Orpah VIne
Born: c. 1814
Died: 1866
Author: Lynda Fase
ORPAH’S EARLY LIFE
Orpah Vine was baptised in February 1814 in St Dunstan’s Church, Cranbrook, Kent. She was the daughter of Alexander and Elizabeth. There were many Vines in the Wealden area of Kent, Surrey and Sussex – and Alexander was quite a common name among them. According to an Ancestry family tree, this Alexander was described as a labourer on at least one of his children’s baptisms (1821) and on the same daughter’s marriage certificate (1840), but I have not seen these documents. Orpah was supposed to be our subject’s name, as in the Bible, but it was more often written Orpha in later records, so perhaps that’s what she called herself. On her son’s baptismal record in Brighton in August 1841, the name recorded is Orpa.
Orpah was followed by a brother Alexander in 1816, sister Ruth in 1821, brother Spencer in 1825, and a sister Isabella in 1831, who died shortly after her baptism. Ruth and Orpah were two sisters-in-law in the Bible story, which might say something about her parents’ interests. Alexander Jr. died at the age of nine in 1826, when Orpah was about twelve. I can’t find her parents’ deaths in Cranbrook before 1841, and I also can’t find them in any of the Censuses from 1841.
The only possible sighting of Orpah’s father is a brief mention in a newspaper from 1831, where two teenage girls called Weston were charged with stealing property from Alexander Vine in Cranbrook. The property was two bonnets, a cloak, two shawls, and other clothes. Going back to Orpah’s parents, the situations of her siblings in 1841 (see below) might imply that there was no family home by that time.
CRANBROOK
The picture above and the following information on Cranbrook has been taken from The Union Mill website. We thank the developers of this website for this resource.
Cranbrook was a small market town in the early 1800s, a fairly prosperous centre for the local rural area, and a stopping place for stagecoaches. However, in the 1820s the whole of England was also suffering the effects of economic depression, poor harvests, and high unemployment. Of course, we don’t know if the Vines lived in the town. It is perhaps more likely that they lived on the rural edges of it.
In the year of Orpah’s birth, Union Mill was built, now a local landmark and tourist attraction. Its name comes from the fact that the original owner went bankrupt due to the economic depression in 1819, and the mill was then held by a union of creditors for some years. Its website has a page describing Cranbrook in 1814, from which we learn something about the place that Orpah grew up in.
There were markets on Saturdays for corn, hops, and other provisions – and fairs (for local trade) in May and September. Only eight inns and public houses remained of a much larger number, but this is still a considerable amount for a population of 3000. There had been a bank, run by a wine and spirit merchant in his business premises, but this was another business that went bankrupt a few months after Orpah’s birth. People who had money could travel to London on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays by stagecoach, the journey taking most of the day. The coach returned from London on the following day each time. Transport from more local areas was by carrier van. Union Mill was the last of several water and wind mills to be built in the parish. So, this is what Orpah might have witnessed as a child, even if she didn’t participate in much of it.
ORPAH’S LIFE IN BRIGHTON
Elder sister Orpah travelled a longer way than Ruth for work as a servant. The seaside resort of Brighton in Sussex was forty miles from Cranbrook and would have been a different kind of environment. We don’t know when she went, or what happened there. But in the June 1841 Census Orpah, like her younger sister, was in a workhouse. Unlike her sister, she was not married, and on 29 August her baby was born and baptised from the workhouse at St Nicholas Church, Brighton. He was given the name John. Despite the involvement of the workhouse authorities, it seems that John’s birth was not actually registered. Orpah managed to keep her child with her, or at least he was with her at the age of 9 in the 1851 Census. At that time, they were lodging at 5 Castle Street Brighton, and Orpah was described as a laundress.
I am not quite sure what the set up was at this house. There were five other women there, all unmarried – a servant aged 34, a needlewoman, aged 27, a servant, aged 35, a dressmaker, aged 26, and the dressmaker’s niece, aged 16. There was nobody shown as a householder – all were lodgers. Orpah was the oldest at 37.
