Lady Govia Glass

[ElvisMole]

VALDA you say
"Crispin Street not Whitechapel?"

National Archives state that for 1891 Crispin Street is in Whitechapel, as are  Gun Street and Artillery Street (and list the refuge), see
http://www.rootschat.com/links/092h/



VALDA you say
"Not sure of the evidence for this statement
'It was once apparently very fashionable for the good and godly to donate money to this establishment. '"
maybe this will help
"Providence Row Night Refuge and Home for Deserving Men, Women and Children as it was formally known, was a Roman Catholic institution established as a charity in 1860 and relocated to Crispin Street eight years later. The building survives to the present day. It was not exactly a "typical" common lodging house, if there was such a thing. Readers will note the inclusion of "deserving" in the Refuge's name. It had very good social connections. In 1888 its patrons included the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Denbigh and the Count De Torre Diaz. Among named donors and subscribers were such as the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, the Marquis of Ripon, Lords Coleridge and Napier, the Lord Mayor of London, and Richard D'Oyly Carte, founder of the company that put on the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. "
taken from
http://www.rootschat.com/links/092i/   

Back to the original request for help, for such a nebulus request, sourced from a verbal hand-me-down,
"possibly the founder of a London Girls' Shelter in Whitechapel (listed on the 1901 Census)"
then a street 200 yards from Whitechapel High Street is "Whitechapel",
especially if you are not in London or not from London.
Note that it is "a" not "The" London Girls' Shelter, to show how difficult it is to pluck a home out of the air, see
http://www.rootschat.com/links/092j/

[Valda]

Hi

I have no problem with Spitalfields being in Whitechapel civil registration district (the link given from My Archives on the TNA website). Civil registration districts encompassed far larger areas than the place some of them trook their title from, largely based initially on poor law unions. Being in a registration district e.g. the registration district of Thame Oxfordshire named after the town, doesn't make the large village of Long Crendon in Buckinghamshire (part of Thame registration district) geographically part of Thame.

The quote you give indicates Providence Row Refuge catered for both sexes

'The Refuge, which could accommodate about three hundred men, women and children'

so not a refuge for women only, which would seem to rule it out.

At this point the specification rightly or wrongly is Whitechapel and a girls refuge (checked Fry's charity guide first so I know it doesn't exist in that exact name). More importantly checked Jeff Kraggs site which lists institutions in Whitechapel on the 1901 census (link already given) and can't see a candidate. Perhaps though there is a confusion and it isn't a refuge as such. Whatever, until the originally poster comes back with more information it doesn't seem worth speculating our way through various London refuges. The Workhouse website has already done that for us

http://www.workhouses.org.uk/index.html?refuges/refuges.shtml


Regards

Valda

[ElvisMole]

I am quite happy to leave Whitechapel to the Whitechapel Society from which (some of) my info about that particular refuge came. 
(  http://www.WhiteChapelSociety.com/  )

British History adds, for that particular refuge,
( http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=50164&strquery=charity )
"Annexes in Gun Street and Artillery Lane have subsequently been opened as hostels for working girls."
So our mysterious lady may have been partly instrumental in the setting up a "hostel for working girls",
as part of the pre-existing Providence (Row) Night Refuge and Home and Convent of Mercy, putting this refuge back in the frame.

Hope she put in more than a fiver.

[Valda]

Hi

The Whitechapel Society seem to be based on the Jack the Ripper murders. Jack the Ripper at the time was known as the Whitechapel murderer though I doubt he considered precise parish boundaries when he committed his actual murders. The Society therefore names itself from those events and his nickname based on the fact nearly all the murders were committed in Whitechapel - though the last at least (I'm no expert) took place in Spitalfields in the vicinity of the Providence Row Refuge.

'The Whitechapel Society 1888 promotes the study of the Whitechapel murders and the social impact that this event had on the East End of London'.


'She' might indeed have helped set up the working girls hostels in Artillery Lane and Gun Street in Spitalfields, particularly perhaps if she was a Catholic. Hostels (or working girls homes) are of course different types of institution from a nightly refuge such as Providence Row, which is why I said in my earlier post - 'Perhaps though there is a confusion and it isn't a refuge as such' So really until we have more information we can't go any further because to do so is to merely speculate, since we don't have sufficient details to work from.


Regards

Valda