Croydon Workhouse Minute Book 1881

The records of the Croydon Union Workhouse from 1881 show the sad stories of some of the poorer women and children living in the area at this time and the futile and ineffective punishments meted out according to the law of the time.  An entry in the Workhouse's Minute Book for 26 July 1881 records:

It was resolved that Mr Henry John Upton R.O. be authorized to apply to the Magistrates at Croydon for a Warrant for the apprehension of Charles Lamb late of No.51 Wilford Rd. Croydon Mathamatical (sic) Instrument Maker for deserting and leaving his Wife Fanny and children Ellen aged 12 years Alice aged 10 years Charles aged 8 years Eliza aged 4 years and Maria aged 10 months in consequence whereof they became chargeable to the Common Fund of the Croydon Union on the 26th day of July 1881 and are still chargeable thereto.

It is not recorded why Mr Lamb left his family.  It may have been due to lack of work or income, or perhaps drunkenness.  Or to seek work elsewhere.  He may have left in despair at being unable to support his family financially, in the knowledge the Union would look after them.

Another entry reads:

On the 27th August Michael Mann was sentenced to seven days hard labour for wilfully neglecting and refusing to support his Wife Hannah Mann who became chargeable to the Common Fund of the Union on the 15th July last.

It is clear that husbands left their wives and children to the mercy of the Union, even though they risked a jail sentence, albeit a very short one.

Alas, the law and punishment for abandonment of one's wife and children did not help Charlotte Boyt, abandoned and pregnant at this time, but unmarried.  It did not extend to the apprehension of men who deserted pregnant fiancees.

And so Charlotte, even though she had some idea of the whereabouts of the father of her child, had no recourse but to seek help and shelter from the Croydon Workhouse when the birth of her child was imminent.

Lily and The Foundling Hospital

In December 1882, Charlotte Boyt, of  The Herne, Beddington Lane, Mitcham petitioned The Foundling Hospital at Corams's Fields for the admission of her infant daughter Lily.

Charlotte's was an unfortunate tale; she was aged 26 and had been a servant in more than one middle class household in the parish of Wallington, Surrey in recent years after leaving her birthplace of Christchurch, Hampshire.  She became engaged to George Robertson, a bricklayer she met when they both lived at East Dulwich. George eventually had to take employment as a gardener in a different location, due to lack of work in his usual occupation.  Their engagement continued for three and a half years, during which Charlotte was a regular visitor to the home of George and his mother, a widowed charwoman who lived at 3 Church Lane, Beddington.  All was well, it appeared, apart from the fact of no wedding date being set, possibly due to George's lack of money and employment prospects. 

Charlotte left her situation as a servant at Dr Hardy's, The Grove, East Dulwich to obtain one closer to where George now lived, on his suggestion.  She was well-liked by George's mother who said in an interview with a Foundling Hospital official that she was most happy to have Charlotte as a future daughter-in-law.

One night when Charlotte and George were out walking, as they did to have time alone together, he "violently seduced" her. She found herself pregnant soon afterwards. She told no-one of the incident and it was not repeated.  She and George, who initially acknowledged paternity, remained in contact.  Towards the end of Charlotte's pregnancy however, he started to deny the fact the child was his, and disappeared from his mother's home shortly after the birth.  Neighbours reported him as "going to Yorkshire to find work."  George's mother stated she was not in a position to help Charlotte as due to George's actions, their relationship was now "at variance".

And so Charlotte entered the Croydon Workhouse for her confinement.  She was delivered of a baby daughter on 27 September 1881 and named her "Lily Maud Boyt".  No father's name was indicated on the baby's birth certificate.  It is not known if Charlotte informed her family of the birth.  What is certain is that she did not go back to live with them, as she was offered a position as a wet nurse on the recommendation of the midwife who delivered her baby, which she went to on 12 October 1881.

After 12 months as wet nurse for Mrs Rickett of Benleigh House, Park Hill Road, Croydon, Charlotte had to find another dwelling place for both herself and her daughter.  Her options were limited; she could not take her baby with her to a live-in situation as a servant for a household and it appears she was able to resist the options of either prostitution, where she could possibly have kept Lily, or the workhouse, where they would have been separated in any event.  She managed to find a situation as servant for Mrs Webber in her household at Mitcham, but her baby had to be relinquished, if she was to stay there.

