History
It was founded by Louisa Twining in 1858 “to promote the moral and spiritual improvement of workhouse inmates” (The English Church Union Kalendar, 1863), though it also campaigned vigorously for practical improvements in their education and health
It acted as a supervising organisation for some of the other institutions founded by Twining, including the Home for Workhouse Girls and the Home for Incurables in its own and the next door premises in Great Ormond Street
It organised a system of visiting and practical help for workhouse inmates throughout England and Ireland: “The Workhouse Visiting Society had a comparatively short life, but it left behind a habit of workhouse visiting which spread into the provinces”(M. A. Crowther, The Workhouse System, 1834–1929: The History of an English Social Institution, 1981)
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What was reforming about it?
It was a sustained and systematic onslaught on the conditions in workhouses by middle-class women
Where in Bloomsbury
It was based at 23 New Ormond Street (now 22 Great Ormond Street) in 1863 (The English Church Union Kalendar, 1863)
Website of current institution
It no longer exists
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Books about it
Louisa Twining, ‘The Objects and Aims of the Workhouse Visiting Society,’ Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1858)
Louisa Twining, Recollections of Life and Work: Being the Autobiography of Louisa Twining (1893)
The Society also published its own journal, the Journal of the Workhouse Visiting Society from 1859 to 1865; copies are held in the British Library and the LSE archives, among other places
Archives
None found
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