In 1892, Viscount George Maidstone (or ‘Maidy’) Finch-Hatton became ill with flu while abroad with his family in Cannes. He was nursed for several weeks by his mother, Lady Winchilsea, but sadly her efforts were in vain. While ill, nine-year-old Maidy discussed with his father the idea of setting up a children’s society, whose members would assist and write to poorer children. The 12th Earl of Winchilsea was reputedly a devoted father to Maidy and his sister Muriel, and just over a year later, he established the Children’s Order of Chivalry. Its watchwords were ‘gentleness, honour and love’. Born out of a family’s grief, the Order is a fascinating attempt to bring together rich and poor and to instil social responsibility in the young.

Chivalry and Christian action

Born into the aristocracy, Maidy attended Eton College, one of the most prestigious schools in England; he can be seen wearing the Eton collar on the Order’s logo. He was also brought up as a devout Christian by his father. Prevalent in universities and in public schools like Eton was the concept of ‘Christian socialism’ and the ideal of the chivalrous gentleman.

Christian socialists believed that the better off should help the worst off, which led to many acts of service – not least the founding of missions, clubs, and working men’s institutes, many of which were concentrated in the East End of London. The East End had evolved rapidly, with high levels of migration from abroad and from the countryside. Housing was overcrowded, with little access to clean water and sanitation. Public focus on the East End and its living conditions was sustained with the publication of Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People in London (vol.1) in 1889, and its accompanying poverty maps.

The Victorian revival of chivalry complemented Christian socialism. While not all men of means subscribed to the same ideas, the chivalrous gentleman was promoted in 19th-century art, society and literature as a man of honour, a protector of the weak, a patriot, a loyal friend, a natural and selfless leader, a sportsman and a lover of the countryside. Maidy and his father grew up with these ideals, and the Order’s name and motto – ‘What’s brave, what’s noble, let’s do it!’ – expresses them. Yet the Order was not about challenging the social order. Instead, it gave a leading role to rich children.

The work of the Order

From 1893, the Earl of Winchilsea’s agricultural newspaper, The Cable, printed a weekly supplement dedicated to the Order’s work and members. A children’s editor published membership lists for the Order and its Guild of Associates (for those aged 17 and over), wrote editorials for the children, and co-ordinated puzzles and Bible competitions. The Order was supported by many lady patrons known as ‘Lady Prioresses’.

Children who joined the Order as ‘companions’ were encouraged to write to poorer children in the East End and to send gifts of clothing, sweets, magazines and books. Some members hosted one or more children at their country homes for a holiday. At Christmas, letters were encouraged under a ‘Santa Claus’ scheme, with richer children readily taking on the magical mantle of Santa. East End children were in turn encouraged to think of rich friends as their Santa Claus. At Christmas, gifts were distributed to children at a special tea in the East End, replete with a 15-foot Christmas tree decorated with 500 candles.

By 1897, the Order had opened a convalescent home in Ewerby (Lincolnshire) for sick children, close to the Winchilseas’ family seat at Haverholme Priory. It accommodated up to six children at a time, who were looked after by a nurse. The home admitted children with illnesses such as diphtheria and consumption. The children’s editor of The Cable stayed for tea on one occasion, noting the children’s improved health and a preference for golden syrup on copious amounts of brown bread.

On 7 July 1894, the Order celebrated its love of the country with a ‘grand picnic’ at Kirby Hall, the semi-ruined ancestral home of the 12th Earl of Winchilsea. The picnic attracted national headlines, and included a bazaar, a grand investiture of children of the order, sports, a performance by some of the poorer children, a trip to nearby Weldon Quarries and refreshments. Of the 5,000 guests who attended, 400 were poorer children from the Old Ford district in London, where a clergyman, the Reverend Welchman, had been particularly active. Much was made of the symbolism of rich and poor coming together and sharing ‘the same beautiful space’ and ‘breathing the same pure air’.

Yet the afternoon tea for the poorer companions was held separately, prior to a tea for the well-off companions. A spirit of sympathy between rich and poor did not extend to eating together at the same table, though there are accounts in the letters of richer children meeting up with the children they had corresponded with and purchasing toys and sweets for them from the stalls. The editor concluded of the day, addressing the rich children: ‘You have succeeded in buying happy hours for all these poor little children, and they will never forget that they owe them to you, the richer Companions of the Order.’

The Cable consistently addressed well-off children in this way, boosting their sense of importance. The few letters printed by children living in the East End express gratitude for gifts, reinforcing a sense of indebtedness. The Order was more about extending opportunities to poorer children rather than upending the social order, which was in keeping with the views of prominent Christian socialists like John Ruskin. He did not believe in democracy but in an altruistic, honourable ruling class, who did the right thing by others.

