The story of two Institutions for orphaned and destitute children in Kilburn

A hard and brutal life
What happened to children in Victorian London who were orphaned, or whose parents couldn’t look after them? In the absence of any state care or benefit, many families had to find their own solution to this problem. As a last resort there was the Workhouse, but admission was not automatic, and came with its own strict set of rules and restrictions.

Kilburn had several establishments that took in orphans, destitute and abandoned children. These Homes were financed by donations and bequests; when a donor withdrew their help, the resulting shortfall in funds had to be replaced by finding new benefactors. A Home had to appeal to the public. If this didn’t happen it closed.

In this story we look at two Homes for girls that began life in the same street, Cambridge Road, (the northern stretch was later re-named Cambridge Avenue). They occupied converted houses that were adequate but not ideal for the purpose. Today, all the houses have been demolished and redeveloped. 

Cambridge Avenue looking towards Kilburn (No.55 was beyond the two matching pavement lamps)

In the late 1860s, Miss Dorette Charlotte Mittendorff opened her Home for Destitute Children at No.65. It was also described as a Refuge, and later, a Kindergarten.

Miss Ann Cole opened the Mount Hermon Orphanage at No.55 around the same time, but then expanded to occupy Nos.47 and 49. Always short of funds, the ladies struggled to maintain the children they took in, and requests for entry always exceeded the number of places available. Both Homes relied on donations, fundraising and legacies, as and when they materialized, to provide the cash required. 

The Homes provided a basic education and trained the girls for domestic service, finding them jobs when they reached the age of 15 or 16. A reliable live in servant was something much prized by Victorian householders. The Kilburn censuses show most of the girls were born in London, but Germany, France and even Australia also appear. Eventually, both Homes left for new premises in the Home Counties.

The Home for Destitute and Deserted Children
Dorette Mittendorff was born in 1826 in Hanover Germany and came to England around 1850. She worked as a governess but after a long and painful illness following a bad accident, she decided to devote her energies to ‘some special Christian work’ and opened her Home at No.65 Cambridge Road. In addition to orphans and girls whose families couldn’t afford to care for them, she was unusual in taking in destitute and deserted girls. 

In 1871, Dorette wrote a brief article for ‘The Christian’, where she told the readers that her material problems were solved by trusting in her faith. However, as funds and donations were unreliable, teachers agreed to be paid ‘when the Lord sends the money.’ There was at least one substantial bequest: in 1873, £1,000 (today worth about £91,000) from Jane Margaret Kirsop of Durham, who Dorette had corresponded with but never met. The downside to receiving this large sum was the number of donations to the Home declined, and the now ‘wealthy’ Dorette was approached to contribute to other projects. In August 1871 there were 21 girls in the Home, the census earlier that year listing a 7-month baby among the orphans. The need to find new premises was pressing because the Home was due to leave Canterbury Road that September. 

The move to Kilburn Square
By October, a new Home had been established at No. 6 Kilburn Square, a larger house than No.65, just off the High Road. A plaque on the door read ‘Kindergarten’ – not a German system of education, said Miss Mittendorff, but a ‘garden’ of young children. She fell seriously ill in 1872 and spent time in hospital. It seems possible hers was not a condition that could be cured. By 1874, the Kindergarten also occupied No.7 and by 1877 there were ‘branch homes’ on Haverstock Hill and a cottage at Bushey for sick or delicate girls, totaling about 100 children in all. Described by a visitor as ‘affectionate and communicative’, the girls managed the running of the Kilburn Home, doing the cooking, cleaning, and nursing.

Kilburn Square showing Nos 6 and 7 in the 1950s

The importance of religion
Religion played a significant role in the daily life of the Homes. Both Miss Mittendorff and Miss Cole had deep religious convictions, and local churches and churchgoers underwrote and supported their efforts. The care given was not always unconditional. If they were employed, Miss Mittendorff charged mothers of illegitimate children a fee towards their child’s upkeep, in order ‘that they should feel the responsibility and the burden which sin has brought upon them.’ But such moral judgments should be set against the fact the children in the Homes were fed, housed, educated, and taught skills that enabled them to get work. Otherwise, many would have ended their lives prematurely, living hand to mouth on the streets, as witnessed by Miss Mittendorff’s account of some of her charges. 

One 6-year-old girl was sent to Kilburn from the north of England, like a parcel, with a label round her neck that simply gave her name and the address of the Home. She was delivered to Cambridge Avenue by a policeman. Dorette wrote of a mother, whose husband was incurably ill; she came to No.65 to ask that her daughters aged 2, 8 and 10 be taken in. When Dorette visited their home, the girls were huddled in a corner, cold, hungry, and sleeping on the bare floorboards. The mother returned to the Home that same evening and left the girls in Miss Mittendorf’s care.

