High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Andover workhouse scandal arose when the inhumane conditions at the workhouse in Andover, Hampshire, England were exposed by journalists and politicians in 1845. The inmates were kept starving by the workhouse master who stole from the food supplies provided, which were already smaller in quantity than the subsistence diet decreed by the Poor Law Commission. Hunger drove the inmates to eat the bones which they were supposed to crush to make fertilizer, and the regime was operated like a penal settlement. John Walter, who was the editor of The Times and an outspoken critic of the Poor Laws, took a special interest in the case and his newspaper covered the scandal and the subsequent public inquiries in great detail. Parliament set up a select committee to investigate the workhouse in March 1846, and as a result of its findings and the weight of public opinion the Commission was abolished in 1847.