Last modified: 28 October 2026
— Video: Asylum (.mp4)
Where does Chapter Two start?
On arrival, the Royal party processed along a red carpet lined by 200 orphan boys and girls to a covered platform at the centre of the arena. After the Archbishop of Canterbury offered up a Prayer Prince Albert read an address to Her Majesty in which he described the purpose of the new building he orphans admitted into this institution but be carefully instructed in their moral and religious duties and in addition to a useful Elementary education will be taught to those branches of industrial knowledge which will fit them to perform the duties of domestic servants and when they may become wives and mothers will enable them to manage their home with economy and by having some cleanliness and order to contribute to the comfort and cheerfulness of their homes.
Queen Victoria gave a short reply and then put the finishing touches to the mortar using the silver trial made by the Royal goldsmiths garage or Haymarket appropriately the handle was a figure of Britannia shielding three children representing the nations of England Ireland and Scotland in Keeping with the customer these occasions Queen Victoria Hackley took the trowel away with her. As the upper stone was lowered into place the band prematurely struck up the national anthem, which in turn trigger the gun session outside in Spencer the green departed everyone present??
That evening the Queen wrote in her journal:
"We went with the three eldest children Charlotte, ladies and gentlemen, to Wandsworth Common to lay the foundation stone of an asylum for 300 orphan girl children of soldiers sailors, and marines whose fathers had died in the late war. There were many people there. The Archbishop read a prayer, after which Albert, as head of the Commission, read a long address to which I responded. Then the stone firing as returned [??] as we came, May their good work, which is to bear my name, prosper."
The history of the building actually starts three years earlier with the Outbreak of the Crimean War after the Russian fleet attacked the Turkish Navy in the Black Sea Britain and France responded to the threat to their own strategic interests why declaring war. In March 1854 a force of 28,000 men left to great patriotic rejoicing such was the confidence Across The Nation the British Army would pick up where it had left off of Waterloo — victorious.
Today the Crimean War is best remembered for the charge of the Light Brigade and the single action serves as a bitter sweet symbol for much of the campaign courageous but ultimately futile sacrifices by the ordinary British soldier as a result of the incompetence, petty rivalries of those in command the fact that did not escape [??
"Frward the Light Brigade was there a man dismayed not though the soldier someone had not to make reply there's not to reason why there's but to do or [AND!] die. Into the Valley of Death rode the 600.
Just as damaging was the bureaucracy that aggravated the challenges of equipping and supplying and army through a Russian winter 3000 miles away stopping ment rotten food and appalling medical conditions meant that of the 22,000 British casualties four fifths died as a result of disease malnutrition and exposure rather than combat if those commanding the British Army had learned little in the 40 years since Waterloo there had been nothing less than a revolution in war journalism the introduction of telegraphy meant that articles by journalists like whoa frosting of the Times could be read in London within 48 hours and
Was there a man dismayed not though the soul genius someone had blunders there's not to make reply there's not to reason why there's but to do or [AND!] die. Into the valley of death road the 600.
Just as damaging was the bureaucracy that aggravated the challenges of equipping and supplying an army through a Russian winter 3000 miles away poor equipment rotten food and appalling medical conditions meant that of the 22,000 British casualties four fifths died as a result of disease malnutrition and exposure rather than combat.
If those commanding the British Army had learned little in the 40 years since Waterloo there had been nothing less than a revolution in war journalism. The introduction of telegraphy meant that articles by journalists like Russell of The Times could be read in London within 48 hours. And for the first time accurate images by photographers such as Roger Fenton brought home the real horror of the war. As the first major conflict to be widely reported and photographed in contemporary newspapers, the true circumstances under which soldiers were living fighting and dying in the Crimea quickly became public knowledge around the world the realities of the war were brought home change from jubilation to growing alive.
News of the first casualties of the battle of the Alma in September 1854 provoked a wave of public sympathy for the full and soldiers, their widows and orphans, prompting the War Office to put into effect plans for a public appeal. And on the 7th of October at Balmoral in Scotland Queen Victoria signed a Royal Commission of the Patriotic Front.
The newly formed royal Commission was presided over by no less a person than Prince Albert and it included many of those actually responsible for the conduct of the war, such as the prime minister Lord Aberdeen, and the man who would succeed him the following spring, Lord Palmerston, as well as successive secretaries of state at War the Duke of Sydney Herbert andLlord Panmure. and the commander-in-chief of the army in the Crimea himself, Lord Raglan.
The prominence of the Royal commissioners ensured that anyone who was anyone in Victorian Society wanted to be associated with the fund Lord left tenants and city mayors competed to organise fundraising committees a national and local newspapers carried advertisement soliciting public contributions response to the appeal was phenomenal contributions flooded in from all strata of society 5 of Queen Victoria's children auctioned their own artwork at an exhibition in Bond Street including the Field of battle a watercolor of a Grenadier dying in the arms of his wife painted by the Princess Royal which sold for 250 guineas.
