Are you seriously suggesting, Roz, that a film made in 2002, dealing with a Catholic institution in Ireland, is a better source of information about Louise House, a non-secular institution, than the surviving records which include minute books, annual reports, lists of pupils and details of their progress through the school, lists of benefactors &c. These records are held in the Lewisham Local History Centre. I have used them and so, directly or indirectly, did the researchers from English Heritage.

It is clear from these records that those who managed Louise House were proud of what they were doing, and actively encouraged visitors.

Louise House's particular place in British social history is as best, a physical representation and monument to the often misguided Victorian efforts at reformist, paternalistic ( yes even when promoted by women) philanthropy, and was most certainly not an example of political enlightenment or an institution that feminists or Labour Councillors should necessarily celebrate. That was not the intention or the outcome.

The girls more likely than not would have been taken from their homes against both their wishes and that of their families, by officials who considered it in their best interests. Not unlike UK social services policies even as late as the 1980s where the state was considered a better parent than any natural one.
No doubt not every home was the same, but as I understand it, the girls were not given a traditional education but trained for domestic servitude.
You might consider this a better alternative to the workhouse or being condemned to making a living on street corners, but please do not portray this particular venture as a 'championing of working women'.

I'll eat my words as and when someone provides me with hard evidence to the contrary...

When Roz asked for evidence to support sniffer's claim that "Louise House was built for the training of orphaned and impoverished girls to improve their chances of earning a respectable living as independent individuals", I suggested where she might find that evidence. Roz has now made several assertions based upon grounds such as "more likely than not" and "as I understand it". I don't believe there is any evidence for these assertions but, like her, would certainly consider revising my views if evidence were provided.

This is quite untrue. Places at Louise House had to be applied for; usually it was a parent who applied but it might be another relative or somebody in the community who felt a particular child might benefit. Each application was considered and children were often refused admission either because they were too old, "not destitute enough" or because it was felt the home could not help them. Furthermore although "wholly destitute" children were admitted free, where relatives or friends were able to contribute, they were expected to do so.

The reasons for admission to the home were recorded. Most frequent was the death or disability of the father, for example: "Father dead; Mother works hard charing", "Father killed in street accident", "Father dead; Mother extremely poor, but respectable; struggling hard to maintain a home".

This is also untrue. The children attended Holy Trinity School and, later, what is now Kelvin Grove. They also sat annual examinations, to ensure that they (and the home) were achieving adequate standards. They were tested in reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic and composition. Amongst other subjects taught, but not tested, were history, geography, singing, grammar and industrial work (laundry, cooking and needlework for the girls and farm work and boot making for the boys). It is clear that "industrial work" was no more significant than any of the other subjects they were studying. Both boys and girls studied the same subjects and were expected to achieve the same standards.

Additionally, Louise House retained a doctor, a dentist and a hairdresser to help care for the girls.

I have been contacted several times by people who had ancestors at either Shaftesbury House or Louise House and not one of them has suggested that the homes offered anything other than a good start in life for their relative. Indeed one respondant's great grandfather, instead of leaving when his training had finished, decided to remain at the home to help train other children.

As for evidence, much of the above is from the Annual Report of the Boys & Girls' Industrial Homes, 1911 and Minutes of the General Committee Meetings, 1911 as they are amongst the few documents I have access to at home.

I must just correct something in my previous post; the home was "non-sectarian" rather than "non-secular".

I think Steve and Roz actually both make good points. Louise House was open from the 1880s until the 1930s as an "industrial home for girls".

A little bit of information from the life of Janus Korczak:

Korczak then went on, inspired in part by his visit to London, to run orphanages in Warsaw, including in the Warsaw Ghetto. He wrote the 'Rights of the Child' which formed the basis of the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

In my view the orphanages in Forest Hill were inspirational to one of the most inspirational pediatrician and campaigner on Childrens' Rights. In this sense there can be no doubt that they were progressive institutions.

However, 'as I understand it', by the 1930s such institutions were being phased out and it was not reopened as an industrial home after the war. I did overhear one old lady once say that she had known some of the girls who attended Louise House when it was an Industrial Home and felt that the girls who had attended would be furious at the idea that this institution should be honoured in any way. Of course this is just hearsay, and I wish I had got the contact details for the lady who made this statement as she clearly knows a different side to Louise House. We should accept that history can be remarkably subjective and very much depenant on your own place in history.

