Paupers Behaving Badly: Punishment in the Victorian Workhouse

Abstract The deterrent workhouse, with its strict rules for the behavior of inmates and boundaries of authority of the workhouse officers, was a central expression of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, known widely as the New Poor Law. This article explores for the first time the day-to-day experience of the power and authority of workhouse masters, matrons, other officers of the workhouse, and its Board of Guardians, and the resistance and agency of resentful inmates. Despite new sets of regulations to guide workhouse officers in the uniform imposition of discipline on residents, there was a high degree of regional diversity not only in the types of offenses committed by paupers but also in welfare policy relating to the punishments inflicted for disorderly and refractory behavior. And while pauper agency was significant, it should not be overstated, given the disparity in power between inmates and workhouse officials.

Discipline was essential because of the low ratio of staff to inmates; in Norwich workhouse in 1881, for instance, there were 529 paupers to twenty staff members. 5 The new act set up the Poor Law Commission, based at Somerset House in London and composed of three men: Thomas Frankland Lewis, George Nicholls, and John George Shaw Lefevre. Although independent of Parliament, it "did not have the power many people assumed." 6 Nevertheless, to their opponents, including some Tories, radical defenders of the rights of the poor and the working class, the Poor Law commissioners were the "Tyrants of Somerset House." 7 The commission ordered the formation of Poor Law unions-confederations of parishes large enough to support a workhouse. Parishes were grouped into some six hundred unions, and while some of these unions adapted existing workhouses, by 1841 about 320 new buildings had been completed. 8 The new union workhouses were the most iconic expressions of the change in policy, deliberately imposing structures designed not only to cow those applying at the workhouse gate but also to surveil them once they became inmates. 9 The assistant Poor Law commissioner E. C. Tufnell commented that workhouses' "prison-like appearance, and the notion that they are intended to torment the poor, inspires a salutary dread of them." 10 Commonly referred to as "bastilles," 11 they represented the principle and practice of the strict separation of paupers from the rest of society, as well as from each other.
Little work has been published, however, on the day-to-day attempts to maintain discipline in union workhouses, the many acts of defiance by paupers, and the punishment inflicted upon inmates by workhouse staff. 12 This internal misbehavior and insubordination of workhouse paupers is the subject of this article, which draws upon a range of union punishment books. Workhouse masters logged instances of breaches in discipline in pre-printed books that recorded the name of the pauper, the offense, the date committed, the punishment inflicted by the master or other official, the opinion of the guardians on this punishment, the punishment ordered by the guardians, date of that punishment, and any notes attached to the case (which might include referrals to local courts and their outcomes). In my research, set within the context of contemporary understandings of discipline and the appropriate response of authorities through punishment, I explored the types of recorded offenses 5 "Norwich workhouse residents, 1881 census," in The Workhouse: The Story of an Institution . . . (website), comp. Peter Higginbotham, accessed 29 July 2020, http://www.workhouses.org.uk/ Norwich/Norwich.1881.shtml. 6 Derek against workhouse rules and the punishments meted out by workhouse masters and other officers and those ordered by the Board of Guardians and local magistrates. Tensions were inherent within the union workhouse, and I assessed the exercise of agency and authority by various residents of the workhouse, the paupers' chafing at its rules, and the lived experience of all within its walls. Misbehavior by inmates and responses to it as evidenced in the punishment books provided a window into agency and authority.
While there have been studies of the worst behavior-workhouse riots-and the most severe punishment-committals to prison 13 -the only detailed study of pauper punishment is David Green's on London workhouses. Green draws primarily upon parliamentary returns, the London Times, and the West London Union Board of Guardians minutes, 14 a different set of sources than I used in my research. Green's study shows that "only a small number of breaches of discipline ended in a prosecution . . . the remainder were dealt with internally . . . [There was] a much larger problem of insubordination in the workhouse reflecting a wider variety of types of misbehavior than just those paraded before the courts." 15 Green argues that, although the combined authority of the workhouse master, Board of Guardians, and Poor Law commissioners tried to create "docile bodies," the "paupers themselves could be feisty" and misbehavior enabled them to challenge workhouse discipline. Inmates had individual as well as group agency; the workhouse was a site of resistance in which they negotiated with workhouse officials over the provision of poor relief. 16 Green contends that the union workhouse was a "deeply contested institution" and, further, that pauper misbehavior could challenge even "the legitimacy and authority of the poor law itself." 17 The spectrum of misbehavior within workhouses is the focus here, in a variety of workhouse settings beyond London. I initially focus on the concept of discipline and its purposes within institutions, and I then turn to the analysis of workhouse offenses and punishment. While I found broad similarity across unions, I also found striking local difference-a high degree of regional disparity in recorded pauper offenses between workhouses and in workhouse punishment policy. In the final section, I consider whether localism was a consequence of welfare policies and practices at the county or the union level by examining two workhouses in each of the counties of Lincolnshire and Norfolk.

