The main constituent of the workhouse diet was bread. At breakfast it was supplemented by gruel or porridge — both made from water and oatmeal (or occasionally a mixture of flour and oatmeal). Workhouse broth was usually the water used for boiling the dinner meat, perhaps with a few onions or turnips added.

In a time before social services, society’s most vulnerable people were hidden away in brutal institutions. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, poorhouses were a reality for society’s most vulnerable people. ……

Conditions inside the workhouse were deliberately harsh, so that only those who desperately needed help would ask for it. Families were split up and housed in different parts of the workhouse. The poor were made to wear a uniform and the diet was monotonous. There were also strict rules and regulations to follow.

The daily work was backed up with strict rules and punishments. Laziness, drinking, gambling and violence against other inmates or staff were strictly forbidden. Other offences included insubordination, using abusive language and going to Milford without permission.

—No pauper shall smoke in any room of the Workhouse, except by the special direction of the Medical Officer, or shall have any matches or other articles of a highly combustible nature in his possession, and the Master may take from any person any articles of such a nature. Dinner withheld, and but bread for supper.

The most notorious Victorian murders were bloody slayings in the backstreets of London’s Whitechapel, ascribed to Jack the Ripper. These attacks typically involved female prostitutes who lived and worked in the slums of the East End of London, whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations.

Most offenders were young males, but most offences were petty thefts. The most common offences committed by women were linked to prostitution and were, essentially, ‘victimless’ crimes – soliciting, drunkenness, drunk and disorderly, vagrancy. Domestic violence rarely came before the courts….

The people of the Victorian era had a very specific fear: poison murder. This fear was driven partly by obsessive newspaper coverage of sensational poisoning cases, but as Linda Stratmann makes clear in her new history, The Secret Poisoner, it also played perfectly upon the anxieties of the age….

During the 18th century, the number of crimes that were punished by hanging rose to about 200. Towards the end of the 1700’s, the number of people hanged for petty crimes was causing public unrest. In 1823, Sir Robert Peel reduced the number of offences for which convicts could be executed, by over 100.

The Victorian Age brought about a whole new take on crime — both true and fictional. Crime fiction flourished in the nineteenth century because of the Victorians: their environment, philosophies, culture, and shrewd publishers….

The total number of cases reported is 4780, with breaching the peace, drunkenness and assault being the most common crimes, and labourers being the most common offenders of these crimes. One murder case was reported, the offender being a mill worker, and 123 prostitutes were arrested for ‘Loitering and Importuning’.

Whitechapel offered a breeding ground for crime and poor behavioural habits, including murder, prostitution and violence – and vicious circles like these were rarely broken in such poor districts. The streets were unimaginably dirty, fresh food was hard to come by, pollution and the smell of sewage hung in the air….

Reputation in the Victorian Age Despite perceived shortcomings in one’s family, personality, wealth, and so on, the Victorians always put up a front to maintain a good appearance and uphold their reputation.