The Blackpool Rescue and Preventative Home for Girls
The featured image of 216 Whitegate Drive is with the kind permission of the Kensington Foundation. The address as given in the newspapers for the St Margaret’s Home for Friendless Girls, though the similar, double fronted house next door at No 214 is also given for the Home’s address. Today, as The Kensington Foundation, No 216 promotes the same principles of charity that the Rescue Home of this title, in its brief history, fulfilled in both desire and deed.
From 1901 to 1919 it was deemed necessary by some, in a philanthropic sense and subject to the social conditions of the time, to consider the young female and offer help and support at a difficult time of life when emotional support was needed, especially when pressured by poverty and hopelessness. Good advice and a caring concern were seen as essential to help those who could be helped away from that sense of hopelessness and uselessness. A practical way of attempting to achieve this goal was the establishment of a home which could be used as a refuge, and the advice and care given there would, it was hoped, help to redirect the lives of those in need to a life considered more of a socially acceptable, and moral status. Statistically it appears that the scheme was successful, but there were then, and are now, those who cannot be helped whether male or female. Blackpool, it was understood was a place where this help was in particular need as its bright lights and reputation attracted many away from the dirt and dreariness of the industrial conditions of the big cities or from the severe restrictions of a strict moral code which had no place for the adventurous spirit and usually, naïve curiosity of youth.
Girls, as considered a special case, since opportunities in the job market were limited, and if sexual attraction is equally strong in both sexes, nevertheless the consequences for the female are more evident and practically more severe. The boys who were found wrongdoing would be sent to an industrial school or to a training ship where the conditions were harsh, the nearest one, the Indefatigable, being moored at Liverpool, but there was no such facility for girls apart from a fine or a prison sentence. As the compiler of this, my great-great-grandfather was a master on the TS (training ship) Wellesley moored on the Tyne and, along with all the disciplinarians in charge, were affectionately known as, in the language of their reluctant wards, ‘bastards’, the opposite, it can be assumed, to the ‘fairy godmothers’, a title that was warranted by the matrons of the Rescue Home for girls. As the successive superintendents, later given the title of matrons, of the Home, and identified as Miss Gardiner, Miss Scudds, Miss Hoyle, Miss Hudson, and Miss Wright, took on the role, many individual cases, as well as taking in foundlings on occasion, are revealed in the newspapers and a few are given here.
The beginnings of the Home in Blackpool can be traced back to October of 1891, when the Secretary of the Church of England Central Society for Providing Homes for Waifs and Strays, wrote to all those areas in which the Society was not represented, with a plea for representatives to assist in their work, and the editor of the Blackpool Gazette and Herald received such a letter. The request was worded, ‘The children it rescues, houses, clothes, feeds, educates, and trains for domestic and industrial pursuits are in all cases those of the very poor; not seldom of the vicious, and all too frequently they are the literally bruised, wounded, and crippled victims of inhuman cruelty.’ It was much easier to train boys into employment, but girls were more of a neglected item in the employment world with little opportunity other than as domestics in service which was considered as naturally their place. It was however a time when the female was muscling its way into an equality with the male, intellectually via the suffragists and physically, and sometimes violently, via the more militant suffragettes. The war of 1914-18 then would show that women could take on the work of men – even though, with complaint, they had to accept the impractically of wearing long dresses while doing so, whether working in jobs from munitions to tram conductresses or in the town’s destructor, which was also a recycling plant. But meanwhile, the young female needed a little specific care and attention from those who were compassionate enough, and able enough, to give it.
There was much scepticism about the viability of creating such a home, as it was considered impossible to lift the ‘fallen’ off the ground and, once down they just had to remain there until punished for being there. But, where the female was concerned, if the establishment of a place of refuge could be promoted more as a ‘preventative’ home, rather than a punishment home, it was hoped that it would gain more public support in considering that a single stumble, rather than an inherent quality of evil-doing by a young woman, could be corrected if there was the facility to do so. The high expectations of the female in society could not be achieved if prevented by poverty, or the ineluctability of severe and adverse circumstances.
While the idea of the Rescue Home in Blackpool had thus been around for some time, and charitable organisations already existed, usually run by the ladies, a Committee was formed in 1899 when a group of ladies went to the home of Councillor Heap to enlist his help and support. As this was forthcoming, and along with Mrs Heap, it continued through the following years, the Home was up and running sometime in 1900 where a house in Clifton Bank on New Road, (not yet identified but perhaps with a back to Clifton street in that block of houses where there are several numbers relating to Clifton Bank), was rented. The first mention of the established Home then is in February of 1901. It was at a time when Socialism was developing as a political principle to counter both the largely religious obligations to look after the needy, and which was politically opposed to the capitalism which it claimed created the needy. The work to date had been carried out by volunteers under the radar of publicity and in connection with the Salvation Army who would take in many of the girls and find them placements.
Once the Home had been established, it was soon proved to be a success while relying on the ‘remarkable patience, extreme firmness as well as sweetness of temper, and not a little business ability to manage and take care of such an establishment’. Indeed, it was considered that Miss Gardiner, as the original superintendent of the Home, possessed those qualities. The need for such attention directed to the youth of the day, and the girls in particular, was expressed by Rev Ethell, vicar of All Saints S. Shore, while ruing the ease with which the youth could fall into idleness and immorality, ‘There is a vast amount of lounging and leering and loafing by the youths of both sexes in Blackpool,’ though this is countered by a correspondent in the Blackpool Times of December 1904 in defence of the youth, that the loafing and lounging does not necessarily represent en bloc the act of soliciting, and who doubts that there is so much ‘soliciting’ between them. In considering the youth of the day, there was indeed a case to answer for establishing such a preventative home for girls, as a special case, in the form it would take at that date.
On the 13th February 1901 a lecture and concert was given by the Rev Binns at the Methodist Free Church Schoolroom on Coronation Street, in aid of the Rescue Home. The financial balance of the Home was in arrears, but it had already done good work in the form of the Ladies’ Committee which looked after it. The Home was still in its early days, and yet there were many girls and young women who had already been grateful to take advantage of it. Drunkenness and disorderliness, was not the sole preserve of the male, but a regular feature of the female in the statistics of the cases dealt with in the courts and at the Home, but the female had its own specific needs away from drunkenness alone.
