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| Title |
The paupers and the workhouse. |
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| Description |
You could get Outdoor Relief which it was called at that time. There was the workhouse where people could be sent to hospital there, and they could be sent to the County Hospital. Outdoor Relief was issued by the guardians of the workhouse. I remember going over there on a Sunday morning when I'd go to serve Mass. On a Sunday, you'd come over on the boat from the bottom of Market Street and you went up the steps and then you were signed in by the master. In the workhouse, as well as the hospital, was a home for the paupers, poor people who fell on bad times, farmers, workmen, very few workmen from the town but mostly from the country. I remember walking up this big main, the main building as they called it, the House they called it and there were scrubbed white tables and forms, not chairs and on the right hand side was the kitchen and the huge big tin or iron vats or boilers and the smell of porridge on a Sunday morning. The system, at the time, it carried them to their grave because they were buried in a coffin which was made of deal and covered with brown cloth. I remember being on two occasions with a priest at the burial of a pauper and the priest and myself and the man who was going to fill in the grave were the only three people there.
Ref: 90-55-55.
Interviewer: Sandra Matchett, Fermanagh County Museum.
© Fermanagh County Museum. |
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| Speaker |
Jack Donnelly |
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| Sound |
90-55-55.mp3
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