Day 258 - Searching for my grandfather

34 St. Francis Road (formerly Constance Road) today
where my maternal grandfather was born.

My maternal grandfather, Herbert Sims, was born in 1900 in East Dulwich, which is now part of the borough of Southwark in southeast London. The street he was born on is today called St. Francis Road. However, when he was born there, the street was known as Constance Road. The reason for the name change makes an interesting story.

In the century before my grandfather was born, Dulwich was growing rapidly. In 1851, the population was about 1,600. However, in the ten years starting in 1881, 5,000 homes were built, including the homes on the then new Constance Road. By the time my grandfather arrived, 10,000 people lived in Dulwich, including, the author Enid Blyton (famous for the Noddy, Famous Five, and Secret Seven series of children's books), was born a few blocks away three years before him.

Workhouses for the poor, aged and infirmed were already a well-rooted part of British society's way of coping with those who found themselves unable to fend for themselves. While sometimes this predicament was due to drink or poor life choices, more often it was due to aging, illness, mental health issues, job loss, or death of the main family breadwinner. With the rapid growth of Dulwich's population, the two local workhouses were at capacity. The Poor Law stated that workhouses had to be designed so as to discourage people from entering them. That meant they had to have conditions that were worse than poverty itself. Unfortunately, the only way to make them as bad or worse for many poor on the outside of the workplace was to starve the "inmates" as they were known. People began to be critical of the treatment the poor and destitute were receiving, and believed that "external" relief should be given to those in need rather than making workhouses the sole refuge.

Despite these changing views, officials in Dulwich decided another workhouse was needed and found land for one at the end of Constance Road, where new homes were being built and in close proximity to the two other existing workhouses. The Constance Road workhouse, as it was named, was completed in 1894, and held 900 sick and infirmed, with "lunatics" being housed in one of the older workhouses. At the time of the Constance Road Workhouse's opening, The London Press reported that “were the workhouse not indicative of a painful state of affairs socially, we should be inclined to congratulate Camberwell on the possession of such a stately pile of buildings. As it is, we are content with the remark that Constance Road Workhouse is the most thoroughgoing, up to date and convenient Poor Law establishment yet built.”

My grandfather, Herbert Sims, at
about aged 10. This picture was 
taken upon his entry into the 
Home for Boys.

When my grandfather was eight years old, his father, who was a compositor with a printer, became ill. In an era when if you became sick you lost your job, he found himself in the hospital ward of the Constance Workhouse where died. Sadly, he left his wife, son and two daughter with no means of support. About a year and a half later, my great-grandmother was destitute. Her sister arranged for my grandfather to go into the care of the Bernardo's Home for Boys. Less than two weeks before his tenth birthday, he was admitted into Leopold Orphan House, "a voluntary home for little boys between 10 and 13 years of age, accommodating 420 inmates in good health who are capable of giving their whole time to education." Over the next two years he moved from here to other nearby homes for boys. Shortly after he turned 12, according to Barnardo's records, "...he sailed to a new life in Canada." This new life was child labour on a farm in Baltimore, Ontario where he stayed until he was almost 16, when he "outgrew" his job (in reality, at 16 the farmer would have had to pay him more. My grandfather's employment contract was moved on to another nearby farm, where he stayed until he wanted to enlist in the First World War.

Constance Road Institution.
Source: http://www.exploringsouthwark.co.uk

At about this time, the term workhouse had become politically incorrect in the UK, and the names of any that were still existing were changed to "Institutions." By 1937, the name changed again to St.Francis Hospital, and Constance Road became known as St Francis Road. The hospital became part of the NHS in 1948, administratively moving between different hospital groups and authorities until 1984 when it became the north wing of Dulwich Hospital (the former St Saviour’s Union Infirmary). The hospital closed in 1991 and the former workhouse buildings flattened two years later. A housing estate was built on the site. Similarly, the orphan boys homes in which my grandfather lived were demolished and new housing built in their place. I suppose no one really wants reminders of that part of history.

The Foundling Museum in London.

My intention today was to go and visit the places I could find that were associated with my grandfather and his time in the Barnardo system, but since all are gone, I decided to visit the Foundling Museum in London. The museum is built in what was once the Administrative Building for the Foundling Hospital, built in 1793 to take in London's abandoned babies. At the time, poverty was rampant in parts of London, and 75% of children did not live beyond five years old. The hospital took in children up to 12 months of age, from any first-time mother who was unmarried and had been abandoned by their baby's father. The idea was to try to remove the stigma of bearing an illegitimate child and give the mother one chance to turn her life around. The babies would be sent them to live with a wet nurse in the country, where they remained until they were 4 or 5 years old. They then returned to the hospital, with girls being trained to be servants and boys to enter the military. Many medical professionals were associated with the hospital who worked on trying to resolve many of the illnesses of the day, including cholera.

Unfortunately, the museum tells little of the story of the children taken in to care. Instead, most of the museum is devoted to the works of art donated to the museum by artists and patrons as a way for the hospital to raise needed funds. These works are beautiful, and many do depict life as it was for some of the children, but for the most part, most of the detail of actual life for the children doesn't exist.

The chapel in the Foundling Hospital.

One unique "donation" of a sort is the contribution of the composer George Frideric Handel. When Handel wrote Messiah, he had a difficult time finding a venue in which it was considered okay to perform. Theatre environments were considered too sacrilegious and the work was considered too long to play within a church service. Handel had the opportunity to perform his new work in the Foundling Hospital's small chapel, so he decided to give any money raised to the charity. It was so successfully received  that he asked if he could continue to perform it there. He conducted the piece every year until his death in 1759, and in his will left a copy of the score to the Hospital. This allowed the charity to continue staging the concerts and raising funds. The score and parts are on display in the Foundling Museum, alongside his original will.

The museum did allow me to understand a bit more about society's influence and the pressure to have to give up a child. I can't even begin to imagine the pain of that. I suppose when 3 out of 4 children are dying around you, you make the tough decisions.

In my genealogical research into my grandfather's life, I've managed to find out some interesting information. What has touched me most about this research is seeing how decisions continue to reverberate through the generations. My mother remembers her father as a quiet, gentle man who spoke to her only once about his childhood and how he came to live in Canada. As a boy surrounded by hundreds of other boys facing the same experience, I'm sure that in many ways he saw his life as typical of the time. While he was definitely scarred by what he went through, he lived in a era when you did not burden others with your story, since it wasn't different than most of those around you. You were labelled ungrateful if you complained.

But who my grandfather was made my Mother who she is, and onward to me and my siblings, and our children. Beyond how we look, we take a bit of our ancestor's past with us into our futures in how we think and act, and that it often developed out of the environment in which they were raised. While I didn't discover anything specific to my family today, I did get a glimpse at the pressure placed on you by the times. I look forward to continuing my research and uncovering more about those who came before, and hopefully getting to know them and myself a bit better.