‘A Voice from the Workhouse’: contesting medical care in Victorian New Poor Law workhouses

Recent years have seen a renewed emphasis on the everyday experiences of paupers, expressed through their letters of application for relief and complaints with regard to their indoor treatment. This article uses a variety of poor law sources to analyse the agency of sick workhouse inmates in Birmingham Parish and Wolverhampton Union after the new poor law. It analyses their complaints about their medical care from correspondence to newspapers, the central authority and boards of guardians, and their moves to seek medical care in workhouses of their choosing. Despite the disadvantages they faced within the medical consultation, they were prepared to make serious allegations over the medical care they received and to pursue these in the presence of medical and nursing staff. Their complaints were not infrequently upheld by guardians and could at times result in the medical officer's dismissal or forced resignation.