‘Immediate death or a life of torture are the consequences of the system’: the Bridgwater Union scandal and policy change

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries workhouses were a key provider of medical care to the poor. Workhouse beds in Britain far outnumbered beds provided by charitable hospitals, and a high percentage of inmates were elderly and infirm, needing not only accommodation and work but also medical relief. Historians of welfare, the English poor laws, and medicine have been aware of the importance of workhouse-based medicine, but the topic has not been studied in depth. This volume is the first to examine the history of the medical services provided by these institutions both in Britain and its former colonies, over the period covered by the Old and New Poor Laws. Written by prominent historians of medicine, welfare, and social policy, the essays document the experiences of those who received care or died in these houses, and form the critical foundation for a new historiography of workhouse medicine