York's unique workhouse and poor law records will be opened up to the public next April. But you can get a taster of what is to come in a small exhibition which has just opened at Explore York central library. STEPHEN LEWIS reports

In 1914, in the year that war engulfed Europe, a young parlourmaid in domestic service in York applied to become a probationer nurse at the York Union Workhouse.

The Victorian workhouse has a bad reputation these days. But in 1914, the workhouse infirmary was one of the few places where the poor could get any kind of decent healthcare. And it was a major employer and trainer of nurses.

Nellie Hewitt was 22 at the time she applied to the York workhouse. She had been working as a maid for two well-known local families since she was 16: first for Seebohm and Lydia Rowntree at The Homestead, and subsequently for Oscar and Isabella Rowntree in Brandsby.

But becoming a nurse would have been a step up, says Julie-Anne Vickers, the archivist at York Explore who has been in charge of a major project - Past Caring - which is cataloguing the city's extensive Poor Law Union and healthcare records. It would have allowed her to 'improve her position'.

Nellie was given references by both Isabella and Lydia Rowntree. And she began work at the workhouse on July 27, 1914 - just a week before Britain declared war on Germany.

She seems to have had a long and hopefully fulfilling career. The nursing register shows that by 1934 she was living in St Maurice Place off Lord Mayor's Walk - and still working as a nurse. Sadly, she died a couple of years later, aged 43, at a sanatorium in Surrey - though it isn't known whether she was there as a nurse or as a patient. Her body was brought back to York so she could be buried with her father in York Cemetery.

We know so much about Nellie because amongst the many other items that Julie-Anne and her team have been cataloguing are the 'applications files' containing details of people who applied for work at the York Workhouse between 1905 and 1919.

The careers of women like Nellie reveal a great deal about the changes that were taking place both in British society and in the nursing profession in the 1910s, says Julie-Anne. Where once a woman may have been content to spend her whole life in domestic service, clearly by Nellie's time that was no longer the case - no matter how good their employer.

The extensive workhouse and poor law records on which Julie-Anne has been working contain a wealth of fascinating information about life in York from the mid 1800s up until the 1910s - and about conditions in the workhouse itself.

The records contain harrowing details about the desperate York people who had to turn to the York Poor Law Union for help - people such as Elizabeth Rogers, a 27-year-old servant who, in 1838, applied to the poor law union for support for herself and her one-week-old baby son John. A note written in a crabbed clerk's hand in the poor law register notes the reason for her application: "Wholly disabled in childbirth. Not able to support her bastard child."

The records are full of heartbreaking stories like that. But they're also full of information about life in the workhouse itself - with details such as the daily regime and diet of people who lived there, and information too about the people who worked there.

From April next year, the poor law archives will be fully opened up to the public - so York people will be able to go along to York Explore, and ask to search through the records for any ancestors who might have have lived in or worked at the York workhouse.

Between now and Christmas, however, in a taster of what is to come, a small exhibition has been mounted in a glass case in the foyer at York Explore's central library in York. It focuses on the lives of nurses employed by the workhouse - women like Nellie Hewitt - and includes photographs, application letters, work records and the like. A couple of information panels prepared by volunteers Janis Raven and Mike Rogers detail the life stories of two nurses - Nellie herself, and workhouse superintendent nurse Peggie Blenkharn.

It is a small exhibition but a fascinating one - and it provides a glimpse of the much greater riches to come when the city's poor law records are officially opened up to the public next April.

Panel

Alongside the project to catalogue the poor law union records has been another project - to physically conserve them.

This has been led by professional conservator Tiffany Eng Moore, with the help of an army of enthusiastic volunteers.

They have been painstakingly cleaning and restoring fragile documents - removing dust and grime from old pages, repairing bindings and torn pages, dealing with the damage caused by rusting staples and other metal fasteners, and re-packaging and re-labelling documents so that they are ready to be handled.

This work has been going on quietly behind the scenes for months.

But visitors to York Explore yesterday got a rare chance to see Tiffany and some of her volunteers demonstrating some of the techniques they have been using.

They showed how conservators use soft brushes and special 'smoke sponges' to remove dirt and grime - often coal dust from the coal fires once used to heat buildings - from the pages of archive documents: and even gve visitors a chance to have a go themselves.

"It has been a chance to showcase some of the amazing work that volunteers have been doing," Tiffany said.

BLOB To find out more about the Past Caring project, visit exploreyork.org.uk and search for Past Caring.