But the most significant cases were those mismanaged lives, of desperation, or of cries for help, and this was revealed in the early days of the Home’s existence in the August of 1901, when a father, in despair of his 14 year old daughter, Belle Flower, who had three times tried to commit suicide, a criminal offence, by drowning, had brought her up before the court in in order to seek help, the only place seemingly available to him. The help came from Miss Gardiner, the matron of the Home who, along with succeeding matrons, would all have a close relationship with the courts. Miss Gardiner who was present at the court to give the girl support and the court some confidence in the legitimate assurances she could give, revealed that she could get the girl into a home for two years at a cost of between three and five guineas, (£324.90 – £541.60) which the father was able and willing to pay. The girl was thus given in to the custody of Miss Gardiner. In assuming that the costs were paid, and Belle Flower was handed into the further care of Miss Gardiner, it is not known whether the kind and sympathetic and non-judgemental voice of the matron was able to divert the young girl away from her need for self-destruction and find her a suitable home somewhere under care. The cost of keeping a girl with the Home itself was largely borne by the Home and the charity directed towards it.
In the beginning, the Home was thus funded by charitable donations and, on the 27th February of the following year of 1902, a large audience, attended by local dignitaries, enjoyed a concert of song and narrative in the Pavilion of the Winter Gardens specifically in aid of the Rescue and Preventative Home. The Mayor, in his concluding address, praised the good work of the Home and, ‘It proved that Blackpool was not behind in any good work, and the cause was one that should be helped in every possible way.’ There were objections to the seeming extravagance of this concert, aired in the correspondence columns of the Blackpool Times, but these were countered by Louis Cohen the organiser of the concert, who could claim that much of the grandeur in costume and decoration, was gifted or self-made by the ‘townspeople’. It shared a page with a column entitled ‘Are Paupers Pampered’. Indeed those residents of the Workhouse appear to have been given good food and not scraps, and the food of the workmen working there on an extension relished the food that had been refused by the residents but which was better than they could afford themselves, it was alleged, but perhaps with some prejudicial content. But such is fairness, and the concept of injustice and will rarely settle to an evenly graded sediment.
In March of 1902 a donation of 2 guineas (£216.30) was received by the Blackpool Rescue Home, and a similar amount to two other charities, and in July of 1902 there was a garden party held at the Mount, Marton and home of J P Dixon, for funds likewise for the Home. It was a fun day with a Gretna Green race in which the men and women linked arms, raced to a (fictional, of course) Gretna Green and back, having signed the register. There was a bicycle obstacle race for ladies, football kicking, and a tug of war among other innocent fun events. So fun could be had by those who had some spare change in the pocket, or a generous chequebook in the wallet, all in a good cause, and some poor soul, sleeping out on the streets without a home or succumbing to sexual interaction as the only means of achieving attention and status to a confused spirit, alone and unloved, might receive some guidance and a different and more stable placement for self-expression within the complex, and sometimes unforgiving, social world.
Also in July 1902 the case of a Sheffield girl, Jessie Cuthbert Smith, who had run away from home to come to Blackpool to find work, was heard at the Blackpool Police Court. She had been sleeping rough, but had found comfort in male company and had been thrown out of at least one pub by the landlord. Not finding work, she had to resort to theft or committing her body to sexual interaction when such physical commitment was the only way to survive. She had stolen a five stoned diamond ring worth £6 15s (£695.44) which a lady, Miss Mary Moorhouse, on holiday from Bradford, and in evidently better financial circumstances than the young girl, had left in the washrooms upstairs at Lockhart’s dining rooms on Market Street. She had taken it off her finger to wash her hands. Once on the Promenade, she realised she no longer had her ring and, on going back to the dining rooms, she found Jessie Smith and another girl in the washrooms and asked them if they had seen the ring. Both denied it, but Jessie Smith, no doubt not able to conceal a lie, caught the suspicion of the more well to do lady and, it seems, in order to get out of a tricky situation, went in to the WC. Miss Mary Moorhouse however followed her in and saw her put her hand down her stocking, retrieve something and flush it down the WC. Jessie was somehow able to run away, perhaps in panic, but it was not long before she was caught and brought up in the Police Court, where she had admitted taking the ring. It seems now she was naturally distressed and in genuine tears rather than convenient ones. The court learnt that she had come from better circumstances in Sheffield to find prospects in Blackpool, but had fallen in with a bad crowd and had been lured into an immoral life. She was liable to six months imprisonment but, on the condition that she signed herself into the Rescue Home, that option would provide an alternative. Miss Gardiner the superintendent, who was present, was quite willing to take in the girl who, it appears, was of a nature that could be ‘rescued’. Having been bound over for good behaviour for a stipulated two years, she was then released into the care of Miss Gardiner. It is not known, as it is not stated in the report, whether Miss Moorhouse was able to retrieve the ring from the WC, or it became the prize of a fortunate drain cleaner of the future.
Yet another case was recorded in October. This concerned a ‘young woman’ named Fanny Price who had stolen £4 (£412.57) from her roommate. Fanny was 20 years old and was working as a housemaid at 19 Station Road. She shared a room at the address with Lillie Rookes who was engaged as cook. Lillie had put the money away in her purse and locked it in a box, but later found the money missing. It seems there could only be one suspect, and Fanny admitted the theft when confronted by the police. It was revealed that she was the mother of a 12 month old child, though there is no indication of where the child was living but the father, who was giving her 3s 6d (£18.05) a week, was willing to marry her when he reached 21 years of age. She was a girl from a good home in Wellington and her parents, her father a Sunday school teacher, no doubt quite alarmed to learn of her situation, were willing to take her back. In discussion with Miss Gardiner of the Rescue Home, it was agreed that she could enter the Home for twelve months if her parents were unable, for any reason, to take her back, and was remanded until her parents could be contacted on the matter and that a decision could be made.
Also in October, 15 year old Mary Ann Cozens was accused of stealing a watch and chain from the address at which she was staying on Lytham Road. It was revealed that the girl had been a ‘wicked’ girl ever since she had left John’s school in Lytham at 13yrs old, and this was the fourth time she had run away from home. She was bound over to the Rescue Home for a period of two years as Miss Gardiner was willing to take her in. Perhaps she would prove to be a more difficult case than the previous two, though it is not known what happened to her or, indeed, any of the girls after they had left the home.