Another case was Florence, whose mother was judged to be mentally unstable and unable to look after her daughter. But there was no legal means to prevent her removing her child from the Home, which she did. Ten days later, the girl was discovered, dead, with severe head injuries. Florence’s grandmother claimed she had been killed by her mother. We were not able to trace Florence’s death as we had no surname or date for the incident.

From Kilburn to Epsom
In 1879 the lease was up on the Kilburn property and a decision was made to reunite all the children under one roof. By April 1880 the Home had moved into Clayton House, 18 East Street, Epsom. Until recently this had had been a private school. It wasn’t an ideal choice, but it had the hidden advantage of providing lay preachers with a base during the nearby horse race meetings! Almost immediately, a diphtheria outbreak among the children resulted in four deaths. 

Dorette may have stood back from her work, describing herself in the 1891 census as ‘living on her own means’, when staying with a friend in Brighton. Records show that she handed over the Home, free of charge, to Dr Barnardo’s in 1896, the formal transfer was completed early in 1898. The only clue why this happened was a reference in an annual report, that ‘circumstances led to a proposal that it should become one of (Dr Barnardo’s) branches.’ It could have been due to continuing ill health or Dorette may have run short of funds. The Epsom building was renamed Mittendorff House.

It is interesting to look at a case study of one of the girls in the Home. In the 1880s, young British girls were helped to emigrate to Canada, to be placed as domestic servants. Jane Eleanor Collis who was in the Epsom Home in 1881, age 11, was described by Miss Mittendorff as, ‘of the real East End type. Has a bad father and one sister in a bad house, but she herself is perfectly steady and innocent.’ In May 1887 Jane sailed to Canada onboard the SS Corean.

In Toronto her sponsor Miss Charlotte Alexander received mixed reports about her progress from a series of employers: ‘good and obedient’, ‘no sense of work and responsibility’, and strangely, given her training, ‘does not appear to understand much about housework.’

Before they parted company, this employer also wrote: ‘Jane has greatly disappointed me, most of the time she is utterly useless, wild as a hare.’ She was however good with children, and it was to Miss Mittendorff’s credit that Jane could read and write a good letter. After working on a farm which she disliked, the 1891 census shows Jane as a servant in a druggist’s family back in Toronto. Sadly, ten years later and again in 1911, she was a patient in Brockville Asylum for the Insane. Jane had been suffering from tuberculosis for three years and was hospitalised that May, dying on 23 December 1911.

We could not find Miss Mittendorff after she gifted the Home. It appears that she may have returned to Germany and died about 1909.

The Mount Hermon Homes for Orphans
Mary Ann Cole was born 1837 in Portsea, Hampshire. She was one of four children of portrait painter Thomas Cole, who died at the young age of 30, a year after Mary Ann was born.

By 1861 Mary Ann was living in London where she opened a day school for neglected and poor children near Oxford Street. But she felt her teachings were undermined by what were described as ‘evil’ home influences so decided to change her approach. She took charge of a single orphan girl in 1864, and three years later and now looking after five girls, she opened her Home in Kilburn. Beginning with No.55 (1867), Miss Cole expanded to occupy No.49 (1870) and then No.47 Cambridge Avenue (by 1872.) These properties stood on the north side of the road near Cambridge Gardens; No.55 was demolished about 1914 for the building of Kilburn Park underground station; most of the remaining houses on this frontage, including Nos.47&49, were demolished as part of the major redevelopment of South Kilburn after WWII.

Mary Ann’s work at No.55 began with 20 orphans, three teachers and herself. By 1871, the annual report of the Home which now also included No.49, recorded 121 girls had been taken in, of whom four had died, 13 had left, 22 were placed in domestic service and 82 remained in Mount Hermon’s care. Children in the care of a single parent were accepted at the Home, as in the case of Beatrice Aldridge whose mother died in the Peel Road disaster, (see our previous blog story).

In common with Miss Mittendorff’s Home, the Mount Hermon girls were trained for domestic service, being taught housework and needlework. An evening school (reading, writing and arithmetic) was held twice a week for the older girls, while a day school was carried on at both houses for the younger girls.

The girls were generally reported as doing well when they left the Home and were encouraged to keep in touch. Girls could return to the Home to convalesce or if they were between situations. In 1881 two former pupils were staying on census night, one was a milliner and the other a dressmaker. Some orphans stayed on, for example Jennie Gerard and Jessie Ada Baggs, who became a governess and an assistant matron at the Home (1891.)

Unrealized plans and a convalescent home
In December 1877, the local paper reported a new Mount Hermon orphanage was being planned; a plot of land 20 miles away had been offered and £1,000 promised towards new buildings. Although Miss Cole wanted to stay closer to Kilburn, by the middle of the following year, she conceded her work would benefit from a larger school room, purpose-built premises, and more space. A freehold site of around three acres would be ideal, to build six large cottages, each housing 20 children. This scheme never materialized, probably reflecting a lack of funds and/or the failure to secure a suitable site. Instead, a much smaller plot was purchased on Mill Lane and ‘Praise Cottage’ for convalescents opened there in July 1883. It stood at the end of Hillfield Road, where the road ends in an embankment below Gondar Gardens. At the time, there was open countryside close by, a healthy retreat for invalids.

