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Housing the ‘decayed members’ of the middle classes: social class and St Scholastica's Retreat, 1861–1901

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2014

CARMEN M. MANGION
CARMEN M. MANGION*
Affiliation:
Birkbeck, University of London.
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Abstract

This study of St Scholastica's Retreat offers an opportunity to examine a charity for the middle classes and the horizontal relationship between middle-class benefactors and recipients that did not appear to stigmatise middle-class recipients of charity. Middle-class inhabitants accessed a mix of resources, from personal resources, kinship relationships, friendship and charitable networks, as part of a ‘mixed economy of welfare’ so often discussed by welfare historians in Britain. Their ‘choices’ were limited but their personal networks enabled them to maintain their middle-class identities. This research not also demonstrates the flexibility of almshouse accommodation but also the meanings inherent in the domestic space that emphasised middle-class respectability.

Loger les «membres déchus» des classes moyennes: classe sociale et maison de retraite sainte scholastique, 1861–1901

Cette étude de la maison de retraite Sainte Scholastique, en Angleterre, offre l'occasion d'examiner un organisme de bienfaisance destiné aux classes moyennes. Il reposait sur un rapport horizontal entre bienfaiteurs et destinataires appartenant les uns comme les autres à la classe moyenne, ce qui permettait une œuvre charitable sans pour autant en stigmatiser les bénéficiaires. Les résidents, membres de la classe moyenne, accédaient ainsi à un éventail de services, qu'il s'agît de ressources personnelles, de relations de parenté, d'amitié ou de réseaux de bienfaisance, dans le cadre d'une «économie mixte de bienfaisance», un système bien souvent objet de discussion pour les historiens de l'aide sociale en Grande-Bretagne. Pour les résidents de cet établissement de retraite, les «choix» étaient limités mais ils conservaient leurs réseaux personnels, ce qui leur permettait de maintenir leur identité d'appartenance à la classe moyenne. Cette recherche démontre non seulement la flexibilité de l'hébergement de type «hospice», mais aussi comment l'espace domestique peut être porteur de signifiants, ici quand la respectabilité de la classe moyenne s'y trouvait soulignée.

Unterkunft für die ‘verfallenen mitglieder’ des bürgertums: soziale klasse und der alterswohnsitz st. scholastica, 1861–1901

Diese Studie des Alterswohnsitzes St. Scholastica eröffnet die Möglichkeit, eine Wohlfahrtseinrichtung für die bürgerlichen Mittelschichten und die horizontale Beziehung zwischen bürgerlichen Stiftern und Begünstigten zu untersuchen, welche die bürgerlichen Wohlfahrtsempfänger nicht stigmatisiert zu haben scheint. Die bürgerlichen Bewohner hatten Zugang zu einer Reihe von Ressourcen, die von persönlichen Ressourcen über Verwandtschaftsbeziehungen und Freundschaften bis hin zu Wohlfahrtsnetzwerken reichten und Teil jener “Wohlfahrtsmischwirtschaft” (mixed economy of welfare), war, die von Wohlfahrtshistorikern in Großbritannien schon so oft diskutiert worden ist. Ihre ‘Auswahlmöglichkeiten’ waren zwar begrenzt, aber ihre persönlichen Netzwerke ermöglichten es ihnen, ihre bürgerliche Identität zu wahren. Diese Forschung demonstriert nicht nur die Flexibilität der Unterbringung im Altenheim, sondern auch die Bedeutung des häuslichen Lebensraums für die Betonung bürgerlicher Ehrbarkeit.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , December 2014 , pp. 373 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

ENDNOTES

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20 Both congregations offered homes for the elderly without payment. For more on the Sisters of Nazareth homes for the aged poor see Mangion, Carmen M., ‘Faith, philanthropy and the aged poor in nineteenth-century England and Wales’, European Review of History 19, 4 (2012), 515–30Google Scholar.