She thus found herself journeying in December 1882 from the lavender fields of Mitcham to Bloomsbury for the purpose of petitioning the St. Pancras Foundling Hospital.  If her petition was successful, she could be sure Lily would live in a safe place where she would be educated and looked after until she reached the age of 21.  She would be released into domestic service at the age of sixteen, but the position would be one where the employer was found and approved by the Hospital.

Charlotte was eligible to petition for Lily to be accepted as a foundling as she was not married, not widowed and Lily was her first child.  Lily was older at the time of the petition than the requisite twelve months stipulated by the Hospital, but this appears not to have been an issue.  Charlotte wrote on her petition that George Robertson "is gone right away" and this fact was verified by interviews with George's mother and neighbours.  Her petition was accepted on 5 January 1883.

Lily Maud was then received by The Foundling Hospital on 16 January 1883. On that same day she was baptised in the Hospital's chapel with the new name chosen for her by the Hospital. And so Lily became "Edith Irwin," the name by which she was to be known for the rest of her life.

Sophie Anderson, Foundling Girls in the Chapel  Copyright Coram in the care of the Foundling Museum

Thanks to the staff of the London Metropolitan Archives who assisted in locating the actual Petition lodged by Charlotte Boyt for the admission of Lily to the Foundling Hospital.

Charlotte & the Workhouse

Charlotte was in love.  With the bricklayer to whom she had been engaged for three years.  They had not married as they had not enough money to rent a home; bricklaying work had all but ceased in London and George had been forced to take on gardening work instead.  Charlotte had fallen pregnant after George seduced her one night when they were out walking, as they did to seek time alone, seeing as George lived with his widowed charwoman mother.

Being pregnant, with no family in London and George now denying paternity, Charlotte arrived at the door of the Croydon Union Workhouse in late 1881.   As related in Oliver Twist, the parish workhouse was where one went if found destitute on the streets or unable to pay rent on a home.  With unmistakable images in mind of the situation in which Oliver Twist's mother found herself, my great grandmother Charlotte had herself classified as a pauper when she was eight months into her pregnancy and her situation as a live-in servant was no longer tenable.

Her admission details were recorded on 4 August 1881 in the workhouse's Discharge & Admission book as:

- Charlotte Elizabeth Boyt                             - No. affixed to the Pauper's Clothes: 31
- Next Meal after Admission: Supper            - Parish from which admitted: Wallington
- Calling: Servant                                          - By whose order admitted: Ebbutt
- Religious Persuasion: Baptist                     - Observations on condition at the time of admission:
- When Born: 1857                                          Pregnant

Charlotte entered the Croydon Workhouse Infirmary in the old workhouse in Duppas Hill, where it had remained after the new Croydon Union Workhouse opened in 1866 in Queens Road, Croydon.  She had been born in Christchurch, Hampshire but had come to London in order to work.  Her employer, Mrs Parrott, was unwilling to keep her on in her situation as a household servant, once her pregnancy could no longer be concealed.  Until well into the twentieth century the only hospitals which made no charge for treatment were the infirmaries attached to workhouses, so Charlotte, having little money, had no choice but to enter a workhouse in order to be attended by a midwife during her labour.

Whilst resident in a workhouse an inmate was required to work and "picking oakum" became a common occupation in Victorian era prisons and workhouses and could not leave unless they found a job outside.  "Oakum" was a preparation of tarred fibre used in shipbuilding, for caulking or packing the joints of timbers in wooden vessels and deck planking of iron and steel ships.  It was recycled from old, tarry ropes by painstakingly unravelling these into fibre.  I don't know if Charlotte was required to engage in this occupation or if she was allowed to partake in a less arduous one such as crocheting lace cuffs, which Charlie Chaplin's mother did as a resident of the Lambeth Workhouse in 1896 when she, Charlie and his brother were forced by poverty and ill health to live there.  Records now made available by the London Metropolitan Archives show that workhouses at this time were no more benevolent in regard to other conditions: Charlie was placed on a 'number 4' diet, basically a diet of gruel.  I expect a similarly meagre diet was the only one available to Charlotte 15 years earlier once she entered the workhouse door.  At the new Croydon workhouse in Queens Road it seems women were employed in the laundry, but whether Charlotte, in her advanced state of pregnancy was put to work in the Infirmary laundry, I do not know. 

