paupers worked. The first workhouses of this type were founded at Abington in 1631 and Exeter in 1652.
William III of Orange, who carried out the Glorious Revolution, had great hopes for workhouses. “Workhouses,” he said in Parliament in 1698, “under virtuous and proper management, will solve all questions of charity in relation to the poor, both their souls and their bodies. They can become a nursery for the cultivation of religiosity, virtue and hard work." In 1696-1697 Bristol entrepreneur John Caray established the well-known “Bristol Poor Corporation”, where cash assistance could be received and worked out. Carey declared his goals to be “the equalization of taxes on the poor within the urban district, the fight against laziness and the involvement of beggars of both sexes and all ages in work.” After several years of operation of the workhouse, Carey presented a written report to Parliament, which stated that “not a single beggar or vagabond is now seen on the streets, and the beggars are helped in the right place and in the right amount.” Caray's example inspired many wealthy Englishmen who decided to use the labor of paupers for their own benefit. At the end of the 17th century, parliament received proposals for the creation of joint-stock companies that would organize the work of beggars in order to make a profit. However, the labor of the paupers was not sufficiently profitable to cover the expenses of the entrepreneur.
During the 18th century, according to researcher W. Quirk, workhouses “came in and out of fashion in many counties - depending on changes in material circumstances in the parish or administration.” Often the workhouse of that time looked like a space for the sick, the elderly, and street children to live under one roof, who lived together and were periodically “forced to work” - so periodically that workhouses of the 18th century were ironically called “pauper palaces.”
At the end of the 18th century, quite a large-scale public debate unfolded in England about poverty as a social problem, aggravated by a whole range of economic and political factors, not least of which were the industrial revolution and the radicalization of the political climate under the influence of the revolution in France. At one pole of this debate were those who looked at the problem of poverty from general philosophical, humanistic positions. Representative of the Enlightenment W. Godwin, doctor C. Hall, publicist W. Hazlitt wrote that the poor, elderly, uneducated - that is, those who need help - deserve it, if only because they are not to blame for their deplorable fate. At the other pole were those who preached the principle of “personal cause” of poverty (people themselves are to blame for their poverty). J. Townshend, T. Malthus, I. Bentham and their followers called on government officials to stop helping the poor and either direct the latter towards self-help, or use them as a potential productive resource. The second point of view won. In 1834, a reform of poor law was carried out in England, which abolished all subsidies in favor of the poor. Some 15,000 English and Welsh parishes were reorganized into Poor Law Unions, and each union was required to organize its own workhouse. The “new system” was in complete harmony with the norms and values of Protestantism, which did not consider poverty inevitable, the poor as victims of the situation, and helping them as a Christian duty. The 1834 Act was based on the premise that the poor were responsible for their situation, which they could change if they chose.
The principles on which the workhouses themselves were to be based were also, to a certain extent, unified. For example, back in 1828, the head of the workhouse in Southwell
le, Reverend J. T. Becher, wrote a “model” work, “A System for Combating Pauperism,” which was later, when republished in 1834, proposed to be equal to other workhouses. This work explained in a simple and accessible way the main principle on which the “new poor law” was based. “The advantage provided by the workhouse,” wrote Becher, “is not that it allows the poor to be kept, but that it helps to prevent them from entering there, by making the lower class feel how shameful and humiliating it is to be forcibly torn from the parish. When the poor people of the parish express dissatisfaction, we invite them to go to the workhouse, and after that the complaints subside...” In other words, the stay of beggars in the workhouse should be made as repulsive as possible.
At the end of the 1830s. Hundreds of new workhouse buildings were erected in England. If the original plan, dating back to the 17th century, envisaged the “closure” of only able-bodied adult paupers as “work-evading parasites,” then from 1834 the number of inhabitants of workhouses began to include the elderly, the disabled, orphans, unmarried mothers, and the mentally ill. Each category lived in a separate fenced-off room. Only the dining room was common, although in a number of workhouses special partitions were installed there to separate men from women. If, therefore, a family ended up in a workhouse, its members were immediately and deliberately separated from each other. An exception was made only for mothers with children: since 1842, they were allowed visits “for reasonable reasons” - once a week for an hour (usually on Sunday evenings).
The next deliberate principle of workhouse life was a meager and monotonous menu. Here is what a former overseer of one of the workhouses in the south of England recalls: “Breakfast and tea were unimportant. The workers were fed bread with margarine, and they were also given tea - that’s all the food... For lunch they gave meat,... I also remember cabbage. She was thrown into large cauldrons at about ten o'clock in the morning. and it resembled wet paper. Evening food was always the same - bread with margarine and tea.” . The most famous scandal involving disgusting food in workhouses erupted in 1848 in Andover, where inspectors found a group of paupers fighting over the remains of rotten meat left on the bones they were grinding.