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22 Carmen M. Mangion, ‘London's Catholic almspeople’, in Helen Caffrey, Nigel Goose and Anne Langley eds., New perspectives on philanthropy: the British almshouse 1500–1914 (forthcoming 2015).

23 Another almshouse ‘retreat’ is ‘Provident Retreat’ in Abbott's Langley, Hertfordshire for aged booksellers, their assistants and their widows. Low, The charities of London in 1861, 59–67, 121, 131, 141, 175. There were other similar serials of charities including The shilling guide to the London charities (later renamed The royal guide to the London charities) edited by Herbert Fry.

24 Archives of St Scholastica's Retreat, Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire (hereafter SSR): R. A. Kidd, ‘The Harrison family of Hackney, 1792–1876’ (unpublished typescript), 1–2. Much of what is known about the Harrisons has been pieced together by local historian R. A. Kidd. I am most grateful for his generosity in sharing the fruits of his thorough research.

25 ‘Death of Miss Harrison’, 675–6. St John's accommodated four residents, each with two rooms. There is no extant evidence that Elizabeth was involved in the operation of St John's Hospice. These almshouses were still occupied until around 1971, when the building was demolished.

26 Carter, Brian, ‘Catholic charitable endeavour in London, 1810–1840. Part I’, Recusant History 25, 3 (2001), 487Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., 675. No details of her charitable work outside St Scholastica's Retreat were noted.

28 Pearce, ‘Catholic philanthropy’, 52.

29 This seems similar to the seventeenth-century ‘monumental’ almshouses in the Netherlands. Looijesteijn, ‘Funding and founding private charities’, 214–15.

30 It was likely that St Scholastica's was named after Elizabeth Harrison's sister-in-law, Charlotte Scholastica. SSR, ‘St Scholastica's Retreat: a short historical record compiled by the warden, Major H. Gilmore, 1966’, 1. St Scholastica (480–543) is acknowledged as the founder of the female branch of Benedictine monasticism. Her brother was St Benedict of Nursia, founder of the male Benedictines. Gibson, Henry, Short lives of the saints (London and Leamington, 1896), 172–5Google Scholar.

31 These are translated to ‘a wise man can rule the stars’ and ‘deeds not words’.

32 AAW, Box FN, Letter from Major Gilmore to Stephen Welsh dated 21 October 1965.

33 Howson, Almshouses, 143; Goose and Looijesteijn, ‘Almshouses in England and the Dutch Republic’, 1053.

34 Unfortunately, no photographs have been found of the interior of the residences.

35 The apartments were lit by gas, and heating and cooking done by coal fire.

36 SSR, ‘St Scholastica's Retreat: a short historical record compiled by the warden, Major H. Gilmore, 1966’, 8. St Scholastica's chapel and school opened in 1882.

37 The trustee who handled daily matters was John Haly (1804–1874), Charlotte Scholastica's (née Haly) brother and Robert Harrison's confidential clerk. The remaining trustees were businessman Henry Dolan (1820–1884), stockbroker William Henry Bishop (1827–1908), barrister John Woollett (1821–1898) and solicitor Sylvester Dignam (1831–1892). All were Catholic laymen with professional expertise.

38 SSR, Kidd, ‘The Harrison family’, 7.

39 ‘Death of Miss Harrison’, 675–6.

40 AAW, Box FN, ‘Rights and restrictions of inmates’, 1868, 1.

41 The register lists 186 separate individuals. Of these, 117 were accepted into St Scholastica's, 31 were rejected and 38 withdrew before the vetting process was completed. Eight co-inmates who became inmates were not listed separately in the register. The inmate statistics in this article are derived from a prosopographical database (hereafter SSR Database) created using sources including St Scholastica's Inmates Register (hereafter SSR Register), minutes, correspondence and the decennial census.

42 SSR, ‘St Scholastica's Retreat: a short historical record compiled by the warden, Major H. Gilmore, 1966’, 5, 19. Gilmore was warden from 1965 to 1970. Stipends will be discussed in more detail in the next section.

