Leeds Union Workhouse

One hundred and fifty years ago today the Leeds Union Workhouse opened. Over the past century and a half, it has developed into one of the country’s most prestigious hospitals with many wings and modern buildings, but there are still visible remnants of the old workhouse (much of which is now museum).

The workhouse – yet another vile product of the industrial revolution – was among one of the first institutions that, to my mind, marked the dehumanising of humanity. When England – and particularly the north of England – was largely dependent upon farming, most people lived in villages or parishes, where they worked the land, paid rent and a couple of days labour a year to the local landowner or squire, weaved and spun in their cottages and took their wares to sell in the nearest market town every week or so. (Even today, Yorkshire is filled with road signs pointing to ‘Historic Market Towns’). It wasn’t by any means an easy life. Most cottages were pretty squalid; when harvests were bad, people starved, animals and people were often undernourished...On the other hand, there were some advantages: people were people. Whether you were the village idiot or the eccentric midwife, local witch or passing labourer, you were a unique person, accepted in your own right. You contributed – often by tithing – to the parish poor fund, and the local parson handed out that money to the elderly or those who could no longer work. Parish Relief, as it was called, worked quite well when the harvest was good and not many people were claiming it.

The Enclosure Acts changed everything. Cottagers were evicted from their homes. Animals were cruelly fattened beyond recognition. Village idiots were placed in institutions and, as the towns developed into industrial cities, churning out more cloth in a day than an ordinary weaver could produce in a year, more and more people were thrown ‘on the mercy of the parish.’ Since the Parish Relief couldn’t meet the growing demand, the government authorised parishes to group together in a Union and, instead of handing out money, they should build workhouses – hence the Leeds Union Workhouse.

The workhouses were created to discourage people from being poor.
They did this by making these places as dehumanising as possible so you would only go there if you were absolutely desperate. Men and women were segregated and, since many people who arrived at the workhouse were elderly couples who could no longer work, this meant that people who had been married for decades were not allowed to see each other again. Forced into uniforms, sitting in rows, eating and working in silence, the workhouse inmates’ lives were as appalling as those of the people who later were forced into concentration camps.

Who was responsible for this? Not monarchs, not princes, but petty-minded officials who believed themselves to be the elite, more intelligent than the masses, and the only ones capable of controlling an unruly and unintelligent society.

Today, of course, we are far more enlightened. We no longer allow ourselves to be regimented by people who know better; there are no longer elite groups who believe that most people are ignorant and need to be put in their place...

Bricks

Growing up in the more or less leafy suburbs of a northern city, founded and once flourishing on the wool trade, and much preferring the more original Yorkshire landscape of moors and rivers and crags and gardens, it often seemed to me as a child that the nearer I went to the city centre, the uglier the city became. The main problem was bricks! Thousands upon thousands of them - millions even! Travel, in those days (the 1970s) by car, and there were endless rows of terraces. My school itself, which I loved and which was beautiful, was built of countless red bricks. Travel by train, and there were numerous red brick bridges, tunnels and sidings. Bricks, bricks, bricks; walls, walls, walls....and they all seemed so very ugly, so uniform and confining, so colourless and dull. They were solid. They didn't flow like rivers flow. They were static. They didn't change like the trees change. They lacked the creativity and beauty of the original stone walls that divide fields and which blend so beautifully into the landscape. They were just there - millions and millions of red bricks. Occasionally I wondered who could have spent so long putting them there and wasn't it utterly soul destroying to have to start placing one brick on another to create even a small wall, let alone miles upon miles of tunnels and terraces. To some extent they stood for all that was the worst about the Victorian era and the industrial revolution - that terrible (to my mind) change from living with Nature, to living with so-called progress. The era when people were no longer people but merely cogs in the wheel of industry. (Incidentally, I also think that was one of the most beautiful eras in the whole of history - the age of civility, house parties, Queen Victoria, monarchs and pageants and loveliness!).