DISCIPLINE IN THE WORKHOUSE
Discipline within the workhouse may be understood in two overlapping ways: conceptually and through the definitions of contemporaries. M. A. Crowther has argued that "most obviously, the workhouse was not Victorian at all," as there is ample evidence of continuity between the old and the new poor laws-in workhouse provision, the internal management of inmates and officials, and the understanding of discipline within the institutions. 18 Old poor law workhouses established under the Workhouse Test Act of 1723 were also designed to discipline inmates, and this legislation thus "anticipated the new poor law by over 100 years." 19 Discipline had been necessary to the good running of old poor law workhouses, and misbehavior was punished with a range of measures, from being reported to the master or the workhouse committee to a pardon or reprimand, the restriction of leave or diet, or discharge to short spells of incarceration in houses of correction. 20 There were 3,327 workhouses in Britain by the start of the nineteenth century; 21 the New Poor Law did not necessarily entail an increase in the numbers of people accommodated in workhouses in regions of the country that had previously possessed them. 22 Nevertheless, with the new union workhouses, the numbers accommodated almost doubled-from an average of 123,004 indoor paupers in 1850 to 215,377 in 1900. 23 Discipline was an organizing principal of the New Poor Law project. From the late eighteenth century, significant shifts in conceptions of discipline had been increasingly defined by institutions, surveillance, and restriction of liberty, reflecting a change in the wider ethos of criminal justice and punishment. 24 Between the 1780s and the 1830s, argues V. A. C. Gatrell, "disciplinary responses to the poor and workshy accelerated markedly." 25 Discipline, despite its centrality in policy, was not articulated in relation to punishment in the Poor Law Report of 1834. Instead, somewhat surprisingly, it was associated with a "well-regulated workhouse" and the classification of the indoor poor and the provision of work to prevent the "mischief [that] arises more from the bad example of the few, than from the many." 26 The commissioners were critical of the general mixed workhouses under the old poor law but praised those like that at Southwell (one of the workhouses in the study) that categorized their poor 18  according to an "Anti-Pauper System" set up in 1824. 27 One of its instigators, the Rev. John T. Becher, stated, "The whole System is conducted upon the Principles of salutary Restraint and strict Discipline," based upon the classification and separation of paupers. 28 This concept greatly influenced the authors of the Poor Law Report. Its appendices indicated that "a strict system of discipline" for the young and able-bodied must be combined with "hard work, low diet, and restricted liberty." 29 The resulting Poor Law Amendment Act stated "Parties wilfully neglecting or disobeying [workhouse] Rules, Orders, or Regulations" were "liable to such Penalties and Punishments." 30 The term regulation was used primarily to refer, again, to the provision of irksome work for the adult able-bodied, classification between the deserving and the indolent, and restrictions on alcohol and tobacco that, it was claimed, were "intolerable to the indolent and disorderly." The "regularity and discipline" provided in the workhouse would, somewhat paradoxically, "render the workhouse a place of comparable comfort . . . to the aged, the feeble and other proper objects of relief," who also had to be appropriately accommodated. 31 A well-regulated workhouse classified and separated the indoor poor as an essential aspect of discipline.