Paupers of “the same category” slept in common, crowded dormitories, where, as nineteenth-century publicists noted, “10 children slept in one bed, a living person shared a bed with a corpse if there was a delay in burial, and the sick and infirm lay in their own excrement.” . Bathing in most workhouses was provided once a week, and medical care was provided by a doctor who was assisted by the inmates of the workhouse for a fee of a pint of beer or a couple of glasses of gin.
The daily routine, hours for work and rest, rules of behavior in workhouses were prescribed in special “rules and punishments”, large printed and posted for everyone to see; for the illiterate, the rules were read aloud every week. Such sheets with rules are a fairly accessible source for researchers; they can be found in historical museums of cities and even posted in pubs. Overall they were similar. Rise was provided at 6 a.m. “in the summer half of the year” and at 7 a.m. “in the winter half.” Start of work - immediately after getting up, duration - 12 hours. In summer, lights out at 8 pm, in winter - at 7 pm. Breaks: half an hour for breakfast, an hour for lunch and half an hour for dinner. Routine violations were differentiated into “disorderly conduct” and “refractory conduct.” The former could be punished by deprivation of "excess food" - such as cheese or tea, the latter was punished more severely - up to and including imprisonment. Undisciplined behavior included breaking silence, using profanity, “refusing work by pretending to be sick,” and gambling. Unruly behavior included drunkenness, inciting riots either verbally or in writing, insulting an overseer, fighting, and damaging workhouse property. In the special “books of pauper offenses” (Pauper Offence books) you can find examples of such “crimes and punishments”. For example, in Beaminster workhouse in Dorset, John Aplin was locked up on bread and water in a punishment cell for 24 hours for misbehaving during prayer, two girls for fighting with each other
were deprived of meat for a month, and Isaac Hartlett, who broke a window, was sent to prison for 2 months.
But was the 19th century workhouse the same as a prison? Contrary to popular belief, this cannot be said. Thus, the rules allowed a beggar to leave the workhouse as soon as jobs appeared in the area. There were people who were called “ins and outs”, they often came for a short period of time, using the workhouse as a temporary free shelter, albeit with Spartan conditions. It also “failed” to implement the plan according to which the workhouse was to become the only way out for an adult able-bodied pauper. Legislators have not been able to overcome cases of “open charity” in individual parishes, i.e. helping able-bodied beggars in one form or another: food, clothing, etc. This was partly due to growing antipathy in society towards the new workhouse system. Sometimes this antipathy manifested itself in the form of sabotage of elections or the appointment of workhouse officials, sometimes in mass mob actions (for example, in 1842 in Stockport people stormed the workhouse walls from outside, shouting that they were storming the Bastille), sometimes in individual criminal acts. incidents (for example, a few weeks after the opening of the Abington workhouse there was a daring attempt on the life of its boss, Mr. Ellis).
In the 50-60s. XIX century England literally exploded from criticism of the conditions of paupers in workhouses. Writers, politicians, doctors, religious figures published notes, essays and pamphlets on the pages of periodical magazines, which in general, according to the German researcher E. Munsterberg, “created such a reputation for the English workhouse that a person who was offered to go there completely refused from help, not wanting to receive it at the cost of one’s own freedom.” Changes in public attitudes contributed to the fact that by the end of the 19th century, conditions in workhouses had improved markedly. The medical care system was centralized and improved, the menu was improved, “small pleasures” became available to the poor - books, newspapers, etc. Children were gradually transferred to special schools or orphanages in rural areas - the so-called. "cottage homes". The political factor also played a certain role in reforming the system - the activities of the liberal cabinets of Campbell-Bannerman and Lloyd George were marked by a sharp change in the course of social policy. In 1913 the name disappeared - the workhouses were renamed “Poor Law institutions”, and from 1930 the workhouses that survived the First World War were transferred to local (municipal) ones.
authorities. Some buildings were sold or demolished, and some were redeveloped as nursing homes, hospitals and hospices. This essentially marked the end of the workhouse era.
