MISCELLANEOUS INSTITUTIONS
Robinson's Retreat was endowed by Samuel
Robinson (d. 1833), surveyor to St. Thomas's
hospital, (fn. 14) for 8 widows of Independent ministers and 4 widows of Baptists. He designed a
two-storeyed Gothic range with a central chapel
fronting his own tomb on the south side of
Retreat Place and occupying part of 1 a. leased
by the hospital in 1812; other parts were reserved
for a garden and for houses. The founder was
reburied in Abney Park cemetery and the almshouses were mostly let as flats in 1901, after the
inmates had left and been given pensions; the
range was acquired by the L.C.C. in 1935 and
demolished after the war. Robinson's trustees
bought the freehold in 1911 and sold nearly all
the land in 1940 but retained funds for both the
Retreat and a relief charity, founded under his
will, in 1991. (fn. 15)
The London Orphan Asylum (fn. 16) was founded in
1813 by Andrew Reed (d. 1862), (fn. 17) who had been
trained at Hackney College. The 8-a. site of
Hackney school (fn. 18) off Lower Clapton Road, later
reached by Linscott Road, was bought in
1820 and the children were transferred to new
buildings there in 1825. The asylum included
boys' and girls' schools and was administered by
the headmaster, who was also chaplain; numbers
rose from 206 in 1826 to 453 in the 1860s.
The building by W. S. Inman, 'very ambitious
although rather cheaply executed', (fn. 19) had a frontage
of 19 bays, the central 3 projecting beneath a
pedimented Tuscan portico and the outer ones
also projecting; it was extended behind in 1846
and included a chapel seating 400 in 1851. (fn. 20)
After the orphans had moved to Watford
(Herts.) in 1871, the building was occupied by
the Metropolitan Asylums Board c. 1873-6 and
the Salvation Army from 1882. (fn. 21)
Dalston infant orphan asylum, under royal
patronage like the London Orphan Asylum, was
founded by Reed in 1827. It moved from
Bethnal Green to Dalston Lane in 1832, expanded to occupy three houses, with 170
children in 1842, and made way for the German
hospital after moving in 1843 to Essex, where
it became the Royal Wanstead school. (fn. 22) The Bakers'
Co. of London built almshouses in St. Thomas's
Passage (later Lyme Grove) c. 1828; inmates
moved to Epping (Essex) in 1973. (fn. 23) The Children's
Friend Society supported its first home from
1830 to c. 1841 at Hackney Wick, to train boys
for apprenticing in the colonies. It was called
Brenton's asylum after the philanthropist Capt.
Edward Brenton (d. 1839), who had no known
connexion with the area, (fn. 24) and occupied Leny
Smith's silk mill. (fn. 25) The girls' branch of a refuge
for young ex-prisoners, opened in Lambeth
in 1805, moved from Bethnal Green in
1849 to Manor House in Dalston Lane,
where, as Dalston Refuge for Destitute Females, it continued as a reformatory under
royal patronage, with 86 girls in 1857 supported
largely by laundry-work. From 1925 it formed
part of the Samuel Lewis trust dwellings. (fn. 26) The
Elizabeth Fry refuge for women ex-prisoners
opened in 1849 on the site of the later St.
Joseph's hospice and moved in the 1860s to no.
195 Mare Street, which it left for Highbury in
1913; the institution amalgamated with Dalston
Refuge in 1924. (fn. 27) The Goldsmiths' and Jewellers'
annuity institution of Clerkenwell in 1853 built
an asylum in Manor (later Holcroft) Road. A
two-storeyed range of 16 almshouses, designed
by W. P. Griffith in the Tudor style, it was
replaced by Orchard primary school. (fn. 28) Almshouses for Sephardic Jews, with an average of
seven inmates, were built at the south-east
corner of London Fields with funds given in
1851 by Emanuel Pacifico. They were to be sold
under a Scheme of 1897, having been supported
since 1880 by the Spanish and Portuguese Jews'
congregation of London, and had been demolished by 1900; the congregation, which had been
reimbursed, then offered accommodation at new
almshouses which it had built for Barrow's
charity in Mile End. (fn. 29) Tre-Wint industrial home was
at no. 201 Mare Street by 1859, when it received
a parliamentary grant, until 1880 or later; by 1902
it was in Haverstock Hill, Hampstead. (fn. 30) The Hand
in Hand asylum for aged Jews was at no. 23 Well
Street by 1880; it was united with two other
institutions in 1894 and remained until c.
1907. (fn. 31)
The hospital for French protestants, founded
in 1708, moved in 1865 from Bath Street, in St.
Luke's, to a 3-a. site in Victoria Park Road. In
effect an almshouse and larger than any other in
Hackney, it opened with 60 inmates. The chateaustyle buildings, designed free of charge by R. L.
Roumieu, included an apsidal chapel and were of
diapered brick with much ornate Franco-Flemish
detail, 'very beefy'. They were taken over by St.
Victoire's convent school in 1949 after the hospital
had moved to Horsham (Suss.); Cardinal Pole
school occupied them in 1990. (fn. 32)
A supporter of the German hospital, (fn. 33) Baron
von Schroder (created Sir John Schroder, Bt.,
in 1892), in 1879 founded a German orphanage
at no. 214 Dalston Lane. As the German orphan
asylum it moved in 1884 to no. 106 Norfolk
(from 1938 Cecilia) Road, where it survived until
1939. Sir John's nephew Freiherr Bruno von
Schroder in 1910 established a German old
people's home at no. 47 Nightingale Place,
whence it moved to Stoke Newington in 1921 or
later. (fn. 34) A girls' home, Lutherhaus, was established opposite the German church in 1932 and
apparently closed in 1939. (fn. 35)
An orphanage was established in 1881 and managed by the Anglican community of the Holy
Childhood, at no. 19 Clapton Common from c.
1897 until the Second World War. (fn. 36) The Woodlands, Clapton Common, was temporarily acquired
c. 1882 as a boys' home by the Waifs and Strays
Society, whose chairman Bishop Walsham How
lived next door at Stainforth House. (fn. 37) The
London City Mission moved the Ayahs' Home,
an apparently unique institution for Indian
women whose employers were staying in England, from Jewry Street (Lond.) in 1900 to no. 26
King Edward's Road and c. 1921 to no. 4 where,
as the Ayahs' and Amahs' Home, it continued
until c. 1942. (fn. 38) The London Female Penitentiary
(later London Female Guardian society) was on
the west side of Stoke Newington High Street
from 1884 until 1939. (fn. 39) The Mission of Help for
the Suffering Poor, founded in 1894, was a
tenant at Sutton House from 1931 until 1947. (fn. 40)