Work remained central to the disciplining and reforming of laboring bodies, reflecting considerable continuity in policy from the Elizabethan poor laws and punishment for the poor idle and disorderly in houses of correction. 32 The amount of work required of workhouse inmates was designed to be less than that required of prisoners. However, paupers objected to undertaking the same labor; oakum picking, for example, was viewed as "felons' work." 33 As in the prison and the wider the philanthropic culture, the notion of discipline shifted, now understood as a means of correcting and reforming behavior. Under the new system of union workhouses and the new prisons, the working classes would become "accustomed to hard work, instead of idleness." 34 In the union workhouses, deterrence and discipline were ensured by classification and segregation, thereby separating husbands, wives, and their children, and by the provision of a monotonous diet, a daily routine punctuated by bells for rising, eating, working, bedtime, and religious instruction. From the 1830s, the tone of the regulation and control of daily life within workhouses-and thus its discipline-took on a more moral, religious flavor. 35 27 Poor Law Report, 30, 31, 129, 132. 28  Specific workhouse rules around discipline and related punishment were set out in detail in the First Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners of 1835. 36 These rules still allowed for considerable autonomy by the local Board of Guardians, and so the Poor Law Commission attempted in 1841 to impose a uniform policy. 37 Offenses could be classified as "disorderly" or "refractory." Disorderly behavior included relatively trivial offenses such as swearing, making a noise, playing card games, disobeying orders, or refusing to work; punishment was a reduced diet, such as just bread or potatoes, and the withholding of "luxuries" like butter or tea. Refractory conduct included any disorderly offense repeated within a week, as well as more serious behaviors, such as reviling a workhouse staff member, damage to workhouse property, spoiling provisions, drunkenness, and assault. Such acts were punishable with confinement for up to twenty-four hours and alteration of diet. Serious and persistent offenders could be prosecuted, and magistrates could sentence paupers to up to twenty-one days' hard labor. 38 The law specified that the regulations were to be publicized widely and that they were to be enforced by inspections. 39 It is clear from the correspondence of Sir John Walsham, an assistant Poor Law commissioner, that the rules had to be displayed in the workhouse: when he visited Mitford and Launditch workhouse (another of the workhouses in the study) in Norfolk on 14 June 1847 he commented, "The Commission are concerned that the regulations for pauper punishment are not displayed in the appropriate places in the workhouse." 40 Masters, matrons, and guardians had considerable power to punish inmates but only within the terms of their authority within the rules; indeed, the 1834 act anticipated the risk of abuse and so specified restrictions to their power. 41  practices or abuses. 43 Moreover, magistrates might sympathize with the poor and could undermine workhouse officials by giving lenient sentences or discharging cases. 44 Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish offers a powerful conceptual critique of the role of discipline, punishment, and institutions in modernity. Workhouses in some respects resemble the prisons of Foucault's study. They shared many aspects of the design of Bentham's "Panopticon" prison; activities were scheduled, and work was intended to make the body ready for utility. The classification of paupers was arranged spatially, and authorities sought uniformity of punishment for infractions of workhouse rules. 45 Paupers certainly recognized the "bastille" quality of the buildings: "The very vastness of [the workhouse] chilled us," Charles Shaw recalled in his autobiography. His description evokes the prison: "Doors were unlocked by keys belonging to bunches, and the sound of keys and locks and bars, and doors banging, froze the blood within us." So, too, does James Reynolds Withers's poem in a letter to his sister: "I sometimes look at the bit of blue sky / High over my head, with a tear in my eye, / Surrounded by walls that are too high to climb, / Confin'd like a felon without any crime." 46 Workhouse punishment, like that in prisons, was no longer corporal (except for schoolboys) but based on incarceration, surveillance, and reform. 47 Moreover, some workhouse inmates found themselves propelled for their behavior from the workhouse to prison.
However, while the architects of the New Poor Law might have designed the workhouse as a "carceral system" to "neutralise . . . anti-social instincts," such a view does not take account of the power of resistance of those submitted to regimes of discipline. 48 The historian must also seek to recover individual agency and the "semi-autonomous culture of the poor." 49 Poor behavior in workhouses can be understood as "weapons of the weak," powerfully disruptive actions that frustrated discourses of discipline. 50 The understandings of repression and resistance put forward by James C. Scott, in terms such as "exchange of small arms fire" and "a small skirmish," provide a model within which to contextualize social relations in the workhouse. 51 The interactions between workhouse officials and inmates also offer a window into what Michel de Certeau characterizes as the "strategies and tactics" of "the practice everyday life." 52 The punishment books certainly suggest that workhouse inmates took advantages of "opportunities" and "cracks" in the "surveillance of the proprietary powers." 