British historian J. Bradley rightly noted that “in England, the situation with workhouses was a kind of barometer, reflecting changes and fluctuations in the social and cultural climate. The emergence of workhouses in the 17th century. reflected a sharply negative attitude towards vagabonds and beggars... The more tolerant - or at least more indifferent - 18th century turned out to be more generous and less punitive in the provision of social assistance. The more measured Victorian era revived the harsh, prison-like workhouse - the "Dickens workhouse". Finally, the rapid growth of charitable organizations, attention to "open charity" and the abolition of workhouses are features of the 20th century."
In any case, exploring the history of workhouses as an institution of British social policy allows us to enrich the historical perspective of contemporary debates about social security and social inequality, raising important questions about contemporary problems of poverty, including unemployment, homelessness and exclusion from public life.
Literature
1. International Coalition of Memorial Museums of Conscience (electronic resource). - http://www.sitesofconscience.org/sites-ru/ru/-consulted 20/06/08.
2. Munsterberg E. Charity for the poor. Guide to practical activities in the field of caring for the poor (translated from German). - St. Petersburg, 1900.
3. Bradley J. Moscow Workhouse and Urban Welfare reform in Russia // Russian review, vol. 41. - No. 4 (October 1982).
4. Eden FM. The State of the Poor. L., G. Rutlege ans Sons Ltd., 1928.
5. HigginbothamP. The Workhouse. - 2005. - (electronic resource) - http://www.workhouses.org.uk/-consulted 21/07/08.
6. Nicholls G. A History of the English Poor Law. - in 3 vols. - Vol I, L., 1898.
7. Quirk V. Lessons from the English Poor Laws. Referred paper presented to the Australian Political Studies Association Conference, University of Newcastle, 25-27 September 2006.
8. Slack P. Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England. - L., 1993.
9. TwiningL. Workhouses and Pauperism. - L., Methen, 1898.
UDC 94 BBK 66.2 (7)
FACTORS FORMING THE MIDDLE EAST POLICY OF THE USA (THIRD QUARTER OF THE XX CENTURY) K.A. Belousova, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Modern and Contemporary History of Moscow State Pedagogical University, [email protected]
US Middle East policy is one of the main directions of modern American strategy. The factors influencing US policy in this region in the modern period differ little from those that shaped policy in the third quarter of the 20th century.
Key words: US policy in the Middle East, Arab countries, Israel.
THE MAIN TRENDS OF US POLICE IN THE MIDDLE EAST (THE THIRD QUARTER OF THE XX CENTURY)
The Middle Eastern policy of the United State is one of the main trends of the modern American strategy. Factors influenced the US police in this region nowadays differs very little from one that formed their policy in 1945-1975.
Keywords: US Policy in the Middle East, Arab countries, Israel.
The factors that influenced US Middle East policy in the third quarter of the 20th century are not particularly different from those that shape US policy today. Therefore, the study of this issue is certainly relevant. The Middle East region is becoming increasingly important in the modern world. In recent decades, its economic and political role in the world community and geopolitical significance have begun to increase sharply. An important point is also the unifying and concentrating power of Islam - the main religion of the peoples of the Middle East. Among the reasons for the unremitting US attention to this region are the following: the recent war; the constant threat of Islamic fundamentalism; the continued importance of the area as an oil producing area; unrelenting tension between Israel
and Arabs; international terrorism; high probability of conflicts and their internationalization.
The fundamental factor that shaped US foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, was the antagonism between capitalism and socialism. This contradiction lay in material structures and processes, and, therefore, had its manifestation in superstructural areas, including politics, where it is best seen. This is perhaps the only factor that has ceased to exist in its “pure form” these days, but with the disappearance of bipolar antagonism, the US desire to strengthen itself in the Middle East has not diminished. In modern language, this material justification is called the “race of cultures.” It should be noted that the Soviet Union also tried to consolidate its position in the Middle East.
The state wanted to reduce the financial costs of maintaining prisoners and decided not only to recoup the costs of their accommodation, but also to earn money from the labor of convicts. Over time, such penitentiary institutions spun off into charitable institutions that provided food, shelter, and work to those in need. Although it often happened that conditions in workhouses were even worse than in prisons, which provoked several high-profile scandals in the 19th century.
The idea of creating the first such institutions to combat petty thieves began to spread in Europe in the 16th century. Then professional beggars and pickpockets so filled the cities that they became a problem for the authorities to ensure law and order. On the other hand, there was a humanistic grain in this idea: juvenile criminals were sentenced to the same severe punishment as adults, and placement in a workhouse could ease their fate.
In addition, the industrial sector developed in European cities, which led to the creation of a large number of low-skilled jobs. This is how institutions emerged where the main principles were isolation and forced labor.
