What were the children in the Victorian workhouses fed?

Their treatment in Shakespeare's day was better than it would be in later centuries, but not perhaps as good as it is now. Shakespeare gives a number of examples of bastards in his plays including Falconbridge in King John and Edmund in King Lear. Edmund clearly resents the lower status his bastardy gives him, but he is acknowledged and supported by his father. Their disadvantage was chiefly in their inability to inherit from their natural father, even if they were acknowledged.