15 November 1894: Application is made to move Maria Squires (11) of Dewsbury from a girls’ shelter in Wakefield to St Chad’s Home For Girls, Far Headingley
Children’s Society Records and Archives Centre. N.d. Catalogue of Children’s Case Files. London: Children’s Society. Get it:
.Excerpt
The child’s father [John Squires] had previously been sent to prison for assaulting the child’s mother. The child’s mother left the family, taking the child with her. The mother then abandoned the child by the side of the road and the child was taken into Dewsbury Workhouse. The child was then taken out of the workhouse by the child’s father. The family appeared to be very poor and the child appeared to have been sexually abused by the child’s father. The child ran away from home and went back to Dewsbury Workhouse. From there the child was taken into a home not operated by The Society: a shelter in Wakefield run by Wakefield Ladies Association for Care of Girls.
To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.
Abbreviations:
- ER: East Riding
- GM: Greater Manchester
- NR: North Riding
- NY: North Yorkshire
- SY: South Yorkshire
- WR: West Riding
- WY: West Yorkshire
Comment
Comment
Then:
27 November 1894 – Received into St Chad’s Home For Girls, Far Headingley,
Leeds, Yorkshire [just before the move to the new building]
22 April 1897 – Went to Leeds Union Workhouse
What happened thereafter? Case file 4570 estimates Maria’s DOB as 1881, giving her age as roughly 13, but the 1901 census for the Ledgard household, Huddersfield Road, Ravensthorpe, Dewsbury lists an 18-year-old Maria Squires born in Dewsbury in ca. 1883, single, and employed as “GENERAL SERVANT (DOMESTIC)” – hence the age of 11 I give.
If ever I return to London, I hope to read the docs relating to this case in the archive.
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Original
The child’s father had previously been sent to prison for assaulting the child’s mother. The child’s mother left the family, taking the child with her. The mother then abandoned the child by the side of the road and the child was taken into Dewsbury Workhouse. The child was then taken out of the workhouse by the child’s father. The family appeared to be very poor and the child appeared to have been sexually abused by the child’s father. The child ran away from home and went back to Dewsbury Workhouse. From there the child was taken into a home not operated by The Society: a shelter in Wakefield run by Wakefield Ladies Association for Care of Girls.
124 words.
Tags
Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.
- Child abandonment (1)
· - Child abuse (3) ·
- Child labour (8) ·
- Child sexual abuse (7) ·
- 📌Dewsbury (21) ·
- Domestic violence (7) ·
- 📌Far Headingley (2) ·
- 📌Leeds (235) ·
- Neglect (1) ·
- Poverty (16) ·
- Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire (1) ·
- Runaway (dependent) (1) ·
- Sexual assault (5) ·
- 📌St Chad's Home For Girls (1889-1939) (1), 29th children's home set up by the Waifs and Strays' Society, originally Glebe House, Hollin Lane/Glebe Terrace, Far Headingley, but from 1894 in the purpose-built Hollin Hall, on Hollin Road, now Weetwood Primary School ·
- The Children’s Society (1) ·
- 📌Wakefield (36), cathedral city on the River Calder in the West Riding/West Yorkshire ·
- Weetwood (2) ·
- Workhouse (3) ·
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