Workhouse and Poor Law Records: A Family History Guide

Workhouse and poor law records are the papers created when a parish or poor law union helped, questioned, moved or housed a person who could not support themselves. For family historians they are among the most personal records in England and Wales: a settlement examination can give a pauper’s birthplace and working life, and a workhouse register can give an age, a religion, a reason for admission and the date someone left or died.

Almost all of these records are held locally, in county and city record offices, not at The National Archives. Before 1834 look in the parish records of the overseers of the poor. From 1834 to 1930 look in the records of the poor law union that covered the place where your ancestor lived.

How poor relief worked: the dates that matter

Period	Who ran poor relief	Main records	Usually held at
Before 1834 (Old Poor Law)	Each parish, through its overseers of the poor	Overseers’ accounts, settlement certificates and examinations, removal orders, bastardy papers, apprenticeship indentures, vestry minutes	County record office, in the parish collection
1834 to 1930	Poor law unions (groups of parishes), each run by a board of guardians	Guardians’ minutes, workhouse admission and discharge registers, creed registers, births and deaths registers, out-relief lists	County or city record office; central correspondence at The National Archives
1930 to 1948	County and county borough councils (public assistance)	Public assistance and institution records, where they survive	County or city record office

Under the Old Poor Law each parish had to appoint overseers of the poor, a duty that goes back to the late sixteenth century. A pauper was the responsibility of their parish of settlement, often, but not always, the parish of birth; a married woman took her husband’s settlement.

The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 grouped parishes into poor law unions. Each union had a board of guardians elected by the ratepayers and reporting to the new Poor Law Commission in London, later the Poor Law Board and then the Local Government Board. Most unions built or took over a union workhouse.

The Local Government Act 1929 abolished the boards of guardians from its appointed day, 1 April 1930. County and county borough councils took over, and many former workhouses carried on as public assistance institutions or hospitals. The National Assistance Act 1948 finally provided that “the existing poor law shall cease to have effect”.

Old Poor Law records before 1834

Parish poor law papers are usually catalogued with the parish records in the county record office. Survival is uneven: one parish may keep hundreds of settlement papers and its neighbour none. Overseers’ account books, listing payments by name, and vestry minutes can add years of detail.

Settlement certificates and examinations

A settlement certificate, introduced in the 1690s, was issued by a person’s home parish to accept responsibility if they fell on hard times somewhere else. A settlement examination was a statement made on oath before a Justice of the Peace to decide which parish was responsible. Examinations are the richest item for genealogists: they can name the place of birth, past employers, apprenticeships, rented homes, the spouse and the children.

Removal orders

If a parish decided that someone belonged elsewhere, magistrates could order their removal to their parish of settlement. The order names the people being moved and the two parishes, so it links a family to a place you might not otherwise have searched. Search the records of both parishes.

Bastardy papers and pauper apprentices

Overseers tried to make the father of an illegitimate child pay for its keep. The mother’s examination often names the putative father, and a bastardy bond or a later maintenance order can confirm him when the baptism entry does not. Overseers also bound poor children as apprentices; the indenture names the child, the master and his trade, and sometimes the child’s parent.

Workhouse and union records from 1834

The operational records of the unions and their workhouses are not at The National Archives. They passed to local councils and are now mostly in the county or city record office covering the union. Typical survivals include:

Admission and discharge registers: dated entries for each person coming in and going out, often with age, parish, occupation, religion and the reason for admission.
Creed registers: kept in many workhouses in the later nineteenth century, recording each inmate’s religion; some are arranged alphabetically and add birthplace and the name of a relative.
Registers of births and deaths in the workhouse, and sometimes baptism registers kept by the chaplain.
Guardians’ minute books: decisions on relief, children sent to training ships or emigrated, lunatics sent to the county asylum, and staff appointments.
Settlement examinations, removal orders and out-relief lists, which continued under the unions.

Finding the right union matters more than finding the right workhouse. The workhouse might sit in a different parish from the one in the union’s name. The National Archives recommends checking the union for a place on the Workhouses website (workhouses.org.uk), and the union name will lead you to the right catalogue.

Remember that the census recorded workhouse inmates too. From 1841 to 1921 an inmate appears on the census page for the institution, usually with age and birthplace, which can confirm that a person was in the house on census night. See our census and 1939 Register guide.