43 Goose and Basten, ‘Almshouse residency’, 69–70.

44 Anderson, Michael, ‘The social position of the spinster in mid-Victorian Britain’, Journal of Family History 9, 4 (1984), 377–93Google Scholar, here 390; Goose, Nigel, ‘Poverty, old age and gender in nineteenth-century England: the case of Hertfordshire’, Continuity and Change 20, 3 (2005), 351–84Google Scholar.

45 Moore, Ada, ‘The “decayed” gentlewoman: an appeal to England's chivalry’, The Westminster Review CLXII, 4 (1904), 450–62Google Scholar, here 450.

46 Gordon, Eleanor and Nair, Gwyneth, ‘The economic role of middle-class women in Victorian Glasgow’, Women's History Review 9, 4 (2000), 791–814Google Scholar; Vicinus, Martha, Independent women: work and community for single women, 1850–1920 (London, 1985)Google Scholar.

47 ‘St Scholastica's Retreat, Clapton, and the adjoining new mission of the Fathers of Charity’, The Tablet, 27 September 1862, 613; The Catholic Directory, 1862 to 1868.

48 Goose and Looijesteijn, ‘Almshouses in England and the Dutch Republic’, 8. For a table of occupations see Goose and Basten, ‘Almshouse residency’, 73.

49 Patrick Joyce in his history of Morden College contends that social status was maintained through the exclusiveness of charitable institutions for the middle classes. Joyce, Patronage and poverty in merchant society, 23.

50 SSR Database.

51 AAW, Box FN, ‘Rights and restrictions of inmates’.

52 AAW, Box AIE, ‘Correspondence copy book 1873–1874’, letter dated 27 September 1873 from probably John Haly to Mr Corney, 30.

53 SSR, SSR Register, entry 45.

54 Simon Gunn and Rachel Bell in Middle classes. Their rise and sprawl (2002), 53, 71–3 attest to the significance of respectability to middle-class identity. See also Cannadine, David, Class in Britain (London, 1998), 91–3Google Scholar.

55 Great Britain at this time would have included England, Wales and Scotland. Ireland existed as a separate realm.

56 Bryson, John R., McGuiness, Mark and Ford, Robert G., ‘Chasing a “loose and baggy monster”. Almshouses and the geography of charity’, Area 34 (2002), 48–58Google Scholar, here 51; Goose and Looijesteijn, ‘Almshouses in England and the Dutch Republic’, 1057. That said, the preliminary analysis of the FACHRS data indicates that nineteenth-century almshouse residents were probably not local people. Goose and Basten, ‘Almshouse residency’, 72.

57 AAW, Box AIE, Correspondence copy book 1873–1874: letter from John Haly to Dr S. J. Haly, dated 8 August 1874, 155. It is curious that Haly indicates ‘England’ in this letter as the published ‘Rights and restrictions of inmates’ clearly states ‘Great Britain’.

58 Belchem, John, ‘Class, creed and country: the Irish middle class in Victorian Liverpool’, in Swift, Roger and Gilley, Sheridan eds., The Irish in Victorian Britain. The local dimension (Dublin, 1999), 211Google Scholar.

59 Morris, Class, sect and party, 105–6. Also, Morris, R. J., Men, women and property in England, 1780–1870. A social and economic history of family strategies amongst the Leeds middle classes (Cambridge, 2005), 58–9Google Scholar; Lester, V. Markham, Victorian insolvency. Bankruptcy, imprisonment for debt, and company winding-up in nineteenth-century England (Oxford, 1995), 163–7, 299Google Scholar, Bourne, J. M., Patronage and society in nineteenth-century England (London, 1986), 89–90Google Scholar.