You are correct, Michael. Louise House ceased to be a Girls' Home in the mid-1930s (the word "Industrial" was abandoned a little earlier, in about 1929, when it was carefully chipped from the facade). By 1939 the building was the head-quarters of Lewisham Borough's Air Raid Precautions.

After the war it became a London County Council Maternity and Child Welfare Centre. On the demise of the LCC, in 1965, the maternity centre was taken over by Lewisham when, I imagine, they became owners of the building.

Steve Grindlay is arguing rationally on the basis of written evidence. If only the arguments of Roz and Michael were as well founded. Michael's statement: "We should accept that history can be remarkably subjective and very much depenant on your own place in history" is sanctimonious priggishness.

I'd like to see you tell it to the lady concerned.

I also overheard her comments, which were made to the councillors she mistakenly thought had approved the listing, at the public meeting last year. Incidentally, she also referred to the Magdalen Sisters, and was very angry on behalf of those 'inmates' she had known, suggesting not only that they would have been unimpressed by the listing, but that they would actually have cheered the bulldozers.

So while you may consider some awareness or respect for those involved with a particular part of history who were not in a position to document their experiences for posterity to be 'sanctimonious' or 'priggish', I would like to suggest that it is the dismissal of these experiences in the name of preserving bricks and mortar in aspic which can sometimes (although not always) fall into those categories.

Whatever happens to Louise House, I think it is very important that there is some form of display which commemorates the kind of lives the girls there would have led sensibely, without glorifying the original philanthropic intent at the expense of the suffering endured.

Some very good points made there, Mary (and also Michael & Steve above).

My only contribution would be that the 'old' lady referred to above could only have ever known LH personally from after the 1920s (maybe '30s) depending on her age, and that for good or bad, LH had a history before then.

Nevertheless, I always find it fascinating to hear of eye-witness accounts from our (near) history.

So how could the history of the people for whom Louise House was built be honoured?

By providing the very best services we can to those children alive today who face special difficulties in their lives

Or by the retention of Louise House lest we forget . . .

I remember her too. My recollection (which carries no more weight than anyone else's) was that she was angry and rather confused. If she heard this conversation when she was 10 years old and it occured at the time the school closed then she must be about 84, and she didn't appear that old to me.

If conditions were as bad as have been so imaginatively described a case (as sniffer suggests) could be made for turning the building into a memorial to the children who suffered there.

On the other hand, perhaps that would not be a good idea. Most of those who contributed money to the homes were local people, who kept a watchful eye on them to make sure that their money was well spent. The most generous was FJ Horniman who made an annual donation sufficient to support one child. After his death his family continued the donations.

How could Horniman (who visited the school, and arranged for groups of children to visit his museum), the Tetleys (the other local tea merchants), William Aste (who was also secretary of the Sydenham Children's Hospital) and many others have been so easily deceived about the conditions that some allege existed at the homes? The museum that bears Horniman's name would also find it difficult to deal with the fact that their founder paid money to keep a child against its will in such appalling conditions.

Stevegrindlay again highlights the evidence that Louise House was an example of enlightened and progressive social attitudes towards girls who, to paraphrase Dave Whiting, faced special difficulties in their lives. The history represented in Louise House therefore deserves the respect of those people who today support and fight for enlightened social policies, namely socialists and feminists.

It is probably anachronistic to explain Louise House in terms of either feminism or socialism. There was much activity in the late 19th and early 20th century aimed at improving the lot of unfortunate children. Efforts were often based on residential and institutional care models, which do not figure in contemporary social work thinking in anglo-saxon countries, though may still be more alive in continental Europe.

You may be right that there is a case to memorialise one of those movements by the preservation of Louise House, but do not imagine that it is without consequences for the services which it is possible to provide for children and adults alive today. For a variety of reasons, retaining Louise House will make it extremely difficult if not impossible to have a leisure centre on this site which will be able to offer a wide range of facilities to all groups of the population. There would certainly be no capacity to modify the centre to meet changing needs. I really wonder what the original promoters of Louise House would say if they were alive today! They were radical innovators, and I think they would find it hard to believe that people wished to reduce the level of current services to preserve an averagely nice building as a memorial.

If you doubt that the listing causes a problem, I suggest you visit some of the successful leisure centres in south London. For a start I would recommend the Spa in Beckenham, East Dulwich and the Arches in Greenwich. I would also suggest a discussion with some of the people running those places about how they built up their activities over a period of years.

The logical solution to the listing of Louise House is, I am afraid, a centre on Willow Way, with the existing site used for housing.

David Whiting is being so melodramatic. There are pools already on the site and it is feasible and economic to replace them with a modern version, if the Council had the will to do so.