53 Inmates not only expressed their agency by 43  their actions within the house but also projected their complaints outside it. Steven King argues that under the New Poor Law, inmates were never "merely subject to the regimes of the workhouse": "Individually and collectively, inmates protested when they or their friends and peers experienced medical neglect, when diet or clothing was inadequate, when people were disciplined unjustly and where relief decisions were taken or not taken by staff and workhouse masters and mistresses." 54 This dissent was over and above the anti-New Poor Law movement and local protests. 55 Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker have recently gone further than has de Certeau: "It is the character of tactics, despite the frequent absence of an explicit collective voice, that turns individual actions . . . into a collective, at times even strategic, engagement with the social system." 56 The argument here is that, even though power was far from equally distributed within workhouse walls, paupers displayed agency by employing "blow by blow" tactics that could be strategic. profile of the eleven workhouses.) I chose two workhouses in each of Lincolnshire and Norfolk to allow comparison both within counties and between them. I supplement this largely statistical evidence with "voices from the workhouse"-accounts from those who were once inmates and workhouse staff. 58 The keeping of punishment books, separate from reporting punishments to the Board of Guardians, was not compulsory, perhaps explaining their poor survival. 59 Not only do relatively few survive, but they must be used with caution. Where such books were kept, workhouse masters were supposed to enter into them all workhouse offenses. Yet the diary of Benjamin Woodcock, master of the Barnet Workhouse, reveals that this was not always done. Woodcock merely "talked" to some workhouse boys who destroyed a garden hedge, and when Thomas Bourne returned late from church worse for drink, this "being his first-offence since his admission," and considering that he "Acknowledged his Transgression [and] went quiet & orderly to Bed," Woodcock chose not to punish him. 60 Instances of informal punishment likely also went unrecorded, such as the "pulling or 'clipping' of [children's] ears," which, argues Lesley Hulonce, "survived long into the twentieth century." 61 Moreover, workhouse scandals make it clear that not all punishments meted out were recorded and some were explicitly against workhouse rules. 62 Thus, these books document only recorded offenses, not necessarily the sum total of offenses.
Punishment books include the date of the recorded offense, the name of the inmate, the nature of the offense, the punishment inflicted by the master or other officer or that ordered by the Board of Guardians, the opinion of the guardians, and any observations. If paupers were sent before local magistrates and sentenced to prison, this, too, was entered. Many punishment books show more offenses than cases, as an entry in the book may record more than one offense; the eleven books record 3,987 cases reflecting 5,214 offenses (an average of 1.3 offenses per case). This was also the situation for punishments (numbering 4,390); due to repeat offenders, there were many more offenses than there were offenders. Across all eleven workhouses studied and all dates, I found the average was 1.5 cases per offender, but in Cockermouth, for instance, the name of Elizabeth Fawcett was listed twenty-eight times.
Recorded offenders were disproportionately male: I found that at least 60 percent of offenses were committed by boys and men; in some places, the figure was 81 percent (table 1). The perception of offending was undoubtedly gendered, and male misbehavior, seen as more threatening, appears more frequently in the punishments books. The masculinization of recorded offenses was the case for all the workhouses except Cockermouth (where only 22 percent of cases were committed by males, yet 55 percent of inmates were male in 1881), and in Patrington (where males were responsible for 43 percent of offenses but were 54 percent of inmates in 1881). 63 Historians of crime have shown that men were far more likely to be prosecuted and imprisoned. 64 Men reacted to the undermining of their domestic authority and social standing with flared tempers or worse. I analyzed the offenses that appear in the selected punishment books according to the 1841 classification, although they did not always fit neatly into them. I found that 62 percent of all recorded offenses across the workhouses were disorderly, and 22 percent were refractory. The remaining 16 percent were not accommodated by these schema. A wide range of other acts were neither specifically disorderly nor refractory, including cruelty to children or desertion of family members, theft, tobacco-related offenses, and truancy. Thus, almost two-thirds of bad behavior incidents were not serious or not repeated within a week. However, the consequences of refractory actions could be far more severe: in 9.7 percent of cases, paupers were imprisoned. Unlike at the national level, workhouse officers did not resort increasingly to the courts; such recourse fluctuated between no cases in a given year (1856) and forty-three (1848), with no upward trend. 67 (Of course, 1848 was a year dominated with concerns with public order, embodied in the Chartist petition, and revolutions in Europe. 68 ) In my analysis of the eleven workhouses, I found that magistrates ordered spells in prison of up to twenty-one days in most cases: seven  66 Green, "Pauper Protests," 146, figure 3. 67 Crowther, The Workhouse System, 209-10; Green, "Pauper Protests," 151-52. 68 Navickas, Protest and the Politics of Space and Place, chap. 9.

