A mariner's widow: almshouses 2

From at least 1871, Ann Caithness was residing in an almshouse at Totton. There were four of these dwellings, each inhabited by a respectable elderly person, living alone. Ann’s neighbours in 1881 were two seamstresses and a nurse; Ann, at 85, was the oldest.

The almshouses were in Commercial Road, Totton, as seen in the map below:

Almshouses in Commercial Road, Totton 

As the almshouses haven’t survived and so far no pictures of them have been found we have to rely on descriptions, drawings and photographs of other similar structures. Almshouses were usually built in a row or a traditional three sided square, with a central courtyard. This gave a sense of safety and security without isolating the residents from the outside world; as pensioners they remained part of the community they had lived among for many years.

The term ‘almshouse’ is not synonymous with ‘workhouse’. It’s apparent from online offerings that considerable confusion exists on this matter. The basic distinction between the two is that an almshouse was privately funded as a charitable bequest whereas a workhouse was financed by public taxation.

Almshouse, Winchester

An almshouse was a lovely place to live, a workhouse was not. An almshouse was provided as sheltered housing for deserving aged individuals specifically designated by the benefactor and administered by a trust. A workhouse was set up by the Parish or, prior to the passing of the Poor Law Amendment in 1834, by the Union, and was the last refuge of the desperate.

Almshouses –  one of various terms including bedehouse, maison dieu, hospital - have an ancient history going back to monastic times in the 10^th century. After the dissolution of the monasteries many of the medieval hospitals disappeared but others were rebuilt and run as secular accommodation for those in need.

Perhaps the best example in literature is Hiram’s Hospital as described in Anthony Trollope’s novel, The Warden:

In the year 1434 there died at Barchester one John Hiram, who had made money in the town as a wool-stapler, and in his will he left the house in which he died and certain meadows and closes near the town …for the support of twelve superannuated wool-carders, all of whom should have been born and bred and spent their days in Barchester; he also appointed that an alms-house should be built for their abode … the twelve old men received a comfortable lodging and a small stipend under the will of John Hiram.….

There has been some debate as to whether Trollope based Hiram’s Hospital on St Nicholas’s, Salisbury, or on St Cross in Winchester.

St Nicholas's, Salisbury

Pawnbrokers' Almshouses
Forest Gate

Sometimes almshouses would be provided for people of a particular occupation. Examples: the Free Watermen and Lightermen’s Almshouses in Penge, Kent, built in 1840-1841 for retired company freemen and their widows; the Pawnbrokers’ Almshouses, Forest Gate, built in 1850.

The Free Watermen and Lightermen's Almshouses, Penge

In the volume of the Victoria County History pertaining to Eling and Totton it’s mentioned that in 1786 parliamentary returns refer to ‘a house, then vested in the churchwardens, given to the poor by a Mrs Moody. It was used as almshouses for four widows until 1860, when the houses were burnt down.’ Interestingly, the first reference to the almshouses at Totton is dated 1861 and is about fire insurance, a concern perhaps prompted by the disaster which overtook Mrs Moody’s almshouses.

A typical row of 19th c almshouses

  

Almshouses at Chipping Norton

Acknowledgement:

Tom Sheldon

Child Emigrants to the Cape Colony Part 1 cont

Naval battle

After the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815 and throughout the Regency and early Victorian eras there was a spectacular increase in Britain’s population, especially in the cities. The urban crime rate rose to new heights; gaols were full. A wide chasm existed between rich and poor. The spectre of the workhouse hovered over the poorer echelons.

Conditions in the metropolis of London (with an estimated 1.1 million inhabitants in 1797) led to thousands of vagrant children living on the streets and turning to theft or other criminal activities for survival. There were also juveniles who, as paupers, were under the guardianship of the Parish. Many of them were put out to work, ostensibly as apprentices but actually as unskilled child labourers. The system was open to abuse. 

Much is heard of the wickedness of the Regency years but there were individuals who had a social conscience and made efforts to improve the lot of the underprivileged. Influenced by the missionary and evangelical movements, they believed that ‘philanthropy was an expression of piety, benevolence a moral obligation’. One such philanthropist was Edward Pelham Brenton, the founder of the Children’s Friend Society.

Captain Brenton

Brenton, a Captain in the Royal Navy, retired on half-pay at the end of the War. Though offered another command, he had no wish to serve during the Peace, and dedicated his life  to improving the situation of the working classes, particularly the children of the poor. 

In 1829 the notorious Hibner trial made a sensation in the British press. The story had a profound effect on Brenton. In the Memoir written by his brother, Sir Jahleel Brenton, Captain Brenton’s own words are quoted:   

A woman named Hibner, a tambour worker … had murdered two of her little female apprentices. These unhappy children were poor orphan parish girls of St Pancras. She had six of them bound to her and the testimony of the survivors, corroborated by indisputable evidence, exposed to the public a scene of tyranny and cruelty … I immediately made myself acquainted with the process of binding parish apprentices, the motives of the guardians of the poor in getting rid of them, as well as those of the generality of tradesmen who apply for them.

 [The trial proceedings can be accessed at www.oldbaileyonline.org under the keyword Hibner] 

Brenton, with the support of like-minded patrons, began his crusade by founding the Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy in 1830, and establishing an ‘asylum’ at West Ham Abbey near Bow in Essex, where twenty boys of ‘a forlorn and neglected condition’ were received. In 1833, this institution was relocated to Hackney Wick and named the Brenton Juvenile Asylum. The Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy was given a more positive title - The Children’s Friend Society (CFS).

WORKHOUSES AND PRISONS

Brenton was a man of strong religious beliefs who expressed his views forthrightly Describing himself as ‘the uncompromising enemy’ of the workhouse system, he pointed out its many flaws. Workhouses were ‘receptacles of misery …fraught with the very germ and essence of all moral depravity …’ Those who, though not ‘vicious’, were driven by circumstances to take refuge in the workhouse, were crowded together with the most depraved and were inevitably influenced for the worse. The workhouses too often relieved the poor with money, irresponsible parents spending this on gin and leaving their children to beg.

Equally critical of prisons, Brenton wrote: 

Coldbath Fields Prison

'The House of Correction in Coldbath Fields has within its walls some hundreds of children and young people, whose offences are mostly trivial, and grew out of want and idleness.

Many poor little boys are shut up among thieves for robbing orchards and fruit gardens’. Conversely, ‘at our little Asylum at West Ham our boys are reclaimed and happy, without police, or iron bar, or flogging'.

However, it was clear that vagrant children were frequently enticed into organized crime: 

... in the neighbourhood of St Giles … a very large house was let out at 4d per night to pickpockets and thieves, chiefly from 10-16 years of age, who were seen every morning sallying forth in groups of three and four, having previously arranged their routes for the day. 

Oliver Twist asks for More

Is this scenario sounding familiar? Of course it is: shades of the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Bill Sykes and company. Charles Dickens began writing his novel Oliver Twist seven years after the founding of the CFS.

To be continued