On 1st February 1859 the Hon. Mrs. Emmeline Way opened ‘The Brockham Home and Training School for Workhouse Girls’. The Home was founded for orphan girls of eleven to sixteen from workhouses across England and the girls were trained in all kinds of household work to fit them for domestic service. When they were ‘out of a situation’ it also provided them with a home. If a girl stayed in her first job for a year she received a bonus of £1.

The School is recorded in'The Charities of London' by Samuel Low, Jun., in 1861.

Training Schools for Girls taken out of Workhouses, Brockham, near Reigate, in Surrey. Instituted as a training school for orphan girls of thirteen and sixteen, taken out of workhouses, with the object of preparing them for service, and finding them suitable places. A home is also provided for the girls, in case of sickness, or of their being out of place, should the reasons for their leaving be satisfactory. Ten pounds a year will be required for each child, until the funds shall increase sufficiently to take them for less. Several ladies in the neighbourhood allow the girls to attend their houses, in order to learn household work and assist in the kitchen.

Subscriptions and Donations are received by the Rev Henry Gosse, Redhill, Surrey; Hon. Mrs Way, Wonham Manor, Reigate; Mrs Beaumont, Buckland Court, Reigate; Mrs Forman, Betchworth, Reigate.

The Hon. Mrs. Emmeline Way was born on 8 Nov 1810 and was the next to youngest daughter of John Thomas, First Lord Stanley of Alderley in Cheshire and his wife Maria Josepha. She was a timid child and was not liked by her mother who always favoured her younger sister. In fact an incident in her childhood coloured Emmeline's life when she was six years old; she saw her baby sister and two nurses engulfed in quicksands on the Isle of Anglesey. She was too small to get help. Lady Stanley was at home. A maid burst into the room followed by little Emmeline who crouched unseen by the door. The maid cried out that one of the children had vanished on the beach, and Lady Stanley exclaimed "If one has been killed - I hope it is Emmeline".

And from then on her mother blamed Emmeline for her sister's death, and perversely kept the child by her as a sort of unpaid lady's companion until her marriage when she was nearly forty years of age. Emmeline had caught the eye of a very personable young man - Albert Way (born Jun 1805) - when she was only nineteen years old, but her dreadful mother - making excuses that there was madness in his family - refused to let her daughter go. It was only Albert's persistence and devotion to Emmeline (whom he was never allowed to see alone) that eventually broke down her mother's resistance, and they were married at St George's, Hanover Square, London on 30th April 1844.

Under the sunshine of Albert's love the nightmare of her childhood began to fade, and she developed into a clever and charming woman. Albert was a prominent man in his own right; he was a friend of Charles Darwin, an eminent archaeologist, became director of the Society of Antiquaries, founder of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and founder of the Archaeological Journal.

They had one daughter Mary Alethea, born 1850 and christened on 28 September 1850 at Betchworth. Mary was conceived late in Emmeline's life - and Emmeline opened an Infant's Home adjoining the existing Home in 1871 as a birthday present and an interest and occupation for her daughter.

Emmeline must have been a great favourite in her family as two of her sisters moved away from Maria Josepha and came to live in Wonham Manor in Betchworth where Albert and Emmeline had made their home, and both the sisters were married in Betchworth Church.

Emmeline lived in an age of female' do-gooders', and took a great interest in the lives of destitute girls, mostly orphaned or even abandoned at birth (one child at the Brockham Home was christened Terrina Towpath - obviously found on the ground by the side of a canal). She decided to open this little shelter and school for girls - who could come from anywhere in the country. The town or parish of origin paid a small amount (generally to get rid of an embarassing problem) and the child was brought to the Home for training as a domestic servant. She stipulated that every girl should have:

The frocks, jacket and hat were provided by the matron and charged to the place of origin at a cost of eighteen shillings. The rest must have come from the meagre income paid to the Home, or hand-me-downs.

It should be noted, however, that Emmeline did not site her little Home in her own village. Oh no, she didn't want a lot of presumably noisy children too near her home of Wonham Manor, so she built the Home in the nearby and rather more 'working class' village of Brockham!

J S Hurt writes in his publication 'Outside the Mainstream - A History of Special Education'

“An early pioneer of taking girls from workhouses, training them for domestic service and giving them somewhere to return, should the position fail was the Hon. Mrs Emmeline Way, who started a home at Brockham near Reigate, Surrey, in which she trained ex-workhouse girls for domestic service. Others followed her example at Bristol in 1860 and Southall in 1863.”

It was obviously a very tough life.. “with many ex-workhouse girls facing economic and sexual exploitation, physical ill-treatment or sheer neglect. Guardians were encouraged to ensure that girls who found employment received a shilling a week, a wage that some were still earning as late as the 1890s. At the worst, girls found their money docked for months ostensibly to pay for their clothes and uniforms. If they went to large households as ‘between maids’ or ‘tweenies’, at the beck and call of both the cook and the housemaid, the normal misery of such a post could be compounded by the added incubus of the workhouse taint.