But as the Commissioners later reported to Her Majesty, it was not just the upper and middle classes who were ready to contribute to the fund. In one striking instance the inmates of the reformatory asylum at Smith Street, Westminster, having literally nothing of their own to give, denied themselves a meal that its value might be offered as their gift. And in six schools [in shortage??] 1500 children each gave a penny to the fund. Here in Clapham over £800 was raised in the first month alone, with the local Gazette recording that even the very poorest neighborhoods gave what they could.
?? one of the committee will be offended this rifle it is the last penny I have in the ass but I'll give you this you are bearing a printed scene of the Dead and wounded at the Crimea on one side and grieving family at home on the other was manufactured and sold to raise funds by Samuel a family pottery in Staffordshire one-fifth of the money raised was contributed from elsewhere in the Empire even parts of the world with little connection to Britain donated to the fund including the Six Nations tribe of North American Indians in the end the fundraised almost one and a half million pounds from Public donations the equivalent today to about 1 billion pounds 130 years of modern technology the live
[9:53]
130 years later in 1985 and with all the
Ever.
Even parts of the world with little connection to Britain donated to the fund, including the Six Nations tribe of North American Indians. In the end, the fundraised almost one and a half million pounds from Public donations the equivalent today to about 1 billion pounds 130 years later in 1985 and with all the advantages of modern technology the life Victoria for as long as the Crimean War continued the final number of soldiers families left destitute as a result could not be known the commissioners therefore restricted themselves to making small weekly allowances to with those in orphans as they became known. However, after a peace treaty with Russia brought the war to an end in March 1856 they could be confident that the fund would now greatly exceed any financial demands placed on it. They immediately raised the value of the weekly allowances. They also resolved to establish orphanages for those fatherless children whose mothers were left unable to look after them until these were ready temporary homes were found on East Hill in Wandsworth for the boys and that Lime Grove, a villa on Putney Hill, for the girls.
Because of the shortage of alternative institutions at the time priority was given to the establishment of the girls' orphanage. A subcommittee was appointed to find a desirable site of not less than five and not more than fifteen acres, located not more than twenty miles from London. Several potential sites were soon identified, including Felton Hampton Holloway Shooters Hill Slough and Willesden. Kneller Hall at Sudbury quickly emerged as the favorite. Then, unexpectedly the commissioners received the offer of a large site or ones with common from the fourth Earl Spencer the great great grandfather of Diana and her brother Charles the current Earl Fritz [??] Spencer was at the time Lord Stewar at Buckingham Palace and therefore well aware of Prince Albert's personal interest in the orphanage.
In a letter dated fifth December 1856, Earl Spencer wrote my dear if the Patriotic Fund Commission should select my ground of how their institutional ones with common I should be willing in consideration of the national object to take one half the price Mr Lee has fixed on the value this — £50 an acre. Only three miles from London and yet as the Illustrated London News described it in the midst of pure air uncontaminated as yet by the smoke of the metropolis.
The members of the subcommittee considered the site ones with common in every respect the most eligible of any brought under their notice ignoring their previously self-imposed limit, they recommended the purchase of up to fifty acres. The Royal Cmmissioners for their part was so pleased with the offer that they eventually authorized the purchase of 65 acres and a final cost of £3,700. To put that figure into perspective the equivalent sum today — about a quarter of a million pounds — wouldn't buy a one-bedroom flat in the housing estate that now stands in the grounds it was not without justification therefore that the current earl Spencer observed that the sale of the family Estates south of the River Thames has become something of a joke amongst succeeding generations of Spencers.
Within a generation, thanks to the advent of the railway, they had become parts of Greater London worth millions at the time however it was questionable whether Earl Spencer was actually entitled to sell what had previously been common land appointee seem to acknowledge in the rest of his letter:
"I do not wish to encounter any difficulty with the copyholders, and the commissioners if they entertain any position of land must take all risks of those difficulties. Yours faithfully, Spencer.
For the design of the orphanage the commissioners turned to the then architect to the committee of the council on education, Major Rohde Hawkins. Hawkins was neither a particularly accomplished nor prolific architect. Indeed, the two most remarkable facts about him are that he was not a military officer — "Major" major was merely his first name — and secondly that his second name was not spelled as in Rhde Island but Rohde.
13:27
Fortunately, Hawkins took us his model for the building George Herriot's Hospital in Edinburgh, which had been built in the 1660s to designs by a much more talented architect, Inigo Jones.
In contrast with Hawkins, the construction work was awarded to George Myers of Lambeth, one of England's leading building contractors of his time, whose successful tender of £31,337 was also the lowest. Myers was known as "Pugin's builder", being the preferred contractor of the renowned Victorian architect. Together Myers and Pugin worked on 55 projects including four cathedrals — Birmingham, Nottingham, Newcastle and St George's at Southwark — as well as the medieval court for The Great Exhibition in 1851, and Pugin's own home in Ramsgate.
The Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum was just one of several national military institutions built by Myers, including the British army's camp at Aldershot, Netley military hospital on Southampton Water, and Woolwich Hospital. Closer to home, Myers also later developed the area around Elms Road on Clapham Common east side.
Inside, the ceiling of the central main hall was decorated with the coats of arms of the principal places that had contributed to the original fund — twenty-one from the home countries and twenty-one from the overseas possessions of the British Empire.
They were produced by John Gregory Grace a well-known firm of interior designers who were frequently employed by Pugin to make wallpapers, carpets and furniture to his design.
Today, hundreds of thousands of people passed by the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building every day without noticing it. Yet the Royal Commissioners intended it to afford a visible and permanent memorial of the national generosity. To this end the building was deliberately built facing the new London and South-Western railway, it's impressive three-storey northern facade in stark contrast to the modest low-standing service courtyard at the rear. The roofs were reticulated with the slates diminishing in size from the gutters up to the apex to give the illusion of even greater height. And the embankment in front of the building was lowered to give the passengers a clear view of it as they passed.
Accompanied by her eldest daughter, Victoria, and her fiance, Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia, Queen Victoria again visited the asylum on the first of June 1859 where Albert was overseing the final stages of the building. That evening she recorded in her diary: "Drove up to Wandsworth to see the school of the Patriotic Fund and which I laid the first stone two years ago the key and Fritz being present. Albert met us there and took us over some part of the building which is beautiful, roomy and airy. Vicky was delighted, lamenting over German inferiority in all these things.
The Builder magazine pronounced the finished building "as perfect a specimen of its special kind as any that has been erected during the last thirty years."
The one change Myers made to Hawkins’s original design was to move the clock on the front of the central tower to the rear and replace it with a statue of St George and the Dragon, quite possibly carved by Myers himself and believed to be the largest statue of St George and the Dragon in England.
One month later the Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum opened to receive its first intake of orphans and within a few years had reached its full complement of 300 girls.
[18:00]
[Is there a Chapter Two?]
18:
EARLY DAYS
The Orphanage immediately ran into problems. Firstly the lady superintendent had to be dismissed for being drunk. Then, in December 1861, Prince Albert suddenly died, plunging the Royal Commission into paralysis for more than seven years until the Queen was prevailed upon to appoint a new President, her first cousin and general commander-in-chief of the British Army the Duke of Cambridge.
But the greatest trial involved one of the first authors Charlotte Jane Bennett. The story of her early life was typical of the daughters of the drum, the young girls who followed their soldier fathers around the Empire and whose childhoods were tragically cut short in the Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum.
Charlotte was born on the 29th of July 1844 in Gibraltar, the elder daughter of John Bennett, a sergeant in the 38th foot, and his Irish wife Roseanne [sp?]. The following year when Charlotte was just one year old the Regiment received orders to embark for the West Indies and for the next six years Charlotte followed her father around Britain's imperial possessions in the Americas before finally setting foot in England for the first time.
Three years later, when John Bennett and the 38th foot set sail for the Crimea, Charlotte and the rest of her family were left behind on the dockside at Portsmouth to make their own way back to the family home in Tooting. The following year, just three days before Charlotte’s 11th birthday, John Bennett died of his wounds in Sebastopol. With no army pay or pension Roseanne was forced to give up a four children into whatever care she could find and Charlotte and her younger sister eventually found places at the Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum.
On the morning of Monday the 6th of January 1862, after Charlotte was cheeky to the assistant launderess, the Chaplain placed her in solitary confinement for two days in the Ladies superintendent bathroom in the main tower she was allowed out to sleep in her own bed that night but the following morning she had again been placed in the bathroom the view of separately. Her dinner had been taken to where about three o'clock when Lucifer matches were left to enable her to light her fire. She was visited again, but unfortunately the young woman who should have taken her tea to her, about half past five o'clock, forgot to do so and did not think of it until the middle of the prayer meeting about half past eight. On opening the door she saw the poor girl lying on her back in front of the window dead from the effects of the fire, evidently caused by a Lucifer match used to light the gas.
The subsequent investigation revealed that although two orphans had reported hearing screams at about six o’clock, Matron in charge had assumed that Charlotte was merely throwing a tantrum and scolded them instead. Too scared anything more the girls sat at prayers in the main hall terrified and listening for further screams from the
[21:-00]
The “Case of the girl Bennett” became a national cause celebre, the subject of a highly critical editorial in The Times, and questions in the House of Commons.
[21:26]
Charlotte was just 17 when she died but she had already experienced more in a short life the most of us do in a lifetime but she should survive all the hardships of 19th century army life — perilous sea voyages, deadly tropical diseasy and Barrack room fires only to die at the heart of the British Empire in an orphanage intended to care for her is a tragic irony given the tragedy it is not surprising that several people claim to have seen the ghost of the young Victorian woman around the building.
