SARUM U3A

At the July Coffee Morning Groups Organiser Linda Farrow announced that nearly all applicants had been accommodated in the interest groups of their choice from September by dint of the flexibility of group leaders and by new group leaders emerging; the remainder would be given first choice of any vacancies.

Ena Baldock introduced our speaker Ruth Newman, a trustee of Salisbury Museum, who exhorted her audience to become members in order to provide much needed support from the City. Her speech was entitled “Poverty in the Workhouses of Salisbury and the Mysterious Death of Louisa Garrett”, drawing material from the internet, the Salisbury Journal and the National Archives in Kew. Salisbury’s first proper workhouse was founded in 1602 in St Thomas’s churchyard with 12 beds – 6 for correction of rogues (the devil’s poor to be punished) and 6 for the sick. This coincided with the decline of Salisbury as a cloth making city when employment rose to nearly half of the adult population. In 1637 a much larger workhouse in Crane Street took over and operated for 242 years until 1879 when it was bought by the Church of England and became Church House, the administrative centre of the diocese.

In the workhouse, Louisa Garrett, aged about 10, was placed in a sulphur bath, possibly for delousing, for 35 minutes. She turned blue and died and a scandal ensued. The medical officer for Salisbury was blamed and reprimanded. Thereafter, the bath was used under supervision for only up to 15 minutes!