The other day, though, I saw part of the BBC programme about 'Great Railway Journeys' in which the presenter spoke so enthusiastically about Isambard Kingdom Brunel's brilliance in standing up to the all the cynical voices which say something can't be done. Rather than arguing, Brunel just went ahead and did whatever he had planned and he succeeded in all of it. His railways, his ships, his bridges - everything flourished because he believed in them and didn't give the cynics a second thought. What a brilliant man! What a brilliant mind! One bridge, according to the programme (possibly this one??*) involved him measuring the angle of every single brick - wow!! Who could be so single-minded as to do such a thing? Better still, Brunel created beauty. He combined his engineering skill with an aesthetic sense (and this was a man whose father, like Dickens' father, was stuck in debtors' prison) A long time ago, I saw a couple of other programmes about the building of the sewers in London (how many bricks are there??) and the building of the London Tube (again - all those bricks!!). Those feats of engineering are so awe-inspiring. More awe-inspiring are the aspirations of those Victorians who had a vision of something and brought it into being.

I still find the brick walls ugly but that is probably a fault in my vision. Some people love and find beauty in power stations and cooling towers. Personally, I prefer rivers and trees and the changing scenery of Nature but I do stand in awe of that vision and the almost Zen-like attention to detail of those who day after day place one brick upon another and enabled me to travel by rail to town. I guess that without all that Victorian engineering, there would never have been room for people to move on to develop such fabulous things as computers, the internet, the ability to write on blogs and to be in contact with people from all over the world.

Next time I see the brick tunnels, I shall say, "Thank you!"

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brunel's_Railway_Bridge_at_Maidenhead_-_geograph.org.uk_-_94793.jpg

Leeds City Varieties

Music Hall is something so evocative of a bygone age - a time of ornate theatre boxes and seedy goings-on behind the scenes; the clashing of the world of performers like Vesta Tilly and Marie Lloyd, and that of the gentlemen 'Dr. Jeckyls' by day and 'Mr. Hydes' by night. I love Music Hall; love Marie Lloyd singing, "When I take my morning promenade" (which I have on a crackling CD and would love to hear on the original wax cylinder) and imagine the whole parade of performers with their Union Jacks behind them as they roused the young men in the audience to march off to some hopeless war. The power of it - the intimacy of it - the clashing, cacophonous beauty of it all...a kind of innocence that is long gone.

The City Varieties in Leeds, where I live, is an old Music Hall (the place where they filmed the 1970s series of "The Good Old Days"). I remember there being photos of so many of the great Music Hall stars and in every footstep to the seat you could feel the history of the place and wonder how many thousands of feet had walked into that place in another era, seeking escape, seeking laughter, seeking all the extremes of emotion, from the laughter of "The Laughing Policeman" and "Don't Have Anymore Mrs. Moor" to the heart-rending ballads of, "After the Ball" and "Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage". And beyond to, "Keep the Homes Fires Burning" and "Please Beak the News To Mother."

Music Halls speak of every possible emotion - from the heights to the depths. All those over-sentimental Victorian preaching songs about drunken/absent fathers (Yikes!! (Father's a Drunkard and Mother is Dead" and "Father, dear Father, Come Home to Us Now"), all the risqué songs like "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear" and all the really funny songs that Marie Lloyd sang. It's so interesting how music and the history of music speaks of social change and the different ages through which we have lived. Music Halls were of an era because it was the only era in which they would have 'fit'. It was the first time that so many people had been crammed together in one place, trying to make sense of so many different views and experiences all at once, and somehow in the 'varieties', they manages to capture it all.

The Ghosts of Temple Newsam

Temple Newsam House, a short walk from where I live, is renowned for its ghosts and it seems appropriate to speak of them at Halloween. Thousands of years ago, when I was a child, the famous 'Blue Lady' was the stuff of nightmares. Many times, since, I have been through the house half hoping to see her - alas to no avail! Children, today, though still speak of her and the various legends about how she was attacked and robbed while returning home and died soon afterwards. Legend has it, she returns in search of her stolen jewels. Then there is the story of the maid strangled in the cellars while resisting the advances of a footman...
I have never seen any ghosts at Temple Newsam but I have walked thousands of times in the woods there and I believe there is something so mystical and ancient about them. It would not surprise me to see fauns and satyrs skipping around those gnarled trees. The Templar legends resonate in that place and there is something so unique about the atmosphere of Temple Newsam that I have never experienced anywhere else. I would love to hear more of other people's stories of the ghosts they have encountered there, for I know there are many!