If girls had known little love in their lives became pregnant, perhaps as a result of yielding to the blandishments of a member of the household, they faced instant dismissal without references. Whether they left a post from choice or were dismissed friendless and penniless, they had few means of support apart from temporary prostitution or returning to the Workhouse, especially if they were pregnant.”

The function therefore of Mrs Way’s home at Brockham and a few other small agencies was to train ex-workhouse and orphaned girls to work in middle-class households, positions usually debarred to ex-workhouse girls, they usually satisfied the demand for domestic servants at the bottom end of the market; those families unable to afford or not prepared to pay girls from a more respectable background.

Hurt dismisses the argument that middle class philanthropists were recruiting their own supply of cheap servants, arguing that the only benefit was an indirect one!

Hon Mrs Way went on to pioneer The Pauper Education Act passed in 1863, which allowed local authorities to pay from the rates for children to live in homes but no more than would have been paid to the workhouses, and she probably quoted the success of her own little venture.

The Brockham Home flourished and there was a resident matron and school mistress. Beginning with twenty or so little girls; it grew to up to about forty, and eventually small boys were admitted, especially if they had older sisters in the Home. The children were partly supported by grants from their places of origin, but also from the generosity of the several large houses in Brockham and Betchworth. One house would supply the milk, others would pay for vegetables and fruit, coal, etc.

A Committee was formed of ladies from these' big houses', and the children lived a fairly happy and healthy life. Rules were strict, and if broken the children were severely dealt with. But the thought of what could have happened to them well out-balanced such minor hardships.

For the first few years they were taught in the Home, but eventually they joined the local children in Brockham School, and were allowed - with reservations - to mix with the other children in the village.

The girls were sent out to domestic service, reasonably well kitted out with clothes (for which they had to pay one half of each quarter's wages for the first year of service) and if they were' out of a position- they could come back to the Home until they were re-employed, thus ensuring their employers did not mistreat them. In fact most of them were employed locally and were in great demand, as with their training and subsequent good reputations they were much sought after.
And it was a two-way trafficking - one local employer was known to be a 'holy terror' and when she came to the Home to choose a new servant, the girls would make themselves appear 'dopey' for fear she would choose them!

In 1874, Albert Way died in Cannes, France and thereafter the Hon Mrs Way's health deteriorated. In 1877 she was obliged to 'relinquish its superintendence to her daughter, Mary Alethea. Mary had married Lewis A Way (b 1841) early on the same year at Windsor, Berkshire.

The following year, late in 1877, Mary gave birth to Susan M Way and the couple moved to Bournemouth where they had two more children - Alice M (1879) and Gregory Lewis A (1880).

By 1881 Lewis and Mary had settled to The Haven in Holdenhurst, Hampshire where they had a third daughter, Olivia (b 1881). Gregory attended the fashionable Lambrook School, Winkfield, Berkshire.

On 31 August, 1906 the Hon Mrs Emmeline Way died in Tonbridge.

The Dorking Advertiser wrote in 1911:

An interesting ceremony took place at Brockham when the Brockham Training Home for Girls was reopened after extensive alterations and additions carried out at a cost of £1000. There are at present 38 girls at the Home, two thirds of whom are paid for by the Board of Guardians. Sir Trevor Lawrence Bart testified to the importance of training girls for domestic work. Those he said “who had the good fortune to have a good servant, would know the enormous difference there was between a good servant and an indifferent one."

By 1919 there were 42 girls at the Home, 11 of them were motherless girls whose fathers were soldiers.

In 1925 Mary Alethea Way, daughter of Hon Mrs Emmeline Way died.

All the girls wore their hair bobbed and in 1927 Mr Lassam cut their hair for free - "no small matter now all are bobbed."

One of the great benefactors in Brockham was Sydney Poland who in 1928, paid for all the milk (three gallons a day) and potatoes for all 45 girls. He also paid for their holiday and travel costs in Margate and their Christmas dinner that year.

Nine years later in 1937, it is recorded that Mr Poland's sister Grace invited the girls to use the boating lake in Kiln Lane once a week.

In course of time the name was changed from an Industrial Training Home to the more gentle "Way House", so that girls would not be blemished with the stigmata of anything like a workhouse.
Sadly when Social Services grew to include destitute children, the Home had lived out its useful life and numbers diminished to such an extent that the site of the Home was put up for sale with a view to complete demolition.

But appeals were made to keep this pretty local building, and John Betjeman came to look and heartily recommended that it should be 'saved'. And so it was. The inside was gutted and converted into four homes (One Way House, Two Way House, etc.) and a further fifth house built in the grounds. So although it is a 'hollow victory' we still have remnants of the Hon. Emmeline Way's excellent work, and surprisingly there are many 'girls' surviving who were once "Home Girls", and we still receive enquiries from daughters and grand-daughters of some of them.

With contributions by:

Mrs Victoria Houghton

Mr Tony Hines

Mr Nick Caddick

Acknowledgements

Ms Katie Dodson, The Birth of a Parish, 1987

Mrs Gifford-Mead, Two Way House, Wheelers Lane, Brockham

Mrs Beryl Higgins, Census Returns, 1981

June 2004

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