At the top of the list were two male visitors – a bricklayer, aged 29, and plumber, aged 28. The women were mostly born in Sussex, but the men had been born in London and Bedford. Prostitution was common in Brighton, although I did not find any reference to Castle Street being notorious for it. The other houses in the street were occupied more conventionally by families and tradespeople. There would have been plenty of work for a laundress in the busy resort of Brighton, but it could also be that – as a single mother with a child to support – Orpah had been forced into something else.
ORPAH’S TROUBLES
Orpah’s life was hard and she probably had little or no contact with her siblings. According to her admission record (11 August 1859) to Sussex County Asylum, Orpah had previously been certified insane on 8 June 1855, then in her early forties and described as a servant in the records. Because Sussex did not yet have its own County Asylum, she had been sent to Bethnal House Asylum in Bethnal Green, London, like many similar Sussex patients. Orpah was already far from her siblings, but the move would probably have taken her away from her son. Ironically, it might have brought her geographically closer to her sister Ruth, who was living in the grounds of Trent Park mansion in Cockfosters, north London. We know Ruth was living there by 1858 from her daughter’s birth record.
According to Orpah’s subsequent admission records to the newly opened Sussex County Asylum in 1859, her diagnosis was chronic mania, with a further detail given that she supposed she was about to be married.
Bethnal House had once been one of the most notoriously bad asylums, but by Orpah’s time the Commissioners in Lunacy held it to be one of the best. The good conditions involved baths, WCs, heating, better clothing and food, occupations for the patients, a library, and church services. That said, all of these were improvements from a very low base line, and the library was probably reserved for the private patients, or at least those for those who could read.
Seven years after Orpah’s transfer to the Sussex Asylum, she died there of cancer of the uterus on 6 November 1866, aged 53. Like thousands of others, Orpah was buried as a pauper in Sussex County Asylum cemetery with a numbered marker and no name.
ORPAH’S RELATIVES
Orpah’s Son
John Vine would not yet have been 14 when his mother was taken to London. I think he was probably still alive as there were no deaths of a John Vine in Brighton in that period, but his future is hard to pin down. There was a man of the right age, born in Brighton, and living in London as a lodger in 1861 and 1871, but he was working as a printer compositor, which seems rather a skilled job for his background. But then there were no other births of a John Vine registered at the right time, so I don’t know. I can’t find this man after 1861.
Orpah’s Sister
Ruth Vine had a difficult start to her adult life but came through it well. In the third quarter of 1840, aged about 19, she married, had a baby, and lost the baby. Then in June 1841 she was alone in the workhouse at Cranbrook. Her husband David Penfold was born in Goudhurst, near Cranbrook, but the marriage took place at Tunstall, twenty miles to the north, near the town of Sittingbourne on the Thames estuary. David Penfold was working at Woodstock House in Tunstall in 1841, probably as a footman, so perhaps Ruth had also been in service there, or perhaps they had met locally, and when Ruth was pregnant she left home for a secret marriage. David had become a butler by 1851, and his career shows him working in some prestigious positions. In the 1851 Census he and Ruth were living with their children William, aged six, and Emily aged three, in Broadfield near Crawley. He may well have been working in nearby Broadfield House, which was built in the 1830s. Ruth followed David around and they had children, but her life was perhaps a lonely one, if stable, as she is sometimes found in censuses alone with the children, while David was away with his grand employers. For more about Ruth and her family see below.
Ruth’s children
Ruth’s son, William James, had opportunities which led him into a white-collar job, as did Harry Penfold, a nephew who was probably brought up in Ruth’s family. However, Ruth lost three of her children as babies or in early childhood. Her daughter Emily was in service (in a prestigious household) at the age of thirteen. It was a young age but may have been thought of as the first step in a good career.
What happened to Emily later is unclear, but her younger sister Ruth Jnr. had the trusted position of lady’s maid by 1881, when she was 23. Ruth Jnr. is significant to our story because, like her aunt Orpah, she spent many years in mental asylums. We know a lot about this because there was a dispute between Lewisham and Edmonton’s Boards of Guardians about who was responsible for funding her.
