The Commissioners in Lunacy approve of the new dietary for imbecile and weak-minded inmates of the workhouse, assuming that the rice or barley soup given on the Saturday contains a good proportion of meat in each pint, say two or three ounces and that at least once a week the solid meat is roasted or baked.

18th September 1872

Class 1 and Class 2 vagrants relieved at the workhouse…..

Class I
Shall break 1 cwt of stones per hour for 3 hours
OR
Shall grind 10 lbs of wheat per hour for 3 hours
OR
Shall dig over effectually 20 square yards of arable land per hour for 3 hours
OR
Shall fill and wheel four barrows full of material or rubbish a distance of 90 yards per hour for 3 hours
OR
That each two able bodied male adults shall cross cut with a saw, 5 pieces of timber each 9 ft x 12 in x 4 in, into 7 inch lengths during 3 hours
OR
Shall be employed three hours at wood chopping
OR
Shall perform any other task of work as prescribed and ordered by the Local Government Board dated November 22 1871.

The time for performing any of the foregoing tasks of work shall be from 7 to 10 o’clock every day excepting Sunday, Good Friday an Christmas Day.

Class II

Each able bodied male adult in this class shall perform at the rate of three times the amount of the same kind of task work per day as prescribed for vagrants in Class I for 3 hours.

30th October 1872

Clerk to request a tender for 1000 white dinner plates stamped with the words “Leeds Workhouse” and also a tender for the same goods unstamped.

27th November 1872

That permission be given for Mr Parker’s String Band to play at the workhouse on Friday next at the usual ball.

9th April 1873

With reference to the proposal that a fish dinner should once a week be substituted for a meat dinner for the inmates of your workhouse, I am of the opinion that such a change is note desirable. At present the ordinary diet scale provided four meat dinners a week and I think it would not be beneficial to the general health of the inmates to lessen this number.

Moreover, I believe that the bones of the fish would be a source of great inconvenience if not at times of absolute danger to the aged and infirm.

With regard to the fish dinners at Wakefield Asylum I beg to remind you that the diet scale there is a much more generous one than ours, and though fish may be satisfactorily introduced into theirs it does not at all follow that the alteration proposed would be good in ours….

24th September 1873

The Local Government Board Inspector has discovered that the children are being given American Pickled Pork and this constitutes an unauthorised alteration to the dietary table.

18th January 1888

Magic lantern entertainment to be provided for the inmates.

13th February 1889

The sister of an imate complained to the infirmary that she had not had her chemise changed for three weeks, that she had been bathed and kept sitting in a room for several hours until she had become very cold, and afterwards placed in a room so cold as to benumb her. That on the doctor being complained to, he had told her sister that if she did not like it she was to go home.