This is the story of a tragic tale in the Wapping area, of 1,603 adolescent girls between 1835 and 1891, and of a home for working-class education in Leytonstone, there before the familiar stretches of east London houses intercept with railway lines.
In London, we are familiar with the landscape changing around us. Suddenly there is a large gap where once there was a building and your view of the other buildings changes. Or perhaps our absence from an area was for a longer period and a new building exists where there wasn’t one before.
Have you taken a walk or stared out of the bus or train window and wondered what was there before? For example, when I go to the London Metropolitan Archives in Clerkenwell, I can’t help but wonder, “How pleasant was Mount Pleasant to give it this name?” It must have been very different to now.
Where was Wood House?
If you take the train from Wanstead Park to Leytonstone High Road, at around halfway, the track goes across ground where once stood Wood House, a building with a perhaps unexpected role in women’s history. There is a clue a local road name: Woodhouse Road.
The Ordinance Survey map (1872-1890) shows no road but the boundary between the fields of Cannhall Farm and the grounds of Wood House, bordered on the other sides by Harrow Lane (now Road) and Cann Hall Lane (now Road). (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Apart from the house being substantial in size with formal gardens and parkland, the map tells us nothing else about Wood House. However, the Society housed there was known throughout the British Isles and undertook a form of girls’ education very different to modern schooling.
Why did people establish this Society?
“The history of the foundation of this old Society – the parent of many of a somewhat similar character that have since been established – may be of interest at the present time”, a handwritten draft for a pamphlet of 1892 opened. The spin off societies were those that prevented cruelty to women and children. This society was established as the Society for the Prevention of Juvenile Prostitution in 1835, renamed National Society for the Protection of Young Girls in 1865. In 1873, it changed its name again to the Princess Louise Home and the National Society for the Protection of Young Girls when Princess Louise, Marchioness of Lorne and her husband, the Marquis of Lorne became patrons.
“The Object of this Society”, the annual report for 1891 began, “is to save young girls, between the ages of eleven and fifteen, whether orphans, or otherwise, who are, from any circumstance, in danger of becoming abandoned; to educate them, train, feed, clothe, and prepare them for usefulness as domestic servants; to protect them during the most critical period of life, and lead them safe into womanhood;”. It goes on to say how they find suitable work places, ensure they have clothing when they leave, advise them and reward them if they remained in their jobs. They also helped girls travel safely across London.
Where did the idea come from?
The Society began after a tragic incident involving a 14-year-old girl in 1834 in “the Parish of St George in the East”, which is in Wapping. The girl’s mother had died and her father, unable to care for her and work, sent her to live in Norfolk with her grandmother. The girl was now travelling back to her father, having “become dissatisfied”; in searching for her father she “strayed over the Thames into The Borough”, in the dark. Lost and distressed, she began to cry, drawing the attention of an “apparently respectable middle-aged woman”, who offered her lodging with the promise of assistance in finding her father the next day. However, this was a trap - the girl was kidnapped and forced into prostitution; she died three weeks later in hospital. Upon searching, two other girls were found captive in the house along with the woman’s daughter: the three were taken to safety.
In response to this, “concerned men” established a Vigilance Committee in the area. The Secretary, Mr. W. Talbot suggested at a public meeting that they should form the Society for the Prevention of Juvenile Prostitution. A search through the British Newspaper Archives tells us that news of the Society spread. The Limerick Chronicle on 30th May 1835 printed a report of the meeting held in the parish of St George‘s-in-the -East wherein the Society was established, adding that its work was for the whole “metropolis” and that “Every right thinking man must wish their labours successful”.
What happened in the Home?
Admission to the Home required meeting standards, including being “very clean in her person, especially the head” and owning an umbrella. Although a few free places existed at the school, most girls were admitted after having been recommended by someone who already financially supported it and would then pay 4 shillings per week. The maximum capacity was 100 girls.
The Home had a Day School and a Night school, both of which came under the Education Department, meaning they received inspections and crucially, a grant from government. As well as learning to read, write and be numerate, the school taught sewing under a specific sewing teacher and after 1885, laundry. Laundry was a recommendation of the Marquis of Lorne, a patron of the Society and had two benefits: useful education for the girls’ future employment and the potential to earn income for the school.
