A Stirling children’s home has inspired a local writer to shine a light on life in the town at the turn of the 20th century.
Elaine Whiteford’s new novel ‘The Rescue Sisters’ centres around the lives of young people from Whinwell Children’s Home.
Set in 1900 in both Stirling and Quebec, child rescue and migration are the backdrops to the historical drama.
The novel was inspired by Elaine’s discovery that between the late 1800s and 1927 around 150 destitute children were sent to Canada and Australia from Whinwell.
She said: “Child migration was government policy for almost a hundred years from 1860. It was thought to offer a solution to destitution by offering children prospects they might not otherwise have had.”
‘The Rescue Sisters’ is about children being sent abroad, siblings being separated and women trying to do the right thing at a time when they were second class citizens. It is a tale of blackmail, kidnap and terrible secrets.
Elaine, 60, attended Wallace High School, St Andrews and Stirling universities and retired from local government six years ago. She has an MLitt in Creative Writing from Stirling University and is also the author of ‘The Story of Stirling Golf Club’.
To inform the novel, Elaine researched the Whinwell archives and read extensively about child migration.
She said: “While the characters and storylines are fictional, they’re based on real life contexts, so actual historical settings and events are referenced.” Stirling is the book’s main setting, with a number of local landmarks featuring.
“I’ve always wanted to set a novel here so to revisit familiar places, like the castle and the Old Cemetery, and imagining them populated by my characters in 1900, was a lovely experience.”
As well as having an interest in Stirling’s local history, Elaine has a particular interest in women’s social history in late Victorian and Edwardian times. She is currently finalising another historical novel, which draws on the experiences of women in Stirling District Lunatic Asylum in the early 1900s.
Whinwell was founded by Annie Knight Croall (1854-1927), the daughter of the first curator of the Smith Institute, and came from Leeds to stay in Stirling at the age of 19.
A deeply spiritual person, her work for neglected and orphaned children started after she found a baby on the Back Walk, left there by its mother who had gone into town for a drink and had been arrested.
In the 1870s there was absolutely no social provision for children in need, and Annie Croall struggled to find the means of housing and sustaining those who were sent to her.
However, she managed to purchase Whinwell House in Upper Bridge Street in 1890 and set up a Dorcas Society whose members helped by sewing clothing for the children.
Many of the children who found themselves in her care were put into emigration schemes at the age of 14, and were sent to start new lives Canada and Australia.
Whinwell continued to take admissions until 1979 but ceased to operate as a children’s home a short time later. Children’s charity the Aberlour Trust bought the building in 1980 but never operated a children’s home there. They no longer own the property.
Stirling Archives holds a host of information about the home and some of the youngsters who spent their early years there.
Many orphaned children and those given up by their parents, who were unable to provide for them, were sent from Scotland to Australia and Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
This was arranged by organisations such as the Child Emigration Society. It was thought that the children would have more opportunities in the New World. It is known now that while some prospered others were used as little better than slave labour on farms.
‘The Rescue Sisters’ is out now in ebook and paperback.