London workhouses

[janeann1966]

Just wondered does anyone else ever feel as sad when you find bad stuff about your ancestors I have just found quite a few of mine in a workhouse in deptford kent and one girl died qyite young then another side of family my ggg grans brother i also found there with his family now I realise why on the census records lots of members of one family lived at same address is because they were workhouses like st johns on yet another side which I never looked at makes you realise what strong women they were

[kathb]

Hi, Janeanne1976, yes I think we all find that times were extremely hard for our ancestors and sometimes when we find them in the workhouse it is upsetting.  I found one of mine in a Lunatic Asylum.  However, she does not appear to have been completely abandoned by her family.  When she died she was brought to the local church for burial in the family plot.
Regards
Kathb

[Sharon01]

Hi,

My great grand mother was in a workshouse at a young age after her parents died, she never told anyone in the family & I only found out when I started doing my tree. The sad part was she had many siblings but only her & a younger brother went into the workhouse while the others were taken in by family.

Sharon

[Jeuel]

Many family history discoveries are sad. 

My mother's paternal grandparents were from Gloucestershire. 

Her grandfather's mother  had given birth to twins a few years earlier, who had both died.  Her brother killed his fiancee whilst insane and spent the rest of his life in Broadmoor.  Her father commited suicide though she'd already died by then, in childbirth.

Her grandmother's father married 3 times (3rd wife same age as grandma!) and had 15 children.  5 of them died in infancy or in early adulthood.

[Graham47]

I spent most of yesterday tracking one particular great grandmother and found everything from birth to baptism, from wedding to children, and through census returns and all her homes when finally she became widowed and ended up in what was by accounts a notorious workhouse.

Yes I did feel sad, as I felt I had followed her life from a babe in arms to a destitute old lady. What made it worse was that the workhouse became a hospital and one in which I had been a patient as a child and where one of my children were born - all with knowing anything of it's history or my connection.

The institute was the subject of a rather grim book that recalled the writers memories of beating and deprivation during the 1930's. All rather terrible.