SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: Croydon society in the late 1800s included several organisations formed to provide help, education and training to the destitute, and their work was at the heart of social reforms to come.
DAVID MORGAN profiles the life of one of their significant figures, Alice Malleson
Croydon reformer: Alice Malleson was a teacher, suffragist and community worker
On the west wall of Croydon Minster is a brass plaque which commemorates the life of Alice Malleson.
Malleson died on September 27 1901. The plaque was paid for by her friends and co-workers as mark of their esteem and appreciation for the years of devoted philanthropic work she did in Croydon.
Alice Malleson was born in 1833. She was one of three daughters who survived into adulthood, together with three brothers.
Her father was Rev Philip Malleson. He had married Anna Sophia Taylor in 1823 and six years later became the minister of New Road Chapel, Brighton, as well as becoming the Head of Hove House School. He retired to Croydon in 1860 to be near other members of the Malleson family. The 1866 Croydon Directory showed Rev JP Malleson living in Birdhurst, Coombe Road. By 1869, the year of his death, Rev Malleson had moved to The Close, off Chatsworth Road.
The philanthropic work for Croydon of Alice Malleson began in 1883. Listed in the Croydon Parish Church records initially as the treasurer and then later as the secretary, she was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Croydon Rescue and Preventative Association.
A short service of dedication was led by the Vicar of Croydon, Rev JM Brathwaite, to mark the opening of the project in Milton House, Milton Road.
Much thought and planning had gone into making the home a success, together with a considerable financial commitment. It was estimated that the annual cost of running the home would be about £350 a year. Members of the public were encouraged to help with the project and donate to its upkeep. The first church report about the project referred to it as a “Rescue Home” for “fallen women”.
The object of the home was “to help fallen women desirous to leave their evil life”. Admission to the home was free for local women, but others had to pay a guinea, one pound and a shilling, £1.05 – but still a tidy sum, worth the equivalent of almost £160 today.
Memorial: the brass plaque on the west wall of Croydon Minster to the memory of Victorian reformer Alice Malleson’s life and work
This was a separate, though similar, organisation to Croydon’s Girls Friendly Society, which started out of what was then known as Croydon Parish Church in the 1870s and continued well into the 20th Century, at a time when there was little if any state help, but plenty of demand for some kind of social support for young women, “fallen” or otherwise. The Girls Friendly Society and the Croydon Rescue and Preventative Association both depended on public subscription and charity to be able to function.
At the Croydon Rescue and Preventative Association home, after the women had stayed for a few weeks or months, the management committee hoped to move the young women into service, as domestic servants, maids or cooks, or to another home. The 1890 register showed that there were seven young women living on the premises. It was a vital refuge for them.
The venture proved to be a successful one as, by 1895, a second project had been started. This was a Training Home for Young Servants and was based at 34 Park Lane.
Bloomsbury set: the Malleson family figured prominently in the Working Women’s College
The object of this second project was “to train orphaned, friendless girls and those in danger from bad surroundings for domestic service”. Girls aged between 10 and 16 were eligible. It was planned that the girls would stay between six months and two years. Alice Malleson was again listed as the secretary of this organisation.
After she died, aged 68, Alice Malleson’s will provided much information about her life and her family. She never married. At the time of her death, she was living in “Fairholme”, Park Lane, Croydon. She had bought the house in 1881. She bequeathed the lease of Fairholme to Bithynia Myrrha Malleson, the wife of Edmund, her nephew. Alice’s will also included all her furniture, electroplate, linen, glass and china in this bequest as well.
To her brothers, William and Frank, and her brother-in-law Frank Goodwin, she left all her pictures, books, engravings and framed photographs which were to be divided between them “as equally as may be by choice”.
To her third brother, Arthur, who had emigrated to America, she bequieved £150, “if he should survive me”.
Her niece Mabel was left Alice’s freehold property, Daylesford House, 4 Holland Road, Croydon. The interesting part about this bequest is that Alice wrote in her will that this house had been let for 14 years, commencing in midsummer 1900, to Miss Lacy Morland for the use of the Croydon Preventative and Rescue Service. Alice clearly hoped that work of the association would be carried on after her death.