It would be several weeks before she gave birth, an event recorded on 28 September as:

- Boyt female infant                         - By whose order admitted: Burt        
- Parent: Charlotte                            - Observations on condition: Girl

It must have been an extremely difficult and dispiriting time for Charlotte, as her future after the birth was an uncertain one, save for the sad fact she may have had to live in the workhouse until her child was old enough to be sent to a workhouse school.  She may then have been able to resume her live-in occupation as a servant, unhampered by a child. 

But, on 15 October 1881, she was discharged at her own request "with a female infant."  The Croydon Infirmary Midwife had been impressed by Charlotte, finding her "respectable and well-disposed" and so recommended her as a wet nurse to a Mrs Rickett.  Charlotte was thus spared any further time in the workhouse and able to leave with her baby for a secure situation, at least for the time being.

Thanks to the staff of the Family Studies Section of the Croydon Library, who enabled my research by making available the Croydon Workhouse Admission & Discharge Books, Minute Books and Creed Registers for the relevant period.

References: Article by Daniel Cochlin, Daily Mail Online, 16 September 2008
My Autobiography Charlie Chaplin (1964) Barnes & Noble
The Croydon Workhouse Paula McInnis & Bill Sparkes (KEY Croydon & The Croydon Society)

The Foundling Hospital

The extraordinary history of the Foundling Hospital starts with Captain Thomas Coram, who had no children of his own, but who lobbied for the establishment of a home for the many abandoned children he saw inhabiting the streets on his daily walk from Rotherhithe to the City of London.  He had spent many years living in Nova Scotia, where he made a moderate fortune as a shipbuilder before returning in 1719 to his native London with his American wife, and was incensed at the waste of life, having experienced American labour shortages.  It took nearly 19 years for his efforts to finally bear fruit, but what a legacy and what a history.  The building which housed the children in the nineteenth century is now demolished, but the 1937 building from which the orphanage was administered still exists today as a museum.  The institution in its early days attracted the patronage of two of the most famous artistic names of the eighteenth century - the artist William Hogarth and Georg Frideric Handel, the composer, who performed his Messiah within its walls in order to raise funds.

An estate of 56 acres was purchased in Lamb's Conduit fields in 1739 and a building erected at which, it was announced, that at 8 o'clock on a designated evening in 1741, twenty children would be received who were not suffering from any contagious disease. The persons bringing them would not be asked any questions and each infant should bear a distinguishing token, so the child could be identified in the future.  On this first night of reception, a group of young women approached the Hospital, weeping and carrying bundles which they placed in the appointed place, observed by the governors and the curious in dimmed light.

The hospital later developed a policy of accepting only illegitimate children on the personal application of the mother, for whom the child was a firstborn child and under the age of twelve months.  The only legitimate children admitted were those of soldiers or sailors killed whilst in the service of the country.  The mother could not be a widow and also had to satisfy the Hospital committee of her previous good character. 

Once a child was admitted to the Hospital, a mother could have no further communication with her infant.  The child was immediately baptised in the Hospital's chapel with a new name but the mother was never informed of this name.  All she was given was a certificate containing the registered number of her infant which she could use to make inquiries. She could visit the Hospital and see all the children together, as could any member of the public, but even if she thought she recognised her own child, she was not permitted to speak to them apart from any of the other children or those in charge.  No Thoroughfare (Charles Dickens & Wilkie Collins, 1867) illustrates this situation through its "veiled lady" whose desperation to identify the child she left at the Hospital is poignantly portrayed as her sorrow leads her to accost and bribe a Hospital nurse into telling her the name given to her son and to return twelve years later to observe the children at dinner and persuade an attendant to identify the named child.*

By 1870, Hospital boys were being apprenticed to a trade at age 14 and girls went to work as domestic servants once they turned 15.  The Hospital was responsible for the children until they turned 21 and invited those apprenticed to visit the Hospital once a year at Easter when, if their employer's reports were favourable, they were awarded a sum of money.  Some of the old 'foundlings' still visited their old home in Lamb's Conduit fields even after forty or fifty years of work and consulted the secretary in relation to the best investment for their savings.

The Hospital is also notable historically as a meeting place of painters, due to Hogarth having the enlightened idea of persuading artists to donate paintings as a fundraising measure.  Meetings were then held which attracted wealthy, polite society who made donations for the upkeep of the children.  As there were no art galleries or museums in London at the time, British artists were able to exhibit their work in public for the first time and gain exposure.  These meetings led directly to the foundation of the Royal Academy of Artists by Sir Joshua Reynolds (who also exhibited at the Hospital) in 1768.

