In Britain, in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, a workhouse was a place where very poor people could live and do unpleasant jobs in return for food. People use the workhouse to refer to these places in general.
...a struggling Shropshire family which lived in fear of the workhouse.
workhouse in British English
(ˈwɜːkˌhaʊs)
noun
1.
(formerly in England) an institution maintained at public expense where poor people did unpaid work in return for food and accommodation
2.
(in the US) a prison for petty offenders serving short sentences at manual labour
workhouse in American English
(ˈwɜrkˌhaʊs)
noun
1. Obsolete
a workshop (sense 1)
2. Obsolete
in England, a poorhouse in which able residents had to work
3. US
a kind of prison, where petty offenders are confined and made to work
Examples of 'workhouse' in a sentence
workhouse
The sports shop chain has been accused of being more of a Victorian workhouse than a modern-day workplace.
The Sun (2016)
The former Victorian workhouse in which my grandparents died has since been bulldozed, but its appalling bad practice still needs to be swept away.