The 6th December witnessed the death of Miss Fryers, ‘A Leading Temperance Advocateand Church Worker,’ as the obit column of the newspaper was titled. At 73 years old she had been a life time supporter of Christian work as a member of the Wesleyan community, and along with the Rev Balmer in particular, at Adelaide Street and the Mothers Meeting at the Revoe Mission. She was one of those women who had steadfastly served on the Committee at the Rescue Home. In all, she comes across as a tolerant woman, except where Temperance (where she would have had a good ally in both Mr and Mrs Heap, as teetotallers), was concerned, and promoted the strength and perseverance of the female sex in the face of male domination in society.
In April of 1904, the case of a girl called Lucy Ives who was found to be in a drunken and disorderly state comes to Court. She was referred to the Rescue Home but this decision had to be deferred since Miss Gardiner was away for an unreported length of time. She was eventually found a place at the Home and it seems that, since, on the recommendation of Miss Gardiner, once back from her absence, and the subsequent application of the Chief Constable, she was eventually released from the Home by the Court.
By May 1904 the house on New Road had been vacated and a new address at No 146 Whitegate Drive, which, on the 1909 OS map is next to Woodland Grove on the south side, and next to the the relatively newly built Victoria hospital, though there is some doubt as to the accuracy of this address at present as both Nos 214 and 21 also have a candidacy for the address until it can be determined. This property had been purchased at a cost below its market value, but nevertheless it had not yet been paid for in full. To this purpose, an elaborate and well attended, three day bazaar was held in May in the Victoria Hall of the Winter Gardens in order to create funding to defray at least a part of this debt to the Home’s Committee for, to complete the purchase price and furnishing, a further £1,100 (£112,237.07) was needed. It was hoped that at least £500 (£51,016.85) could be raised and weekly sewing circles had been held previously in order to create items for the bazaar. There were many stalls, and many local dignitaries attended and it was opened by the Mayor and his wife Councillor and Mrs Blundell. The speeches praised the good work of the ladies’ Committee in ‘helping their fallen sisters’. It was revealed that 490 cases had been dealt with by the Home since it had opened and the intake extended to Fleetwood and the Fylde and not just concerned with Blackpool. The takings of the first day of the event amounted to £99 1s, (£10,106.4), for the second day, £48 9s 2½d, (£4,944.59) though the total for the third day not known.
In the September of 1904, two cases up before the police Court were pleaded by Miss Gardiner of the Home. 22 year old Marion Spencer and 27 year old Ethel Beaumont had both been fined 10s (£51.01) and costs or 14 days in prison for soliciting, but both were allowed to go to the Rescue Home on the assurances of the superintendent of the home, who could claim success with other previous cases. In November of this year the annual meeting of the Rescue Home was held in the Clarke and Heap’s Station Coffee Palace. Alderman Joseph Heap, a supporter of the Home form the outset and whose wife was the President of the Committee, had attended each meeting to date, could not attend due to illness. Miss Davies, the secretary, regretted the fact that such an institution was needed in Blackpool, but the fact that it was, had been faithfully supported by a good number of people. To date there had been three special meetings held at Red Lees, which is the home of Alderman Heap on Hornby Road, and six interim meetings held at the Home itself on Whitegate Drive. Mr John Doe, the treasurer, presenting the balance sheet, revealed that donations had realised £88 16s 3d (approx. £8,978.97) and other income from collection boxes and meetings amounted to £328 0s 3d (approx. £33,467.05). Expenses of £261 16s 5d (approx. £26,630.80) left a balance of £66 3s 10d (approx. £6,734.22) which had helped to reduce the overall debt to £215 9s 11d (approx. £21,937.25) from last year’s higher amount.
Miss Gardiner in her speech at this at this time, was able to show that the Home had done good work in a busy year. Of the 91 cases undertaken, many girls had had to be kept in the Home longer than usual, most being under 30 years of age, 8 in number being under 14 years. 105 visits had been given to girls in the Police Courts and some of these instances, help had been given without the need to enter the Home. A lot of effort was needed to look after the girls at the Home and, when they arrived, they usually had nothing but a box of rags but, when leaving, were clean and tidy and well clothed.
A Miss Thompson of Manchester, devout no doubt in her intentions but perhaps somewhat prejudicial in her justifications, claimed that while drink, when referring to the excessive consumption of alcohol, was responsible for much despair in society, and of course always will be whether it’s a challenge to the drink by the drinker or the retreat into its arms away from an overburden of pain or responsibilities, and that Great Britain spent £14,000,000 (£1,428,471,795.38) more on drink than ‘the whole of Europe spent on militaries’. There was the necessity for ‘ladies to lend a helping hand to their sisters who were in danger of falling.’ Many cases of female drunkenness took up the time of the courts and were often punished with imprisonment with hard labour or a fine if it could be paid.
The Reverend Hogg then spoke, and emphasised the need for such work as the Home, and he claimed that in the four and a half years he had been in Blackpool, he had seen more cases of evil than he had seen in his 12 years in Preston. It was a prevailing evil that needed a strong counter measure, though it wasn’t only spiritual advice that the reverend could offer since, he confidently claimed to be prepared to go after the married man, who was having an affair with a young girl, and give him a good hiding. The girl had been brought to the Reverend by her parents and he claimed, at least, to have successfully persuaded the girl to give up the affair. The militant aspect of the reverend’s Christianity then made itself evident and, he states that if he had seen the man in the next half hour after seeing the girl and the assurances he gave her, he insinuated that that ‘good hiding’ would have been carried out with full vigour. The evening ended, as these social gatherings often did with music and song, with a solo by a Miss Milligan after the business of the meeting had been concluded.
