STORY OF THE WEEK, #12, AUTHOR, JULIE BANNER
'Is the old workhouse still there?' Dad asked
me after finding out that I was working at City Hospital. I stared at him
blankly. 'On Western Road.' Dad
continued. I shrugged and let him carry on. I have no interest in old buildings
at all, but do have a passing interest in local history. 'It was connected to
All Saints Hospital by underground tunnels so they could drag the people they
thought were mental from one to the other without anybody outside seeing.'
I'd heard hundreds of dad's stories about old Birmingham.
A Brummie born and bred, his interest and knowledge of local history is
certainly much more in-depth than mine. However, this one didn't sound very
pleasant at all so I changed the subject and disregarded this particular tale,
quite happy to remain in blissful ignorance.
It was five years later before I was reminded of dad's story and that
was only because I gave up smoking. Why on Earth are the two connected? It's
simple. Deciding that a good brisk walk would keep my mind off having a fag and
as a half hearted attempt at trying to be healthier, I had started walking
round the grounds of the hospital each day, taking a different route each time.
At the back of the hospital is an old building, boarded up and neglected. It
looks odd among the new buildings that have been erected to modernise the place
in the name of progress. It is obvious this was the building dad was talking
about all that time ago. Here stands what is left of Birmingham's workhouse.
Mentioning it to mum
one day as we walked past she looked at it, sighed and made a comment about how
she would have ended up in there if she had lived her life a hundred or so
years ago. She had been an unmarried mother, so would've been sent to the
workhouse with her bastard child taken away from her. As we walked away, I kept
on looking back at it - suddenly it had changed from an
insignificant building to a horrible, dirty, dark place full of misery and
suffering.. I stared to wonder whether any of my ancestors were ever there.
I continued my walks in my
lunch hour and after a few weeks I decided to go and face the demon I had
turned this monstrosity into. A strange chill passed through me every time I
walked towards it. Even on a glorious summer day something about it made me feel
icy cold, but at the same time it fascinated me. The building is boarded up and
cordoned off with warning signs that seem to add to its terror. I think of
those poor people being dragged kicking and screaming through some musty
underground tunnel towards the institution, classed as 'insane, idiots and
imbeciles' or 'feeble minded' just because they suffered from Epilepsy. On a
particularly dull day I am sure I can hear the screams of terror even though
the institution is long gone.
There are still signs of its
age and history. Religious crosses still adorn the roof and walls, the chimneys
scream Victorian architecture and the legendary' Archway of Tears' leading the
way into the grounds is the only piece of the building left. A plaque was
placed outside the archway in 1999 in tribute. Its inscription reads:
'In memory of all those folk forced by hardships through the archway of
tears and into the workhouse. In life they endured misfortune,
in death they may rest in peace. '
I hate this place, yet
it draws me in to stare and wonder what really went on within. I want to go
inside, just once, but I can feel fear rising up into my throat. It fascinates
me yet petrifies me at the same time. There have been stories that it is
haunted by tortured souls of the past which makes me think of the people who
had to live there, humiliated, degraded, their pride non existent. Men, women
and children in separate, already overcrowded, living and sleeping areas.
Unmarried mothers kept away from other women as well as their offspring, being
classed as 'moral defectives' along with vicious criminals. Orphans being fed
the merest amount of gruel and told to count their blessings.
It would probably seem completely
insignificant to me if I didn't know its history and it seems totally out of
place in the grounds of a hospital designed to help and cure people but the
workhouse was here long before the hospital was built.
I tried to do some research into what became an obsession at one point
and found that the original workhouse was moved from Lichfield Street in the
centre of Birmingham in 1852 when the number of people living there increased
and another site had to be found. The hospital was opened in 1889 when the sick
were taking up more room in the workhouse's medical section, which was already
filled to its capacity, and was called The Workhouse Infirmary, becoming Dudley
Road Hospital in 1948.
I walk past and fear it - others walk past and ignore it. Maybe
they don't know its history. Could you really tell just by looking at it? If
dad hadn't mentioned it, I doubt I'd have known its history and Birmingham is
full of these old buildings, left to decay and crumble away to dust. Maybe they
just don't care, after all the rest of the workhouse is no longer in existence
and the grounds around the remainder of it are now a car park. Who cares about
a tatty old building when you're trying to park your car?
I do not know whether the stories about these places are true. Can a
building really be described as evil? Surely it is the people inside that made
it so. After all there is nobody alive to tell me any different and any
research on the subject seems quite limited although the details I have managed
to find do not contradict any of the books I have read or films that I have
seen. The building is now a listed Grade 1 so will stand as a constant reminder
until it falls away to dust or heaven forbid it is restored to its former
grandeur.
Just one more insignificant monument to a past long forgotten.
Julie Banner