A Final Farewell
“It’s time to say goodbye, but I think goodbyes are sad and I’d much rather say hello. Hello to a new adventure.”
— Ernie Harwell, signing off after his last Detroit Tiger broadcast in 2002
In 1906 Bessie Estall and her sister Lily, aged 15 and 13 respectively, left England for Canada, marking an end to their London childhoods. They’d been motherless since their mom’s passing in 1899; fatherless since he abandoned them in 1901; and orphaned after their dad’s death in March of 1906.
Bessie, Lily, and their sister Rosie attended the Anerley School run by the Lewisham Workhouse for the five years following their abandonment. Then, in May of 1906, the three sisters were sent to the Macpherson Training Home in Hackney to prepare for emigration to Canada.
My sister Beth and I wanted to see this last place in London that Bessie would call home. Finding it required a bit of detective work prior to our trip to London, however. The Charities Directory listed it at 2 and 4 Tower Street. But finding that on a map today is impossible. Fortunately, web sites that track street name changes over the years solved our dilemma, and a street sign confirmed we were on the right track: Tower Street was renamed Martello, so it was off to Martello Street for us.
Getting there after an exhausting day of walking around Bethnal Green meant we had the choice of walking another 20 minutes or taking a bus. It was an easy decision … and a good one, as it turned out, because we got the front row seats of a red double-decker, affording us a nice view.
Annie Macpherson opened the Training Home in 1874 “with prayer and thanksgiving. It consists of two large old-fashioned houses thrown into one, and the situation is, for the neighbourhood, remarkably open and airy.”1 That was due to its location facing the large park called London Fields that I imagine was sometimes used by the children … under strict religious supervision no doubt. Beth and I used it also, finding a bench to rest our weary feet, soak up some sun on a beautiful July afternoon, and gaze at the decorous home where once Bessie, Lily, and Rosie learned by day and slept by night.
Unfortunately Bessie and Lily’s stay at the Training Home led to not just a farewell to London, but a farewell to Rosie as well. As Lily related the story to her son Ed Schrotzberger:
Rosie was sent back to the Lewisham Workhouse System and never saw her sisters again.
On 26 July 1906 Bessie and Lily left the Training Home, boarding the overground train at the London Fields station for the ship in Liverpool that would take them to Canada. Rosie caught the overground in the opposite direction to return to the Lewisham Workhouse. This day would mark Bessie and Lily’s farewell to London and Rosie’s farewell to her sisters.
A view of the back entrance to the London Fields overground station as seen from a walk from the former Training Home. Silhouetted carefree children frolicking in the roadway arch are reminders of what was lost on the day that Bessie left her childhood city and one of her sisters behind.
Notes:
1. Clara M. S. Lowe, God’s Answers: A Record of Miss Annie Macpherson’s Work (London: Ballantyne Press, 1882), p. 110. The drawing of the Training Home is from the same source, p. 111.