When I got home from work this evening I received one of my ancestor's death certificates in the post. He was my great great great Grandfather and he died in a workhouse in Gravesend in 1896, of "apoplexy". It seems such a shame that his large family didn't take him in but I don't know the circumstances they were in at the time so I can't really comment - they all may have been really poor or have had large families of their own, but the thing that struck me is that his name was different on the certificate. Maybe they weren't really sure of his real name, but it makes me think hard about the kind of lives my family lived in the late 19th century and how hard it must have been.
There was obviously no welfare state and no old peoples' homes and if your family couldn't take you in, it was off to the workhouse. There was certainly no old age pension or benefits of any kind so I suppose people kept on working for as long as they could. Several of my family have ended up there and the one in Dartford is now a block of very smart offices - I wonder if the occupants have any inkling of how their workplace used to be!
No comments:
Post a Comment