Poverty and power: the Irish Poor Law in a north Antrim town, 1861–1921

Abstract

Austere and forbidding, the workhouse occupied a prominent position in the towns of nineteenth-century Ireland. Reformer Laura Stephens, writing in the New Ireland Review in 1900, said of the Irish workhouse that ‘the great gloomy pile of grey stone buildings, surrounded with high walls is unmistakable,’ while Anna Clarke quotes William Field as having observed ‘Foreigners remark … that our constitution seems to produce poverty and lunacy; because, either the immense ugly union or the big regular asylum is generally the leading architectural feature in county towns; instead of the fine church or cathedral, the handsome maison de ville, and the pleasurable, instructive galleries to be found in other countries.’