To claim that the justifiable listing of Louise House thwarts the provision of modern facilities on Dartmouth Road is unreasonable and exaggerated and in no way justifies an out-of-centre leisure centre at Willow Way.

Yes I agree.
I am fed up with all talk about Louise House . Why is was listed is beyond me , looks like the vote too close to call at moment. I have lived within 3/4ths of a mile of LH for 60 years and never considered it anything else than an ugly building. I am a member of EH and a good mind to write to them to point out how their medling has cost us our pool.

However the original pool site should be big enough for a new pool and any other sports facilities.

I'm sorry Steve, I think the affection for Louise House goes beyond local history and into cloying sentimental affection for anything old. The present cannot be sacrificed to an imagined past.

Brian, you too are being a touch over-dramatic. We have not lost our pool, as you say, at least not yet though I admit this chav council and its chav mayor do not fill one with confidence that a decent facility, that complements the Victorian heritage of Forest Hill, can be restored to Dartmouth Road.

Louise House is worth preserving not just because of its appearance but because of the part it has played in the history of Forest Hill as well as in the history of social and educational service provision in Britain. It is a shame that so few people recognise this fact. Thankfully English Heritage did.

Steve Grindlay said:

[/quote]As for evidence, much of the above is from the Annual Report of the Boys & Girls' Industrial Homes, 1911 and Minutes of the General Committee Meetings, 1911 as they are amongst the few documents I have access to at home.[/quote]

and also:

[/quote]How could Horniman (who visited the school, and arranged for groups of children to visit his museum), the Tetleys (the other local tea merchants), William Aste (who was also secretary of the Sydenham Children's Hospital) and many others have been so easily deceived about the conditions that some allege existed at the homes?[/quote].

I have great respect for the depth of Steve's knowledge and authority in these areas - his conscientiousness is admirable, as too many historians at the moment seem to prefer to descend into propaganda... I hope he will take the following in the spirit of friendly inquiry and debate intended

I don't think it's out of order to suspect that things on the ground may have been a bit more complicated than the documents referenced above suggest (Just think of all the aspects of the Pools debate which won't have made it to the Council minutes, simply because that isn't their primary purpose!).

For one thing, even enlightened institutions of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras were working in a social atmosphere which took a heavily disciplinarian attitude to children, women and the poor.

Secondly, does anyone else remember how firmly "best behaviour" was impressed on them at school during inspections? (I am not suggesting anything more sinister than 'target-panic'! on the part of Lewisham's great schools!)

Given that the relationship between abuser and abused is known to be somewhat more intense than that between frazzled modern-day teacher and unruly pupils, and that we are talking about times when children were expected to be 'seen and not heard' and certainly not to tell 'wicked untruths' about their treatment, is it totally beyond the realm of possibility that when the grandees went a-calling, everything was made to look rosy and ship-shape so that Horniman et al could have been blissfully unaware of any dodgy goings-on?

As for the prospect of damage to his or the Museum's reputation -

Bristol must have found it very painful to publicly acknowledge what some of their great philanthropists had been involved in (and as far as I am aware, at least the Hornimans are in the clear on that one! ), but the city is much the better for having faced it's whole history warts-and-all. Its reputation has actually been enhanced by its new-found honesty. Likewise, the case of Louise House/Horniman Museum, there is no reason for any acknowledgement of any shadow side to their pasts to call into question their subsequent good work for a better future.

It may well be that further investigation of any remaining aural history might show that rumours of abuse at Louise House are only rumours - if so, then thank God, for all concerned. But we won't find out one way or the other by ignoring the issue.

If Steve or anyone else could offer advice on how to go about collecting stories without distressing the tellers, maybe someone might be willing to give it a go and settle the matter?

I don't believe it is right to try to hide the bad things about the past, but nor do I think we need to single out Louise House as a particularly cruel place without significantly more evidence. It would be easy to accuse virtually any Victorian or Edwardian institution of abuse by today's standards. For example a teacher today would be sacked for caning a child, but it was standard practice back then.

There is little doubt that it was at one time an inspirational institution to no less a figure that Janus Korczak, the man who invented the idea of the rights of a child.

If you view time backward then you can come to any number of conclusions about our ancestors. But when viewed forward it is clear that Louise House was in a small way part of a movement to improve the lives of children and the poor. I do believe that it matters when you make your judgements about the past, and you do need to take some account of the prevailing conditions at the time. If this makes me sound sanctimonious and priggish then tough.