With the distress and unemployment resulting from the long period of wars with France between 1793 and 1815, parishes were no longer able to deal satisfactorily with the social and financial problems which faced them. About half the parishes of Somerset had built poorhouses where the sick and aged poor could be accommodated, but only a few, for example Taunton, Yeovil, Stoke St Gregory, North Curry, Bruton and Frome, had provided workhouses where poor people could be employed as well as helped. Most parishes gave 'out-door relief' in the form of small payments of money raised by parish rates to help those in need. The North Curry bill jumped from £475 to £1102. It was realised that the parish was too small a unit to be effective and so, by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, parishes were grouped into Unions. Each Union was centred on a town or large village where a Union workhouse was built. Outdoor relief was administered by the Union under much stricter controls, and tests of need were applied. The new workhouses were efficient and economical to run, but proved to be harsh and even brutal in practice, and were feared and hated by the poor. Charles Dickens describes the terrifying conditions in a Union workhouse in his book 'Oliver Twist', but these were gradually improved during the century. The workhouses became redundant, having lost their original purpose, but some of the old buildings were used for hospitals, including the Taunton one which became Trinity Hospital, seen here on the 1912 OS Map. The workhouse had been built in in 1836.