In September of 1905 as the Rescue Home was high on the list of charitable concerns, a garden party was held at the Athletic Grounds. The Della Rosa band was there with the kind permission of Mr Huddlestone of the Winter Gardens and the Blackpool Ambulance band was also there to entertain. A cricket match between ‘Ladies’ and ‘Gentlemen’ was also arranged to increase the entertainment value. In October of 1906, John Doe, the treasurer of the Home, announced that he had received £16.00 (£1,632.54) from the collections of the local churches. In March of 1907 on the conviction of two women, Maria Mantle and Isabella Stevens, for theft, Mrs Scudds is now described as the matron of the Rescue Home and, as present at the Court, she would be prepared to take Isabella Stevens, a first offender, into the home. Neither girl was from Blackpool but Maria Mantle was a serial offender and had been convicted in several towns previously. It is not known whether Isabella went into the Rescue Home at Blackpool since the magistrates handed the two women over to the Bolton officer, to await their fate, deservedly harsh or lenient.
In April of 1907 it is attributed to the officers and Committee of the Rescue Home for the invitation to the American reverend, Dr Charles Monroe Sheldon to visit the town and to give a lecture on Christian Socialism, which linked the ethics of religion to resolving social issues of poverty and the deprivation that derived from it. Given at the Winter Gardens, the lecture relating to his publication, ‘In His Steps’, which dealt with the subject, he was welcomed to Red Lees the home of Alderman Heap on Hornby Road for the length of his short visit to the town.
At the end of April, a whist drive was held in the Assembly Rooms of the Metropole Hotel. About 140 people were present and, since most were women, the Master of Ceremonies role was taken by one of them and which was considered quite an innovation. It was a first too for a Bridge Drive to be held in the town and it was expected to prove a popular event in the future, such was its success. Donated items of good value were given as prizes. By June 1907 the secretary of the Rescue Home is Mrs Edwards of Devonshire Road and the Hon treasurer is Mrs Doe of Talbot Road, taking over from her husband since his recent demise.
In July of 1907, Dorothy, the regular ladies’ columnist of the Blackpool Times, once more gets ecstatic with the finery of the women present at the garden party at Red Lees on Hornby Road, home of the president of the Rescue Home, Alderman Joseph and Mrs Heap. Funds were of course in aid of the Rescue Home and nearly all the committee members were present along with a good selection of the society of the town.
In August of 1907, Edith Neville, a young woman, was charged with entering a property, described as ‘an enclosed place’ without permission. The resident tenant of the building was surprised to find the young woman in the lavatory of the house at 15 Hornby Road, and who could give her no explanation of why she was there. It turned out that her father lived in a basement at No 11 Hornby Rd but he wanted nothing to do with his daughter. It wasn’t the girl’s first offence and, as such, it might be that she could have been considered a serial lavatory sitter at houses other than her own. Miss Scudds offered to take her into the Rescue Home which would make a better place to live than a basement where she was not wanted, and the magistrates agreed.
In September of 1907 Jane Taylor was up in court accused of stealing a child’s frock and a piece of underclothing from a washing line at the back of No 1 Bonny Street, and which were worth 4s (£20.19). She had taken them, and on other occasions taken other items she had found or stolen, to Mrs Duckworth’s second hand shop at 18 Bonny Street. She had often been sent to the shop by her mother so no questions had been asked by the proprietress. As it wasn’t her first offence, she was put on remand into the care of Miss Scudds until a decision could be made.
In November of 1907 ’Dorothy’ in her regular ‘Ladies’ (‘A Woman’s World and its Musings’) column in the Blackpool Times, gives a paragraph to the Blackpool Rescue and Preventative Home which has ‘done a tremendous amount of good in a very quiet way,’ and one that necessarily works under the radar of publicity in the very nature of its work. Dr Edith Johnson, a staunch supporter of women’s suffrage, as the honorary physician to the Home, in the tireless efforts to create the funding to maintain the Home, had arranged a concert at the Winter Gardens Pavilion with several locally well-known names to provide the entertainment. In the beginnings of cinematography, there was a series of pictures to end the evening, though Dorothy only describes a series of ‘living statues’, as was popular at the time and these in good taste it might be considered were fully clothed females representing the Classical Greek style. The event was well attended by a ‘goodly part of our townspeople, occupying good social positions.’ These were represented at first by the Mayor, Councillor Battersby, and his three daughters which led the columnist into her regular eulogy of dress with an extensive knowledge and vocabulary to suit, of all the women present. The proceeds, which amounted to £80 (£8,075.86) after expenses, were hoped would enable the Home to carry out the work ‘for at least some time without pecuniary embarrassment.’
Personal troubles of course can arrive in many ways and each individual has a way to deal with them often not knowing what way that is. Some are driven to theft to survive and for the girl there is always the last resort of the streets in the isolation from any other means of assistance. Where the personal difficulties of life cannot be resolved with the help of others they have to be lived with and provide the obstacles that have to be overcome or succumbed to. Consumed by her difficulties in life, young Mary Magson from Manchester was in the police court accused of attempted suicide when she had thrown herself into the sea with that intention. She had however failed, either by design or default and was found by a passer-by. She was sat on a bench, wet through and covered in sand in the darkness of the November night at 10.30pm. Mr Taylor the man who was passing by on the promenade opposite Church Street, offered her his coat and contacted the police. An ordinary girl who worked in a hotel in Manchester, there was no indication that she was in trouble in any way. The court learnt, as she had told Mr Taylor that she had no friends and had come to Blackpool on her half day Sunday off to commit suicide. In an evident state of despair, and with a sympathetic court and Chief Constable Derham, it was agreed that Miss Scudds of the Rescue Home who was present, would take the girl in order to readjust her, in a better and more constructive way, to the life that had nearly deserted her.
Later on, at the end of November, ‘Dorothy’ pays a visit to the Home in Whitegate Drive, and describes it as a spacious, double fronted house, standing a little back from the road with a trellised verandah to the front, four bedrooms upstairs in which there were four beds each. Downstairs were a scullery and kitchen and a bedroom and a room which was used as sewing room. There were buildings outside which she thought could be put to good use as the Home evolved. However, her description of the property, rather than describing No 146, is more appropriate to the house at 216 Whitegate Drive at which address the Corporation bought the property, as St Margaret’s Home, a name which was added to the Rescue Home to convert it into a maternity home in 1919.
