Publisher's blurb: Workhouses were a fact of life in several countries during the 18th and 19th centuries the poor, the sick and the orphaned would often find themselves in the loveless, cold embrace of such an institution. Miserable places in which paupers and orphans would be put to work in exchange for basic accommodation and food. Even in these lowly conditions, the inmates could not escape the rigid class structures so common in Victorian Britain and they would be divided into first and second class paupers, those deemed of 'Good character' and those deemed of bad.