Workhouses in England and Wales linked to transatlantic slave trade, study suggests

[LiberalArkie]

Sept 8, 2025

They were places of crushing hardship for the poorest people in Britain for centuries but a new report highlights how closely workhouses in England and Wales were linked with slavery and British imperialism.

Workhouses, perhaps best known in popular culture through the Charles Dickens story Oliver Twist, were routinely funded and administered by people involved in the slave trade, the study says.

Snip

In addition, workhouse inmates in Bristol and elsewhere were transported to Britain’s colonies as a source of indentured labour, boosting the profits of planters and allowing them to purchase more enslaved people.

Snip

Williams also suggested links between the workhouses and big business profiting from running prisons and immigration detention centres, though their paper accepted more work needed to be done on these points.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/08/britain-workhouses-transatlantic-slavery-research?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=bluesky&CMP=bsky_gu

[NNadir]

1. My son bought me a book for my birthday some years back.

It was called "The Half Has Never Been Told" by Edward Baptist.

The thesis, which strikes me as credible, was that until this day, American wealth derives from the legacy of human slavery.

[LiberalArkie]

2. How the Brits solved the problem of poor with the "work houses"

Introduction: The Workhouse in the Atlantic World

In 1601, successive attempts to rationalise almsgiving in Britain were crystallised
in the Elizabethan Poor Law, consolidating a system of poor relief that was to
shape Britain’s welfare apparatus for the next 400 years. The Act made parishes
responsible for the collection of taxes to support the poor and differentiated
between the“impotent poor” (people unable to work to be given food, clothing,
and money or cared for in alms-houses), the“able-bodied poor” (people who
were willing but unable to nd work and who were be set to work in a House of
Industry, or“workhouse”), and the“undeserving”, “vagrant”, or “idle poor”
(people who refused work and were sent to a House of Correction or prison). Par-
ish overseers were responsible for collecting a poor rate on local households, and
determined the level at which relief was set (resulting in signi cant variation
between parishes) and to whom it should be provided. To deter the movement
of paupers, subsequent legislation further restricted eligibility on grounds of“set-
tlement” (local connection) and sought to curtail outdoor relief through the use
of“workhouse tests”. In 1834 a new centralised system of Poor Law administra-
tion was established with the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act. This saw
parishes grouped into Poor Law Unions, and a national network of workhouses
built characterised by deliberately harsh conditions, forced labour, and family sep-
aration, all underpinned by the principle that life inside the workhouse should be
less desirable than the lowest-paid work outside.

https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/178220/1/A%20Williams%202025%20Racial%20Capitalism%20pub%20ver.pdf