Bridewell
One of the first work establishments was Bridewell. In 1553, the English king Edward VI gave his father's castle to London to house orphans and women who "disturbed the public peace." The city authorities took full possession of it three years later and placed a prison, hospital and workhouse in the former palace of Henry VIII. The prison was famous for the fact that imprisonment there, according to contemporaries, was “worse than death.”
At that time, Bridewell was still part of the penitentiary system, and not a charitable institution. Its name became synonymous with police stations and places of detention throughout England and Ireland. Most of the building was destroyed during the Great Fire, and in 1855 the prison was completely closed.
Disciplinary house in Amsterdam
The city council of Amsterdam liked Bidewell's experience and in 1589 a decision was made to establish workhouses in the Netherlands. The Dutch approached this issue carefully and wrote a set of rules about what goals such an institution should pursue, how to maintain prisoners, and how to arrange everything.
Sebastian Egberts noted that the creation of workhouses would not require any special financial costs, since the convicts would work themselves.
Such a system, in his opinion, will allow criminals not only to support themselves, but also to bring tangible profits. After weighing all the advantages of such an undertaking, the city authorities founded a disciplinary house in 1595. He was placed in the monastery of the Clarissas, specially rebuilt for this purpose. Unlike its English counterpart, not only prostitutes and dangerous criminals were placed there, but also petty offenders.
In addition, the disciplinary house essentially combined three institutions: a workhouse for the able-bodied poor, a disciplinary institution for those who did not want to work voluntarily, and a charity house for beggars, old people, orphans and children.
At the same time, it was divided into a male disciplinary house and a female one. Soon similar establishments began to appear in many Dutch cities. In essence, there was a gradual transformation of the workhouse as an analogue of a prison into an institution with more humane principles of maintenance.
Back to England
In the 17th century in England there were already changes in this matter, although the situation of the residents of such houses still continued to be difficult. Thus, beggars in workhouses were provided with wages for their work, subject to mandatory residence in such an institution and compliance with internal regulations.
The first classical workhouse appeared in 1652 in Exeter. The order in such an institution differed little from that of a prison. Men, women and children were isolated from each other and lived in different parts of the building. There was a strict regime in the house; in addition, there was a system of corporal punishment; often violators were even placed in a punishment cell or starved to death.
According to the “poor law,” which prohibited the payment of benefits, everyone who applied for public assistance began to be driven into workhouses. Conditions in workhouses even caused major scandals in the 19th century.
For example, in the workhouse in Andover, Hampshire, workers were forced to eat bones due to hunger. In 1845, rumors spread across the country that the inmates of this workhouse were deprived of food, so in order to survive they ate the bones of horses, dogs and cattle, which were supposed to be used to make bone meal fertilizer.
The rumor reached the local judge, who, together with the doctor, decided to raid the workhouse for an inspection. It turned out that the owner of the institution stole food from suppliers and gave prisoners even less food than the minimum norm established by the Commission for the Poor. The editor of the Times newspaper became interested in the case and the case received wide public attention.
In Rus'
For the first time, Ivan the Terrible was concerned with the problem of creating such institutions in Russia at the legislative level. Before this, caring for beggars and vagabonds fell on the shoulders of monasteries. Peter I also, in the regulations for the chief magistrate of 1721, speaks of the establishment of straithouses for keeping “people of indecent living” in constant work.
But this idea began to be realized only in 1775 with the decree of Catherine II on the creation of a workhouse. They entrusted this to the Moscow Chief of Police Arkharov. Young “sloths” were to be placed in the workhouse to earn their living by working. Moreover, the organization of workhouses fell on orders of public contempt. Following Moscow, similar institutions began to appear in other cities of the country.
In 1785, the Moscow workhouse was combined with a restraining house for violent sloths, and less than 100 years later, the Matrosskaya Tishina prison arose on its basis. And in 1836, with the money of the merchant Chizhov, a house was purchased opposite the Yusupov Palace, in which the “Yusupov Workhouse” was opened. Attitudes towards workhouses changed either in the direction of strengthening or weakening.
INTRODUCTION
It is generally accepted that in order to live, a person must work, mine or produce. But gradual social stratification led to the emergence of a layer of people who had means that freed them from the need and, accordingly, the obligation to work. In some societies this was allowed, in others it was not, on the contrary, it was punishable by exile, confiscation of property, but one way or another there was a precedent, and the problem of compulsory labor arose.
