On reading recently that deployment of 'concierges' is on the rise in the corporate world and that people in full time work too busy to perform their own errands are outsourcing these tasks via Airtasker.com, I could not help wondering if we were perhaps reprising the situation of previous era where the rich delegated their menial tasks to those born into the working class - those who were destined to obtain employment with the rich in "situations" where they worked for life in domestic service as unskilled or semi-skilled servants.
The only difference between a 'service provider' in the nineteenth century and today is that the provider lives in their own home, not cheek by jowl with other servants in cramped quarters under their employer's roof, where they were always at the mercy of their master or mistress's demands.
Today's service provider is usually self-employed and living in their own home, but relies on a well-off person with a need to pay them for a one-off service. Servants of yore at least had security in the knowledge that they would be paid wages and did not have to pay rent. All was well, unless they incurred their employer's displeasure and were dismissed without a 'character' - the vital reference they needed to gain a 'situation' with another household.
The role of a female servant in the Victorian era was potentially one for life from which a woman could escape only if she married or emigrated to Australia or the United States, where better working conditions and an improved life could be obtained. The 1901 census counted 1,330,783 female domestic indoor servants and probably one in three Victorian era women served as "domestics" at some point in their lives, usually between the ages of 15 and 25. The work was demanding, the hours long and irregular and the segrated life often very lonely.*
In the early 19th century, servants were given no regular time off, and had to ask pernmission for even short periods of personal time, which was typically frowned upon by their employers. By the 1880s, servants had gained a half-day off on Sundays, starting after lunch (but only after all their chores were completed) and were generally given one day off per month, starting after breakfast.
By about 1900, many servants could expect an evening off each week, but this concession was only usually available in households with more than one servant so one was still available to attend to their employer.
In short, those in domestic service were at the beck and call of those in positions of wealth, as were the other dominant type of worker of the time - the itinerant, those who shined shoes, played music on the street, were labourers or skilled tradesmen. All were self-employed and reliant on casual work to be given to them by those who had deeper pockets.
Today, there is a new pool of servants for those who are time-poor but flush with cash can call upon; the migrant from a poor country or asylum seeker fleeing persecution from within their native land or those who have suffered retrenchment or who are simply unable to find regular employment for a variety of reasons. Servants are alive and well in the modern era and just as subject to exploitation, under-payment and irregular hours as their predecessors. Modern laws protecting their rights are more plentiful, but it takes a brave person to enforce those rights, as doing so requires time, resilience and financial resources, all in short supply when you have to keep working in the only employment you can obtain in order to simply keep body and soul together.
But, as we all know, under the glittering surface of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras where master/mistress and servant all knew their place, things were not all well. Poverty was growing and social tensiona were rising. Entrenched class inequality gave rise to working men striking for rights. Today, it may well be that history is repeating itself, with an increasingly casualised workforce and chief executives earning salaries many times those of the average worker. Are the living standards of the majority being sacrificed perhaps to protect those of the privileged and powerful few? Economic growth is benefitting some, but not all. And has social mobility slowed to the pace it was prior to the game changer that was World War I?
How Our Ancestors Lived David Hey, Public Record Office (UK) 2002 pp108-9
Showing posts with label Working Class Women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Working Class Women. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Ellen: An Act of Bastardy
Christchurch, Hampshire in the mid-nineteenth century was an impoverished place, a market town whose inhabitants, living largely in small, rented, mud-walled cottages in streets known as Pit or Rotten Row, eked out a meagre living. The location, although on the coast, was a remote one and the most common ways of making a living were through shepherding, fishing, as a tradesman or labouring on a farm. But, these occupations paid hardly enough to allow a worker to support a family, so most inhabitants became regular participants in the illicit trade of smuggling. This last occupation was enabled by the town's proximity to the English Channel and the heathland surrounding it, where contraband was stowed pending the times when detection by customs officers was least likely. Similarly, it was enabled when a flock of sheep crowding a road delayed the passage of those same officers in pursuit of a wagon containing rum, tobacco and silk.
The townspeople had taken to smuggling as a strategy to survive in a harsh and ungiving environment. It seems they were always alive to new ways in which to make a living and when a new manufacturing industry set up shop in Christchurch, it was embraced enthusiastically by its inhabitants
This was the fusee watch chain industry. Commencing in Christchurch in the late eighteenth century, it required nimble fingers and accurate eyesight to rivet its tiny chain links together to produce a chain as fine as horsehair. Young girls gained employment making these chains from the age of 8, in the local factory or working from home, often at a specially extended window sill at the front of their houses, to catch the best light. Families encouraged their young to become watch chain makers; their wages were a valuable addition to family income, and often meant the difference between paying the rent or not.
