| Description | As with the House committee, it is unclear when the House sub-committee was formed. No references to it could be found in the Board of Guardians minutes for the period around 1867, and the minutes of the House committee for that period do not survive (see GP B/2/3/1). However, within the sub-committee's volumes themselves there are frequent references to the Visiting and General Purposes committee. These entries, regarding issues passed onto the sub-committee by the Visiting committee for further examination, and the election of Guardians to the sub-committee, lead one to suspect that it was under the Visiting committee's authority. The later volumes (from 1887 onwards) refer to the sub-committee coming under the remit of the Workhouse Management committee.
For the period from November 1874 to September 1882, the committee became known as the House and School sub-committee. This occurred as a result of the amalgamation of the separate House and School sub-committees, but why this took place is unclear. Equally puzzling is the fact that, after the sub-committee was re-named the House sub-committee in October 1882, it still continued to deal with issues relating to the Union's schools. Unfortunately, the Board of Guardians' minutes shed no light on this matter.
Further confusion may result from the fact that the volumes GP B/2/3/3/22-23 are labelled as being from the Workhouse House sub-committee - however, a brief survey of their contents confirms that they are in fact minutes from the House sub-committee. - The volumes contain information similar to that in the House committee's minutes, and deal with all matters relating to the workhouse and, from 1874 onwards, the Union's schools. In the earlier volumes, original correspondence from Union officials, businessmen interested in supplying goods to the Union and the central Poor Law authority are pasted onto the pages. There are also some references to individual inmates. The volumes are not indexed. |