In search of the poor

The Order funded day outings to the country, as well as longer holidays. It is through the holiday scheme that we learn more about the poorer children. In May 1894, nine-year-old Louisa Tuck boarded a train for Sleaford. She was one of the first to be sent away for a stay in the country. Louisa was from Bethnal Green and one of five children. Her mother was ‘obliged to work at making cardboard boxes’. Louisa had responsibilities beyond her young age, helping her mother by ‘carrying the boxes to and fro’ and doing the shopping for the family.

Louisa appears in a list of 55 children who benefited from the holiday scheme and who were predominantly from the Old Ford area. This list provides the street address of the children, their holiday destination, host and duration of stay. Therefore it was possible to check the 1891 and 1901 censuses, and to consult old maps of the Old Ford area to find out more.

The findings from the census show that these were children from large families, often with six children or more. Their parents worked as wire merchants, wood sawyers, blind makers, garment packers, plumbers, decorators, gunsmiths, boot finishers and milliners. In many households, one or more siblings also worked, and so times may not have been too hard for many of these children. Where siblings were too young to work, or the mother or father was self-employed or widowed, life must have been difficult, e.g. Louisa and Emma Jeffreys of Candy Street were two of six children in 1891 and their father worked as a house decorator.

Some families moved around throughout the 1890s, and some children lodged with other families who may have been known to them (e.g. Maud Ellis, who by 1901 was lodging with another family). By 1901, many of the children on the holiday list were working themselves in various trades e.g. poulterer, office boy, confectionary worker, dressmaker’s assistant and fancy box maker.

Old OS maps of the streets of Old Ford in Bow show rows of terraced housing, schools, mission churches and various industries bordered by a canal and intersected by the North London Railway. Charles Booth’s findings from his survey of East London from 1886 onwards suggest that Old Ford and the outskirts of Bethnal Green were not the worst places to live in the East End. Homes were close to large public spaces, such as Victoria Park, occupied wider streets and had ‘gardens of some sort’.

On Booth’s colour-coded poverty map of 1889 most of the children on the holiday list were from homes he regarded as a mixture of the comfortably off and poor, with a few – Rose Mansfield, Mary Adams and Florence Mansfield – living on streets classified as ‘poor’, with a household income of 18s to 21s per week. Florence was one of nine children, the daughter of a wooden stick carver, although two older siblings worked.

The findings indicate that the Order did not routinely help the most impoverished families, although there were exceptions to this rule as family circumstances changed. In 1901, The Cable published the circumstances of a family who Booth might have described as being of ‘chronic want’, through work insecurity. In a moving February editorial, the family were described as close to starvation and headed for the workhouse. The father was a bricklayer on a wage of 23s a week and had been out of work in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The family’s rent was 7s 6d, which left little to feed and clothe a family of eight and nothing to put by for leaner times. The family had pawned most of their furniture and belongings, including the children’s beds and blankets. The editor asked the well-off children and families to put themselves in the shoes of a man walking the streets day after day to find work, only to return home empty handed to a cold and hungry family. Three of the children had ‘Santa Claus’ companions, who sent enough money to support the family until the father found work.

This family was fortunate. Those who knew the family had decided that they were worthy of further support, because the father was ‘respectable’, wrote poetry and was interested in things ‘which many men in that station of life never pay the slightest attention’. The attitudes expressed here by the children’s editor are in line with a previous editorial, explaining that the Order helped those considered the respectable, hard-working poor. Helping families classified as ‘thriftless’ was deemed a waste of time, since letters and presents from country friends would go unheeded. This distinction between a deserving and undeserving poor was in line with Booth’s classification of the poorest as ‘loafers’ and ‘semi-criminals’.

The Children’s Order of Chivalry was created to fight what Lord Winchilsea described as chivalry’s ‘new enemy’: poverty. The Order provided some relief to poor children, particularly in its care of sick children. However, its call to action was limited in scope and did not tackle the causes of poverty. It was a product of its time, governed by attitudes that ultimately supported the worldview of the wealthy. The Order continued over several years, well beyond the death of the Earl of Winchilsea in 1898, and gradually evolved into a branch structure. In 1947, the Newark branch was still in existence. By 1901, there were 14,290 registered members, far exceeding the original target of 5,000 members.

Digging deeper

• Charles Booth’s poverty maps and accompanying notes are available online, published by the London School of Economics: booth.lse.ac.uk/map and on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer
• The National Archives’ ‘Discovery’ database reveals the location of the Winchilsea family papers, but ensure you search using the family surname (Finch-Hatton) as well as the titled name.
• The London Picture Archive: londonpicturearchive.org.uk
• The Cable can be viewed at The British Library, and is not available via The British Newspaper Archive. In 1901, it became The Agricultural World and Cable. In a publication devoted to farming, with articles on grain, animal breeds and the ‘philosophy of manuring’, I underestimated how much information is available on the Order!