What The National Archives holds: MH 12 and MH 9

The National Archives in Kew holds the central government side of the system: records about running the unions rather than lists of inmates, although individual paupers do appear.

MH 12: correspondence between each union and the central poor law authorities, from 1834 to about 1900, arranged by county and union. It covers complaints, inquiries, staff, medical cases and building plans. Most post-1900 papers were destroyed by fire in the 1940s.
MH 9: registers of paid officers, 1837 to 1921, useful if your ancestor was a workhouse master, matron, nurse, porter or teacher.
MH 15: subject indexes to the correspondence.

Only a small part of MH 12 is online. Correspondence for 24 unions, among them Cardiff, Keighley, Mansfield, Southampton and Truro, has been catalogued name by name in Discovery and digitised; the rest is catalogued only by union and date and must be seen at Kew. At the time of writing (September 2026) The National Archives says digitised records are free to download for signed-in users, “for now”, so check the current terms. For planning a visit, see our guide to family history at The National Archives, Kew.

What is online, free and paid

There is no national index of workhouse inmates. Start with free catalogues, then check the commercial sites.

Discovery (free) searches the catalogues of The National Archives and of many local record offices. Search for the union name with words such as admission, creed or guardians.
Record office catalogues (free): some county archives, such as Gloucestershire Archives, have indexed overseers’ papers by name, including settlement papers, apprenticeships and bastardy documents.
London: The London Archives (formerly London Metropolitan Archives) holds records for over 30 London unions and parishes. Its admission and discharge registers, creed registers, settlement examinations and removal orders are on Ancestry in several poor law collections, and Ancestry is free to use at The London Archives. See our guide to The London Archives.
Ancestry, Findmypast and TheGenealogist each publish selected county poor law and workhouse collections. Coverage differs by county, so check each site’s collection list for your area before subscribing.
FamilySearch (free with an account): check its catalogue by place.

Access rules for records less than 100 years old

Workhouse registers contain personal and often medical information. Many record offices treat entries less than about 100 years old as closed or restricted under data protection law, and may ask you to sign a form or apply for access. Rules vary between archives, so ask the record office before you travel.

How to search, step by step

Fix a place and a period. A census entry, a death certificate giving the workhouse as place of death, or a baptism in a union chaplain’s register tells you where to look. Some workhouse deaths were registered under a street address rather than the word workhouse, so an unfamiliar address on a certificate may be the institution.
Identify the parish (before 1834) or the union (1834 to 1930) that covered that place.
Find the record office that holds it through Discovery or the county archive’s own catalogue.
Check for name indexes: overseers’ papers, settlement examinations and some creed registers are often indexed by volunteers.
Read the admission and discharge registers around the known date, then the creed register, then the guardians’ minutes.
For a union covered by the digitised MH 12 volumes, search Discovery by surname as well.
Record every variant spelling. Clerks wrote names as they heard them, and ages are often approximate.

An illustrative example: a woman appears in the 1881 census as an inmate of a union workhouse, born in “Poland”. The creed register for that house gives her religion as Roman Catholic, her birthplace as a named town and her husband as a seaman. The guardians’ minutes then record her discharge to a relative, which leads to the next census household.

Polish-born ancestors in poor law records

Immigrants who fell ill, lost work or were widowed could need poor relief like anyone else, so Polish-born people do appear in union registers, especially in ports and large cities. In London’s East End, many Jewish families from the Russian Empire, including the Russian-ruled Polish lands, settled from the 1880s onwards. Much of their relief came from their own community: the Jewish Board of Guardians, founded in 1859 to relieve poor Jewish immigrants in London, and its records survive as the Archives of Jewish Care (MS 173) at the University of Southampton. In a register entry, check four things.

Birthplace: often only “Poland”, “Russia”, “Prussia” or “Germany”, reflecting the borders of the time. A creed register or a settlement examination is more likely than a census to give a town.
Religion: “Roman Catholic” or “Jew” in a creed register tells you which Polish records to search, Catholic parish books or Jewish civil registers.
Spelling: names written by ear, such as Kowalski as Kovalsky, or a first name turned into English. Our guide to anglicised Polish surnames lists common patterns.
Arrival: an admission soon after landing can be matched against arrival and alien records; see UK immigration records.

Once you have a town or village and an approximate year of birth, the next step is the Polish birth or baptism entry in the parish or civil register for that place. Our guide on finding a birth entry in Poland explains how to identify the right parish and search it.