As a source of work, watch chain making was thus a godsend to the average Christchurch family. Previously, occupations open to its female inhabitants had been flax spinning, knitting silk stockings and plaiting straw for hats; watch chain making was able to be performed by children who were going to school as they could perform it at home on a part time basis. The local workhouses provided some of the child labour employed by the manufacturers, but many of its employees lived at home with their families where the breadwinner had an ill-paid or seasonal occupation. It was ill paid work itself; even by the 1890s the most a worker could expect to receive was only 8s 6 d per week.*
The industry flourished in the early part of the nineteenth and continued until 1899, when Hart's Fusee Factory was closed and the one remaining watch chain maker, Rose Drover, became a nursemaid. The industry declined slowly; my great-great aunt Louisa Boyt, born in 1853 and a watch chain factory employee from an early age, only ceased work as such during the 1890s.
With meagre earnings and little to occupy themselves other than a Nonconformist Chapel, the townspeople of Christchurch were a rowdy lot in general. They drank, swore and regularly got into fights with each other, even (or especially) the womenfolk who often assaulted each other when drunk. Apart from twice-yearly fairs, the main form of entertainment for Christchurch's population was frequenting the taverns and ale houses present in every street, lane and alley of the town. Petty Sessions records show repeat offenders, such as a woman called Keturah Jeffrey who was found guilty of assaulting a 20 year old woman known as Love Ward outside an ale house where she and her friend Ionida had been watching a Mummers^ play in 1853:
Shrove Tuesday was a particular source of rowdiness, when a rabble regularly assembled and threw brickbats, potsherds, glass bottles and other dangerous missiles at the doors of the town's inhabitants. Guy Fawkes Night saw similar behaviour and the Magistrates Court records are full of public order offences as well as those relating to the desertion of families, along with another offence known as bastardy, the act of giving birth to an illegitimate child, and as such, levelled only at women.
Bastardy usually came to the attention of the relevant authorities by the admission of a pregnant, unmarried woman to the local workhouse, there being no hospitals available at this time. The unfortunate woman was questioned by the court as to the identity of the father of her child, who was then pursued by the parish for maintenance for his 'bastard'.
And so it was that Ellen Boyt, unmarried, aged 19 of Christchurch, Hampshire, watch chain maker, was charged with an act of bastardy (or 'misconduct') in 1857. She had given birth to a baby girl she named Charlotte on 26 February of that year in the Christchurch Workhouse before going back to the house of her parents to live with the baby. She could not write her name as she signed her daughter's birth certificate with an 'X.' As Ellen was unmarried, the baby's surname was recorded as "Boyt."
It may have been that Ellen's baby was conceived at the May Fair held in Christchurch. It appears this sort of thing mainly went on in the warmer months, or in stables, when the woman concerned was a single one and did not have access to a marriage bed. One said her 'connection' happened in this way throughout August, "generally in the afternoon."
The father of Ellen's baby was not forced into a shotgun wedding organised by the parish, as had been the case in the previous century when the father of a bastard was taken into custody and guarded while a marriage licence was purchased for the mother of his child and a parson paid to perform their marriage. Ellen stayed living with her poor, but generous parents and younger siblings as well as her baby in the down-at-heel location of Purewell for the next few years, apparently having no continuing relationship with the child's father. If he was a typical Christchurch man, and Ellen told Charlotte he was a 'sawyer', he would have had little money to give to her for their baby's upkeep.
'Connections' were always liable to take place. Young men who were apprentices were not allowed to marry until they were 21. It appears the fathers of bastards were not all callous or irresponsible; they were simply hamstrung by the laws of the time.
But Ellen's sawyer did not come to her rescue. She was to remain living with her family and working as a watch chain maker until she left Christchurch for London with her daughter some time between 1861 and 1863. It was to Islington, in north London that she fetched up, perhaps unsurprisingly, as Islington is adjacent to Clerkenwell, a long established watch making location where the 1861 census recorded 877 manufacturers of clocks and watches. Her migration was no doubt based on economics; she and Charlotte must have been a burden to the family, her father having died prior to the 1861 census. There were four younger children still living at home and her mother was working as a cook and domestic in 1861. Although Louisa and Eliza, the two youngest children aged 9 and 11 were 'scholars', it is likely they too worked as watch chain makers when not at school.
