Long before the welfare state and the social safety net, there was the workhouse, the orphanage and the asylum. Charity was meted out to the homeless and indigent by stern bodies dedicated to Christian values.
'Any girl or woman desiring to forsake a life of sin will find a helping hand and shelter if needed at the Home for Friendless Women, 412 Wellington Street' was the notice that ran regularly in the Ottawa Citizen's classified advertisements through the 1880s. The home was located just west of Bay Street. It was a workhouse, operating as a laundry.
And there was childcare. 'Mothers desiring to obtain employment during the day can have their little ones carefully tended in the Home for Friendless Women, 412 Wellington Street. Fee; for children under 2 years of age, 10 cents; children between the age of 2 and 12, 5 cents. A van will run between the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Depot [Sussex and McTaggart] by way of Dalhousie, Rideau and Wellington at 7:30am and returning at 7:30pm. Free Fare.' A 12-hour day. The careful tending of children meant putting them into baskets in the folding room - hopefully not too close to the rotating belts.
The women were drawn from the courts, the countryside, the streets, and jails. Revenue from the laundry largely funded the home's operations. Shortly after opening they were processing over 80,000 pieces a year, by 1900 10,000 pieces a month.
Around 1900 the HFM converted to steam-driven power. This is the mechanical washing drum, empty. Once can imagine this place when it was full of steam, noise, vibrations and the strong smell of caustic washing soaps and sodas.
Some time after 1900, the home moved across Wellington Street to number 399, a property that was expropriated by the Government of Canada in February 1912 for future federal buildings - today still an empty site beside the Library and Archives Canada.
The Home for Friendless Women relocated to more suburban surroundings, on Turner Street which is now Cambridge Avenue just south of Gladstone. It opened in 1914.
Apart from new windows and no shutters, it's basically unchanged
The front and side yard was shielded by a sturdy board-and-batten fence, giving the inmates and their children a measure of privacy (or control to prevent escapes).
The new home appears to have been primarily residential, with no laundry or workrooms.
This is a meeting room in the 1914 building. Its mission had moved on from indentured labour to education.
There was an inscribed tablet on the third floor
Which has since been covered over. The lower half of the entrance porch has been rebuilt in masonry. I don't know when the home ceased to exist, but it is now apartments.
I ascended the stairs for a quick peek. The vestibule smells of old wood, and the hallways beyond look gloomy.
There were two pillars in Ottawa's nineteenth century's segregated welfare system. The Roman Catholic church was there first with its own network of schools, churches, and hospitals and shelters. The mainline protestant churches had to unite to form collective boards to oversee institutions like the Protestant General Hospital, the Protestant Home for Elderly Women, and the Protestant Orphans' Home (pictured above).
The Board of the Protestant Orphans' Home comprised a large number civic minded women and a sprinkling of society matrons.The home was founded in 1864 in a private residence. It moved from place to place as the number of orphans in its care grew. The object was not so much adoption, but placement into service.
The Board purchased the whole block of Elgin between Lisgar and Cooper in 1874, after Lady Agnes Macdonald led a party of women into what was still mostly open pasture land. She recalled seeing several cows. It took over ten years to raise sufficient funds. The cornerstone was finally laid in 1885, and the wards moved in the next year.
It was certainly a step up from Oliver Twist, with small comforts like electric lights on the Christmas tree, fed by open wiring hung from the ceiling - but the appliqued ensign is a reminder of their place in society.
While architecturally the Orphans' Home was a grim Gothic Revival institutional building, these children playing in the snow look like they are having some fun. In 1925 a fire broke out, raising concerns over the safety of the orphanage and its charges. A new fireproof structure was deemed to be absolutely essential. The Board debated rebuilding on Elgin Street versus relocating. In 1930 they sold the property for a row of stores and the Elgin Theatre, and moved to the more humanely-named 'Children's Village' on Carling Avenue, dropping the word 'orphan' from their title.
At the other end of life's spectrum, elderly impoverished ladies were housed in the Ottawa Protestant Home on Rideau Street - but presumably not put to work.
Like the Home for Friendless Women, the 'Perley Home for the Incurables' next door at 415 Wellington Street was a victim of the 1912 federal expropriation .
The Perley Home had been an uppertown mansion built in the 1870s, and converted into an incurables' home in the 1890s as a gift from the Perleys.
The house was pulled down, and the property left vacant until temporary buildings were put up here at the outbreak of World War II. These were eventually removed in 1965 for the Library and Archives.
In 1914 the Perley Home moved into a new hospital building in a more sylvan setting on Aylmer Avenue overlooking the Rideau Canal and the Ottawa Improvement Commission Driveway.
As a modern purpose-built facility, the new Perley Home was a better place to tend the chronically ill, although the barbaric term 'incurables' wasn't dropped until the 1960s. The open brick enclosures are fire escapes, for a safer evacuation of its bed-ridden patients.
The Perley sold its Ottawa South property to a developer for a private retirement residence, and merged with the Rideau Veterans' Home to form a chronic care and rehabilitation centre in Alta Vista.
Long before the welfare state and the social safety net, there was the workhouse, the orphanage and the asylum. Charity was meted out to the homeless and indigent by stern bodies dedicated to Christian values.
'Any girl or woman desiring to forsake a life of sin will find a helping hand and shelter if needed at the Home for Friendless Women, 412 Wellington Street' was the notice that ran regularly in the Ottawa Citizen's classified advertisements through the 1880s. The home was located just west of Bay Street. It was a workhouse, operating as a laundry.
