Description:The Sutherland Papers Collection contains a wealth of documents which provide an insight into life in Newcastle-under-Lyme during the nineteenth century. Amongst these are a number of papers relating to the Almshouses in Newcastle in the 1840s.
Liddle Elliot, a surveyor employed by the Duke of Sutherland wrote to the Duke on 25th April 1844 with a report he had completed on the Almshouses and the people living there at that time. Elliot had been asked by the Duke to write his observations about the almshouses in order for the Duke to make decisions relating to the state of the buildings and the tenancy of the present inhabitants.
The document tells us about the condition of the almshouses themselves and the lives and families of the people who lodged there in 1844.
Elliot informs the Duke that ‘No. 1’ Almshouse was occupied by a lady called Elizabeth Heath aged seventy eight. Elizabeth was ‘almost blind’ and had received permission from the Duke’s agent Thomas Fenton to leave the almshouse and move in with her son and daughter ‘being incapable of taking care of herself’. A lady called Prudence Beresford had moved into the almshouse in Elizabeth’s place.
Elliot reports that ‘the rooms appeared clean and in a good state’.
Other rooms in the Alms Houses were not in such a good condition. Elliot notes that ‘the chimney smokes very much’ in the second house, adding that ‘the rooms want colouring in consequence’. In his observations on the third property Elliot notes ‘the Roof rains in above the Pantry’. Number three also had smoking chimneys in ‘all the Rooms’. Elliot observes that these conditions ‘must be very uncomfortable for the old people’, adding that ‘often in the winter they say they are obliged to have the doors and windows open entirely’. Other rooms required ‘whitewashing’.
Many of the ladies living in the Alms Houses were widows aged in their lated sixties and seventies, although Elliot’s report indicates that a number of the inhabitants had moved into the Alms Houses in their forties and fifties. Charlotte Jones and her companion Widow Wallbank had been living in one of the properties for over fourteen years but other properties were unoccupied. Reporting on Alms House number 6 Elliot notes that the widow occupying the property ‘does not reside here at all’, and was living with her son in Runcorn. A number of the ladies had friends or relatives residing with them in the Alms Houses. Elizabeth Hill lived in number eleven with her companion Frances Booth. Aged eighty four, Elizabeth required Frances to take care of her.
To learn more about concerns over the condition of the almshouses, click on the image on the left.