On her visit, there was only a single inmate besides Miss Scudds, the matron, and this was a young girl who had attempted suicide some weeks earlier (and who would have been the same Mary Magson). Quiet, and incommunicative, the young girl sat sewing, a figure of pathos which inspired Dorothy to reflect upon the lives of others and the different circumstances that dictate all of our lives. Of the many young females who come to the bright lights of Blackpool in the summer, there are many in difficult circumstances without a privilege to their name and are more easily led into temptation with the dire consequences that follow. It is such a necessity to have a Home such as this to attempt to give these people a fresh chance in life with a listening ear and the practical help of finding a situation to improve their lives. While it is not an easy subject to talk about, and there was opposition to the provision of such a facility in the first place, the Home had rescued many from despair with very few failures of the incalcitrant or the recidivist of which there will always be a portion. It would seem that Mary Magson was one of these rescued girls. She had indeed friends to go back to and who were willing to accept her back into their lives. In Dorothy’s words, ‘many have been given a fresh chance, a renewed start, and hope in life with the new experience fresh in their minds to warn them for the future.’ In respect of all those involved in the running of the Home, she prints their names at the end of the column.
In the same month of November 1907, the annual meeting and sale of work was once more held at the Station Coffee Palace, put at the disposal of the Committee by the Heaps. There was a low attendance and the stalls were not overladen with goods and Alderman Heap was once more unavailable due to illness. In Miss Scudds’ spoken report she showed that 81 girls had been at the Home in the last year and another 106 had received temporary assistance and advice. Most of the girls were not bad but just needed guidance and instruction in life skills to ‘become useful servants and self-respecting members of the social fabric’. She was particularly thankful for the kind regard of the Courts and the Chief Constable himself for their sympathetic attitude to the cases that came before them. Many of the girls were visited in prison. The meeting ended with the appreciation of the clerics and, while there was no religious instruction involved in advising the girls, it was nevertheless naturally conducive to the cause of Christianity. From then, after the speeches, there was musical entertainment from the Vernon Quartet and others.
In January of 1909 the annual conference of the Rescue Home was held at the Station Coffee Palace once more. The initial address by the Reverend S. Gamble-Walker naturally took a religious view of the work of the Home in ‘delivering them from evil’ and leading them away from temptation. He spoke of the opposition to the Home by those who did not quite understand what it was about, nor the good work that it was doing. It was these people who needed converting to the good work that the Home was undertaking. Then it was Miss Scudds’ turn to speak and, while there was religious motive to her work, the practical results were the same if just one person could be prevented from living a life of necessary immorality or crime and being brought back into the world of social respect and mutual help. There was success and failure and, within the police courts there were also hopeless cases which could have no solution on their terms. One of the failures was that of Jane Wigglesworth who, in the March of 1909 was at the police court for the third time in less than three weeks, and even Miss Scudds considered her beyond redemption. Even her sister in Fleetwood would not take her in, the consequence being a 10s (approx. £50), fine and costs or fourteen days in prison. The Probation act of 1907 had helped the local authority and the Courts in charging the offenders into the hands of a probation officer, a role which the Home naturally fulfilled and the matrons themselves would now have relevant qualifications. Of the several anonymous examples given by Miss Scudds there had been 80 admitted to the Home and 144 given temporary assistance. Many had been found employment or places in other permanent homes, and some had been returned to parents or family. In the Rev Gamble-Walker’s closing speech, he emphasises the different roles of the sexes in the modern 20th century when he was, ‘hoping very soon to see the dawn of a day when there should be a new moral conscience in this country, and when a woman should not be the only one to suffer, but when the man, who was primarily responsible for a woman’s degradation, would be treated as an outcast.’ Now, in the 21st century, a woman can engage in sexual activity without contact, in the front of her own camera in the privacy of her room, and make all the money in the world and so maintain a safe distance from destitution, pursuing a far easier life than those who have trodden a much more difficult path before her.
The work of the Rescue Home was needed for Alice Elisabeth Frances Pugh who had stolen a ring from her employer. The ring, a diamond and pearl cluster, was valued at £6 10s, (£699.20) and since there was no rescue home in Lytham where the offence took place, the girl was referred to Miss Scudds of Blackpool who agreed to take her in, and that it was considered far better by the court that she should go to a home rather than to a prison.
In March of 1909 the local amateur operatic society put on Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe for both the Ladies Sick Poor Association and the Rescue Home.
There was a change of personnel at the Home in April of 1909 as Mrs Doe had retired after illness and would go to live with her married daughter in Cheshire, having lost her husband who had died recently. Originally her retirement presentation was to be held at Red Lees but Miss Doe was too ill to attend. In its postponement, Dorothy of the Blackpool Times was thrilled to be invited to the informal, ‘At Home,’ party for the Committee members of the Rescue Home at the Home on Whitegate Drive where Mrs Heap whose turn it was to be ill, could not give her celebratory speech and presentation to Mrs Doe. Dorothy, not short of enthusiastically descriptive text, and immediately arriving at the Home, marvelled at ‘the warm sun quickening into fresh life the trees and shrubs in front of the Home as we passed into the daintily sweet and clean Home itself.’ Dr Edith Johnson took on the role of presenting Mrs Doe with the diamond ring, placing it upon her finger and Mrs Doe in thanking the Committee for their graciously accepted gift said it had been an honour to work with the team as they had always been in accord and without any division between them. It was revealed at the event, too that Miss Scudds would be leaving soon, as a post would be coming vacant near her widowed mother. The Committee had recently appointed a Miss Hudson from Scarborough who had been nine years in the Church Army there. Miss Hudson also acted as a probation officer and since the 1907 Act, it was perhaps a useful requirement for the post. She will be assisted by a Mrs Hammersley as a deputy matron and who had been at the Rescue Home in the same town. The party ended with the usual songs and recitals in which many of the ladies appeared naturally quite competent.