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▪ WILLIAMS days (13 percent), fourteen days (19 percent) and twenty-one days (28 percent), but, in a significant minority of cases, they actually sentenced beyond the twenty-one days given in the regulations, with 20 percent imprisoned for one month and one-fifth up to three months. Imprisonment with hard labor was specified for two-fifths of paupers. In rare instances, the outcome was far more severe: for instance, in December 1845, William Mills was transported from Beaminster union workhouse for seven years for "robbing in the school room & desertion with clothing." 69 The workhouse punishment books reveal simmering underlying tensions, with different motives, perceptions, and expectations between and within each of the groups in the hierarchy of authority: inmates, workhouse staff (master and matron, chaplain, schoolmaster and schoolmistress, medical officer, taskmaster, and any domestic staff), Board of Guardians, Poor Law inspectors, magistrates, and the Poor Law Commission (later the Poor Law Board).
The working classes found the separation of husbands, wives, and children particularly cruel. Indeed, there were protests against it in Spalding Union in 1836. 70 Charles Shaw recalled that upon entering Chell workhouse (near Stoke-on-Trent) as a child, his family was "parted amid bitter cries, the young ones being taken one way and the parents (separated too) taken as well to different regions" of the building. 71 Megan Doolittle argues that the workhouse "had particularly devastating impacts on masculine identities," since the splitting-up of families deprived men of "their position as the head of their household and their standing in the world as providers and protectors." 72 Families were reunited briefly on Sunday afternoons, and children recalled the heavy emotional toll of these reunions. Charlie Chaplin recollected, "How well I remember the poignant sadness of that first visiting day: the shock of seeing Mother enter the visiting-room garbed in workhouse clothes. How forlorn and embarrassed she looked! In one week she had aged and grown thin, but her face lit up when she saw us." 73 The fracturing of familial relationships according to the classification scheme of the commissioners was no doubt a motivating factor in misbehaviors.
In contrast, masters found themselves caught between surly resentful paupers and the local ratepayers sitting as guardians, who, in turn, were directed by the commissioners. Charles Shaw cannily recognized in hindsight that the master had to play a part in order to keep discipline: "[W]hen the New Poor Laws meant making a workhouse a dread and a horror to be avoided, he was perhaps only acting the part he felt to be due to his office." 74 While this "governor" could be "the Bastile (sic) in its most repulsive embodiment," Benjamin Woodcock, master at Barnet, was far from the  73 Higginbotham, Voices from the Workhouse, 61. 74 Higginbotham, 23.

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▪ WILLIAMS bullying stereotype of Mr. Bumble of Oliver Twist. 75 There might also be strain between the master and guardians, as shown when the master of Poplar workhouse attempted to bar Will Crooks, the first working-class guardian in the union (who had been in the workhouse as a child) from entering the premises. 76 Chaplains could be pompous and boring but might also bring consolation to inmates, and such acts of kindness would not be evident in the punishment books. 77 It might have been a thankless job for the taskmaster to extract work from the able-bodied, but taskmasters, too, might have behaved badly. Inmates in Stepney workhouse in 1850, for instance, wrote to the Poor Law Board to report the drunkenness, brutality, and bad language of the taskmaster, who called them "old buggers" and "old sods." 78 Bentham recognized that the custodians of the institution also needed watching. 79 Thus, keeping the peace in the workhouse was fraught, particularly given that children and the elderly made up large sections of workhouse populations and officials had to provide appropriate care for these groups alongside discipline for the ablebodied. Workhouses, as Susannah Ottaway argues, "featured a complex mix of caring and disciplinary imperatives." 80 The recorded offenses of indoor paupers varied greatly from workhouse to workhouse and reveal a repertoire of "tactics" amounting to local cultures of resistance (see below figures 1-3 and 6-8). Paupers chafed against the restrictions of indoor life. They resented, for instance, the regulation to keep silent at mealtimes, so at variance with working-class custom. Benjamin Mackharness was recorded as "making a noise in the dining hall when silence was ordered to be kept," 81 while James Webb had been "disturbing the quiet of the house by singing songs in the day room." 82 Webb also sought to turn individual into collective action since he was "endeavouring to excite the other inmates to acts of insubordination." 83 Other restrictions of workhouse life included strictures on smoking and drinking, which were fundamental to working-class male sociability. Men rebelled in Petworth, in particular, with 13.5 percent of offenses being tobacco-related. James Reynolds Withers bemoaned the lack of alcohol in the workhouse in his verse: "I'll drink your health with a tin of cold water: / Of course, we've no wine, no porter nor beer, / So you see that we all are teetotallers here." 84 Men made the most of any temporary leaves of absence from the workhouse to drink, with a further 9 percent of offenses in Petworth being for drunkenness. On 7 June 1862, Robert Mallett, an inmate of Beaminster workhouse, "Had leave from the Board for One day Left the House on Saturday morning & did not return until Sunday morning and then in a Beastly state of Drunkenness." 85 Religion might also be a flashpoint. In Cockermouth, for instance, women in particular objected to the imposition of compulsory prayers; such 75 Higginbotham, 23, 84-86. 76 Higginbotham, 104-5. 