And there was childcare. 'Mothers desiring to obtain employment during the day can have their little ones carefully tended in the Home for Friendless Women, 412 Wellington Street. Fee; for children under 2 years of age, 10 cents; children between the age of 2 and 12, 5 cents. A van will run between the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Depot [Sussex and McTaggart] by way of Dalhousie, Rideau and Wellington at 7:30am and returning at 7:30pm. Free Fare.' A 12-hour day. The careful tending of children meant putting them into baskets in the folding room - hopefully not too close to the rotating belts.
The women were drawn from the courts, the countryside, the streets, and jails. Revenue from the laundry largely funded the home's operations. Shortly after opening they were processing over 80,000 pieces a year, by 1900 10,000 pieces a month.
Around 1900 the HFM converted to steam-driven power. This is the mechanical washing drum, empty. Once can imagine this place when it was full of steam, noise, vibrations and the strong smell of caustic washing soaps and sodas.
Some time after 1900, the home moved across Wellington Street to number 399, a property that was expropriated by the Government of Canada in February 1912 for future federal buildings - today still an empty site beside the Library and Archives Canada.
The Home for Friendless Women relocated to more suburban surroundings, on Turner Street which is now Cambridge Avenue just south of Gladstone. It opened in 1914.
Apart from new windows and no shutters, it's basically unchanged
The front and side yard was shielded by a sturdy board-and-batten fence, giving the inmates and their children a measure of privacy (or control to prevent escapes).
The new home appears to have been primarily residential, with no laundry or workrooms.
This is a meeting room in the 1914 building. Its mission had moved on from indentured labour to education.
There was an inscribed tablet on the third floor
Which has since been covered over. The lower half of the entrance porch has been rebuilt in masonry. I don't know when the home ceased to exist, but it is now apartments.
I ascended the stairs for a quick peek. The vestibule smells of old wood, and the hallways beyond look gloomy.
There were two pillars in Ottawa's nineteenth century's segregated welfare system. The Roman Catholic church was there first with its own network of schools, churches, and hospitals and shelters. The mainline protestant churches had to unite to form collective boards to oversee institutions like the Protestant General Hospital, the Protestant Home for Elderly Women, and the Protestant Orphans' Home (pictured above).
The Board of the Protestant Orphans' Home comprised a large number civic minded women and a sprinkling of society matrons.The home was founded in 1864 in a private residence. It moved from place to place as the number of orphans in its care grew. The object was not so much adoption, but placement into service.
The Board purchased the whole block of Elgin between Lisgar and Cooper in 1874, after Lady Agnes Macdonald led a party of women into what was still mostly open pasture land. She recalled seeing several cows. It took over ten years to raise sufficient funds. The cornerstone was finally laid in 1885, and the wards moved in the next year.
It was certainly a step up from Oliver Twist, with small comforts like electric lights on the Christmas tree, fed by open wiring hung from the ceiling - but the appliqued ensign is a reminder of their place in society.
While architecturally the Orphans' Home was a grim Gothic Revival institutional building, these children playing in the snow look like they are having some fun. In 1925 a fire broke out, raising concerns over the safety of the orphanage and its charges. A new fireproof structure was deemed to be absolutely essential. The Board debated rebuilding on Elgin Street versus relocating. In 1930 they sold the property for a row of stores and the Elgin Theatre, and moved to the more humanely-named 'Children's Village' on Carling Avenue, dropping the word 'orphan' from their title.
At the other end of life's spectrum, elderly impoverished ladies were housed in the Ottawa Protestant Home on Rideau Street - but presumably not put to work.
Like the Home for Friendless Women, the 'Perley Home for the Incurables' next door at 415 Wellington Street was a victim of the 1912 federal expropriation .
The Perley Home had been an uppertown mansion built in the 1870s, and converted into an incurables' home in the 1890s as a gift from the Perleys.
The house was pulled down, and the property left vacant until temporary buildings were put up here at the outbreak of World War II. These were eventually removed in 1965 for the Library and Archives.
In 1914 the Perley Home moved into a new hospital building in a more sylvan setting on Aylmer Avenue overlooking the Rideau Canal and the Ottawa Improvement Commission Driveway.
As a modern purpose-built facility, the new Perley Home was a better place to tend the chronically ill, although the barbaric term 'incurables' wasn't dropped until the 1960s. The open brick enclosures are fire escapes, for a safer evacuation of its bed-ridden patients.
The Perley sold its Ottawa South property to a developer for a private retirement residence, and merged with the Rideau Veterans' Home to form a chronic care and rehabilitation centre in Alta Vista.
I really liked this posting. Not only do I love that picture of the Protestant Orphans' Home (the one outdoors in which you can see the east side of 182 Lisgar - my wife and I lived there for a few years), but it is really interesting to see the Home for Friendless Women and how it appears to be residential when it was actually more institutional.
ReplyDeleteThe odd part is the new Pearly Home. It's a post-modern building and one of the most annoying buildings in Ottawa (SITE at Ottawa U is another like this). There's no clear entrance, there's about a hundred different outside doors all of which are locked except one. The hallways go in every direction. Weird building.
ReplyDeletetest
ReplyDeleteVery interesting for me b/c my grandfather William Cooper 8 and two of his siblings, Annie 6 and Alexander 4, resided within the Wellington Ward in a similar dwelling according to the 1881 census. I'm wondering if could be the same address.
ReplyDeletePeace and love,
Bill Cooper.
Where did you get that old pictures?Its really interesting.
ReplyDeleteMy G Grandmother was in the home for Friendless Girls in 1908 I wonder does anyone know where the records may be kept??
ReplyDelete