Following the success of our last A Few Forgotten Women Friday, when fifty-three volunteers researched the stories of seventy-four girls from Leeds Industrial and Ragged School, we are pleased to give you some details of the next A Few Forgotten Women Friday, which is on 24 March. You can find out more about how these days work here. The chosen institutions for 24 March are St. Joseph’s Inebriate Reformatory, Ashford, Middlesex and Farmfield Reformatory for Inebriate Women, Horley, Surrey. We will be looking at the eighty-six women who were enumerated as inmates in these institutions in the 1901 census.
You can find out more about St. Joseph’s here. It opened in 1899 to cater for Catholic inebriate women, who came from across England and Wales. As it was a Catholic institution, several of those treated there were of Irish origin, so anyone with experience of searching in Irish records would be particularly welcome but this expertise isn’t essential. Farmfield was opened in 1900; there is more information here.
There is more detail about the treatment of inebriates on Liz Craig’s excellent website.
This time, we are asking that all findings are sent to us in a narrative form, even if this is only a few lines long. This will help us to make the stories public as quickly as possible. You may like to look at the reports from our previous Forgotten Women Friday, to see what was produced then. The shorter stories have been published together in the ‘Other Girls’ document. We will be asking for reports to be returned by Monday 10 April at the latest.
If you would like to take part, please get in touch. Please be aware that it may be difficult to find out about some of these women; there may be very little, or nothing, that can be discovered. We know that it can be both frustrating and disappointing if your allocated woman does not have much potential. If this is the case, please submit what you can find and we will allocate you a new name if you wish and if we still have some available. Don’t be afraid to admit defeat.
When you contact us to volunteer, please let us know what UK county, or country you are in. Not only is it interesting to know how widespread our volunteers are, it may be that we can allocate you someone from your home area. For this particular Forgotten Women Friday, please also let us know if you are familiar with Irish research. If you aren’t used to researching in Ireland, we may still have to allocate you a woman from Ireland but we are hoping that we can find some volunteers with the relevant experience to look for our Irish women.