77 Higginbotham, 86-89. 78 Fowler, Workhouse, 137-38. 79 Emsley, Crime and Society, 270. 80 Ottaway, "'Very Bad Presidente,'" 1. 81 86 Even if workhouse routine was designed as a "temporal means of discipline," 87 paupers exploited available "cracks" to protest against it. 88 Workhouse staff faced a battery of abuse from inmates. Outbursts of "obscene or profane language" were the easiest form of resistance and regularly upset workhouse life. 89 John Pearson, aged forty, swore at Ampthill's porter, and two days later was using bad language to the barber. 90 Bad language was three times more common in Ampthill (15.1 percent) than in Patrington (4 percent), and in Spalding it was even lower (2.8 percent). Assault was the most serious refractory offense; inmates assaulted masters, matrons, schoolmasters, porters, and caretakers. Henry Jarvis was punished for "assaulting the lab[or] master & throwing an iron scraper at him," 91 while Mary Scarborough violently assaulted the Sleaford workhouse matron and tore off her cap. 92 Such wrongdoing made up a significant proportion of offenses in some workhouses: assault accounted for almost one-fifth of offenses in Southwell and Sleaford and more than 15 percent in Patrington and in Mitford and Launditch. That paupers felt able to resort to assault points to the limits of the disciplinary regime of the workhouse and, at times, their very real agency within it. Frustration at institutional life was expressed in damaging workhouse doors and smashing windows, breaking kitchen utensils and cupboards, or tearing union clothes. In Beaminster, such damage accounted for almost 11 percent of cases. Breaking windows was a particular favorite of refractory paupers (one-third of all damage offenses), since it was an easy and visible way to protest; Elizabath Thursby of Cockermouth broke "23 panes of glass in the receiving ward." 93 Digby suggests that vagrants in Norfolk purposely broke windows in an attempt to be sent to prison where, she argues, there was a "superior diet . . . light labour and a more spacious environment." 94 William Cummings, also of Cockermouth, set fire to the straw loft and John Castlehow burned the outhouse, 95 while Thomas Bone willfully broke the Mitford and Laundich workhouse doorbell. 96 In 1876, William Roberts, in Sleaford workhouse, was accused of damaging workhouse property: he broke open the field gate and made away with the lock and chain, he broke open the door of the work cell, and scaled the wall of the yard, with the local policeman returning him. 97 Other paupers targeted their sleeping quarters; George You smashed up his chamber, 98 while Emily Rix threw her bedclothes out of the Norwich workhouse window. 99 No less than sixteen naughty schoolboys damaged the workhouse garden when returning from school to Mitford and Launditch workhouse, 100 and in Spalding workhouse, Alfred Stanger (aged twelve) and Frederick Thompson (aged fifteen), were recorded as "climbing over the roof of the schoolroom, going to the town & buying a pennyworth of gunpowder and a half pennyworth of lucifer matches, and on going to bed setting fire to the gunpowder on the landing adjoining their bedroom." 101 Despite a "good flogging," two weeks later, Alfred was again "climbing over the roof of the schoolroom and going into the womens day drying ground without permission," this time with William Bannister (aged thirteen). 102 Defiance manifested in damage to workhouse clothing accounted for 55 percent of offenses of damage. John Cousins, in Beaminster workhouse, was accused of "wilfully destroying a shirt and trowsers this being a very frequent 92  offence." 103 Richmond has recently shown that "workhouse dress" was rarely an actual uniform but that the economies of scale in provision of these items meant that in practice it amounted to one. Those entering the house were clothed from the stock of available clothing, which meant that it rarely fitted. 104 In Norfolk, male inmates were dressed in a Duffield jacket, drabbett trousers, a waistcoat, cotton shirt, and neckerchief; women wore stays, a flannel or linsey petticoat, striped serge or grosgrain or union chambrey gown, hessian apron, checked neckerchief, camlet jacket or shawl, grey stockings, and a white calico or cambric hat; children were dressed in striped or checked gowns, with aprons for the girls and jackets, and trousers of a coarse cloth with a spotted neckerchief for the boys. Men and children might have their hair roughly cut. 105 John Castle recalled workhouse clothing as "the regimentals of the Union." 106 Charles Shaw wrote that when he entered the workhouse at age ten he was "roughly disrobed, roughly and coldly washed, and roughly attired in rough clothes." 107 At Kent workhouse, clothing for boys was badly torn and stained, and such poor attire must have resonated negatively with the working classes who expressed the unacceptability of their poverty in pauper letters through the motif of the ragged child. 108 Paupers were expected to wear such clothing even when leaving the workhouse on an errand or to attend church or school. 109 One female workhouse visitor commented that children's uniforms had "brought real misery." 110 When paupers absconded, they were of course wearing workhouse clothing and thereby compounded one offense with another one; correspondence with the Poor Law Commission suggests that some contemporaries argued a specific punishment for this should be devised. 111 When John Osborn, Edward Southeron, and William Warren were give three months in Ipswich prison for absconding with workhouse clothing, a petition for clemency was made due to their youth and a fear that severe punishment might have a bad effect. 112 Vagrants were not clothed in workhouse attire, but tore their own clothes nonetheless. The punishment books inconsistently register whether paupers were vagrants, face discoloured very much." 125 Such examples highlight the real problems faced by workhouse staff in combining the caring and disciplinary features of the workhouse.
