“Would you be so kind as to let me have him back”: some thoughts on women’s work and the history of care
Kate Brooks presented a paper ‘Still seen but not heard: Bristol young people in care today, responding to the history of Muller’s Orphan Homes, Bristol’ at the WESWWHN Annual Conference on Gender and Commemoration in October 2021. Joseph Lowe was one of six, and nineteen months old when his parents died in 1854. Joseph Snr and Charlotte died of cholera within a fortnight of each other, days after the birth of Joseph’s younger sister Agnes. Willenhall, near Wolverhampton, was a densely populated part of the industrialised Black Country, and cholera rates were extremely high. All but the eldest (who went to work aged 11) went into care. I am currently completing a doctorate on the archives of Muller’s Orphanages, in Bristol, which contains many similar stories. Muller’s was a Victorian, evangelical Christian institution, founded by Plymouth Brethren co-founder George Muller in 1836, and housing at any one time, around 2,000 children, including the Lowes. It is still a religious or