Image from the Grimsby Local History Library Facebook Page
In Grandma’s House
In Grandma’s house a game of chase begins.
My sister, smaller, faster flies beneath
the kitchen table.
Following, forgetting I have grown,
my head explodes against the table edge.
Dad wraps me in a towel and runs,
he in his vest, no time to dress,
out into the winter’s night.
A mile or more he runs to reach the old
infirmary gates and turns between the
ornamental columns. Along the drive
he runs and runs towards what seems to be
a mansion house.
Except that this was land that had been bought,
from the Earl of Yarborough no less,
Ten acres, sixteen hundred pounds, to build
the Grimsby Poor Law Union Workhouse.
In 1895 no-one ran towards it.
Each halting step would take them ever closer
to this prison house of poverty.
Beneath the arch they were divided.
Women to the north, men to the south,
Children to a block adjacent to the old
Infirmary where now the nurses dressed and
bound my broken head and sent me home to heal.
There was no healing for my grandad
when he went back in there to die.
His bed was in a ground floor ward beside
a window, workhouse bars not yet removed.
Children weren’t allowed inside and so
we squeezed our heads between the bars
and mouthed goodbyes against the glass.
Then back to Grandma’s house
to play beneath the kitchen table.
This poem is based upon an early childhood memory. Then I did not know the hospital’s history as a workhouse that held many painful memories for my grandparents. I learned that from my Dad when I was older. More recently I have begun to research its history with the help of Peter Higginbotham’s website, The History of the Workhouse.
In Grandma’s House is part of a wider project to put together a collection of poems about my childhood.