Iin August 1987 a carpenter was working in what are today the sellers of Le Gothique restaurant when a girl in Victorian clothing appeared in the doorway and stood watching him in silence. Believing she must be a student from the drama school in period costume he continued with his work. Only afterwards was he told at the school was on holiday at the time. The terrified carpenter refused to go back down into the celar even to collect his tools.
Today, mention of Victorian orphanages conjures up images of Dickens Oliver Twist and conditions at the Asylum were undeniably harsh but by the standards of the Times the girls there could almost count themselves lucky. Iin 1860 barely one half of London's children received any sort of formal education. The rest read the forced to beg in the streets or work up to 16 hours a day in sweatshops under atrocious conditions.
But undoubtedly the greatest threat to children at the time was from disease with one in every 5 children dying before the age of one. The situation in London in particular became so bad that after successive outbreaks of cholera in the 1870s the orphans were allowed no visitors whatsoever for 10 years.
And similarly while the orphans industrial training at the Asylum might have condemned them to life as some of the 120,000 domestic servants in London who worked 80-hour weeks for less than a pound there were undoubtedly worse fates for young women. The Lancet estimated the one in 16 women in the capital worked as prostitutes, some of whom could be seen at night seeking sorry shelter among the gravel pits on Wandsworth Common itself.
Indeed physical reminders of the alternative fates that might have befallen in the girls could be seen all around the asylum. To the north, the Wandsworth and Clapham Union Workhouse on St John’s Hill and, further down, the slums of Clapham Junction. To the south, St James's Industrial School for delinquent children. And to the west children could still be jailed alongside adult criminals in Wandsworth Prison simply for stealing food.
[23:30]
In 1870, work began on the Royal Commissioner's second great project, an orphanage for 200 boys to be built in the northern corner of the grounds close to Clapham Junction. Two years later the Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum for Boys was opened.
By now, however, the Royal Commissioners were growing increasingly alarmed that they may have overextended the fund’s resources. As the nation’s principal organization for the care of servicemen's dependents, the Patriotic Fund had assumed responsibility for administering similar funds for the widows and orphans of later conflicts. In fact, as the Empire expanded, the British Army fought more campaigns in the 50 years following the Crimean War than in the whole of the previous two centuries. Yet the proceeds from these later appeals were by no means as substantial as the original Patriotic Fund, and its liabilities quickly mounted. In 1881, just nine years after it opened, the Royal Commissioners decided they had no alternative but to sell the boys’ orphanage. They received just two offers and the winning bid of £32,000
[c.25:32]
came from the governors of the United Westminster Schools. The new occupant was Emanuel School, founded in 1594 by Lord and Lady Dacre. Lord Dacre had himself been made an orphan, albeit a Royal Ward, after his father was hanged for the murder of a member of a rival hunting faction.
Lady Dacre was the sister of Thomas Sackville,Elizabeth I’s Lord High Treasurer, and a second cousin to the queen to whom she was also a maid of honour. Tragically the Dacres’ only child died in infancy and the loss of their son meant the end of the family line. Possibly to perpetuate the memory of the family’s noble name, shortly after the death of her husband Lady Dacre collect instructions in her will for the endowment of a hospital for 24 poor aged people to dwell and also 20 poor children to be brought up there in virtue and good and laudable Arts. Tthe hospital was built in Tithiill Fields on the site of what is now the [St Ermine’s?] Hotel, close to new Scotland Yard.
By the second half of the 19th century Emanuel had become a school for boys, the majority of whom were fee paying and drawn from the city's middle classes a scheme to combine Emanuell with other Endowed schools was initially defeated in Parliament with the help of Lord Salisbury, a future three times Prime Minister. But when the governors of Emmanuel similarly attempted to have a revised scheme rejected in the House of Commons in 1873, the prime minister, William Gladstone, himself rose to condemn their objections. The scheme was approved and Emanuel School was absorbed into the United Westminster schools.
On 16th June 1887 the Princess of Wales came to Wandsworth to distribute school prizes the first royal visit to the asylum since the death of Prince Albert more than 25 years earlier. Ten years later, on 22nd of June 1897, all 300 orphans were invited onto Constitution Hill to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. There they unfolded a banner that read, “Tto Victoria our beloved Queen and foundress 300 orphan daughters of your Majesty's sailors, soldiers and marines say God bless you in 1907 King Edward the seventh and Queen Alexandra renewed the royal family’s connection to The Orphanage with a visit to commemorate its 50th anniversary
[27.55]
On the 16th of June 1887 the Princess of Wales came to Wandsworth to distribute school prizes, the first royal visit to the asylum since the death of Prince Albert more than 25 years earlier. Ten years, later on 22nd of June 1897, all 300 orphans were invited onto Constitution Hill to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee there they unfold a banner that read to Victoria our beloved Queen and foundress 300 orphan daughters of your Majesty's sailors soldiers and marines say god bless you in 1907 King Edward the 7th and Queen Alexandra renewed the royal families connection to The Orphanage with a visit to commemorate its 50th anniversary on the 4th of August 1914 the staff at the Royal Victoria Patriotic School were enjoying their short summer holiday when war was declared the building was immediately commanded by the army and for the next five years it served as the Third London General, one of four major territorial hospitals in the capital for those wounded at the fron.
