Aerial view of St Mary's Hospital, in Bury St Edmunds. Now demolished, it was the Thingoe Union Workhouse until 1948. So well did the designers understand the purpose of the Poor Law Act that they modelled the workhouse on Bury Gaol, with separate wings and yards for different classes of inmate - male, female, young and old. When the place became a hospital, many older people refused to go there, such was the lingering stigma of the workhouse building.
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