Tracing Your Manchester & Salford Ancestors by Sue Wilkes

Author:Sue Wilkes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2017-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

• www.workhouses.org.uk/Manchester/.

• www.workhouses.org.uk/Salford/.

Gerard Lodge’s website also has a wealth of information on Manchester and Salford Poor Law records and workhouses, http://bit.ly/1ZrNRkB, and Guardians’ minutes, http://bit.ly/1r9WJj5.

Orphanages and Children’s Homes

Many workhouse inmates were children; some of these institutions had schools attached. ‘Industrial schools’, sometimes known as ‘barrack schools’ or ‘district schools’, were large residential institutions for workhouse children. Manchester Union built the Swinton Industrial Schools (1846) which housed over 600 children. MLIA has an online guide to the records available, http://bit.ly/2gXrqmB.

After the mid-1870s, it became more common for pauper children to be ‘boarded out’ either with foster parents, or in ‘cottage homes’. These homes were usually run by a married couple, and the children attended local schools. For example, early in the twentieth century, Salford Union built some cottage homes for children at Culcheth, and MCL(G) has a photographic collection (DPA/1679).

Chorlton Union’s cottage homes were built at Styal, in rural Cheshire. MCL(M) holds Styal Cottage Homes admission registers and registers of children, 1903–62 (M66/84 – restricted access). This series includes lists of children who were sent to Canada as migrants. In mid-to-late Victorian times, philanthropists, children’s homes, charities (including Barnardo’s) and workhouses began sending children to places like Australia and Canada to begin new lives as farm or domestic servants. These children often endured great hardships in their new homes.

Poor Law union records include ‘registers of boarded out children’ or ‘registers of orphan children’ which give the child’s name, age, the address of the foster parent or cottage home, and dates when the child was living there. Sometimes information is given on the child’s later whereabouts, e.g. if they returned to the workhouse or went into domestic service. The Salford Poor Law Union records at SCA include minutes for the Boarding-Out Committee.

In 1870, Sunday school teachers Leonard Kilbee Shaw, Annie Shaw and Richard Bramwell Taylor founded a charity for destitute children, the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges and Homes. It set up several homes for boys and girls in places like Broughton and Angel Meadow. The charity also sent child migrants to Canada. Over the years, the charity greatly expanded its activities, and is still helping children and families. MCL(M) holds records for Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges and Homes from 1870–1930 (M189 – restricted access). The charity, now known as the Together Trust, has an archive relating to children who were in its care. The website has a list of children’s homes run by the charity: https://www.togethertrust.org.uk/ our-history. Contact the archivist for family history enquiries, https://www.togethertrust.org.uk/contact-us. There’s an archive blog: http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/.

The Former Children’s Homes website, www.childrenscottagehomes.org.uk, and Peter Higginbotham’s Children’s Homes websites have lots more information, www.childrenshomes.org.uk.

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