Together Trust Archive

  Admission records we hold relating to the Gordon Boys’ Home in Manchester held in the Together Trust Archive have recently been digitised by the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society to help make these more accessible. It’s timely then to shed some light on the home’s very brief existence and explore how the Manchester and Salford Refuges (as the Together Trust was then known) came to take over after the home ran into difficulties. Established in 1888 by Alexander Devine, the Gordon Boys’ Home came about the year after a new piece of legislation known as The First Offender’s Act was established. This meant first offenders for minor crimes could avoid a prison sentence if they had fixed accommodation, which the Gordon Boys Home provided, first located off Rusholme Road and later at Cornbrook Abbey, Chester Road, Manchester. From a Sept 1890 entry of the Gordon Boy’s Home register showing a boy charged with stealing cloth and opera glasses from his employer being disch...

To celebrate the lives and achievements of people with disabilities as part of UK Disability History Month (20 November- 20 December) I’ve had a look into the Trust’s archive to explore Bethesda, the Charity’s first home for children with disabilities opened in 1890. The service provided care and later education, but I was interested to find what extra-curricular activities and recreations were available to the children and how these changed. The Bethesda home was located on the edge of Broughton Park, Salford. The home’s name meant ‘House of Mercy’ and annual reports from the 1890s stated the aim for Bethesda was to provide, ‘ a combined home and hospital.'   Residents came to Bethesda from local hospitals where no further treatment could be provided and where families didn’t have the facilities to provide care. For other children, their health conditions were the result of poverty and/or neglect. From 1905 Annual Report Crafts were undertaken from the early days of the service....

The final plans are currently being put in place for the Join Together Festival this weekend which continues the long tradition of summer celebrations, festivals and fetes run by the Charity since it’s inception in 1870. Before the Charity’s move to Cheadle, garden fetes were held by individual services to raise funds, such as those undertaken by the Charity’s Bethesda Home then based in Salford for children with disabilities, and by the seaside convalescent home in Old Colwyn. The purchase in 1920 of over 20 acres of land in Cheadle provided the perfect opportunity to hold a larger celebration. By May 1921 the Charity’s magazine put out a call for flags and bunting to help decorate the house and grounds for the event. The first fete in Cheadle took place on 23 July 1921 opened by Lord Mayor of Manchester and saw 2000 people pass through making £858 9s 1d. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t kind and despite a glorious summer, the day itself brought rain. An account of the various ...

  One of the lesser-known services of the first 50 years of the Charity’s history was the Day Nursery in Ancoats which operated for over a decade from 1887. The service was aimed at local working women who could pay two-pence a day for their child to be fed and cared for while she went out to work. An invaluable resource in industrial Manchester and an example of how the Charity operated services to meet a particular need of the times. The Nursery was originally located on Butler Street in Ancoats and it was at the request of the Day Nurseries Association that the Charity took over the service which moved within the first year to a premises a short distance away on the corner of Canning Street and Carruthers Street.  The Day Nursery, Ancoats ref: M189/9/1/5 The Charity magazine refers to the dangers of mothers being obliged to earn a wage and their children being injured after being left either uncared for or with unsuitable carers such as other young children or the very el...

The following blog post has been written by Katie Royle, a student at Manchester Metropolitan University who recently completed her Master's in Public History and Heritage. As part of her course Katie used the Together Trust Archive located at Manchester Central Library to undertake research on some of the young people in the Charity's care who were emigrated. In the spring of 1883, Manchester was hit by evangelical fever when a famous American preacher began a fortnights mission in the city.   Dwight L Moody had achieved fame through a mix of his ‘man of the men’ persona and his ‘peculiarly original style’ of preaching, which gained him a widespread following both in America and throughout the world. Moody, together with hymn singer Ira Sankey, visited Manchester as part of a nationwide tour where, not unlike the celebrity pop stars of today, the sermons attracted thousands. Moody had said he ‘feared the cold formalism which was creeping over Christianity’, and his services we...

In recognition of black history month the story of Arthur, a young resident of the Charity admitted in April 1892 is well worth re-exploring. Part of Arthur’s story has been recorded previously in this blog but didn’t include this wonderful photograph: M189/9/2/1 emigration book Arthur’s entry in the 1892 admission book originally drew attention with an interesting reference to his father as: ‘ coming over from Africa with “General Tom Thumb” and having settled in Manchr ’ [Manchester]. Charles Sherwood Stratton, more widely known as General Tom Thumb  was a popular performer under the management of P.T Barnum  in the mid nineteenth century and travelled widely around the world. M189/5/1/1/2 from admission book entry 23 April 1892 As shown in the admission book above, Arthur was aged 11 when he came into the Charity’s care. His mother had died and it seems his father was no longer working in entertainment, according to the admission book he was, ‘ selling papers and porterin...

  The following blog post has been written by Katie Royle, a student at Manchester Metropolitan University currently studying for a Master's in Public History and Heritage. As part of her course Katie is using the Together Trust Archive located at Manchester Central Library to undertake research on some of the young people emigrated to Canada. This is the second part of  Katie's research into the Maddock family, detailing the brothers' life in Canada and beyond. In March 1892, Charlie, Joseph and David departed from Liverpool on the steamship SS Sarnia bound for Ontario, accompanied by 150 other boys from the Refuge. For most, it would have been the first time they had ever seen the sea, and many suffered terribly with seasickness over the ten day crossing. Each child had their own wooden trunk with their names inscribed, inside each were a summer and winter outfit, new underclothes, two pairs of boots, and a prayer book. Charlie had also saved up some money and bought...

The following blog post has been written by Katie Royle, a student at Manchester Metropolitan University currently studying for a Master's in Public History and Heritage. As part of her course Katie is using the Together Trust Archive located at Manchester Central Library to undertake research on some of the young people emigrated to Canada. This is the first part of Katie's research into the Maddock family, detailing the circumstances behind how the family came into contact with the Charity. It was a happy day when Charlie Maddock stood proudly in the church awaiting his new bride in Kingston, Ontario, in 1899. Dressed in his smartest suit, with his younger brother smiling by his side, he was ready to settle down and start a family with his new Canadian wife. Outside the church, the snow was over a foot deep, the air crisp and clear - a world away from his life in smog-filled industrial Manchester; a life of hardship and squalor that had been transformed forever just over...

 While the initial aim of the Charity on its inception in 1870 was to provide safe accommodation and food to orphan boys who didn’t have these essentials, it wasn’t long before the Charity started to broaden their aims. One of the first ways it did so was to provide boys with a means of employment by establishing a Shoeblack Brigade and a Messenger Brigade. These Brigades were in operation by February 1870, only a month after the Charity’s first refuge accommodation was opened on Quay Street, Manchester. Shoeblack brigades were already well established in London, and with the permission of the authorities in Manchester boys in this Brigade dressed in scarlet tunics could occupy positions in twelve stands around the city and earn money by cleaning the shoes and boots of the city’s residents. The railway had come to Manchester in 1830 and with the population of the city ever expanding the Charity spotted another opportunity with the establishment of their Messenger Brigade. This ...