In June of the same year two girls were in the police court charged with soliciting two youths, and later on, two older men. One girl who had the otherwise identifiable name of Florence Forde of the Music Halls, but who went by the name of Florence Shaw and Annie Fellows, who had Shortlands as an alias, were tearful in court but, while Annie Fellows was bound over for three months but allowed to go to the Rescue Home until her mother could come and collect her, Florence Forde was seemingly of a bad character and had already been convicted of the same offence in both Manchester and Liverpool. She was fined 40s (£199.77) and costs or a month’s hard labour if in default of payment. The previous day there had been a meeting of the Blackpool and Fylde Women’s Suffrage movement at the Metropole hotel and hosted by Dr Edith Johnson as demand for a greater equality for the nature of women’s status and role in society. On the same day in Bispham a young woman, Mary Jane Hardman, was charged with the manslaughter of her new born baby. It had been found hidden in brown paper by two young boys, on wasteland near Norbreck. She was in service at a respectable home but now with little sympathy for the progress of her future and a life destroyed with the lack of the male responsibility, as social roles of sexual responsibilities were not equally apportioned in society in general. Her case was sent to trial at Manchester and the outcome is not known to this account.
In July, Dorothy is pleased to announce in her column, when she can get away from talking about the fashions at Ascot, the garden party in aid of the Rescue Home and urges all her readers to attend where a large attendance is expected and ‘there are sure’, in the definitive role of the female to be expected to look good, to be ‘many pretty dresses’. It will take place at the Agricultural Show Ground on New Road weather permitting, or postponed to a later date if not.
In July of the same year, two young girls, Ethel Longford and Annie Morley were up before the court accused of importuning, on several occasions in Church Street and sometimes in the company of ladies of known ‘ill repute’. They had also been seen in drinking saloons with men but Chief Superintendent Derham judiciously declined to say, for a reason that he was at first reluctant to reveal, that they had been seen to enter an address with the men. The girls were bound over for three months on the condition that they report to the Rescue Home from time to time.
The reason why the Chief Constable had not been too forthcoming with evidential facts in this case was that Ethel Longford was up in court again in August, once more charged with the same offence of importuning, or soliciting as the words are interchangeable in the context. Along with a woman named Lily Short, she had been seen soliciting on Central Beach and the two had been followed home by police constables and found to have taken their ‘pick ups’ to a house on Fenton Road, a house that had been on the police radar having been watched for some time as a potential ‘disorderly’ house, and the neighbours corroborated the suspicion with the noise and the constant night time comings and goings of cars. On the arrival of the police, at the address, Lily was seen upstairs with a man but the stern cross questioning of defence attorney Mr Callis, in conflict with Chief Constable, secured the fact that they were not seen in an uncompromising position and that he couldn’t prove she didn’t know the men in question. Ethel Longford, who was only seventeen years at the time, had claimed that she was kept by a well-known local man for some time and had been seen out many a time with him, even when as young as 15 years. It was this man, who the Chief Constable had refused to name since there wasn’t enough evidence, and the word of the girl would be worthless as no-one would believe her. On the continuing objections of defence counsel Mr Callis, the case against Ethel Longford was dismissed but the double standards continued to prevail and the un-named man remained un-named to continue his life no doubt in a comfortable social status with an untarnished reputation.
On February 8th of the following year of 1910, Beatrice Walker from Blackpool, was found loitering about the Hutment barracks in Fleetwood ‘without having any visible means of subsistence.’ She was in the company of a soldier and both were found together on the other side of the boundary fence by the duty policeman of the garrison. She had often been seen loitering around the barracks and had been previously warned about it at the police station, when she was sent home to her parents at the time but then, seemingly egged on by others, she had returned once more. The Blackpool magistrate bound her over in the sum of £5 (£499.43) for 12 months and handed her over to Miss Hudson, now matron of the Rescue Home.
At the end of February, another annual sale of work and jumble sale was held at the Station Coffee Palace which was a great success in the amount of goods donated and the purchasing crowds that arrived early doors and to wait outside. On April 15th the ladies of the Rescue Home Committee arranged a mixed concert on behalf of funds for the Home. It was held in the Assembly Rooms of the Conservative Club on Victoria Street.
On the 31st May, Sarah Alice Bradshaw was charged with importuning, and though she denied it, the owners of the house where she was in service would have nothing to do with her because of her revealed behaviour. She was fined 10s (£29.42) and costs as the alternative of going to the Rescue Home was denied by Miss Scudds who, it appears, was still in the post as matron, and who had claimed she could do nothing with the girl. Charges against women continued as the police kept an eye on known offenders who might have encouraged first time offenders. It was largely, in the case of three women up before the court in July, a matter of poverty and the need to have sufficient means to live on and since the labour market continued to be a restricted one for the female. One woman was fined 40s (£197.70) or 14 days hard Labour and two women 20s (£98.85) and a week’s hard labour. Mary Davies was offered the Rescue Home, but since she had a husband and child in Birmingham she declined the opportunity. To avoid prison she perhaps, somehow, paid the fine.
In August, the Rescue Home is praised once again by Dorothy in her defence of the female in relating the story of a young servant girl who had taken poison because she was in ‘great distress.’ What this distress was is not recorded but it must have been quite severe and Dorothy speaks highly of Miss Hudson who was prepared to take in the girl to give her another chance of turning her life around. For, with the human being in any era and of any age it is, ‘practical sympathy that is needed.’ In her column, Dorothy also praises the women who have gone up as passengers in an aeroplane with celebrated Graham-White in the ‘new science’ of aviation recently held in the town. Perhaps a woman might shriek at a mouse but when it comes to being brave they are naturally equal to the task as much as any man she claims, and the coming war years would reveal just that.
‘Nobody’s Woman’ is the title of an article in Pearson’s magazine by Miss Olive Malvery who had spent years investigating the specific hardships of women in the cities, visiting doss houses and rescue homes amongst the ‘lowest of the low’, prompting the question, ‘When is adequate provision going to made for the terrible army of hopeless, homeless, and destitute women, whom nobody wants, whom nobody cares for, whose only crime is poverty?’ There was in progress a social change, strikes from the male workers, demanding better pay and conditions, the Women’s suffrage movement gaining momentum, and the concept of nationalisation mooted in both industry and health at Government level. The idea of how to treat the female however took a second place to the male, and the ordinary girl in society, is expected both by the privileged male and the privileged female in society to be a pure creature but which all too often circumstances would not allow, and came to be overlooked by most but a compassionate few.
