The spinster and the orphan

Life could be tough for single women in the Victorian era, but Jane Kerr Davies was exceptionally self-assured. Eldest daughter of John Birt Davies, Jane never married, living at home with her parents until she was middle-aged. When her father died in 1878 she and her mother, Sarah, moved to a smaller house in Edgbaston. They lived there together until Sarah’s death four years later. She then took the remarkable step, for a single woman, of adopting a daughter.

Adoption was an informal business in those days. There were no legal requirements and abandoned or orphaned children were either looked after by relatives or fostered in baby farms, orphanages, charities or the workhouse.  Some of these children suffered neglect or worse. Philanthropists and social reformers took up the cause, setting up many charities whose mission was to help orphans.

The Infant Orphan Asylum at Wanstead was one of these charities. Queen Victoria was its patron and it gained the support of many eminent folk. Admissions were reserved for children of ‘respectable’ families. Unusual among Victorian orphanages, this establishment admitted babies as well as older children. There were always more candidates than places available. This painting by George Elgar Hicks shows relatives desperate to get places for children in a London orphanage when family bereavements left them caring for more children than they could cope with.  

One such child was Charlotte Rose Grabham, born on 22^nd September 1882 and orphaned when she was just sixteen months old. Her parents, John Grabham, a professional singer, and his wife Louisa had been married for about eighteen years and had six living children at the time of Charlotte’s birth, but by January 1884 both parents were dead. There was no one who could look after the children so Charlotte and her elder sister, Adelaide, were admitted to the Wanstead orphanage.

How and why Jane Davies came to adopt this orphaned baby girl remains a mystery.  By 1884 she was living alone, having recently lost both her parents, three of her brothers and her youngest sister. She had inherited considerable wealth following these bereavements and may have wanted to put it to good use. No doubt she had given up any hope of marriage and maybe she was seeking companionship.

At any rate, Charlotte was taken into the comfortable surroundings of Jane’s Edgbaston home. It must have been a strange transition for the middle-aged spinster – Jane was about fifty at the time – to take on responsibility for a toddler. However, the arrangement seems to have worked well. Charlotte remained living with Jane into her mid-twenties when she married Jane’s nephew, Birt, son of Clement Davies.

Jane died on 17th September 1908, just seven months before Charlotte and Birt’s wedding. She left instructions that her body should be cremated at the Birmingham Crematorium without any religious ceremony and the ashes scattered in her garden. The bulk of her large estate was bequeathed to Charlotte, with the remainder to her nephews and nieces and to Birmingham University. Her will made it clear that if any one of her legatees became a Catholic or dabbled in ‘psychical purposes’, they would be dispossessed.