By 1871, Eliza and Louisa, their mother having died, were still living in Purewell as boarders with the Rose family. Hannah and David, their older sister and brother, a watch chain maker and bricklayer respectively in 1861, no longer lived in Christchurch. Hannah, and later Eliza, may have moved to Bournemouth, only five miles from Christchurch which, with its newly built hotels and villas, gave opportunities for employment to former chain makers as servants and chambermaids. Ellen and Charlotte clearly felt themselves to be a burden on their family, but Ellen may also have felt there was little future for Charlotte as a watch chain maker, with its low pay and the fact the work was becoming increasingly less available. In any event, Charlotte went to school; she was eventually able to write reasonably well and as a member of the poorer classes, Ellen may have reasoned that employment as a servant would always be available to her and more available in London, with its growing upper middle class.
And so Ellen and Charlotte joined the mid-19th century exodus of poor, working class women from country England to its capital to try their luck in that teeming metropolis where the streets, if not paved with gold, held better paid opportunities for willing workers than watch chain making in the impoverished, crowded, hand-to-mouth melee that was Christchurch.
Reference: The Christchurch Fusee Chain Gang Sue Newman, Amberley 2010
*The Christchurch Fusee Chain Gang, page 69
^Mummers were troupes of actors who performed seasonal folk plays. These plays often contained plots based on the underlying themes of duality and resurrection. A battle, representing good against evil, often took place between two or more characters. Main characters included a Hero, his chief opponent, a Fool and a quack Doctor. Either the Hero or his opponent (generally the Turkish Knight in southern England) are killed during their battle and the Doctor restores the dead man to life, with much conjecture from minor characters, such Little Devil Doubt and Robin Hood along the way.
The writer is the great granddaughter of Charlotte Boyt.
The townspeople had taken to smuggling as a strategy to survive in a harsh and ungiving environment. It seems they were always alive to new ways in which to make a living and when a new manufacturing industry set up shop in Christchurch, it was embraced enthusiastically by its inhabitants
This was the fusee watch chain industry. Commencing in Christchurch in the late eighteenth century, it required nimble fingers and accurate eyesight to rivet its tiny chain links together to produce a chain as fine as horsehair. Young girls gained employment making these chains from the age of 8, in the local factory or working from home, often at a specially extended window sill at the front of their houses, to catch the best light. Families encouraged their young to become watch chain makers; their wages were a valuable addition to family income, and often meant the difference between paying the rent or not.
As a source of work, watch chain making was thus a godsend to the average Christchurch family. Previously, occupations open to its female inhabitants had been flax spinning, knitting silk stockings and plaiting straw for hats; watch chain making was able to be performed by children who were going to school as they could perform it at home on a part time basis. The local workhouses provided some of the child labour employed by the manufacturers, but many of its employees lived at home with their families where the breadwinner had an ill-paid or seasonal occupation. It was ill paid work itself; even by the 1890s the most a worker could expect to receive was only 8s 6 d per week.*
The industry flourished in the early part of the nineteenth and continued until 1899, when Hart's Fusee Factory was closed and the one remaining watch chain maker, Rose Drover, became a nursemaid. The industry declined slowly; my great-great aunt Louisa Boyt, born in 1853 and a watch chain factory employee from an early age, only ceased work as such during the 1890s.
With meagre earnings and little to occupy themselves other than a Nonconformist Chapel, the townspeople of Christchurch were a rowdy lot in general. They drank, swore and regularly got into fights with each other, even (or especially) the womenfolk who often assaulted each other when drunk. Apart from twice-yearly fairs, the main form of entertainment for Christchurch's population was frequenting the taverns and ale houses present in every street, lane and alley of the town. Petty Sessions records show repeat offenders, such as a woman called Keturah Jeffrey who was found guilty of assaulting a 20 year old woman known as Love Ward outside an ale house where she and her friend Ionida had been watching a Mummers^ play in 1853:
After the Mummers had done...We left...As we were going out Jeffrey struck me on the side of my face and pulled the crown of my bonnet out, took my apron away and kept it. Threw me over in the road, tore the tail of my dress from my body...a young man named Duffett came out of the Halfway House, picked up my things for me...She had a baby on her left arm all the time.
Shrove Tuesday was a particular source of rowdiness, when a rabble regularly assembled and threw brickbats, potsherds, glass bottles and other dangerous missiles at the doors of the town's inhabitants. Guy Fawkes Night saw similar behaviour and the Magistrates Court records are full of public order offences as well as those relating to the desertion of families, along with another offence known as bastardy, the act of giving birth to an illegitimate child, and as such, levelled only at women.