In the impressive speed with which the army occupied the building other aspects of its administration did not appear to have improved much since the Crimean War. The first equipment to arrive was for a field hospital including tents and trenching tools, the war offers apparently under the impression that Wandsworth was on the front line. Missing from among the equipment were any beds on the grounds that the girls dormitory has were already equipped with 300 of them — until it was pointed out that the girls beds were just four feet long.
Soon the Third London General had beds for 500 men, but as the war in France dragged on and the awful cost in human life mounted additional wards were constructed right across the top of Wandsworth Common. At the height of the war it housed more than 2,600 patients in what became known as bungalow town among the first volunteers at the hospital was a group of distinguished artists from the Chelsea Arts Club included among them were well-known artists such as Henry Fulwood Tom Roberts and Arthur later Sir Arthur streeton as well as punch cartoonists hm Bateman and jhowed too old or unfit for Active Service they shaved not only their beards but years of their ages in order to be allowed to join up in the days before conscription their daily workers orderly is provided them with plenty of inspiration for their artistic talents.
In October 1915 after a well received public exhibition of their work at the hospital the Artists were given permission to publish a selection of their artwork together with sketches and poems by other members of staff in a monthly journal to raise money for the patient's comfort fund with so much talent on show the Gazette of the third London General Hospital was critically acclaimed from the outset it proves so popular that it ran for the duration of the war in all 46 issues of the cassette were produced with a monthly circulation of over 5,000 no mean feat for a magazine that was only sold at the hospital and from a few helpful shops in the ones with neighbourhood the principal Duty awardees was to collect the war wounded as they arrived from France on the hospital trains that ran from the south coast to Clapham Junction from the platforms they carried the Wounded on stretches over the station Bridge to the waiting ambulance is outside where they were taken ups and John's Hill to the hospital. There the wounded were assessed in the main hall before being dispersed towards elsewhere in the grounds according to the nature of their wounds.
Not surprisingly the arrival of the wounded figured frequently in their sketches and paintings George Coates are announced Australian portrait painter who was living in London when war broke out produced several paintings of the hospital which are on display today in the Australian warm memorial in Canberra including this one of the main hall called first Australian wounded at Gallipoli arriving at once with hospital London coaches commemorated today in the name of a road in the housing estate but now stands on the former grounds of the Royal Patriotic School.
Another is named after the English futurist artist C.R.W. Nevinson. A pacifist, Nevinson was an unlikely volunteer for the Front but in 1914 he joined the Red Cross and went to France as an ambulance driver. Ill-health forced its return to England where he eventually joined a hospital at Wandsworth he later contracted rheumatic fever which is the Gazette noted bestowed upon him the rare distinction fast as working as an orderly here and then being himself and in he was commissioned as a war artist and sent to France. however as a result of his experiences both at the front and in the hospital at Wandsworth Nevinson had developed a deep seated Loathing of war and the realism of some of his work caused it to be censored.
Nevinson's work after the war never captured the intensity of his earlier paintings but he was still held in sufficient regard to be commissioned by the BBC in 1937 to produce the cover of the radio times for the coronation of King George the Sith the names of the other roads on the estate acknowledged two more orderlys who served at the third London general wrs stot was a lesser Talent than coats or nevinson perhaps but he became a prolific illustrator of books during the interwar years the fourth Road is named after the founding editor of the Gazette the Canadian writer award Muir who later described his experiences at the hospital in observations of an orderly
one artist who was able to produce Talents directly to use at the third London General Hospital was Francis Derwent Wood. He inaugurated the hospital's mask for facial wounds department using his skills as a sculptor to repair the terrible facial wounds of many of those returning from the front after the war Derwent wood was appointed professor of sculpture at the Royal Academy and he left his mark on the face of the capital in the form of David on the machine gun core memorial at Hyde Park Corner the Atalanta in Chelsea and Ebankment Gardens and a figure of William Pitt for the Houses of Parliament.
Meanwhile the girls had spent the war with insight of the Royal Victoria Patriotic School in eight houses at the opposite end of Spencer Park once a year in January the staff and patients at the hospital invited them back for a tea party and concert by the time the third London General Hospital closed in July 1919 some 52,000 wounded officers and Men had been treated there many of them had come from other parts of the British Empire to fight a Gallipoli and Flanders and as the war graves in Wandsworth Cemetery bear witness not all of them returned home after the war the Matron at the third London general he did Holden moved into a house opposite the hospital at the top of Earl's Field Road where she ran a small nursing home when she died in August 1930 she was buried at her own request beside the men she considered “her boys”.
