Unlocking carceral geographies of care: The legacies of Wirral workhouse-hospitals

This project, developed closely with the Wirral Archives Service employs historic records of spaces, provisions and approaches to (health)care in the 'carceral' settings of workhouse-hospitals to reflect on current localised services and delivery.

It focuses on the period after the 1834 Poor Laws, which saw the construction of workhouses to provide residential welfare for the destitute (Crowther 2016). Many of those admitted suffered chronic ill-health (often the cause of their poverty), and workhouses constructed 'infirmaries' to treat them (Reinarz and Schwarz 2013). By the early twentieth century many infirmaries were providing a wider range of healthcare services, increasingly used by non-residential patients. From 1929, many hospitals were transferred from the Poor Law authorities into municipal control. Some became general hospitals; others retained a 'carceral' culture as long-stay institutions for the infirm elderly. In 1948 they became fully integrated into the new NHS.