A workhouse was opened in Barking in 1722 in four tenements in North Street.
An inspection report of March 1725 gives an impression of daily life for the inmates in the workhouse:-
“Their employment consists of picking Ockam (this was old rope and cable or Junk purchased from merchants and teased out into fibres to be resold to shipbuilders for mixing with tar to seal the lining of wooden craft. This could also be used to make matting or bandaging). The women knit and mend stockings for the whole family, make beds and keep the house clean, and sometimes pick Ockam.
The Steward and his wife have the government of the family, he buys the food at the market and she prepares it. There is a small infirmary built on the back but the people are generally in such good health that it has little use.”
There were three meals a day- breakfast, consisting of broth or porridge. Dinner included meat four times a week usually beef, sheep’s head, or ox cheek. Supper was left-overs from dinner or bread and butter with cheese and unlimited bread and beer!
The civil parish of Barking was divided into four wards. Barking Town, Ripple, Chadwell and Ilford. The Barking Workhouse Act passed in 1786 appointed six Directors of the Poor to be responsible over the four Guardians (one from each ward) and Overseers for Poor Relief. The original Directors were:
The Rev Peter Rashleigh, vicar
Mr Bamber Gascoyne senior of Byfrons
Mr Bamber Gascoyne junior of Byfrons
George Spurrell, farmer of Roden Lodge
Thomas Pittman, farmer of Loxford Hall
Edward Hulse, Lord of the Manor
A new building could accommodate over 250 inmates. It was one of the largest parish workhouses in Essex, completed in 1788 on a site which had previously housed Mr Rayment’s Brewhouse & Malthouse and an old school building. The brick building, which cost £4,000, had a frontage of 140 feet, was two storeys high, plus a basement, with two side wings, forming a square with piazzas (supported by plain pillars) where the inmates could enjoy their recreation periods. It contained an apartment for the Master and Matron, committee room, store rooms and a long room for the looms (spinning and sack making were two of the occupations the inmates performed). The bedchamber was on the first floor. A Latin inscription on the pediment translated as “This House of Industry was built at the sole expense of the inhabitants of Barking to provide for and protect the industrious and to punish the idle and wicked”. This inscription was salvaged when the workhouse was demolished and is now displayed in the kitchen garden at Eastbury Manor House.
The Grammar School and Workhouse at Barking 1799
From the Workhouse (where the Asda supermarket is today) looking diagonally across the junction with London Road could be seen the site of the Barking House of Correction/Bridewell from 1792 until it closed in 1831. Also the site of the old North Street Police Station from 1842 until it was demolished in 1955.
The new Union Act of 1837 abolished local workhouses and the inmates were transferred to the care of the Romford Union. From 1836 to 1838 the Barking workhouse was leased to Romford Poor Law Union for two years until their own building was completed. The vacated building was let and converted into shops in 1841.
There was evidence part of the building was used as a mortuary. The London Morning Advertiser reported on 5th January 1853.
“Suspected suicide: The naked body of a young man found in the Thames and the body removed to Barking Workhouse to be owned”.
The Western Mail on 5th September 1878 reported the sinking of The Princess Alice Paddle Steamer disaster at Woolwich on 3rd September with the loss of hundreds of lives. No less than 29 bodies were recovered on the shore of The Beckton Gas Company and they were removed to the Barking Workhouse about a half a mile away.
Barking was the first place in Essex to adopt the Public Libraries Act in 1888. After long negotiations space in the north-west corner of the old workhouse building was allocated for the library. Repairs and renovations were supervised by Mr. C.J. Dawson, the Surveyor to the local board. On the 31st May 1889 the new Barking Public Library was officially opened. In 1894 the library transferred to the Public Offices in East Street.
The workhouse was finally demolished in 1936.
Bamford's depiction of the Workhouse in 1905