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The Salvation Army - Girls' Statement Books
by Major David Clark*
Amongst the archives of the Salvation Army are a number of documents known as the Girls' Statement Books. These unwieldy volumes were compiled from the returns of certain homes as part of the Army's Women's Social Work and have by coincidence become a central register of those particular branches of Salvation Army endeavour.
The descriptions of the homes that were involved were:
 Children's Homes
Girls Training Homes
The Mother and Baby Homes (for unmarried mothers)
The Mother and Baby Homes were started as early as 1886 when the Officer-in-Charge of the Army's Girls Rescue Home in Chelsea could not help noticing how many girls were turning up pregnant and she placed them in an outbuilding away from the other girls. Later that year the same officer was moved across London with her expectant girls to Brent House, Devonshire Road, Hackney. This became the first Salvation Army Mother and Baby Home. In the following year the Army made further provision by opening a maternity hospital just a few hundred yards from the home; this was called Ivy House and it operated until 1913 when the Mother's Hospital was opened to replace and update it. By 1913 there were three Mother and Baby Homes in London, all in the Hackney area, and half a dozen around the country.
Her Majesty Queen Mary visiting a Salvation Army childrens ward
The necessity of keeping records became apparent in the home as a matter of course. In the beginning, some of these were written in school exercise books but official record books soon made their appearance. Both Brent House and Ivy House were near enough to Headquarters for the leaders of the Women 's Social Work to check on the work of the home. Expansion meant that returns had to be made to inform the leadership of what was going on. We do not know what happened to the early returns but they were eventually copied into a series of books bearing the title Girls' Statement Book. There are two series of records: one, for the homes in London, and the other for the homes outside London, called Country homes. The earliest Statement Book in our archives includes records from the Refuge opened at 212 Hanbury Street, Whitechapel, on 22 May 1884, though the early records were not written in the book until after the Refuge moved to 48 Navarino Road, Dalston, on 5 August 1885.
The format of the records changed in October 1897, though there was some overlap between the old and new fomat in the last quarter of 1897, when the new system came into operation.
The Salvation Army homes were eventually situated around the country: Plymouth, Bradninch (Devon), Bristol, Cardiff, Lichfield, Birmingham, Manchester (two), Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle-upon- Tyne, Glasgow (two), Edinburgh, Dundee, Belfast and up to five at anyone time in the Capital. These homes were sometimes housed in various buildings during their lifetimes.
 The information in the Statement Books
The information in the Statement Books after 1897 is recorded on standard forms.
First comes the page heading:
- Name of Home, e.g. "Cotland"
- Month ( of departure)
- Year (of departure)
The next items all concern the girl:
- Home numbers. (This refers to documents that have survived in only one of our homes. )
- Name.
- Date of birth. In later versions of the book the age (of the girl) is recorded and you are left to guess whether that was age at admission or discharge.
- Place of birth. This usually just gives the name of the town.
- Where from? Again often just a town.
- Date of entry.
- Manner of application. This sometimes mentions the name of a Social Services agency and can give the enquirer a vital clue. However often it is of no help whatsoever.
- Has she been before a court? This is not usually applicable in maternity cases. In the case of probation hostels etc it refers only to the present case.
- Where?
- When?
- Result.
- Questions referring similarly to prison.
- Has she been in other homes? If so give details.
- Date of departure from home.
- Where to? Usually just an address.
Three more questions concern the Army's spiritual influence whilst under our care.
The answers to all of these questions help us to build up a picture of the girl's stay in the home. In the case of the Mother and Baby Homes a second form is pasted over the first just as it was received from the home. This gives some details of the baby and will give the date of birth and the address to which the child went on leaving the home. It may give us a name for the alleged father (not necessarily the right one), or some other way of identifying him; a serviceman however may be identified by his unit alone.
One such form names the putative father as 'Second Battalion, the Coldstream Guards' (!) and another names one of His Majesty's ships, which was missing at sea. Where the father has been properly identified these forms also state how much he is promising to pay for the maintenance of the baby. Often that portion of the form carries the phrase 'father not known' or 'no corroboration'.
Unfortunately there is a gap in the records of the Country Homes from March 1942 to March 1948 as the Statements for those years have not survived. For the missing years, we have an index volume which lists the names of the women (and their babies) with the date they left the home. Other sources of information are available for some cases; about half the girls in our London homes were first interviewed at Headquarters and a brief and sometimes informative record was made at the time.
A register in two volumes has survived from our Liverpool home covering a large portion of the missing years; this gives different information, for example, it includes the baby's weight at birth, something a lot of people are very grateful for. In a flood-prone cellar of our Cardiff home a nearly complete set of books covering twenty-five years, mouldered and decayed but we have been able to give some enquirers a fairly full story. The Salvation Army phased this work out gradually and by 1984 it was no more, but many of the buildings continued to be used for other sorts of homes and at least two of them still are.
Typical sample cases:
The work finished in 1984 where it began ninety-eight years earlier, in the East End of London.
The Girls' Statement Books continued with the Salvation Army's involvement with Girls Approved Homes. By now these were labelled community homes with education and children 's homes. The record ceased with internal changes within the Army, which were effective in 1995. The books are now housed in the Salvation Army International Heritage Centre (currently at the William Booth College).
When we receive enquiries relating to these books, we prefer to do the research on behalf of the enquirer ourselves, so that we can preserve confidentiality. Social work records often contain sensitive information which would not generally be disclosed, and access to information which would identify a third party who is still living is restricted by the Data Protection Act.
*Major David Clark formerly the Social Services Historian at the Salvation Army International Heritage Centre
Tel: 020 7737 3327
e-mail: heritage@salvationarmy.org
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