60 SSR, SSR Register, entry 83.

61 SSR, SSR Register, entry 168.

62 SSR, SSR Register, entry 130.

63 AAW, Box FN, ‘Rights and restrictions of inmates’, 1. It is difficult to calculate an average income necessary to maintain a middle-class lifestyle. Lawyers, doctors and top civil servants spent approximately £100 per annum to rent homes commensurate to their status (10-room houses). With an average annuity of £39, Retreat inhabitants could not afford this quality of housing. Muthesius, Stefan, The English terraced house (New Haven and London, 1992), 44Google Scholar. See also Long, Helen C., The Edwardian house. The middle-class home in Britain, 1880–1914 (Manchester and New York, 1993), 8–10Google Scholar.

64 AAW, Box FN, ‘Miss Harrison contemplated’. Harrison's investment securities did not achieve the interest rates she had anticipated, thus investment revenues were reduced.

65 SSR, ‘St Scholastica's Retreat: a short historical record’, 14.

66 AAW, Box FN, ‘Miss Harrison contemplated’. The Charity Commission is a government body, established by the Charitable Trusts Act 1853 which registered and regulated charities in England and Wales.

67 Of the residents, 24 cobbled together their annuity from multiple sources.

68 Thane, ‘Old people and their families in the English past’, 134.

69 The Universal Beneficent Society was founded in 1857 by Charles Dickens and other philanthropists. Its aim was to ‘assist all those in need with no distinction of class or creed’. In 1851, spinster Theresa Molineux left a bequest to the Aged Poor Society setting up the Molineux Trust and Pension Funds, which was used to fund the building of St Joseph's Almshouses in Hammersmith and also to provide eligible Catholic applicants a pension of £20 per annum. See Mangion, ‘London's Catholic almspeople’.

70 SSR, SSR Register, entry 53.

71 SSR, SSR Register, entry 194.

72 SSR, SSR Register, entry 78.

73 SSR, SSR Register, entry 127.

74 SSR Database.

75 It was against the rules to have two co-inmates, but Elizabeth Harrison approved this exception (amongst others). AAW, Box AHR, Grant book, 1891–1899; AAW, Box AHY Minute book, 19 November 1890.

76 SSR Database.

77 SSR, SSR Register, entry 107.

78 SSR, SSR Register, entry 22.

79 AAW, Box FN, ‘Rights and restrictions of inmates’, 1. The warden's wife was expected to do some basic nursing but this was not meant to be done on a routine basis.

80 SSR, SSR Register, entry 44.

81 SSR, SSR Register, entries 145 and 169. See Mangion, ‘Faith, philanthropy and the aged poor’.

82 SSR, SSR Register, entry 93. For more on St Mary's Hospital, see Mangion, Carmen M., ‘“Meeting a well-known want”: Catholic specialist hospitals for long-term medical care in late nineteenth-century England and Wales’, in Bonfield, Christopher, Reinarz, Jonathan and Huguet-Termes, Teresa eds., Hospitals and communities, 1100–1960 (Oxford, 2013), 239–62Google Scholar.

83 SSR, SSR Register, entry 32.

84 Prochaska, F. K., ‘Philanthropy’, in Thompson, F. M. L. ed., The Cambridge social history of Britain 1750–1950, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1990), 375Google Scholar.

85 There are many important works on this topic including Joanna Innes, ‘The “mixed economy of welfare” in early modern England: assessments of the options from Hale to Malthus (c.1683–1803)’, in Daunton, Charity, self-interest and welfare, 139–80; Goose, ‘The English almshouse and the mixed economy of welfare’; Lewis, Jane, ‘Family provision of health and welfare in the mixed economy of care in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, Social History of Medicine 8, 1 (1995), 1–16Google Scholar; King, Steven and Tomkins, Alannah eds., The poor in England, 1700–1850. An economy of makeshifts (Manchester and New York, 2003), 8–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 SSR, SSR Register, entry 45.

87 Thompson, F. M. L., The rise of respectable society: A social history of Victorian Britain, 1830–1900 (London, 1988)Google Scholar; Burnett, John, A social history of housing, 1815–1970 (London, 1978)Google Scholar, 94. Burnett argued that ‘For that part of the population whose economic resources allowed it to exercise some real choice as to how and where it lived, the home, and its physical expression, the house, were the central institutions of civilized life.’