[34:52]
Ss the orphans approached the great iron gates and Trinity Road they caught their first glimpse of the vast toroited building where they were spend the rest of their childhoods they were let down the drive by the Gatekeeper to a side door where there were met by the assistant superintendent and taken away sobbing new arrivals were not admitted into the main building at first but taken to the infirmary where they were held in quarantine to ensure they brought in no infections diseases.
Eve who arrived with a sister in 1927 remembers what happened next first we were taken up to the bathroom stripped and based mind you to step into a real bath with running heart water was pure Delight after being used to the ten bath in front of the fire at home after the inspection for any sports the next thing was such a horrific experience I shall never forget it. My head was looked through and like all the other children I knew at that time I had fleas. Horror of horrors that came the scissors and razor in our heads were shaved bald as a coot hanwen the little white cotton pudding basin cap where the drawstring I cried and cried but to no avail in France this is revisited where she was an orphan from 1924 to 1932.
When in quarantine was over the new girl was taken to the main building where she was issued with the uniform each piece of clothing stamped with a unique number between one and 300 that became her new identity the main building had two internal quadrangles separated by the dining hall from the main entrance close to surround along the other three sides of the quadrangles giving access to the classrooms work rooms offices and store rooms or drinks themselves were strictly off limits to the girls in the southwest corner was a Play Hall where the girls assembled every morning the home to main building was a large cobbled Courtyard housing many of the support services for The Orphanage including the main kitchen the large communal bathroom, the laundry, and the farm buildings.
The school was divided into four age groups infants who were five to six years old and preschool Juniors seven to 12 years old and seniors 12 to 14 years old who attended daily classes in the building and the Elders 14 to 16 years old who performed all the chores in preparation for a position in domestic service they slept in six large dormitories named after British military Heroes Hague have a lot jellico Nightingale Raglan and Roberts daily life in a Victorian institution with strong military traditions was inevitably subject to a strict routine it was dictated by a large bill in the passage behind the main hall which was so loud that no one could ever say I didn't hear.
The day began at six o'clock in the morning when the girls got up made their beds washed and got dressed then they were marched downstairs to the play Hall with a Plague quartzly and until breakfast at tend to eight the bell rang again and the girls lined up once more when the bell ring a second time they marched in pairs along the corridor to the dining hall inside long tables ran the length of the room each seating 100 girls when all of them were in position the large door at the far end of the hall opened and in warts the lady superintendent she moved to the rosterum and LED the girls in saying Grace after she had left the girls Satan at their breakfast in silence as the matrons patrol the long tables breakfast was one and a half thick pieces of bread on Monday Wednesday and Friday was served with dripping on the other mornings there was marmalade brown sugar or black treacle
[39:40]
[NEEDS COMPLETING]
And is we leavd ourt meal
Somebody come along
Bur we got On the other mornings there was marmalade brown sugar or black treacleyou've got through it, I suppose
After breakfast the girls were marched out again while the younger ones went to classes the Elders had to work all day some in the bass kitchen preparing meals for 300 others in the laundry doing the washing and ironing the biggest chore was keeping the building clean however the floors were especially hard works they were heavy then sudden every chapter throat but if yawn was beautiful shining dinner was at 12:30 and the main meal of the day it was always the same every week Stu on Mondays and Fridays roast lamb on Tuesday Thursdays and Saturdays Wednesday this fishing days we used to call it
Every scrap of food, including fat, had to be eaten. Any girl who left anything on her plate had to stay behind to eat it under supervision or find it served to her again cold for tea. I've dropped a big parlour plates and then the corner there I've been down to the eater that was down there to bring the hot plates up and I was terrible and as I got to have dropped potatoes and a piece of and then I slipped and special these plates around and all the afternoon I had to stand on the platform and soak all the crests out I counted how many plates are broken.
After lunch the girls filed out of the hall the Elders went back to their work duties and the remaining girls returned to their classrooms at four o'clock when the afternoon session of school ended they were turned outside to play after tea the infants and Juniors prepared for bed by 7:00 the older girls stayed up until 8:00 doing homework in a special preparation room or punishment job such as polishing boots. Mainly they sat in silence knitting socks. Then we used to come here do niche we have to knit all our own socks I remember when I first came at eight years old I was given for needles and they to make these sort of as told how to do the first somebody casted on the stitches and I'm sure just how to do it and I'll be coming through and then riped up to the last.
On Sundays the girls dressed in their best clothes and went to church in their own Chapel twice once in the morning and then again in the afternoon in between the long walks around once with Common the chapel and before lunch we lined up in pairs according to age to form a long procession across to go for our weekly walk around onesworth common turning left out the main school gates we always passed the Wandsworth prison looking grim with its tiny windows and the huge entrance door the prison was a stone's throw across the Trinity Road from the school. We were always scared about a breakout from there.