In history, there have always been people who, in one way or another, shied away from work (but at the same time did not have their own means of subsistence): beggars, beggars, homeless people, pilgrims, etc. And society had to somehow solve the problem of providing for them.
Throughout human history, the state and the church have tried to solve pressing social problems such as beggary, poverty and unemployment.Poverty and its extreme form of manifestation - beggary, requiring compulsory public assistance, were not associated with the concepts of people's responsibility for their situation. The emergence of economic man and, accordingly, economic consciousness became symbols of the industrialization process. Traditional society was replaced by an industrial one: open and mobile, and with it an army of people without land, without a lord, without a piece of bread, with whom something had to be done. The public perception of the “poor” is gradually changing. The poor begin to identify with the dangerous classes. Poor and beggar become synonymous with slacker and tramp.
One solution to the problem of poverty was found and was associated with the so-called “workhouses”. Workhouses as such are long gone. However, the problems of vagrancy, begging, and unwillingness to work are far from being resolved.
The object of research in the course work is English workhouses.
The subject of research in the course work is the functions and activities of English workhouses.
The purpose of the course work is to study English workhouses, namely to consider the concept, functions, activities, as well as the influence of workhouses on the social problems of that time (beggary, vagrancy, unemployment).
To achieve the goal of the course work, the following tasks were identified:
- consider the concept and functions of English workhouses;
analyze the activities of English workhouses;
determine the performance of English houses.
With the development of society and with the development of industrialization, a new social policy appears in relation to the needy segments of the population. It included two elements:
- the desire to employ the “healthy” poor and vagabonds, reinforced by repression;
organization of a centralized assistance system.
London Bridwell was a well-guarded workshop, under constant supervision and distinguished by prison discipline. The workshops were under the control of craft guilds, and the food of the prisoners depended on the results of their labor. Idle tramps were sent to work in mines and bakeries, where the work was hard and required not qualifications, but only physical strength.
Bridwell soon faced insurmountable difficulties: unemployment in London was so great that he was unable to provide work for all the tramps sent there, which is why the role of the house as a punitive institution immediately decreased.
As a result, Bridwell's idea of accustoming tramps to honest work failed, which, however, clarified an important thing: the problem of providing work is always closely related to the state of the labor market 2.
England, during the period of the creation of the first houses of correction, was experiencing an economic recession. In the Act of 1610 it was supposed to have mills, weaving and carding workshops with them, so as not to leave boarders idle. In 1630, by decree of the British king, a special commission was created to monitor the strict observance of the poor laws. In the same year, a whole series of commission orders appeared: in particular, it was ordered to bring to justice beggars and vagabonds, as well as all those “who are stagnant in idleness and do not want to work for a reasonable pay or waste all their money in taverns.” All of them should have been sent to correctional homes.
Already in the middle of the 17th century. a rise began that required the greatest possible involvement of labor, preferably cheap, which became a powerful incentive in the organization of workhouses (correctional houses). Thus, one of the organizers of workhouses in England, Sir Matthew Hale, wrote in the early 1660s that helping to eradicate poverty is “for us Englishmen a highly necessary task and our first Christian duty”; this duty should be entrusted to the judicial officials, who will divide each county into parts, unite neighboring parishes and organize houses for forced houses. “Then no one will beg for alms and there will not be a person so insignificant and thirsty for social destruction to give alms to the poor and encourage them” 3.
The idea of creating workhouses in other European countries was understood somewhat differently. Thus, in 1587, the Dutch humanist Dirk Wockerts Koornhert published a treatise in which it was noted that the new social policy should combine elements of both punishment and forced labor, and a minimum of freedom. Soon two workhouses appeared in Amsterdam: for men - Rasphhuis, where the main occupation was the processing of Brazilian wood, and for women and children - Spinhuis, where the latter were engaged in spinning and sewing clothes. Work in Dutch workhouses was carried out in groups, and work was paid. In addition, special time was reserved for prayer and reading religious books, and the stay was limited to 8 - 12 years.
At the same time, violators of the regime faced severe punishment: in the same Rashuis they were kept in separate cells, constantly filled with water. There was a pump in the cell and the prisoner was constantly busy pumping out water.
The Dutch example became indicative for the construction of workhouses in Germany. In the 1610s. such establishments appeared in Bremen and Lübeck, and then in a number of other cities: Hamburg (1620), Basel (1667), Breslau (1668), Frankfurt (1684), Spandau (1684), Königsberg (1691), Leipzig (1701) ), Halle (1717), Kassel (1720), Brige and Osnabrück (1756), Torgau (1771) 4.