In November of 1910 a young girl was up before the police court for stealing three bicycles and selling them on. Her father had claimed that she was becoming a bit unruly and that she had stayed out a couple of nights and he had had stern words with her. On these two occasions it seems that, with another girl she had used the ruse that she had come from Burnley and needed a room for the night, and the lady on whom they had called had allowed the two in for the night. Similarly she had used the ruse at the Rescue Home where Miss Hudson, now the matron, had allowed her to stay for the night. In the court, Miss Hudson accepted the girl into the Rescue Home but then she ran away after a day, though she was soon found and back in court. In this case, Miss Hudson, not giving up on the girl, said she had a home to send the girl to, but on the plea of her mother, she was allowed to stay in her mother’s care at home under the Probationary supervision of Miss Hudson, who appears now to officially have the title of a female Probation Officer.
At the end of November of 1910, the Amateur Operatic Society was presenting a production of the ‘Walls of Jericho’ at the Grand theatre in aid of funds for the Rescue Home and, according to the chatty ‘Dorothy’, the leading lady is to be played by local and talented amateur actress Ethel Stansfield (‘now Mrs Sauze’).
By 1912, the Home had recently changed its name to the St Margaret’s Home for Friendless Girls, and Dorothy, in her column, agrees that it is a good move to change the name. There was concern however in some circles that to give it a name with a ‘St’ in the title would render it more of a religious Home. With this in mind, when the ladies of the Committee had been allowed by Mr Huddlestone of the Winter Gardens to collect for the home on the premises, they carried white covered boxes written with ‘St Margaret’s Home for Friendless Girls’, with the added assurance that it was a non-denominational charity, an advice that was also printed on the boxes. The term ’Rescue Home’ continued to have a stigma attached to it, but most of the girls, indeed of any age, stand a better chance of success of turning around their lives with a friend rather than a prison sentence.
Within the new Insurance Act of 1912, the Government Insurance Commissioners had sanctioned the appointment of Miss Edith Hoyle who, at the time, was the matron of the Home, as Miss Hudson appears to have left, and she continued in that post for about two and a half years until leaving it sometime in 1915 to take up a post elsewhere, to be succeeded, it appears, by Miss Wright, before returning to the town by 1919. During the time she was matron many of the cases she was concerned with, as previous matrons, reached the columns of the local newspapers.
In 1915 James Robinson, wine and spirit merchant of St Ives, Claremont, left an undisclosed amount to be distributed among charities which included the St Margaret’s Home for Friendless Girls, so money kept coming in varying quantities from various sources.
By November 1916, in the restrictions of wartime, charitable organisations suffered but, despite the difficulties, the garden parties and events went on. The event for the St Margaret’s Home was held at Her Majesty’s Opera House as the organisations geared up for the Christmas period.
In 1917, 20 year old Hilda Dixon was accused of stealing several items of £1 (£58.22) worth in total, from her employer where she was a charwoman. Her husband was away with the forces and she received 12s (£34.93) a week separation allowance. She had been in the court before for stealing a gold band and Miss Wright, now matron of the Rescue Home, said she had known the girl for about 18 months and she had never been any trouble and it appears that, in the words of Miss Wright, ‘a little kind, firm control’ was needed rather than a custodial sentence, and this was agreed by the court and she was bound over for twelve months.
In 1918, the annual meeting of the Home was held at the Town Hall. The importance of the female human being to society is implied, and the role of the male in not giving the importance, opportunity and equality to the female of equal intellect, in the opening paragraph of the article in the Blackpool Times of 16th March 1918 states, ‘Of the philanthropic institutions in Blackpool, nothing is more worthy of encouragement than the St Margaret’s Home, Whitegate Drive. This Home does valuable work among lone and friendless girls, and also among the erring girls, who are assisted to return to the path of rectitude.’ Alderman Heap presiding, stressed the importance of the work of the institution and praised the hard work of all those involved to create the good results that had been achieved especially in the recent and added difficulties of the War time. The annual allowance was thus increased from £20 to £25, (£953.68 – £1,192.10). A cheer of approval was given when he claimed that a subscription from every church in the town should be forthcoming, an idea that might imply a practical contribution from the Christian church rather the merely spiritual.
The matron of the Home was now Mrs Wright and who had had her work cut out in the few previous years which referred to the presence of the military in the town, the soldiers in training and the headquarters of the RAMC, which, as the medical arm of the military, and of all the horrible and unthinkable physical and psychological injuries to the soldiers, had to deal with more cases of venereal disease than any other category. This fact, in Blackpool alone, was perhaps reflected in the farmers’ complaints of the large numbers of courting couples flattening their fields of ripening crops in the late summer months and damaging the harvest. It was these war conditions that had ‘attracted many undesirables’ to the town and had increased the work of the Home. The moral restraints upon sexuality were thrown out of the window, as it were, in the licentiousness brought upon by the extended desperation of wartime. As the consequences of sexual union were largely borne by the female it is perhaps not surprising that Miss Harley the honourable secretary of the Home had recently resigned because of the workload.
Regarding the finances, a total of £324.00 (£15,449.65) had been received from church collections, subscriptions and donations and probation grants. After expenses which, among other costs, included interest on the mortgage of the property, had been deducted, there remained a balance of £64.00 (£3,051.78). In presenting her report, the matron, Miss Wright, stated that 80 cases had been dealt with during 1917, 20 of this number of girls had been sent into service, 30 were restored to their parents, 6 returned to friends, 2 were put in Homes, 10 obtained work, and 12 were sent into the Union. The girls were from all levels of society and subject to many different circumstances, including a nine year old girl who had read the ‘Runaway Princess’ and had followed suit and it was the claim of Miss Wright that girls should not read, and thus be influenced by, such ‘trashy literature’.
The work of the Home as described by Miss Wright, the matron, was perhaps not entirely understood by all in society. They were not dealing with evil women but girls who were down on their luck or in difficult circumstances, implying that society had its responsibilities for making them that way in the first place. There were girls that were found in the streets, but others in different circumstances of need and they were dealt with appropriately, each according to their need and many cases reached the newspapers. The Rev Crabtree, of several clerics present, in moving the adoption of he reports, was maybe convinced to declare that he would ensure that a retiring collection plate would be passed round his church this year.