We walk down Trinity Road as far as the Surrey Tavern I often wondered what ley beyond this point in the wide world we then continue the circuit up Bolingbroke Grove, then back along the opposite side of the railway to Emanuel School before crossing over the Cat's Back into the orphanage again.
Once a month a few lucky girls might receive visits from relatives otherwise the highlight of the year was the annual outing to Olympia for the Royal tournament everyone up early in a waiting the five double decker buses in front of the orphanage to take them out every girl was given their father's regimental badge to wear it was a strange journey across London and people stared from the pavements as the buses passed them and the children waved from the windows to go to relatives for the short summer holiday and we had Landon they were mean that we're in the hospital the first world they call themselves and come in and entertainers and there it was during this concert in 1928 that the minutes of the school management committee record the lady superintendent died while carrying out a duties.
Frances however tells a different story. ? half time they were gonna drink you see imagine he'll got him she said now you all see quiet until they come back with that she went out the door the way she went well another ancient had just talked between Israel's well you just and that came madam Hill after thou there and of course we will naturally she said that's it and the way she went out the corrider she was dead she got knockers along that corridor where we stupid and weekdays and she she collaps and she had contribute understandably the girls memories are dominated by the army-like discipline at the orphanage and they're unsympathetic treatment to the hands of the staff there they were all very stern
Hurt yourself..
[46:15]
SPY SCHOOL
the Outbreak of the second world war in September 1939 triggered the largest mass movement in British history in all one and a half million people were evacuated including 400,000 unaccompanied children from London in the curiously codenamed Operation Pied Piper among them were 90 girls from the Royal Victoria Patriotic School the others remaining on extended summer holiday with relatives in areas deemed safe at the time their destination was Saunders foot in Pembrokeshire Wales where the assistant lady superintendent kept a home.
After a week in the local girl guide Hut the girls were bulleted in three buildings around the town one of these was Hain Castle the home of lord and Lady Merthyr were the four smallest girls slept each night on the billiard table memories of the evacuation generally tend to be mixed but for the Royal pack girls already accustomed to being away from home and enjoying the relative freedom and pleasures of life in the Welsh countryside they were simply joyous with the empty building was for a while occupied by a flight of number 30 barrage balloon group this provided air defences on ones with common against German bombers navigating along local landmarks such as Trinity Road.
They couldn't prevent every attack however and at the height of the Blitz in the autumn of 1940 enemy bombs fell all around the orphanage destroying or damaging several of the outbuildings including the gatehouse other dangers look too the sudden collapse of France and the Low Countries in summer 1940 convinced many that enemy agents have been at work in those countries.
Now facing a huge influx of refugees from the continent, the British began to fear the NBA agents might be infiltrated here too the Ministry of Information contributed to the growing spy hysteria with the somewhat self-fulfilling warning that is a fifth column in Britain anyone who thinks that there is not has simply fallen the Trap Laid by the fifth column itself for the first job of the fifth column is to make people think that it does not exist initially immigration officers interviewed refugees at whichever ports of entry they arrived.
This however made it impossible to check their stories against information gleamed elsewhere in October 1940 MI5 prevailed upon the home office to create a single central establishment for the detention interrogation of refugees at the Royal Victoria Patriotic School female refugees were to be accommodated in a nearby building in Nightingale Lane the Royal Patriotic School as it became known opened for its new role on the 10th of January 1941 and the number of refugees process there quickly Rose to an average of 700 a month colonel arrest a Pinto abduction intelligence officer later describes his experiences at the school in the BBC series Spycatcher
the Royal Victoria Patriotic School we stress the importance of searching with the utmost care of luggage and personal prolongings brought in by the refugees this was usually done after they had made their preliminary statements and before they were given a detailed interrogation which may well be based upon clues picked up during a search of their effects the school contained a large room empty of all furniture except for long bear table and chairs drawn up either silent we called this the lumber room every morning and Examiner would sit at the table with the belongings of his clients spread out in front of him they would examine sometimes with a powerful magnifying pledge that a suitcases briefcases wallets pocketbooks correspondent phantom pens spectacle cases tobacco pouches cigarette cases and bunches of keys and all other paraphernalia brought in by the refugees once they were passed they were push the one side the room looked like a quick Customs examination and the Vicarage jumbled sale
in all this the whole process was greatly facilitated by the informal and even friendly atmosphere that prevailed at the Royal Patriotic School interrogators recognize that the vast majority of the refugees were not only genuine but had overcome considerable hardship to reach Britain most interviews were conducted in a relaxed manner and this probably encouraged those being questioned to dial volge more readily and fully Europe was a great interest to Britain's other clandestine organizations too the secret intelligence service MI6 and the special operations executive both maintained a presence there as did MI9 which was responsible for teaching escape and evade techniques to allied air crew in the event they were shot down over Enemy Territory.