Here attempts were made to introduce some rational principles into the functioning of houses: for example, the charter of the Hamburg workhouse noted that the cost of the work performed was clearly calculated, and those in need received only a quarter of it. Eight managers drew up a general work plan. The master gave a task to everyone and at the end of the week checked how it was completed. In Germany, each of the insulators had its own specialization: they spun mainly in Bremen, Braunschweig, Munich, Breslau, Berlin; weaved - in Hanover. In Bremen and Hamburg men cleared boards; in Nuremberg – optical lenses were ground; in Mainz - flour was ground 5.
The different forms that the policies of isolation, punishment and "re-education through labor" took depended on the social and cultural context. And here the most striking example was demonstrated by Catholic France, where the introduction of a new work ethic also had a significant impact on the further development of the country.
The first attempts to isolate the poor in Paris were made at the beginning of the 17th century, during the reign of Marie de Medici, when three hospitals were created for this purpose. In the fall of 1611, a special decree prohibited begging in Paris, and beggars were ordered to immediately find a job or report to work in one of the hospitals. The streets of Paris were under constant police surveillance and, in the end, hunger drove the beggars to hospitals. After 6 weeks there were about 800 people there, and by 1616 - 2200 people. Women who continued to beg were subjected to public flogging and head shaving, men were imprisoned; Giving alms was prohibited under threat of severe punishment.
Three hospitals were created: for men, for women, and for children over the age of eight, and for the seriously ill. In the first two, prisoners were required to work from dawn to dusk, starting at 5 a.m. in the summer and 6 a.m. in the winter. Men were employed in the mines, brewing, sawmills and “other places of hard labor,” while children and women sewed and spun, made shoes and buttons, etc. Those who did not fulfill the labor norm determined by the guards were punished: their daily food ration was reduced, and if there were constant labor violations, they were evicted from the hospital and were imprisoned in a dungeon. The poor who worked in these hospitals were paid only a quarter of their earnings, the rest went to the benefit of the hospital. At the same time, special guard units were created to combat street begging with the introduction of a special reward for the capture of vagrants 6 .
In the eyes of the authorities and the outside public, these hospitals, despite all their contradictions, became institutions of charity. Placement there was seen as a kind of privilege for the Parisian poor, since “foreign beggars” only faced expulsion. The first paragraph of the hospital statute drew a clear line between those beggars who were natives of Paris and were to be placed in hospitals, and all others who were subject to punishment and expulsion. At the same time, moving from the hospital meant moving from one prison to another, the worst - the Chatelet prison 7.
A corresponding ideological justification was also given for the need to organize hospitals: in particular, it was argued that they were intended, on the one hand, to provide the poor with the opportunity to work, and on the other hand, to provide the necessary religious instruction. Thus, police coercion and repression were justified by feelings of Christian charity, by the fact that they would help teach the poor to live honestly.
In the 1620s - 1630s. The secret religious and political organization, the Society of Holy Communion, began to play a leading role in the creation of hospitals in France, called “general” hospitals. The Paris experience was soon extended to other cities. Thus, in 1647, a plan appeared for the creation of a general hospital in Toulouse, where all beggars without exception, including small children, were placed, and where everyone was obliged to work; It was forbidden to ask for alms. The effect of the innovations turned out to be extremely contradictory: on the one hand, the effectiveness of the assistance provided increased while the amount of alms given was reduced, and on the other hand, the danger of riots by the poor increased during times of political opposition (the so-called Fronde) 8.
Yet the greatest achievement was the creation of the General Hospital in Paris. On May 4, 1656, a special decree on its formation was signed. At the same time, both the previous experience of consciousness of such hospitals and the situation that had developed by that time in the French capital were taken into account. Thus, the Parisian chronicler Henry Saval claimed that the number of poor people in Paris reached 40 thousand people. Under these conditions, the Society of the Holy Sacrament organized the distribution of alms and obliged local Catholic brotherhoods and charitable organizations to provide ongoing assistance to the poor in their parishes. At the same time, a special police force was created to arrest beggars and vagabonds. Begging was prohibited under threat of flogging and being sent to the galleys 9 .
The Paris “General Hospital” became a single governing body for several already existing institutions, including the hospital that included “the house and hospital of Compassion, large and small, with an almshouse, the house and hospital of Scipio, the house of a soap factory, with all its possessions, gardens, houses and buildings adjacent to them.” This also included a shelter for war invalids, the Salpêtrière and Bicêtre hospitals, etc. All these institutions were reserved for the poor of Paris “of both sexes, of every age and origin, of any rank and condition, whatever they may be, healthy or crippled, sick or convalescing , curable or incurable" 10.