Bastardy usually came to the attention of the relevant authorities by the admission of a pregnant, unmarried woman to the local workhouse, there being no hospitals available at this time. The unfortunate woman was questioned by the court as to the identity of the father of her child, who was then pursued by the parish for maintenance for his 'bastard'.
And so it was that Ellen Boyt, unmarried, aged 19 of Christchurch, Hampshire, watch chain maker, was charged with an act of bastardy (or 'misconduct') in 1857. She had given birth to a baby girl she named Charlotte on 26 February of that year in the Christchurch Workhouse before going back to the house of her parents to live with the baby. She could not write her name as she signed her daughter's birth certificate with an 'X.' As Ellen was unmarried, the baby's surname was recorded as "Boyt."
It may have been that Ellen's baby was conceived at the May Fair held in Christchurch. It appears this sort of thing mainly went on in the warmer months, or in stables, when the woman concerned was a single one and did not have access to a marriage bed. One said her 'connection' happened in this way throughout August, "generally in the afternoon."
The father of Ellen's baby was not forced into a shotgun wedding organised by the parish, as had been the case in the previous century when the father of a bastard was taken into custody and guarded while a marriage licence was purchased for the mother of his child and a parson paid to perform their marriage. Ellen stayed living with her poor, but generous parents and younger siblings as well as her baby in the down-at-heel location of Purewell for the next few years, apparently having no continuing relationship with the child's father. If he was a typical Christchurch man, and Ellen told Charlotte he was a 'sawyer', he would have had little money to give to her for their baby's upkeep.
'Connections' were always liable to take place. Young men who were apprentices were not allowed to marry until they were 21. It appears the fathers of bastards were not all callous or irresponsible; they were simply hamstrung by the laws of the time.
But Ellen's sawyer did not come to her rescue. She was to remain living with her family and working as a watch chain maker until she left Christchurch for London with her daughter some time between 1861 and 1863. It was to Islington, in north London that she fetched up, perhaps unsurprisingly, as Islington is adjacent to Clerkenwell, a long established watch making location where the 1861 census recorded 877 manufacturers of clocks and watches. Her migration was no doubt based on economics; she and Charlotte must have been a burden to the family, her father having died prior to the 1861 census. There were four younger children still living at home and her mother was working as a cook and domestic in 1861. Although Louisa and Eliza, the two youngest children aged 9 and 11 were 'scholars', it is likely they too worked as watch chain makers when not at school.
By 1871, Eliza and Louisa, their mother having died, were still living in Purewell as boarders with the Rose family. Hannah and David, their older sister and brother, a watch chain maker and bricklayer respectively in 1861, no longer lived in Christchurch. Hannah, and later Eliza, may have moved to Bournemouth, only five miles from Christchurch which, with its newly built hotels and villas, gave opportunities for employment to former chain makers as servants and chambermaids. Ellen and Charlotte clearly felt themselves to be a burden on their family, but Ellen may also have felt there was little future for Charlotte as a watch chain maker, with its low pay and the fact the work was becoming increasingly less available. In any event, Charlotte went to school; she was eventually able to write reasonably well and as a member of the poorer classes, Ellen may have reasoned that employment as a servant would always be available to her and more available in London, with its growing upper middle class.
And so Ellen and Charlotte joined the mid-19th century exodus of poor, working class women from country England to its capital to try their luck in that teeming metropolis where the streets, if not paved with gold, held better paid opportunities for willing workers than watch chain making in the impoverished, crowded, hand-to-mouth melee that was Christchurch.
Reference: The Christchurch Fusee Chain Gang Sue Newman, Amberley 2010
*The Christchurch Fusee Chain Gang, page 69
^Mummers were troupes of actors who performed seasonal folk plays. These plays often contained plots based on the underlying themes of duality and resurrection. A battle, representing good against evil, often took place between two or more characters. Main characters included a Hero, his chief opponent, a Fool and a quack Doctor. Either the Hero or his opponent (generally the Turkish Knight in southern England) are killed during their battle and the Doctor restores the dead man to life, with much conjecture from minor characters, such Little Devil Doubt and Robin Hood along the way.
The writer is the great granddaughter of Charlotte Boyt.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
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.
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'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.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
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)
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)
Sunday, July 7, 2013
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...
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...
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