Airey Neve, who later became a conservative MP and who was assassinated by the IRA in 1979, was an MI9 officer, codename Saturday, who served at the Royal Patriotic School. The first Britain to escape from Colditz, Neeve contrasted his own treatment at the hands of the Gestapo with conditions at the school. In contrast, the R.V.P.S system seemed deliberately [??] Solace it wore down the suspect by patience suspense and boredom mixed with cigarettes and endless cups of official tea we're not an interrogation the inmate was allowed to roam the stone flagged corridors and school rooms like orphans of the Crimea to ponder the Future the very dreariness of the place and the taste of that government tea would I thought be enough to break the [stoutest?] German agent.
No foreign national from enemy-occupied Europe was exempt from the requirement to go to the Royal Patriotic School for interrogation before they could be released elsewhere into British society. No matter how brave or important, this rule was never broken as the future President of France, Francois Mitterand, later found out when he too was taken to the Royal Victoria Patriotic School for his own interrogation.
By the end of the war an estimated 33,000 [??] nationals have been contained and interrogated at the school. In all, six spies were uncovered at the school three of whom were later returned to Wandsworth to be hanged at the prison by the renowned executioner Albert Pierpoint. To this day their bodies lie in unconsecrated graves beneath the tarmac on the south side of the prison grounds.
Only three enemy agents were known to have passed through undetected, and then only because of misleading information from other parts of the intelligence machinery. This success was due to two crucial factors: firstly, the RPS formed a narrow bottleneck through which all refugees had to pass; secondly,the central information index made it increasingly easy for the interrogators to check the truth of each arrival story — what Dick White, who after the war became head of MI5, called distinguishing the sheep — genuine refugees — from the goats — enemy agents.
CHAPTER 7
54:10
Even before the war had ended the commissioners planned to move the school to smaller premises that would be cheaper to maintain. In 1946 it reopened at Bedwell Park in Essendon, Hertfordshire, with just 100 girls. It was there that the school celebrated its centenary in 1957. Just 15 years later in 1972 the doors of the Royal Victoria Patriotic School closed for the last time with just five orphans remaining on its register, the last of some 4,500 girls. The property [at?] Wandsworth was sold to London County Council in 1950, and in September 1957 as the girls of the Patriotic School were celebrating their centenary in Essendon, a new school opened in the grounds of the original building.
Spencer Park Comprehensive School for Boys was an amalgam of Honeywel, Lavender Hill, Earlsfield and Wandsworth technical schools built for 900 pupils within a year the role of those new school had reached 1200 as a result of which the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building was brought back into use to house the first and second years.
With no budget for maintenance, however, it fell more and more into disrepair. In their report of 1967 the school inspectors described the situation they found there [??] it has long been under threat of demolition and internally has been allowed to deteriorate until his condition can now be only described as squalid." Ironically, it wasn't the squalor of the old building but the discovery of asbestos in the new ones that forced the school to close in 1991 and eventually led to its demolition.
In 1973 Sir John Betjeman and his Victorian Society managed to get the Royal Victoria Patriotic School listed. Abandoned and unwanted, however, the building continued to deteriorate and its very survival seemed doubtful then in 1980 and New Zealand entrepreneur portuton negotiated to buy it for just one pound. Paul jokes today, however, that he probably paid too much for the building.
"All the lead been stolen from the roofs and as a result the building was riddled with dry rock. We also had to remove four tons of pigeon droppings before we could even begin work."
In May 1981, just one day before Paul was due to sign the lease, [an arson attack?] destroyed the main hall. Fortunately craftsman were able to reconstruct it accurately using photographic records taken only two weeks earlier. The restoration of the building was led by two architects John Dickinson and Charles Guam [sp?]. It took seven years to complete and cost almost one and a half million pounds — coincidentally the same amount raised by the Patriotic Fund that originally commissioned the building.
Today the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building is home to a thriving community of residential apartments, studios, workshops, the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts, Le Gothique bar and restaurant. One of these is the resident artist Xavier pick who like some of his World War One predecessors has also been appointed a British war artist.
150th anniversary in July 2007 the building hosted a visit by the current president of the Royal Patriotic Fund Prince Michael of Kent, the great great grandson of Queen Victoria and among those gathered for the occasion the last of the old girls who are at the orphanage during the 1920s and 30s. In spite of its forbiding appearance, the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building has provided sanctuary to almost 100,000 orphans, wounded servicemen, and European refugees.
In turn, the building itself had to be rescued from demolition and if today's surrounded by trees and tower blocks it is no longer as visible as its founders once intended, it has at least proved to be a permanent memorial to the national generosity.
Written and narrated by Simon McNeill-Ritchie [s p?]
Credit
Sources of illustrations and maps
Bibliography
Supported by LAMAS
Back to the top of this page . . .