Edith Hiley - working for the National Children's Home

Henry continues his memories of his sister Edith and her time with the National Children's Home after leaving school.

Her saving, apart from her own spirit, was her joining the Girl Guide movement in Rochdale, in the company run by Sister Dorothy Moodie at the Champness Hall, a Methodist Mission Church. I seem to remember that Edith taught Sunday School.

I do know that she applied for a place at the training school in Highbury of the National Children's Home and was admitted, the youngest recruit, just twenty one years old, to the very first training course. Previously, the sisters had joined and learned 'on the job'. Her first appointment was to the Frodsham Branch. I cycled from Littleborough to visit her there.

Edith served at Frodsham, Harpenden, Chipping Norton and Bramhope. I remember her best at Bramhope. She was in a girls' house, pre-war, and returned after our stepmother died, so that she was nearer to our Littleborough home. Indeed, somehow or other she stood by our father, who had gone to pieces, helped to shut up our home in Littleborough and had him moved to an empty house on the Bramhope estate, to be close at hand. Then, gradually, he picked up. I was serving a three year stretch in the Mediterranean in the Royal Navy at the time.

I can only wonder at Edith's work and efficiency. You see, when she became a sister in a children's house, looking after twenty five children between the ages of five and fifteen, or thereabouts, there would be three sisters to share the work and responsibility. Very often, during the war, and shortly afterwards, Edith was the only lady caring for twenty five boys in the one 'family'. There was a little domestic help, but she seemed to me, when I was ever visiting, to do the cooking, she darned socks and mended the clothes, she supervised the going to bed and the getting up and off to school, she took the children on their afternoon walks. It was phenomenal.

The photos below, taken c.1939, are from Edith's time at Hilton Grange National Children's Home, Old Lane, Bramhope, nr Leeds.

The war eventually ended, I suppose things became a little easier, but not much. Mr Lytton, the head man in the Children's Home, encouraged Edith to apply for a Diploma Course in Social Science at Leeds University, intending her to return to the Children's Home, which she did, I think, but only for a year, working from Exeter, interviewing prospective foster parents, or couples wishing to adopt children from the Home, suiting children to the adults wishing to undertake the work. This did not last long, Edith joined the Probation Service, she was appointed by the West Riding Authority, sent to Halifax, where she spent the rest of her working life and retirement.