Desperation and imprisonment
On the night of 1 October 1885, around 10pm, PC Cherry was in Cambridge Road when he heard a child screaming. A search revealed two babies, a boy and a girl, lying on steps leading down to the Home’s side entrance at No.55. They were well wrapped up, warm and seemed healthy. The babies’ clothes were identified as garments given to Rosina Purcell when she left St Pancras Workhouse on the 29 September. She had given birth to the twins there on 22 August. A detective managed to trace 21-year-old Rosina, working as a servant at the Stag public house on Fleet Road Hampstead. She said she had no friends in London and was forced to leave the workhouse, which officials denied. Rosina who looked weak and ill, wept bitterly as she was committed for trial on a charge of abandoning her children and endangering their lives. She was found guilty and sentenced to three months in Millbank Prison. We don’t know what happened to her or to the twins, their births registered under the names of Rosina and Henry Purcell.

Another Home in Margate and the death of Miss Cole
In July 1886, another Home for 12 children was opened in Sweyn Road, Margate and named ‘Berachah,’ or ‘blessings.’ Mary Ann Cole had been unwell and she went to Margate in the summer of 1887 to convalesce. She died at the Home that September and was brought back to London for burial at Hampstead Cemetery, Fortune Green Road. It seems the Margate Home closed before the next census.

Mary Ann Parry
Fortunately, there was someone who could step in and take over the reins at Mount Hermon, namely Miss Cole’s cousin Mary Ann Parry. Born 1834 in Portsea, she was living with her parents in Netley near Southampton in 1861, where her father William Hearn was an innkeeper. Mary Ann married Henry Parry, a widowed clerk of works at the War Department who lived nearby. The couple were living in Woolwich in 1865, the year their daughter Mary Phoebe was born, and Henry died of TB. Subsequently, both Mary Ann Parry and her daughter worked with Miss Cole in Kilburn.

Lack of funds proved to be a continuing problem and the decision was taken to sell Praise Cottage in 1895. It was demolished and the site used for houses in Hillfield Road and Gondar Gardens, with flats ‘The Mansions’, and shops below, fronting Mill Lane.

The move to Sevenoaks in Kent
When Mary Ann Parry died in January 1902 it became apparent the Home was in financial difficulties. It emerged there had been no board of trustees or formal committee. Friends came together to discuss the future of Mount Hermon. Eventually it was reported, ‘new trustees were appointed, and the work had been established they might say, on a firm businesslike basis.’

This involved closing the Kilburn Homes and downsizing. A new Mount Hermon Home opened in Sevenoaks in June 1905, at 2-4 Park Lane, recently vacated by the Jackson Hip Hospital. At its opening, one of the newly appointed trustees who had known Miss Cole, spoke about the work of the orphanage, choosing his words carefully. ‘He did not want any of them to think that he in the slightest degree reflected upon what was done in the past, but something had to be done to put it on a good basis, to win the confidence, and to keep the confidence of the public, and to obtain the support need for the work.’

A major change was the reduction in the number of children that could be accommodated, just 37 compared to 76 in the 1901 census at Kilburn, ‘and therefore a good many had had to be discharged.’ No details were given about what this involved for the children concerned. 

Religious observance still underpinned the way the Home was run, and terms of entry were tightened up, the new brochure stipulating ‘The Home shall be for the benefit of orphan girls under the age of 13 years who have lost one or both parents, such children having been born in lawful wedlock.’ It was now well managed, and the 1939 register lists around 20 girls.

The following year the Home returned a cheque for £9 7s 6d to Sevenoaks Urban Council. It was part of cash collected during Sunday performances at local cinemas, but the management committee felt, ‘the principles of the Orphanage make it difficult to accept money derived from the opening of cinemas on the Lord’s Day.’ This was a hotly debated subject at the time. 

In 1946 the local paper wrote of the closure of Mount Hermon and the imminent removal of the children to the Children’s Home and Mission in Essex. ‘Although they would be sad to see the children go, they remained confident that the good work would be carried on at Woodford and Tiptree.’ The Essex home had been asked to take over the Sevenoaks orphanage. In the end, 11 girls made the move in January 1947 with one who was in hospital joining later. The Essex home, now called Mill Grove, continues to care for children today.

We would like to thank Keith White of Mill Grove and Peter Reed, Volunteer Webmaster Epsom & Ewell History Explorer www.eehe.org.uk, for their help with this story. Also thanks to Archives of Ontario.