Ruth Jr.’s first entry to an asylum was in January 1891, when she was 33 and still a domestic servant. She was admitted from Edmonton, her parents’ parish. Reference is made in later documents to Middlesex County Asylum, so she should probably have been in Colney Hatch, an asylum quite close to their home. However, it seems she was instead sent to Wandsworth Asylum, near Wandsworth Common – and she spent three years there. Then she came out and led a nomadic existence for the next three years.
The documents produced in 1897 cannot be entirely accurate, but they do make an attempt to describe where Ruth Jr. lived. They say that she first went to live with her mother (Ruth Snr.) at 59 or 29 Malpas Road, Brockley (Lewisham district). Her parents (David & Ruth Snr.) had moved to Brockley in retirement and the index entry in 1892 for her father’s will gives their address as 98 Malpas Road. They had probably moved there in retirement to be close to their nephew/adopted son Harry Penfold. Harry’s children were born in Brockley in the late 1880s and early 1890s, and were also living close to the couple’s son William, who lived in Deptford. However, both the parents had died while Ruth (Jnr.) was in Wandsworth Asylum.
After that Ruth Jnr. took rooms at various Brockley addresses for periods of three-ten months, probably working as a dressmaker – a more casual and flexible occupation than domestic service. She also spent a month in Brighton in May 1896. Just before that she ‘broke up home and warehoused goods’ (put belongings into storage?), but she returned to Brockley, and in March 1897, she came to the attention of the authorities again. In April she was admitted to Cane Hill, an asylum for the County of London, located near Croydon. This is when Lewisham Union started claiming financial contributions from Edmonton Union, because of her previous residence there – even though she had apparently been living outside of an asylum in Brockley for most of the previous three years. Edmonton did pay for her upkeep.
It seems that Ruth Jnr. was trying to advocate for herself. There is mention of a letter written by her, which was forwarded by a medical officer of Lewisham Union to a solicitor, who refused to intervene in her affairs. Were they threatening to move her back to north London, or was she asking for this to happen? Or did she simply not want to be in an asylum at all? Unfortunately, the letter itself has not been kept. Ruth Jnr. remained at Cane Hill until August of that year and was then transferred back to Wandsworth Asylum. Eight years later, in 1905, she made her final move – to Napsbury Asylum, a new Middlesex County Asylum, close to St Albans in Hertfordshire, which opened its doors to patients in that same year. Was this still for reasons of funding?
Records show that Ruth was discharged from Napsbury in 1925, though ‘not improved’. However, if this was not a mistake, she must have been readmitted, as her death certificate shows that she died there in 1932. Strangely, the section describing her occupation states that she was a dressmaker, but also includes the words ‘Lewisham Infirmary’. The life of Ruth Jnr. was quite sad, long (she died about age 74), and lonely.
Orpah’s Brother
Spencer Vine was in the army by 1851 and stationed in Ashton under Lyne in Lancashire. His Census entry tells us that he was a drummer/musician. I could not find him in 1841, so he had perhaps already joined as a boy soldier. He served in the Crimean War in the 50th Regiment of Foot and received the Crimea Medal with clasps to show that he fought in the Battle of Alma and the Battle of Inkerman. I found no records for him after this, so I don’t know if he survived.
AN INTRIGUING LETTER
I am not sure if this is relevant, but here is an interesting letter published in the London Weekly Despatch on 5 September 1847. It may throw some light on the family, and also on conditions in workhouses at the time.
Transcription below:
Pauper Treatment.
We have received a letter from Elizabeth Vine, residing at No. 3, Leicester-court, Leicester-square. Her father was Mr. Stephen Vine, formerly a farmer at Cranbrook, in Kent. The writer informs that she has had the misfortune to be the to be the mother of two illegitimate children. In May last she was an inmate of the Strand Union Workhouse; but, at the latter end of that month she was passed, by order of the authorities, to Cranbrook. Here, according to her statement, she encountered the most severe trials. But let the poor creature recite her own story:
“I was there (Cranbrook workhouse) a fortnight. I had not been in the house but a few days when my dear baby (seven months old) died of inflammation of the chest. I begged to have a mustard plaster applied to the chest, but it was refused me, and I charge the death of my infant to that circumstance.