Laundry and sewing were not strange things to learn in the Home. Girls in schools that received money from the government had to learn sewing after 1862. Laundry was taught to girls in these schools of the age of those at the Princess Louise Home from the 1890s. Girls in similar residential schools learnt laundry.
What did girls think of the Society?
From newspaper reports, it appears that girls did seek the Society’s help. The Champion, a London newspaper, carried a story on 2nd April 1837 of Maria Eagan - aged 14 but described as being “a little girl” - disappeared from her mother’s home. In appealing to the Society for protection, the girl said she had been walking along Commercial Road when she had started to talking to an older girl who had led her to along Brick Lane to Wentworth Street, where another girl took hold of her and locked her in a room where she was then joined by “a monster in human shape” who “ill-used her”, then left her to further “disgusting and brutal treatment”. Her uncle searched the area and a fortnight after her disappearance found her along with around 13 other girls. The pamphlet outlining the Society’s history stated that, “It will be readily understood that there are innumerable cases where girls are danger of going astray owing to the character of their houses, or to the loss, or bad examples of their Parents, and all such cases are eligible for admission.” The frequency of mentions of the society or of juvenile prostitution in newspaper articles suggests this was so. That Maria had appealed to the charity gives us some hope that it was seen favourably.
Letters back to the Home from girls who had gone on to service and printed in annual reports suggest that it was not unpleasant. A girl sent to work in Islington wrote in February 1890 that she would like to recommend two girls to the Home, “knowing the good ingrained by being an inmate, and the kindness shown me”. That only eight of the 1,603 girls between 1835 and 1892 ran away gives hope to the conditions being not too bad (girls in a servant training school in Richmond set fire to the house, twice in a month, to contrast).
Why did it go?
Wood House was given notice of compulsory purchase by the Midland Railway in 1891. Our imaginary train journey above is what happened to Wood House and the grounds. At that point, 1,144 girls had been sent to be servants, 330 had been returned to friends and family, 20 sent to similar institutions around the country, 20 “dismissed for improper conduct”, six had died and one girl emigrated, leaving 74 girls at the end of 1892. Although this was the end of the Home in East London, it was not the end of the Princess Louise Home. A purpose-built house had become vacant in Kingston so they moved.
Was it a Good Thing?
It is hard to say to what extent such a Home was a good idea or not. Providing a safe home and useful education and training for vulnerable girls is kind. However, their education was specifically to prepare them to be good servants in someone’s house and potentially wives and mothers who would be able to manage their homes in a way the middle classes through they should. Kindness with a caveat.
This plot of East London land was responsible for the preparation of many working women. So, next time you are in that area, think of those girls who had to own an umbrella, learning to “earn honest livelihoods and become good and useful members of Society”, in a way deemed suitable by affluent members of society who needed well-trained servants.
Sources
The Princess Louise Home_ National Society for the Protection of Young Girls (1892) [Document] London Metropolitan Archives LMA/4647/D/07/03/001.
The Princess Louise Home of the National Society for the Protection of Young Girls (Instituted 1835) and Home of Rest for Working Girls. The Fifty-Seventh Report of the Committee. (Bishopsgate, E.C.: G. Mitton, 1891) [Document] London Metropolitan Archives LMA/4647/D/07/01/045.
Limerick Chronicle, 30th May 1835.
Woodhouse Home/Princess Louise Home, Wanstead, Essex , http://www.childrenshomes.org.uk/WansteadLouise/ [Retrieved 30/7/20]
The Champion and Weekly Herald, 2nd April 1837.
The Dundee Courier & Argus, 28th March 1893.
Further reading
The British Newspaper Archive, if you wish to read more newspaper article relating to this (or anything else), is at britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk. Your local library service may have a subscription for free access.
Author
My name is Catherine Freeman. I have lived and worked in east London and continuously find myself drawn back. I am a PhD student at the University of Greenwich where I am researching girls’ education and employment in Surrey between 1870 and 1914. I discovered this school as part of my doctoral research.
Twitter: @CatGQFreeman