Workhouses

thumb|right|300px|Former workhouse in Nantwich in [[Cheshire, dating from 1780]] In Britain and Ireland, a workhouse (, lit. "poor-house") was a total institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses. The earliest known use of the term workhouse is from 1631, in an account by the mayor of Abingdon reporting that "we have erected within our borough a workhouse to set poorer people to work".

Poorhouses were public institutions used from the seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries to provide relief for people unable to support themselves, including the elderly, the sick, people with disabilities, widows, and others. In North America—particularly in the United States and Canada—they were usually operated by local governments and often took the form of “poor farms,” where residents who were able to work were expected to contribute labor. thumb|Onondaga County Poorhouse, New York Poorhouses developed from earlier systems of poor relief influenced by the English Poor Laws and