88 The Catholic Directory, 1864, 233.

89 Charles Booth Online Archive; http://booth.lse.ac.uk/cgi-bin/do.pl?sub=view_booth_and_barth&args=534242,186101,1,large,0 (accessed 2 August 2014). The maps of London poverty are part of Charles Booth's inquiry into life and labour in London (1886–1903). Pink was defined as ‘Fairly comfortable. Good ordinary earnings.’; red was defined as ‘Middle class. Well-to-do.’

90 Burnett, A social history of housing, 108. For more on the division and use of rooms with respect to family and servant relationships see Hamlett, Jane, Material relations. Domestic interiors and middle-class families in England, 1850–1910 (Manchester, 2010), 40–62Google Scholar.

91 AAW, Minute book, 20 December 1892.

92 Trainor, Richard, ‘The middle class’, in Martin, Daunton ed., The Cambridge urban history of Britain, III, 1840–1950 (Cambridge, 2000), 673–713Google Scholar, here 693.

93 AAW, Box FN, ‘Rights and restrictions of inmates’. Iron bedsteads were a cheap and sanitary option for institutions from the 1830s, but became, with improved designs and the promotion of their hygienic properties (particularly the discouragement of bedbugs and other vermin) essential in middle-class bedrooms. I am indebted to Jane Hamlett for pointing me to Neiswander's, Judith A., The cosmopolitan interior. Liberalism and the British home, 1870–1914 (New Haven and London, 2008), 64–6Google Scholar.

94 AAW, Box AHY, Minute book, 1890–1913, 9 July 1895, 64.

95 Cohen, W. A., and Johnson, R., Filth: dirt, disgust, and modern life (Minneapolis, 2005), 185Google Scholar.

96 The source of these types of communications is not noted; it is likely that neighbours made the porter or trustees aware of any digressions from rule V.

97 AAW, Minute book, 20 December 1892.

98 AAW, Box AIE, ‘Correspondence copy book 1873–1874’, letter dated 26 February 1873 from probably John Haly to A. F. Sprague, warden, 17.

99 AAW, Box FN, ‘Rights and restrictions of inmates’.

100 Burnett, A social history of housing, 96.

101 SSR, ‘St Scholastica's Retreat: a short historical record compiled by the warden, Major H. Gilmore, 1966’, 5, 19.

102 Monteiro, Mariana, As David and the sibyls say (London, 1905)Google Scholar, xiii.

103 SSR, R. A. Kidd, ‘The trustees of St Scholastica's Retreat’.

104 Prochaska, ‘Philanthropy’, 375. Joyce argues similarly in his study of Morden College. Joyce, Patronage and poverty in merchant society, 25.

105 The economic dependence of St Scholastica's inhabitants reflects some continuities with the medieval and early modern understandings of the ‘shame-faced poor’, where individuals unable to uphold their social status independently were recipients of charity; their deservedness was rarely questioned given the need to maintain the social order and individual respect. Similar to this was the concept of ‘honour’ to be found in residing in Dutch almshouses. Geremek, Bronislaw, Poverty. A history (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA, 1994), 39–40Google Scholar; Daunton, Charity, self-interest and welfare, 11; Brian Pullan, ‘Charity and poor relief in early modern Italy’, in Daunton, Charity, self-interest and welfare, 66–7; Rexroth, Frank, Deviance and power in late medieval London (London, 2007), 223–65Google Scholar. Margot C. Finn has noted how in many instances indebtedness was seen as a ‘misfortune’, thus absolving the debtor of responsibility or negative stigma. See her The character of credit: personal debt in English culture, 1740–1914 (Cambridge, 2003), 128Google Scholar. For an understanding of Dutch honour, see Looijesteijn, Henk and van Leeuwen, Marco H. D., ‘Founding large charities and community building in the Dutch Republic, c. 1600–1800’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 62, 1 (2014), 24–6Google Scholar.

106 Joyce, Patronage and poverty in merchant society, 23.