THERE seems to be a dearth of photographs showing the Oakworth Road Institution – now attractively transformed into Hillworth Village – when it served as a workhouse, so we are indebted to the late Stanley R Boardman who, in a remarkable burst of creative activity, painted dozens of impressions of his 1920s boyhood.
Here on the left, in his signature big cap, he watches the sorry queue for a night’s shelter in the vagrants’ wards.
Keighley’s Victorian poet and sometime investigative journalist Carey Williams Craven got himself admitted and spent two nights there in the 1880s, describing how he slept on boards, ate a breakfast of dry bread and cold water, and had to grind corn to pay for his keep.
“I would not again for a substantial sum, be placed in a similar position,” he concluded.
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