Contagion in the Workhouse

Dr Andrea Tanner has an interest in health having participated in Mortality in the Metropolis Project and founding the Historic Hospitals Admissions Registers Project at Kingston University.

Infectious diseases raged through the streets of London in the nineteenth century. Before the creation of the Metropolitan Asylums Board Fever Hospitals, London's workhouses were the default caring institutions for the unfortunate victims. The role of the New Poor Law 'Bastilles' in caring for the metropolitan infected patients between 1834 and 1870 will be explored in this talk.