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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Steven Morris

Workhouses in England and Wales linked to transatlantic slave trade, study suggests

Cleveland Street workhouse
The former Cleveland Street workhouse in Fitzrovia, London. The report suggests inmates in workhouses often produced materials for plantations and slave ships. Photograph: Jim Dyson/Getty Images

They were places of crushing hardship for the poorest people in Britain for centuries but a new report highlights how closely workhouses in England and Wales were linked with slavery and British imperialism.

Workhouses, perhaps best known in popular culture through the Charles Dickens story Oliver Twist, were routinely funded and administered by people involved in the slave trade, the study says.

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