The physical makeup of the ‘inmates’ is also captured in the indoor registers. In the first instance the clerk recorded whether the person was sick when entering the workhouse. A glance through the registers reveals a host of common illnesses including:
Consumption, pleurisy, general debility, rheumatic fever; ‘sore leg’; aged; infirm and a host of other complaints.
Many were brought to the workhouse on the ‘cart’ which was sent through the towns and villages within the union to provide assistance to those who simply could not make it there. For much of the late 19th century this duty fell to Patrick McElree (McElwee?) who was responsible for the workhouse cart. This was a practice adopted in most towns where a workhouse was located in an effort to keep poverty off the streets.
Young Ann Moran was one such woman, aged twenty, from Bellaghy and who depended on the workhouse cart. She entered the Magherafelt workhouse ‘in a dying state’ and was dead within a day, buried in the adjoining cemetery likely without any family present. William Brown, a coffin maker, was another who was ‘drawn in the workhouse cart’. John McKinney, a broom maker admitted in a ‘dying state’ was dead within a few hours of entering the workhouse.
The condition of people entering the workhouse were often dire. Margaret Kennedy, a repeat entrant, with her three children were described as being ‘dirty and naked’. Kennedy had been abandoned by her husband and relied on the workhouse for her family’s survival.
At times when there was an outbreak of an infectious disease, the numbers in the workhouse rose and the house cart was put into daily use. These could be sporadic such as in 1864 when both Maghera and Bellaghy were said to be suffering from an outbreak of disease.
