Thank you very much. Awesome to see a picture.
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Hello
Thankyou it's all quiet confusing for my nan who's now 84, I've only just been able to start helping her find out where she's from with the help of someone but when I saw where she was born thought I would look it up and surprisingly there's a group about it .my nan said she was Catholic and her parents Irish Catholic and born there .
She just feels quiet abandoned as she was adopted she thinks around ten months old but there could have been very good reason for adoption even know her parents were married maybe they had no where to go with new baby and struggled
I hope that's the case .
Thankyou
For posts about Loveday Street Hospital Birmingham please go to the thread below.
Viv.
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Source: British Newspaper Archive
Viv.
Loveday Street Hospital
Sounds like it to me , Celia. Can the experts tell me is Loveday Street classed as Central Birmingham or is there a District name for it geographically..?
birminghamhistory.co.uk
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Source: British Newspaper Archive
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Hello Curtsandy, I too had someone staying at Loveday street Salvation Army. It took me quite a while to find information to help understand why a person might be there - and here is it!. Extracts at least, the newspaper article is too long to post.
Before I add extracts, my impression is that the Salvation Army Hostel wasn't a 'workhouse' as such. Clearly alcohol addiction was, and still is, a life-destroying scourge and the Salvation Army as you'd know practiced temperance. So I kind of think of them as precursor to AA - who are a great group of people - only the Salvos are not anonymous and in uniform and practice a wider charity. What is reflected in the following extracts are the concerns of the "Salvation Army Working Men's Hostel" which were more diverse than simply helping men get sober. The early 1900s saw employment and housing issues escalate in crowded Birmingham and as there was little social support if a breadwinner became ill or incapable of work many families experienced great difficulties.
The hostel was opened in 1908 and the following article extracts are from the Evening Despatch 17 October 1913. The article is titled "The Unwanted Man: How Employment is found for him in Birmingham"
I hope it gives you a sense of why your grandfather may have been there. It was not a hospital by the way, but anyone who was there at time of death, I feel was being looked after by the Salvation Army staff.
"... there is a class, Catholic in its membership, of men who want to work: who have been in good positions until age, misfortune, or the thoughtlessness of a moment started them on the down grade. Competition is keen, and once out of employment, the majority find it almost impossible to gain another post. They sink into poverty: the home breaks up, and they find themselves homeless wanderers, with nowhere to go but the work house...
It is for men such as these that the salvation army organisation in Birmingham exists–providing work for the Wanderers to do and paying them for doing that work by giving them home, food, and money...
...The shelters are not charitable institutions in the accepted sense of the word. The man who will not work had better steer clear of Staff–Captain Jessie Smith, who rules over the shelter in Loveday–Street... Every man has to work for his livelihood at the big waste–paper elevator in Summer–Lane. If he proves himself a steady and reliable man at that work, he will be promoted to indoor domestic work at the home itself; and after that stage has been reached the officers will do their best to find him a situation outside–give him a chance of redeeming himself and returning to his former position.
...They are of all classes. Artists, solicitors, chemists, musicians, artisans–all men who have at one time been in good circumstances and been driven to the streets by circumstances...
Many of our men have prospered in the situations we have found that them, and have become successful business men... all are free–not in prison as they are in a workhouse. They can go in and out whenever they like; and if they find work to do they can continue to live at the shelter, paying a very small sum of money for their food and lodging...
...the Salvation Army dormitories are spotlessly clean. Every bed is disinfected each day. Downstairs, there are excellent washing arrangements, and a steam oven, which cleanses the newly admitted wander's is clothes, while the wearer luxuriates in a hot bath. The food is good and plentiful: and cleanliness is the keynote of the establishment..."
Attachments
Here's another Lyn. It's the interior in 1913 which accompanied the article, unfortunately a murky news shot, but I have edited it a little to try reveal more. (retired photographer, can't help myself 
). "Have you written to Mother" the first sign says. Combine that sentiment with the hostel requiring all the men to work for their lodgings, and I think you could say the Salvos were wanting to remove shame and reinstate dignity in the men who came into their care.
). "Have you written to Mother" the first sign says. Combine that sentiment with the hostel requiring all the men to work for their lodgings, and I think you could say the Salvos were wanting to remove shame and reinstate dignity in the men who came into their care.