Elizabeth Waites (1823 – 1902) Unwed mother, inmate of what Huggate institution?

[henrietta165]

Elizabeth Waites (aka Bessy, Betsy) had two illegitimate children, Gibson born 1844 and Mary born 1846 in Huggate, Yorkshire. Their baptism records describe their mother as “Inmate” under Trade or Profession. Elizabeth is also described as “Inmate” on her marriage record. The marriage was on Christmas Day 1846, and her second child was buried 5 days later, aged 16 weeks. (The first child also died, aged 8 weeks.)
I have lots of illegitimate births in my family tree, but this is the first time I have seen the unwed mother recorded as an inmate. The abodes for each of the baptisms, deaths and the marriage are all Huggate. What sort of institution would be in this small village (population in 1823 was 413)? A work house?

[KGarrad]

Huggate was a member parish (of 37 parishes) of the Pockington PoorLaw Union.
Pocklington Poor Law Union initially (1834) declined to build a new workhouse and retained the existing premises at Hungate, Pocklington.
This was closed after a cholera outbreak  in 1851.
A new Pocklington workhouse was then built on the road to Burnby.
An Infirmary was added in 1878.

https://www.workhouses.org.uk/Pocklington/

[henrietta165]

Thank you KGarrad. So perhaps she was living at the workhouse at Hungate, Pocklington and had her babies there and then travelled to Huggate (8 miles) for the baptisms, because that was her family home. Or, perhaps she lived at Huggate with her family but was still considered an inmate because she was getting a weekly pension. From the link KGarrad provided: "Very few paupers were ever in the workhouse as it was found that giving paupers weekly pensions was a cheaper option."
I think her parents couldn't afford to support her. In the 1851 census (a few years after Elizabeth's 2 children were born) her father (63) was living at a farm in Warter where he worked as a shepherd, while her mother and youngest sister were still at Huggate.

[MollyC]

The reference actually says the old workhouse was at Hungate, Market Weighton, which was within Pocklington registration district.

[ShaunJ]

There are lots of "inmates" in the Huggate marriage registers at that time.  Looking at "inmates" who were married shortly after the 1841 and 1851 censuses, those that I could find in the censuses were either living with their parents or working as servants.

I wonder if inmate here is used in its archaic sense of someone who lives under the same roof as others, and has been used as a generic description to fill the "rank or profession" column for females who were not currently  employed.

[henrietta165]

Thanks MollyC for your correction.
Thanks ShaunJ. I see what you mean about lots of "Inmates" in Huggate marriage records. On the half a dozen pages that I looked at about half were "servant" and the other half "inmate". So your suggestion that the archaic meaning is being used here makes sense. I found a website which gave the archaic meaning and then said: By the 1830s, inmate had come to mean "one confined to an institution." It's not hard to imagine that the Huggate curate was still using the archaic meaning in the 1840s. Elizabeth had been working as a servant for the Huggate miller (1841 census) and presumably she had to stop work and return to the family home when she became pregnant.
Just goes to show that you shouldn't jump to conclusions. Thanks again to all.