Kilmacthomas Union: The Administration of Poor Law in a County Waterford Workhouse 1851-1872
1. Introduction.
This paper examines Kilmacthomas Union in the period 1851 to 1872, presenting an opportunity to study the workings of the poor law administration outside the period of the famine. The principal argument of this article will centre on the implementation of the poor law and the way in which the workhouse moved from a narrow workhouse base to becoming the major provider of the statutory social services which came about as a direct result of the legislative changes in the poor law in the period following the famine. The minute books provide us with the opportunity for detailed analysis of how the poor law impacted on the administrators, ratepayers, officials and inmates. The geographical area of the union covered sixteen electoral divisions with a population of almost 25,000 people in 1851. The spatial aspect will primarily focus on the workhouse and will reference the actual townlands in the context of the administration of the union, outdoor relief and the administration of the dispensary system established by the Medical Charities Act of 1851. Analysis of assisted emigration, disease control and the changing role of the poor law in the provision of fledgling social services at local level gives a picture of the changes brought about by legislation such as the Sewage Utilisation Act 1865 and the Sanitary Act of 1866. By examining the union as a community as defined by Hoskins and Finberg, we can view it as a 'distinct and fundamental entity and organism with a continuous, ordered, coherent life of its own'.1 The union provides a local view of the political, economic, social and cultural life of a rural workhouse against a national backdrop. As Kinealy points out the poor law system can only be worked out through detailed examination of its implementation at local level.2
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