So, huge almshouses-prisons and workhouses became in the second half of the 17th century. symbol of a new era and are widespread. An act of 1670 revived the idea of workhouses in England in the form of the creation of so-called workhouses. In 1697, the first workhouse appeared in Bristol, in 1703 - in Worcester and Dublin, then similar houses appeared in Plymouth, Norwich, Hull, and Exeter. By the beginning of the 18th century. their number had already reached 126, and in the middle of the century there were 200 workhouses. The majority of the houses' output was textile production, mainly wool spinning. Thus, in the statutes of the Bristol workhouse it was written: “Poor people of both sexes and any age can shake hemp, spin and dress flax, comb and spin wool.” A workshop for children was established in Worcester, where fabric and clothing were made. Finally, a special law of 1723 allowed local parishes to limit assistance to those poor people who refused to work in such houses 11 .
Thus, the fight against ostentatious poverty, laziness and immorality through police and administrative measures led in the 17th century. to the creation of a workhouse system.
ENGLISH WORKHOUSES. CONCEPT
Workhouses - shelters for the poor in England 17-19 centuries 12. They first appeared in the 17th century. They were widely developed due to the Poor Law of 1834, which abolished the system of payment of poverty benefits by parishes. Under this law, 15 thousand parishes in England and Wales were grouped into several hundred “unions”, each of which was obliged to maintain one workhouse. Poor people who had no means of subsistence were sent to workhouses. The workhouse system reduced the expenses of the propertied classes for providing assistance to paupers, since only helpless old people and disabled people voluntarily went to workhouses. In connection with the development of social security in England in the 20th century. The workhouse system has become obsolete. Parliament, by legislative act of 1597, formulated a regulation on the poor and vagabonds, which was in force until 1814, and in 1834 a new “Poor Law” was adopted, which provided for the abolition of the system of payment of appropriate poverty benefits by parishes. The funds of the parishes were used to maintain workhouses, where the poor who did not have the necessary means for subsistence were still sent.
The conditions in workhouses differed little from those in prisons. Unsanitary conditions, hard daily work, and atrocities by guards became a characteristic phenomenon for workhouses. It is no coincidence that they were nicknamed “bastilles for the poor.” The very threat of placement in workhouses was aimed at intimidating workers who were forced to agree to any working conditions in factories and factories, and thereby significantly lowered wages. Movements of the lower classes were often directed against workhouses, which either destroyed them or prevented the construction of new ones. Thus, forced labor existed in an advanced capitalist country for several hundred years 13 .
FUNCTIONS OF WORKHOUSES AND RESULTS OF ACTIVITIES
In general, with all the variety of workhouses that found their use in different countries of Western Europe, these correctional institutions performed two important functions:
- removing loitering people from society and preventing unrest and riots in order to maintain social peace and balance;
using cheap labor by providing jobs to people who are kept locked up and forced to work “for the good of all.”
Firstly, the appearance of workhouses was met with hostility by entrepreneurs and factory owners. Thus, Daniel Defoe wrote that workhouses, using cheap labor, only created more poor people in their environment. “This means giving one the bread taken from another, putting a tramp in the place of an honest man and forcing the latter to look for another job to feed his family,” - D. Defoe.
By housing the unemployed and the beggars, workhouses only masked the growing problems and to some extent avoided political unrest. By distributing the unemployed into forced workshops, these houses contributed to the growth of unemployment in the surrounding regions or in the corresponding sectors of the economy. Workhouses were also unable to influence the decrease in market prices, since the latter also took into account the costs of maintaining boarders. Attempts to reform workhouses into ordinary manufactories were unsuccessful 14 .
Secondly, the labor of prisoners in workhouses was unproductive. This was evidenced by the report of a special commission created in Paris in 1781, when groups of prisoners of the General Hospital began to be used to lift water (instead of horses): “What was the reason that forced such a strange occupation to be found for them? Was it just economy, or was it the only need to keep the prisoners occupied with something? If there was only a need to keep people busy with something, then it was more appropriate to assign them to work that was more useful both for themselves and for the hospital. If the reason lies in economy, then we do not see the slightest economy in that.”
In 1790, a report from the House of Compassion noted that “every kind of manufacture that the capital can offer” had been tried. In the end, almost in despair, they settled on weaving snares as a less wasteful activity” 15.