She added in her will that she would prefer that the association be allowed to continue to rent the house on reasonable terms, with the rent of £47 per year to be raised to not more than £54 after the current term had expired.
A gift of £100 was left to her friend Cecelia Montague.
Any servant who would have been with her for a year or more at her death was to receive £5.
Finally, she gave a £20 donation to the cause and asked that all the residue and personal effects which were not included elsewhere in her will to be shared between her sister Katherine and her niece Hope.
Alice Malleson was a wealthy spinster when she died, but it isn’t clear where her money came from.
The Malleson family were hardworking and were grounded in their Christian faith. They were non-conformists, worshipping in the Unitarian tradition, after their father.
Serious studies: a document from the Working Women’s College gives an idea of the curriculum, and the fees
One of Alice Malleson’s own job opportunities was linked to her brother Frank and his wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth was an education reformist and employed Alice to teach history at the Working Women’s College, which she had founded with her husband in Bloomsbury. Alice and her brother William were named on the Council of the College, and her sister Katherine taught art there, too.
Alice Malleson was clearly an excellent teacher as a report written by an examining professor from University College, London, in 1866 stated: “Finding that you had very properly taken your class through the whole, or nearly the whole, History of England, instead of cramming them with ill-proportioned knowledge of a small part, while the rest was left dark – a plan too commonly followed in schools – I was able and glad to set a paper which should contain not a single puzzling or out-of-the-way question, and should afford an opportunity to each of your pupils of showing unmistakeably whether she possessed that respectable general knowledge of the leading facts of English History that no one ought to be without. I think that you have every right to be satisfied with the success that attended your labours.”
Alice’s abilities were also brought to the attention of Hannah Pipe. Pipe had opened a girl’s school in Manchester and had later moved to London and opened her boarding house for girls, Laleham, in Clapham in 1856. Concerned about finding the quality of teacher she felt necessary to maintain her demanding standards, Pipe was made aware of Malleson’s work at the Working Women’s College.
Pipe decided to pay a visit to Bloomsbury to see Malleson delivering one of her history lectures. Pipe was impressed with what she saw and set about head-hunting her to teach at Laleham. The negotiations were prolonged, partly due to Malleson’s “delicate health”.
But she commenced teaching history at Laleham in the summer term of 1869 and Pipe was able to relinquish her teaching role in this subject. No other reference to Alice Malleson’s health was ever seen in other documents.
The 1860s was a significant decade for Malleson. She was a member of the Kensington Society back then. This was a group of women, often following careers in medicine or education, who met regularly for political debate.
Among the Kensington Society’s members were Emily Davies, the founder of Girton College, Cambridge, Dorothea Beale, the head of Cheltenham Ladies College and founder of St Hilda’s College, Oxford, as well as Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman to qualify in Britain as a physician and surgeon, and Helen Taylor, the step-daughter and collaborator with philosopher John Stuart Mill.
In November 1865 the title of the Kensington Society’s debate was “Is the extension of parliamentary suffrage to women desirable, and if so under what conditions?”
In a response to an MP saying that he couldn’t find any women who wanted the vote, a petition was raised to present in Parliament. This was one of the first occasions when women’s rights came to national prominence. Alice Malleson signed it, together with her sister Catherine and her sister-in-law Elizabeth. The address which she and her sister used on the petition was her father’s old house, Birdhurst.
The Kensington Society’s ideas and actions paved the way for later successful suffrage movements.
Alice Malleson’s sister-in-law, Elizabeth, was a founding member of the Ladies’ London Emancipation Society in 1863, which was the first national anti-slavery group for women in the country. Malleson and her family certainly mixed with some radical and influential thinkers.
Alice Malleson spent her adult life trying to reframe the world for women. She helped numerous young women through her teaching. She supported young women in Croydon in a most practical way.
How would she be reframing society today?
David Morgan, pictured right, is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster, who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 8688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Other recent articles by David Morgan:
- How Melbourne’s White Flats is linked forever to Croydon
- Purley schoolboy who reached for the sky in Battle of Britain
- Goodwyn’s list that takes us back through to Tudor times
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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