After months of planning and the hiring of several key positions, in March 1842 the workhouse was deemed suitable for opening and the first ‘inmates’ were received.
For those entering the workhouse in March 1842 it must have been a foreboding experience, as it was for everyone doing so for the first time. On the that first day twenty people are listed as taking up residence including John and Mary Farrell, children aged twelve and nine and who were described as being ‘illegitimate’. No records survive why the Farrell’s sought entry to the workhouse, but we can assume that in line with the new rules of the building they were immediately separated.
By the end of March there were 90 inhabitants or ‘inmates’ as they were referred to by the authorities. That month had also seen the first death in the workhouse, Adam Dickey a sixty-year old from Aghagaskin, Magherafelt who had entered on 11 March and was described as being ‘destitute but clean’ and suffering from old age. He died on 26 March.
Most of the early inhabitants in the pre-Famine period were described as being ‘dirty and in distress’ or ‘sickly and wretched’ underlying the problems which beset the area by the early 1840s. (see separate section on 1843 entrants)
Towards the end of the month, on 24 March, the first meeting of the Magherafelt Poor Law Union took place in the workhouse.