Handel, who in 1749 offered a performance of vocal instrumental music to raise funds for the completion of the Hospital chapel, was also instrumental in expanding and maintaining it as a building and institution.  He conducted the first of many performances of his Messiah in the chapel in 1750 and later became a governor.  He also gave annual benefit concerts until his death in 1759.  A strong musical tradition was thus begun at the Hospital where the boys were taught to play musical instruments so they could participate in the Hospital's orchestral performances.  These skills then led to interest in recruitment by the Royal Navy.

Fortunate were the children accepted as 'foundlings.'  The Hospital, from its founding years, was progressive in its medical care for its children, often engaging the services of prestigious physicians and medical professionals who gave their services free of charge.  Smallpox inoculation was mandatory for all children admitted after 1743 and contributed to the survival of its infants from the smallpox scourges which prevailed in London throughout the nineteenth century.  My grandmother was indeed lucky to have come to live in such a place of care and innovation rather than a workhouse where disease and contagion were rife.  At the time, it was the most her unmarried mother could have done for her, but definitely the best choice, although it must have been a heartbreaking one.  By 1891, it was a self-contained subculture of society which had, according to the census records of that year, Thomas Bassett as school steward, a head schoolmaster, an assistant schoolmaster, a drill master, a housekeeper, four school mistresses, two sewing mistresses, a trained nurse, a needlewoman and twelve domestic servants, three of whom doubled as kitchen maids and a housemaid and one of whom was a cook.  The domestic servants were also described as "nurses for children," reflecting the fact that a large proportion of the female working population aged from 16 upwards in the United Kingdom at this time were employed to look after young children.

Despite its dining room being used by Dickens as the model for the "Please sir, I want some more" scene in Oliver Twist, the Hospital was an innovation, particularly as it accommodated the babies of "fallen women"; those who had given birth to illegitimate babies and for whom there was no thought of keeping their child unless they had family to whom they could turn.  As many of these women were from poor backgrounds, their families did not have the capacity to take them in and these children usually ended up living on the streets and turning to crime to support themselves.  The Foundling Hospital was a tremendously important contribution to social change.

Pictured is the staircase formerly in the Boys' quarters of the Hospital, removed to the building which now houses the Foundling Museum.

Source: The Terrible Sights of London & Labours of Love in the midst of them by Thomas Archer    (Author of Strange Work and The Pauper, the Thief & the Convict) London, Stanley Rivers & Co.  1870, reproduced at www.victorianlondon.org

*A link to this story is here: http://www.victorianlondon.org/health/foundlinghospital.htm

The Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswick Square, St.Pancras, London WC1N 1AZ
Phone: 44 20 7841 3600  
www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk
Twitter: @FoundlingMuseum
www.facebook.com/folkatthefoundling                                                                                                                                                                                            

Orphans in the Victorian Era

Knowing now that my grandmother spent her childhood in an orphanage during the Victorian era, my mind was immediately filled with images of the institution in which Oliver Twist had the misfortune to find himself in Charles Dickens's novel of the same name.  A cold, bleak, grim place where the main diet was gruel, strictly rationed.  My research found that before an orphan or "pauper child" arrived at an actual orphanage or "workhouse" they were sent to a privately run "baby farm."  This was a requirement set out in Jonas Hanway's Act of 1767; all pauper children under the age of six from London parishes were to be sent to the countryside at least three miles from London or Westminster.  Poor relief was administered by English parishes until 1834 when the Poor Law Amendment Act was enacted and parishes were combined into "poor unions."  Hanway's Act survived and the new unions continued to send their children to privately run baby farms.
Dickens's Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse to a mother who had been taken there after she was found lying in the street, heavily pregnant.  She had evidently walked some distance and no-one knew her, where she was from or to where she was going.  His mother having died almost immediately after giving birth, Oliver was 'farmed' until, at the age of nine, he was sent to a workhouse to be schooled and taught a trade.  After having the temerity however to ask the formidable Mr Bumble for a second bowl of gruel, he was immediately put up for sale - "a bill was pasted on the outside of the gate offering a reward of five pounds to anybody who would take Oliver Twist off the hands of the parish.  In other words, five pounds and Oliver Twist were offered to any man or woman who wanted an apprentice to any trade, business or calling." (Chapter II, Oliver Twist, first published 1839)

