Mappy Monday - London institutions 1911

Leaving the workhouse 1883

As part of the day job, I have been looking at the census statistics for institutions such as workhouses, barracks, prisons and so on. As I looked though the tables of the 1911 Census Report, it struck me that several London institutions were not in London at all, but in the adjacent counties. Even withing London, some were outside the actual parishes to which they belonged. For example, the St George Hanover Square workhouse was in Fulham.

The reason for this is obvious, when you think about it. London was full. From the early 19th century, if a London parish needed to build a workhouse, or even bury its dead, there was no space in the centre of town, so they had to look for available land further afield. As London grew, and with it the demand for workhouses, hospitals and more, these institutions were built further and further afield.

I decided to plot the positions of the London institutions that were outside London altogether, using Google Maps and the results were rather interesting. I also colour-coded them, red for workhouses and homes, dark blue for schools, light blue for asylums and green for hospitals and convalescent homes. I also added some details about each one, including the number of staff and inmates. The locations are approximate, although I may be able to refine them as I find out more about each of them. Meanwhile, they give a reasonable indication of how far London habitually removed some of its poor and needy.

Furthest afield are sanatoria and convalescent homes, some of them is seaside resorts, but by far the greatest number of displaced Londoners were in asylums. Nowadays we would call them mental hospitals, but in 1911 terms like 'Lunatic Asylum' were considered perfectly acceptable; Several of them had more than 2000 inmates.

'London' in this case is the Administrative County of London, created with the formation of the London County Council in 1888. It comprised the Mettropolitan Boroughs of Battersea, Bermondsey, Bethnal Green, Camberwell, Chelsea, Deptford, Finsbury, Fulham, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith, Hampstead, Holborn, Islington, Kensington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Paddington, Poplar, St Marylebone, St Pancras, Shoreditch, Southwark, Stepney, Stoke Newington, Wandsworth, Westminster Woolwich and the City of London.

This 1896 map gives some idea of the area covered, although it also includes parliamentary constituencies, which have slightly different boundaries - the main difference being that West Ham is not part of the London County Council area. 

So you may find that members of your family you have always considered to be Londoners are a long way from home on census night. Most, though not all, of these places were Poor Law institutions of some kind, so the place to look for more information and links is of course Peter Higginbotham's The Workhouse site. Many related records will be found at the London Metropolitan Archives, and some are even online at Ancestry.co.uk

Isles of Wonder - some connections

I don't know what other countries made of Friday's Olympic opening ceremony, but we Brits loved it (well, most of us did). It was full of surprises, it was funny, crazy, and very British. Naturally I was pleased that there was so much history in it, and I liked it when the tone was set by Ken Branagh (from Northern Ireland, but has an English accent) quoted Shakespeare (English, but set an awful lot of his plays in Italy) while dressed as Isambard Kingdom Brunel (a Great British Icon who was half French).



From The Girl's Own Paper 1894

 The ceremony celebrated, among other things, our National Health Service, of which we are very proud. In particular it featured Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) the world-famous hospital for sick children. Founded in 1852 is almost a century older than the National Health Service which dates only from 1948. It was the first hospital in the English-speaking world devoted entirely to the treatment of children, and its history is well-recorded, not least in its own museum and archive (open by appointment only) and The complete history of GOSH on its own website. Since 1929 it has benefited from the copyright of J M Barrie's 'Peter Pan', published in 1911 in book form and in 1926 as a play, donated to the hospital by the author during his lifetime.

According to the Hospital Records Database most of Great Ormond Street's records are held in its own Museum and archives services with a small number at the London Metropolitan Archives. However, for family historians the most useful records are the Admission and Discharge Registers which are online as part of the excellent Historic Hospitals Admission Records Project which also includes the records of the Evelina Hospital, the Alexandra Hospital for Children with Hip Disease (both in London), and Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow. This database is well worth searching, and if you register you can use a number of advanced search features. Best of all, it is completely FREE!