WANSEY (Henry).
Thoughts on Poor-Houses,
"THE SICK HAVE FRESH MEAT AND BROTH"
Rare. OCLC records BL, Bodley, Manchester and UCL in the UK; Johns Hopkins, Columbia, New York Public and Harvard only in the US.
A detailed, nation-wide, examination of the way in which the poor could be better cared for in public institutions through improved diet and suitable employment and education with the lightest burden on public expense.
Henry Wansey (1751-1827), a clothier and antiquary, who had visited the United States in 1794 returned to England and turned his attention to the increasing cost of the Poor Rates and the declining conditions in public workhouses. He begins by looking at his local workhouse in Salisbury but also seems to have visited many other institutions around the country and detailed almost every aspect of how they were run in order to suggest improvements. Wansey provides numerous tables showing the costs associated with different workhouses (including wages; cost of food, fuel, medicine and education). Wansey is particularly interested in the food provided for the poor and carefully lists the ingredients found in the large-scale soups and stews that seem to have formed the majority of the inmates diets. Wansey encourages the use of vegetable gardens (maintained by the inmates of the workhouse) to supplement the diet and praises workhouses which are able to offer meat. He also encourages education and the utilisation of inmates knowledge of particular trades in order to produce good that could be sold to benefit the workhouse.
