Victorian Workhouses V Lawrence Asylums

A parent in far away Kenya or Malaysia receiving a post-card showing a photo of Lawrence School would naturally be impressed. However, that ‘impression’ would be totally misplaced. In my Post on Jeremy Paxman’s series Empire, he is quoted as saying of the Kolkata Office of the West Bengal Government: ‘That’s the reason for the scale, the grandeur, the sheer boastfulness of the place (now the seat of West Bengal Government). The idea being if you look like a ruler, the people will treat you like a ruler.’ The School looks like that of a ruler and was treated as such by parents and local residents who had no idea about its complete lack of even basic amenities such as functioning toilets, adequate water supplies and were unaware of the filth that obtained in the kitchens and dining areas.

At the same time as Lawrence’s asylums were being built in India, workhouses were being constructed in the UK. Both took in the dregs of British Society. Indians were not allowed to enter a Lawrence Asylum; the basic requirement was that both parents of the entrant had to be European.

During the Lawrence era, the East India Company of which Lawrence was very much part, did not repatriate orphans of the East India Company armies. Nor did the British Government repatriate orphans of the British Army. In both cases, it would have been very expensive and so these orphans had to become camp followers of whichever regiment their father belonged to. It is these orphans that Lawrence set up his asylums for.

There would have been practical difficulties too to repatriate, as, bearing in mind their very low levels of education, invariably they would have ended up in a workhouse and become a burden on the state.

Life was meant to be harsh in both institutions and so it proved.

Even the design of the buildings was similar.

This is an extract relating to the architecture of Lawrence School:

‘However, perhaps considering that the occupants were to be entirely Europeans, Chisolm
chose to design the buildings at Lovedale in the traditional Italiante style, more common in England
than in India.’

Here is an extract relating to the description of a workhouse taken from Wikipedia:

About 150 new workhouses were built mainly in London, Lancashire and Yorkshire between 1840 and 1875, in architectural styles that began to adopt Italianate or Elizabethan features, to better fit into their surroundings and present a less intimidating face.

Note: Italianate architecture originated in Victorian England and derives its name from being a fanciful reinterpretation of Italian Renaissance architecture.

Below are photos of a workhouse and Lawrence School Lovedale. Note, the clock in the tower in Lawrence School was only put in in 1925 and the Palm tree shown in not native to the Nilgiri Hills which rise to 7000 feet above sea level.

Thus one can observe that both present a less intimidating face but make no mistake, neither building was for the ‘elite’!

Below is a photo from 1923 showing the School without the clock in the tower

Look at the image below. Eerily, it reminds me of the school. It is, in fact the Golders Green Crematorium where many of my relatives have been cremated as have a number of Indian Royals, including Princess Catherine Duleep Singh, granddaughter of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. So, such buildings being impressive in India are normal in U.K.