St. Julian in Shrewsbury

[cathaldus]

RootsChatters,  I need help!   An old pal has come up with a lady Ellen Morris,
born circa 1850 in Oswestry, who looks like her GG mum.   On the 1871 census
she is shown living in some kind of institution in St. Julians in Shrewsbury in the registration district of Atcham.   The head of this place is given the position of "Head of Salop Penitentiary" and Ellen is shown as being an "inmate"
Just what sort of place was it?   The census ref. is RC10/2772.  Any help would be appreciated!!
Bill   

[Shropshire Lass]

I haven't come across this before but there's this information about it:

www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/SAL/Shrewsbury/Gaz1868.html

"The charitable institutions of the town include the Shropshire infirmary, a Grecian building, with a Doric portico; the eye and ear dispensary; the Salop penitentiary, established in 1844; the county lunatic asylum, at Bicton Heath, a structure in the Elizabethan style; St. Giles's and St. Millington's hospitals; a lying-in hospital; St. Mary's, St. Chad's, and Evans's almshouses, and the Holy Cross hospital, a building erected and endowed by private subscription, and with five dwellings for the reception of respectable females".

The head is described on the census as "Matron of Salop Penitentiary".  The "inmates" are mostly Laundresses and are nearly all in their late teens or early twenties.  It has the feel of a place for young women who may have been earning their living on the street and were sent here as a result of it.  I hope someone can come up with a definite answer.

Monica

[Shropshire Lass]

Here's some more information -

http://oro.open.ac.uk/82/01/NOT_WORSE_THAN_OTHER_GIRLS.pdf

"In Victorian Britain, a female penitentiary was not a penal institution for the punishment of crime, but a charitable enterprise entered voluntarily by members of an outcast group, popularly known as 'fallen women.'

Penitentiaries were intended as transformative institutions, where female outcasts of many kinds could be changed into 'honest' women, a conversion which incorporated both a spiritual change from sinner to penitent, and an equally important social shift from dissolute and deviant female to respectable woman."

I'm sure the cause of most of the girls being in these institutions was poverty.

I've found information from the website of the audio shop now occupying 9 Dogpole - previously a Tabernacle Welsh Independent Chapel - which says that the building next door used to be a home for fallen women.  Cromwell Hotel is 11 Dogpole and I reckon that's probably it - look on www.cromwellsinn.com/ for a picture.

Monica

[cathaldus]

Dear Monica,
Many thanks for your speedy response,  which contains so much useful (and social) information.   My friend can now pursue this with the Salop local authority and be able to fully understand and appreciate the awful situation that extreme poverty places one in.
I will of course post any further details I obtain on this site, directly to your goodself.

Bill