In April of 1918, there is an example of a girl who could not be saved by the Home as 17 year old Margaret Pollard went into a shop on Whitegate Drive and obtained several clothing items claiming that Miss Emily Wright, matron of St Margaret’s Home would be along to pay for them in due course. It was a ruse that didn’t last and, having been found out, she was up before the police court, with several previous convictions for which she received a month’s prison sentence of hard labour. This is one of many cases involving many different aspects of behaviour from thefts to soliciting, vagrancy, homelessness, unwanted pregnancies, many of which were produced by circumstances beyond the control of the individual concerned. So, indeed most could be helped out of these circumstances but there are always those who are lost causes and expect the world to bend to their needs with no ability or desire to change themselves.
Surprisingly perhaps, and for some time now, there had been talks about closing the Home and In November of 1918 the Corporation sought permission from the Local Government Board for £800 to modify and decorate the St Margaret’s Home for the purposes of converting it into a maternity home. In January of 1919 the closing of the Home was discussed and a sub-committee appointed to look into the matter. At the same time it was proposed to appoint a female probation officer to take on the role, as it seems with the understanding that with the closure of the home, probation would provide a substitute. Now with the obligation to provide a municipal maternity home, the premises had been eyed up for that purpose. So on 27th May the Council purchased the Home. It would be expected that the institution would need time to run down and change its operation before closing, but by 16th July it was recorded as ‘defunct’. Though there is a tender for painting the St Margaret’s Home published in the Blackpool Times of 9th August 1919, the address is given as 214 Whitegate Drive and no report of a change of address for the Rescue Home itself before this date has been found to date so it, at present, an anomaly. When it was ‘done and dusted’, Miss Moore, who had experience in Leeds would be appointed as sister-in-charge of the Maternity Home. It is not certain when it ceased to function as a maternity home but by 1939, war conditions created the need for more space which was provided by Glenroyd, a little further up Whitegate Drive, and already in operation as a hospital.
It is also not certain how the functions of the Home continued to operate without premises available, and there is regret expressed that ‘a certain welfare institution had been allowed to collapse.’ It is not until 1929 that premises were once more deemed necessary, and provided at No 28 Milbourne Street. While funding for the conversion of the St Margaret’s Rescue Home was approved and the builders and decorators moved in, the garden parties for funds were no longer a feature of the annual calendar and the insistence of the very real need of a home for ‘friendless girls’ was no longer spoken on the lips of many and had faded from the public consciousness. Mrs Heap the energetic proponent of the Rescue Home died in 1922 and with her demise, another feature of the Home disappeared. Support on all sides seems to have disappeared in an instant.
When the new Home, referred to as the House of Help was acquired on Milbourne Street in May of 1929, and opened, Miss Hoyle, the appointed superintendent, would have the assistance of a matron and a trainee. It was evidently needed for by 9th August of the year, the date that the Home was blessed by the Bishop of the Blackburn, 71 girls had passed through its doors. Many cases continued to be dealt with and statistics for 1931 show that 326 cases had been dealt with and 169 girls had been sheltered at the Home.
Regarding the appointment of a female probation officer in 1919 to deal with boys as well girls, Miss Edith Mary Hoyle, had been only the second woman in the country to become a police inspector. Ever a protector and a chaperone of youth, she was also an organiser of the Girl Guides Group where she was known as Miss Captain Hoyle. Throughout the 1920’s and into the thirties before her retirement due to ill health, the number of probationary or advisory cases that went through her hands were innumerable, many parents relieved to have their children back on the right path, many without parents provided with self-respect and employment, and the unknown number who couldn’t, or wouldn’t be helped. In March of 1932 Miss Hoyle resigned due to ill health. Such was her regard and reputation that she had achieved during the years that she had been the probation officer, that she was lauded as the ‘woman police court missionary’ or regularly, ‘the fairy godmother of boys and girls in the district’. Dorothy the regular female correspondent of the Blackpool Times, in praising Miss Hoyle’s time at the Home, describes her as having shown ‘a pity which is closely allied to love for those who are weak and easily given to fall when tempted.’
The efficiency of the Milbourne Street Home, known as the ‘House of Help’, suffered a little after her departure but its fortunes were turned around once more by Miss Parry who eventually succeeded her and, by 1934, it could be claimed that the House was running as efficiently as Miss Hoyle had run it.
Today in 2024, both Nos 214 and 216 Whitegate Drive are the double fronted houses described by Blackpool Times columnist Dorothy, but No 216 is home to the Kensington Foundation, ‘a Blackpool based charity whose objectives are “to promote the relief of homelessness, poverty, deprivation and distress.” https://www.kensingtonfoundation.com/. So with the closure of the original home in 1919, its conversion into a maternity home at that date, then a period of unknown function, this building reprises its original, charitable role to date, a current embodiment of the warmth and consideration to those in need represented by all those connected with its history.
Notes: The original address of 146 Whitegate Drive quoted in the newspaper is next door but one to the Victoria Hospital on the 1909 OS, map which has the current address of 150-158 Whitegate Drive and is currently the Marton Medical Practice. The Victoria Hospital moved to its present site at Whinney Heys, opening in 1936. Glenroyd Hospital is 164 Whitegate Drive and functions now as the Glenroyd Medical Centre. Nick Moore in his extensive history of Blackpool has No 214 Whitegate Drive as a Post Natal Hospital and a Sick Bay Hospital opened in 1941 (and closed in 1944) as war conditions dictated affairs.
Sources and Acknowledgements.
Much of the information has come from the British Library Newspaper Archive accessed via Findmypast: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/
Probation Act 1907 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1907/17/pdfs/ukpga_19070017_en.pdf
Inflation calculator; all amounts refer to June 2024 as calculated. ‘Approx’ calculations refer to parts of £1 sterling.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator
Nick Moore History of Blackpool:
https://www.visitlytham.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/History-of-Blackpool-Nick-Moore.pdf
Glenroyd Maternity home: https://www.blackpoolteachinghospitals.nhs.uk/about-us/latest-news/vics-1975-maternity-opening-was-bye-bye-baby-glenroyd
WW1 Blackpool and the Fylde During WW1; e-book by Colin Reed published at Smashwords.
The Rise and Fall of the Early Female Balloonists by Colin Reed (unpublished).
