| Workhouses
At the same time as changes were made in the way that the Council was
elected, changes were also made to the poor law. The three poor houses
that had been created in 1601 were providing good care to the poor who
had no work and no money. The people in the poor houses were however,
better off than those people who were working in poorly paid jobs. They
were having to work hard to earn a little money, eating poor food, while
those in the poor houses had no work and three good meals a day.
In 1834 a new act of Parliament created the workhouse. The elderly were
still looked after. but those who could work were given boring hard
work to do in return for two poor meals per day. This made the idea
of entering the poor house look much less attractive that it had done
before.
The Poor House was originally in the former GreyFriars Church, but had
been replaced by three separate poor houses, one for each of the three
parishes of Reading. St Mary’s Poor House was in Pinkneys Lane,
St Laurence’s at the western end of Friars Street, and St Giles’s
in Southampton Street. After the 1834 act St Mary’s Poor House
continued to be used for the elderly, St Laurence’s was converted
into a workhouse for the able bodied who could work and St Giles’
poor house was closed.
A new union workhouse was opened in Oxford Road in 1867 to replace the
old workhouses in the town.
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