Guildford Union Workhouse Casual Ward was built in 1906, to temporarily house the vagrant folk of the town. Though this may sound charitable and preferable to some other alternatives, this workhouse, like many others, was located on the outskirts of town, thereby relegating society’s ill, infirm, and impoverished, away from the communities they wished to be part of. With a maximum stay of two nights, and compulsory hard labor to “earn their keep,” the workhouse was far from homely for those it supposedly welcomed. The ward gained the nickname “the…
