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.

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...