Workhouse In The 1930's

Under the new Act, the threat of the Union workhouse was intended to act as a discouragement to the able-bodied pauper. This soon became known as the "workhouse test". This meant that poor relief would only be granted to those that were desperate enough and brave enough to face entering the revolting conditions of the workhouse. Another aspect of the workhouses which discouraged people was if an able-bodied man entered the workhouse, his entire family had to go into the workhouse with him.
However, the workhouse was not a prison. People were allowed, in principle, to leave whenever they wanted to, for example when work became available locally. Some people that were known as the "ins and outs", entered and left quite often, they were basically
Some of the workhouse buildings were sold off for use as office space, demolished-to make way for new hospital blocks or car parks, or fell into disuse. Many of the workhouses, however, became Public Assistance Institutions and continued to supply accommodation for the elderly, unmarried mothers, sick and vagrants. For inmates of these institutions, life never really changed during the 1930s and 40s. Apart from the ending of uniforms, and indeed more freedom to come and go as they pleased, things improved only gradually. More recently, the surviving buildings have increasingly been sold off to buyers for redevelopment, ironically, in some of the cases, as luxury residential
Under Brehon Law in Ireland, the native laws that date back to Celtic times, all rulers were obliged to take care of the sick and the poor that were living in their community. Christianity came to Ireland in the 5th century and with it came the development of monasteries. Over a period of time, these monasteries took on the job of caring for the people in their community that were less fortunate. Starting from the mid 1500s, Ireland was seized by Protestant English settlers. The land was taken from the Irish rulers, all the religious were prosecuted and the entire care structure broke down.
The condition of Ireland was so awful that by the start of the 1800s, it was discovered that approximately 2.3 million people were close to being at starvation level. At this time Ireland’s population was nearly at 8 million. By this time also, a lot of Ireland’s smaller farmers and landless labourers were depending on the potato as their principal