About Me

My name is Deborah Collins and I have lived all my life in Kent, as have the majority of my ancestors. I have always had an interest in history, especially local history, and a natural extension of this was to research my own family history.

As with many people researching their family I came across relatives who were in the workhouse, either as inmates or as staff, and at first did not look too deeply into it. Later, as I looked into the Union records more closely I became fascinated by the role that the Poor Law Union played in many parts of ordinary people’s lives and especially the fact that most of the assistance given was out of the Workhouse.

This sparked my interest to find out more about the world of the Kent Poor Law Unions, the parish poorhouses which preceded them and the lives of people who were connected to the Poor Law Unions. That is where the inspiration for this website came from – to provide information about the parish poorhouses and Poor Law Unions of Kent and to enable people to solve family history puzzles by using the records associated with them.