Midleton workhouse Board of Guardians (BG118)

Midleton Board of Guardians IE CCCA BG/118

Identity Statement

Reference Code:

IE CCCA/BG/118

Title:

Midleton Board of Guardians

Dates:

1841 – 1925 (- 1966)

Level of description:

Fonds

Extent:

190 items

Context

Creator(s): Midleton Board of Guardians

Archival History The first, and largest, accession of records of Midleton Board of Guardians was deposited in the Archives in around 1982 from Midleton District Home and Hospital. Some indoor relief registers and other inmate and patient records were retained by the Sisters of Mercy at Midleton Hospital (later known as Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital). These records were deposited in the Archives in 2009 and 2010. Administrative & Biographical History The Midleton Board of Guardians was the governing body of Midleton workhouse and poor law union. Midleton workhouse opened 21 August 1841. Midleton Poor Law Union was established under the Poor Law (Ireland) Act, 1838. It was one of 16 unions in the overall County Cork area. Each union was centred on a city or market town and its hinterland, and this union area sometimes ignored existing parish or county boundaries. In this central town was situated the union workhouse (usually built between 1838 and 1852) which provided relief for the unemployed and the destitute. The responsibilities of the guardians increased to encompass public health, including some medical relief for the destitute at the workhouse, ‘outdoor’ relief though a system of dispensary districts, and other functions including overseeing smallpox vaccinations, the boarding-out of orphan and deserted children, and providing labourers’ cottages and improved sanitation. The workhouse buildings included a fever hospital, and fever sheds were created in local districts when larger outbreaks occurred. The workhouse provided education to child inmates, and employed a schoolmaster and schoolmistress. Young inmates also received agricultural education on the workhouse farm. Each workhouse was managed by a staff and officers under the charge of a workhouse master, who reported to the board. Overall responsibility rested with the union's board of guardians, some of whom were elected, and some of whom were ex-officio members appointed usually from amongst local magistrates. The board appointed its own inhouse committees, and received reports from workhouse officers and from dispensary district committees and district medical officers. It also made resolutions on

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