1. Yet despite Charles Dickens etal., workhouses were not all the dark satanic mills of legend.

2. Grim Bastilles of Despair is a short study on the Poor Law Union workhouses in Ireland

3. This system was substantially modified by the 19th-century Poor Law Amendment Act, which introduced the system of workhouses.

4. Prior to World War I, infant mortality rates in the workhouses were more than double the rate for the entire population.

5. Of about half a million foundlings christened in workhouses after 17 only 40 percent survived to their second birthday.

6. 147, NOVEMBER 4, 1914 VARIOUS The London workhouses had become Congested "by the flocking into them of the lowest and most difficult to manage classes of poor." ENGLISH POOR LAW POLICY SIDNEY WEBB