Working mothers lodged at 17 Glenarm Road in Lower Clapton.

© Natasha Lewer

By Natasha Lewer

Homes for workers  

The women who worked in the Salvation Army industries needed somewhere to live, and ‘lodges’ were set up for this purpose, with the women paying for their lodging out of their wages. In the 1890s there was one above the laundry at 14 Maury Road; and another at 17 Glenarm Road, which together accommodated 40 women. The rules, according to Adelaide Cox, were “not very stringent”, though the women were required to be in at a certain time in the evenings.  

Other lodges, established later, were St Oswalds, at 2 Lampard Grove, Stoke Newington, described in 1947 as a ‘young women’s residence’; and Lanark House, Laura Place, which was used as a rescue home, a knitting home, a receiving home, and finally as a ‘hostel for girls’ by 1947.  

Nurses and officers  

The Salvation Army nurses also had living quarters provided. In the 1890s, the nurses from Ivy House lived at 225 Richmond Road, just behind the hospital, and there was another nurses’ home at 43 Shore Road, south Hackney. The nurses at the Mothers’ Hospital lived in the older buildings of the hospital itself, as well as in a nurses' home across the road in Laura Place. Barracks for Salvation Army officers existed in Nisbet Street, Homerton; at 97 Homerton High Street; and in (the now non-existent) Durham Grove.