Being set to work put the "work" in "workhouse." Paupers in union workhouses pumped water, ground corn at a hand-mill, broke stone, grew cereals or vegetables in the workhouse garden, performed household tasks, picked oakum, crushed bone, did tailoring and sewing, and managed the boiler house. 126 My calculations reveal that refusal to work was one of the most common recorded offenses, particularly so in Ampthill (34 percent) and Beaminster (30 percent), while it accounted for more than one-tenth of offenses in Cockermouth, Petworth, Mitford and Launditch, Norwich, Sleaford, and Spalding. William Everitt committed the offense of "not picking 3lbs of oakum a day which is the quantity ordered by the board for each ablebodied man" in Spalding workhouse in September 1862. 127 Susan Gilliver, at Ampthill, was recorded as "refusing to do any kind of work and screaming murder the whole morning, threatening to smash the windows and after throwing two stone[s] through the kitchen windows got over the wall and absconded with the House clothing." 128 The master at Beaminister workhouse had a particular problem with "idleness," a word I found used in 12 percent of offenses. Samuel Dunn's name appeared seventeen times in the pauper offense book, mostly for being idle, refusing to work, or leaving his work. In order to resist the imposition of workhouse work, some paupers destroyed material or equipment. Ruth Dickinson was punished for "destroying oakum." 129 Ingeniously, Henry Howes, George Homes, Richard Howard, and Michael Creed of Norwich workhouse broke open the door of the pump and took off the gear wheels so that they could not be set to work on the pump. 130 The setting of the poor to such tasks went against the cultural notions of the right of the poor to fair work and fair pay. John Rutherford's recollection of Poplar Union workhouse in 1885 provides an insight into the ways in which the poor might subvert the expectations of the authorities. Set to work stripping hemp from telegraph wires, he noted, "There was no hurry over the job-very much the contrary -but plenty of chatter and larking when the taskmaster was out of sight." When transferred to that staple of workhouse work, oakum picking, Rutherford observed that "only a few" ever completed their allocation, and that "no young man that ever I saw completed his four pounds." 131 Decisions to deliberately work slowly highlight pauper agency, showing that work was not so exhausting that it prevented transgressions, and that inmates could turn it into a time of camaraderie. 132 However, workhouse officials had ways of subverting such subversion. Richard Ellis, master of Abingdon Union workhouse, told the Poor Law Board that labor in the workhouse garden was too good for able-bodied men: "I make it a matter of favour to employ 125 Ampthill Union Workhouse punishment book, 7 February 1858. 126  them there; and for those who do not work well while there, some sort of employment within the house is found." Instead, he let the old men and boys occasionally work in the garden, "which makes them cheerful and keeps them in good health." 133 Workhouse walls were far more porous than the ideal of separating paupers from one another and the outside world by the "spatial means of discipline" outlined by Foucault: sectioned-off staircases, day rooms, dormitories, and high surrounding walls. 134 Many inmates avoided the due process of asking the master for permission to leave and collecting one's own clothes, instead absconding beyond the boundaries of the workhouse; this accounted for 32 percent of offenses in Patrington and 16.9 percent in Beaminster, but just 0.7 percent of offenses in Cockermouth. In Southwell, almost 17 percent of offenses related to absconding, despite the institution's infamous and influential design. George Nicholls, a retired officer of the East India Company's merchant marine and Poor Law Commissioner, when overseer of Southwell workhouse, had ordered in 1821 that the workhouse be "enclosed by walls sufficiently high to prevent persons entering or leaving the promises without permission." 135 No doubt some, following an altercation, impetuously shinnied over the external wall; however, refusal to engage with the proper discharge procedure was a powerful rejection of the Poor Law Commission's rules.