Thirdly, among the inhabitants of the workhouses there were people of various categories of people under consideration. Thus, in 1737 in Bicetre they tried to rationally distribute wards among five services:
- straighthouse, dungeons and prison cells for those detained by secret royal command (i.e. royal "boarders");
facilities for the “good” poor;
facilities for adult paralytics;
premises for the insane and insane;
premises for venereal patients, convalescents and children born in the correctional home.
Thus, among the residents of the General Hospital there were also patients suffering from sexually transmitted diseases. The cells with them were overcrowded: in Bicetre in 1781 there were 60 beds for 138 men; in Compassion for 224 women - 125 beds. The insane were also placed in restraint houses, but no treatment was provided for them. Thus, the doctor Auden Rouviere at the end of the 18th century. noted: “A boy of ten or twelve years old, who ends up in this institution due to nervous seizures considered epileptic, being among real epileptics, takes on a disease that he did not have before, and has no other hope for a cure in the long journey of his life, except what the efforts of his own nature bring him, which are far from always sufficient.”
It also became important here that there was no connection between repression and charity practiced in hospitals, namely, the line between professional beggary, who was subject to punishment, and the rest of the poor, who should be helped or given work, was blurred. The poor were to be given the freedom to learn honest work, and forced labor in the hospital was to take a reserved place as an instrument of punishment 17 .
But the significance of the creation of workhouses should not be assessed only from the point of view of their functioning. It is no coincidence that a peculiar motto was inscribed on the gates of the Hamburg workhouse: “Labore nutrior, labore plector” (“By working, I get food, by working, I punish myself”). In 1667, on the doors of the Spinhuis in Amsterdam was written: “Do not be afraid! I do not take revenge on the immoral; I force kindness. My hand is heavy, but my heart is full of love." These mottos reflected the new reality characteristic of countries that had embarked on the path of early bourgeois development. The concentration and isolation of the poor in workhouses became a real manifestation of the work ethic and the new punitive doctrine: a minimum of freedom and a maximum of work, combined with a policy of re-education through labor.
The policy of isolation in general had a great influence on the evolution of modern society in Europe. The combination of charity and repressive politics shaped the work ethic. Labor, both Protestant and Catholic, both agricultural and relatively economically developed countries, pushed them onto the path of the industrial revolution and became a form of social learning by adapting people to new structures of economic life. The combination of prison and manufactory created the basis for the functioning of a modern factory, with its discipline, strict rules and organization of work 18.
CONCLUSION
One solution to the problem of poverty was found and was associated with the so-called “workhouses”. Workhouses are shelters for the poor in England.
These correctional institutions performed two important functions: removing idle people from society and preventing unrest and riots in order to maintain social peace and balance; using cheap labor by providing jobs to people who are kept locked up and forced to work “for the good of all.”
Introduction of the practice of workhouses in England in the 19th century. – a serious socio-economic and socio-political decision. Polanyi gives a negative characterization of this system of virtually forced employment of the poor, their forced treatment in workhouses and a degrading lifestyle. “The decency and self-respect developed by centuries of measured, respectable life quickly disappeared among the motley rabble of inmates of the workhouse, where a person had to beware lest he be considered more materially prosperous than his neighbors.”
J. A. Schumpeter interprets the introduction of amendments to the Poor Law as follows: “Two aspects of this act should be clearly distinguished. On the one hand, he significantly improved the administrative mechanism for issuing benefits to the poor and abolished much of what could now be considered abuse. On the other hand, he limited the relief of the poor to their confinement in workhouses, and in principle prohibited the granting of benefits to those who did not live in them; the idea was that an able-bodied unemployed person in need should not be doomed to starvation, but he should be kept in semi-prison conditions.”
The workhouses in England provided history with a genuine attempt, through public policy (rather than local charity), to address the problems of poverty, vagrancy and employment.
Polanyi examines the socio-political concept of the introduction of workhouses, comparing it with the social labor utopias of Owen and the ideas of Bentham. No other European country, except England, has had such a negative experience in introducing such institutions. It was in England that a poor man, on the verge of starvation, was offered a choice between the absence of any help and placement in a workhouse, where completely unbearable living conditions were imposed.
From a functional point of view, the creation of isolation houses turned out to be an unsuccessful measure. Firstly, the appearance of workhouses was met with hostility by entrepreneurs and factory owners. Secondly, the labor of prisoners in workhouses was unproductive. Thirdly, among the inhabitants of the workhouses there were people of various categories of people under consideration.
Workhouses as such are long gone. However, the problems of vagrancy, begging, and unwillingness to work are far from being resolved.
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