Liverpool Workhouse Registers

Search for your English ancestors within the Liverpool workhouse records. This collection comprises admission and discharge registers, classification lists, registers of the sick, and more types of documents from seven different institutions including: Fazakerley Cottage Homes, Kirkdale Industrial Schools, Mill Road Hospital (West Derby Union Workhouse), Olive Mount Children's Home, Sefton General Hospital (Toxteth Park Workhouse), Walton Workhouse, and West Derby Union. You can also review the Liverpool Board of Guardians minute books.

Every result will provide you with a transcript and an image of the original register. The transcript will contain the limited information listed below, but the images will give you even more rich detail about your ancestor’s life in Liverpool.

  • Name
  • Age – at the time the record was created
  • Birth year
  • Place
  • Institution
  • County
  • Country
  • Archive reference
  • Register type
  • Records year range
  • Archive

Images

Some of the original registers have been damaged or will show water marks. Within the admission and discharge registers, you may discover your ancestor’s religion, last residence, name and address of nearest relatives, and discharge date. The classification lists would classify children as orphans, illegitimate, deserted, child of parents undergoing punishment, child of widows or widowers, or child of lunatics. The records also contain lists of children sent to Canada. The lists will provide the date the child was sent, the name and address of the foster parents, and the ship name.

Discover more about the Liverpool workhouse registers

The Liverpool workhouse registers are a rich collection of registers from Liverpool’s poor unions. The collection includes records from various institutions and a variety of record types, all listed below. The records span from 1841 until 1928. You will find admission and discharge registers, along with classification lists, registers of the sick, and creed registers. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1868 established that workhouse authorities should record in Creed Books each inmate's religious affiliation as a way of ensuring that each person's religious instruction could be met. Additionally, there is a collection of registers of children who were sent from Liverpool to live with foster parents in Canada. The records have been digitised in partnership with the Liverpool City Council.