Once children entered a workhouse, they were given schooling for at least three hours a day in reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, history and geography for boys, needlework, knitting and domestic employment for girls.  Such were the areas of instruction at St.Marylebone's Workhouse in the 1840s, a workhouse school where it appears orphans were lucky in the schooling they received as some in authority had questioned whether such children even needed to be taught to read and write. The Poor Law Amendment Act included the principle of "less eligibility" which, it was argued, allowed workhouse children to receive an education of lower quality than that given to children of modest means who lived in the community.

Jonas Hanway, when he formulated the concept of babies being nursed before they entered an orphanage or workhouse, was a governor of the Foundling Hospital, an orphanage at St.Pancras which received babies born to mothers who were unmarried and unable to provide for them and the one which admitted the infant "Edith Irwin".  Edith, perhaps feeling the stigma of being brought up in an orphanage, promoted in Australia the story that she had lived with "an aunt" when she was a child. This "aunt" however, may simply have been the woman to whom she was sent to live before entering the Foundling Hospital, where she was living at the time of the 1891 census, aged nine, with 99 other girls aged from eight to 14.

As can be seen from Oliver's experience at Mr Bumble's workhouse school, discipline was harsh at such places and children were treated as if they were chattels and fodder for the workforce.   A strict routine was enforced in whichever institution children without parents lived; the Foundling Hospital being no exception.  It provided security, but the children were largely isolated and were often left unprepared for the world outside.  But, all things considered, my grandmother was fortunate to have entered this place of residence as an infant.  The Foundling Hospital, which still exists to this day as a museum, was a more benevolent institution than the grim and spare parish workhouses in which many children lived and worked until they were deemed old enough to leave and earn a meagre living with the basic skills taught to them in accordance with their lowly station in life.  It was in fact "the first, vitally important step towards society's recognition of its responsibility to care for all children"* and its social aims survive and exist today in the form of Coram, the UK's first-ever children's charity.

 Sources:  www.workhouses.org.uk
 London Metropolitan Archives (www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/lma)
 *Exhibition note from The Foundling Hospital Museum display
www.coram.org.uk

The Downstairs Cook

There had always been myth surrounding my maternal grandmother; born in London, she arrived in Sydney in 1910 and worked as a governess before marrying a stockman and settling on a property near Warialda in northern New South Wales, or so the family legend held.  She died in 1955, before I was born, so I never knew her - only of her reputation as a rather formidable, matriachal woman who eventually left her husband and moved their two children to the nearby town of Inverell so they could attend high school.  Always puzzled by her ownership of a 1900 edition of Mrs Beeton's Household Management (now passed to me), as it was not clear why a governess would need to refer to such a publication in her occupation, this mystery was finally cleared after I searched the online 1901 UK census records and found "Edith Irwin," aged 19, living in a residence in Streatham, London where she was listed as "Cook, downstairs."

My interest piqued, I searched the 1891 census records, but to no avail; there was no record of her at all.  My mother then gave me the clue, shortly before she died, that unlocked Edith's origins - she was an orphan "who lived with an aunt."  No "aunt" was located by me, but when I typed the word "orphanage" into the search engine, presto!  There she was - a resident of the St Pancras Foundling Hospital, along with many other girls aged from eight to 14.

I had found her, but needed to know more - what was life like for a young orphan girl in late Victorian London?  When and how did she arrive at the Foundling Hospital?  And were there any records relating to her parents - whose names she knew, as they appeared on her marriage certificate.  The items I have inherited from her - an exquisite crystal perfume bottle with an elaborate silver cap, a silver dressing table set with a glorious design of cherubs and angels had always fascinated me; she was clearly a woman who loved beauty.  The fact she had been born into a situation where she sat on the bottom rung of society in London, yet manage to acquire items of beauty, apparent self-sufficiency and self-reliance only made me more curious and determined to discover more about her and the eras in which she lived - the late Victorian and the Edwardian, the end of which coincided with her embarking upon the ship which would bring her to her new home (and a new era) in Australia.

My hunger leads me to commence a fabulous journey of discovery into the period of my grandmother's life which coincides with the elegant and glittering fin de siecle, together with the social, cultural and culinary aspects of daily life.  Please read on...