While officials frequently could not keep their inmates inside the workhouse, paupers rarely got into one another's ward or yard ("boundary"), with the highest proportion of offenses at just 2.6 in Sleaford. Samuel Dunn was punished (yet again) for "thrusting himself through the bannisters of the mens stairs to get into the mens bed rooms during the working hours" and for "leaving his work and getting on the top of the infirmary wall and talking to a boy an inmate in the infirmary." 136 The Norfolk Mercury recorded a case in early 1847 in Shipmeadow workhouse, in which "male married Paupers (about 70 of them) forced their way into the Female Quarters: then Lock[ed] themselves in Dormitories upstairs, refusing to Surrender." The police arrived, battered the door in, and arrested the three ringleaders. 137 The Poor Law Commissioners also sought to restrict sexual relations between men and women through the separation of the sexes, yet at North Bierley, West Yorkshire, segregation was breached and a female inmate became pregnant in the workhouse. 138 Workhouse officials were not just trying to keep inmates in their wards or yards or within the workhouse walls; they were also attempting to prevent "persons who are not inmates trying to enter the workhouse perhaps aiming to enter the able-bodied women's yard." 139 Some forms of bad behavior envisaged by the Poor Law Commissioners were not realized and there were few offenses of pretending sickness, playing at cards or other games of chance, and lapses in cleanliness; however, able-bodied men in Southwell scratched a "graffiti" game upon the wall of their yard in the only corner that 133  could not be observed by the master from his office (figure 4). There were also few cases of wasting or spoiling provisions, although George Hill was "refusing to eat his gruel for breakfast stating that it was not good and thick." 140 Inmates did not spoil their provisions because, like Oliver Twist, they were hungry. Indeed, Samuel Allen was found "Stealing Potatoes from the Potato Store and Boiling them in the Mens Day Room" on 6 April 1863. 141 While diets might have been more generous in quantity than were those of the independent laborer and his family outside, workhouse diets were frequently monotonous and deficient in fat, vitamins, and minerals; the calorific intake was insufficient by 25 percent. 142 At times, locals outside the workhouse protested the workhouse fare; in Alford Union, Lincolnshire, complaints were made about the poor quality of workhouse bread. 143 Paupers were allowed to leave the workhouse with permission, to attend church services, run errands, or visit the local fair, and for children to attend school. Many, however, returned late and were therefore "absent" (17 percent in Foleshill, 14.7 percent in Sleaford). John Vine was sent to the Petworth Board of Guardians with the workhouse book, but while he was out, he got drunk and neglected to bring the book back to the workhouse. 144 Given the prohibition on drink inside, it is not surprising that men made the most of this opportunity. Drinking alcohol compounded offending behavior with the refractory offense of drunkenness. However, absenteeism and drunkenness undermined the capability of the master to keep order and must have been exasperating. Benjamin Woodcock thought such paupers "very troublesome." 145 Trips out offered paupers opportunities beyond popping to the local public house. 146 Quite what Jane Welbourne got up to is not given in Spalding's punishment book, but she was accused of "[w]ilfully neglecting to attend a place of worship after leaving the workhouse for that purpose." 147 Given the strictures of workhouse rules, inmates used outings as smuggling opportunities. In Shipmeadow workhouse, Suffolk, Elizabeth Stannard returned from her Sunday outing and when she was searched, "the following articles were found upon her person: three quarters of a pint of rum, two pounds of pork, half a pound of sausages, six eggs, some apples, some bread, half a pound of cheese, three packets of sweetmeats, two bunches of keys, £1 9s. 0d. in silver, 7¾d. in copper, and in her box £5 10s. 0d. in gold and many articles of clothing." 148 This was clearly an exceptional amount of contraband to smuggle into the workhouse. In February 1870, William Stamp and John Vaise, Petworth workhouse, asked boys going out to school to smuggle them in tobacco; a few months later John Pennicard asked "W m Brooks, who is weak minded, to buy him ½oz tobacco, when returning from church on Sunday morning." 149 In