place where indigent, vagrant, and idle people are set to work, and supplied with food and clothing. Work-houses are of two kinds, or at least are employed for two different purposes. Some are used as prisons for vagrants or sturdy beggars, who are there confined and compelled to labour for the benefit of the society which maintains them; whilst others, sometimes called poor-houses, are charitable asylums for such indigent persons as through age or infirmity are unable to support themselves by their own labour. See Poor-Laws.