To find out more about workhouses in general, click on the image above
The records
of the old Caersws workhouse tell
us something of what life must have been like inside. We know that the
inmates had to work to earn their keep.
The women were employed in cooking,
cleaning, washing, sewing and domestic duties, and some were used as nurses
in the sick or children's wards.
The land around the workhouse was used for growing
food for the inmates. Here the able-bodied men worked.
As in other workhouses the men at Caersws were set to crushing up animal
bones for fertilizer. This was stopped
when it was discovered that men at a workhouse in England were so hungry
they were eating the marrow!