With reference to diet, the paupers are miserably fed. In the Strand Union each person is supplied with a break-fast of good nourishing gruel; three times a week an abundance of meat and potatoes; another three days with plenty of excellent soup; and one day in the week there is an allowance of pudding.
In the Cranbrook Union Workhouse the inmates have for breakfast a small portion of bread, with about half an ounce of cheese, and no drink; for dinner an allowance of bread and cheese, except Thursday, when suet pudding is served to the inmates, and on Saturday meat pudding; for tea or supper an allowance of bread and cheese, with water only. If a poor woman with a baby at the breast, which was my case, is ordered ta the wash-tub, she has no other allowance than bread and cheese, with water.
After enduring many privations I was compelled to discharge myself from the workhouse, with my child. On my application to the Guardians they refused me the most trifling assistance to carry me and my child to London, a distance of more than 50 miles.
They would not allow my child a pair of shoes, though his feet were quite on the ground; they took from me the flannel petticoat which I wore, and the stockings and shoes from my feet, and I was obliged to leave the house with a pair which I was compelled to tie to my feet, and beg my way to London, not having one penny in the world.”
If the statement be true, what a horrible picture it presents of pauper treatment in Cranbrook Workhouse. Why, if the writer were the veriest wretch upon earth, she could not have been treated worse. But Elizabeth Vine is the mother of illegitimate children, and, on that account, we imagine she is to be hunted to death. O, merciful Guardians! fathers of children, who may perhaps, but we hope not, fall into similar misfortunes, have a little feeling for a fellow-creature, although the Poor Law…..
At a similar time to the births of Orpah and her siblings, a greater number of children were born in Cranbrook to a Stephen Vine, and his wife Elizabeth. The letter in 1847 came from their daughter Elizabeth, written in an eloquent and educated style. It is stated that her father was previously a farmer in Cranbrook. Elizabeth had become the mother of two illegitimate children and was living in London, but she had been transferred the previous May (1846) from the Strand Union Workhouse to the Cranbrook one. She compares the food allowance at Cranbrook (largely bread, cheese and water), very unfavourably to that at the Strand (meat, potatoes, gruel, soup). She also blames the death of her seven-month-old child on the workhouse, although it is unlikely that the mustard poultice they refused would have cured his chest infection.
It seems Elizabeth was a very independent woman. She discharged herself after a fortnight, which was clearly against the rules of the time, and was very indignant that they would not assist her and her older child to get back to London. They also took away a petticoat, shoes, and stockings, which had presumably been given to her in the Cranbrook workhouse. She begged her way back to London.
What comes over from all this is the harsh treatment by the authorities – the radical newspaper is using the letter as an appeal for better treatment, and it makes sarcastic reference to her illegitimate children being used to justify the treatment. However, Elizabeth is unusual in being able to write a letter like that, and has high expectations, given the norms of the time. They would certainly have thought of her as ‘entitled’ in modern terms. The letter may have been written for her by a campaigning journalist. However, it is also possible that her father was indeed been a farmer, that she had received an education, and that she lived an easier life – but by this time Elizabeth’s parents had probably died, or may have been in reduced circumstances, and her unmarried status obviously changed things immensely. Orpah and her sister Ruth’s experience with illegitimate children and workhouses mirror that of Elizabeth, who may have been their cousin.
The Two Vines: A Theory
I have a theory about the relationship between Alexander and Stephen Vine, but there is not much evidence. In 1809, when Stephen married Elizabeth Austen in Cranbrook, he was able to sign his name. Both were of Cranbrook parish. Orpah’s parents (Alexander and Elizabeth Vine) were not married in Cranbrook, but in 1813 there was a marriage record for Alexander Vine and Elizabeth Manser in Heathfield, Sussex.
Looking for this Alexander’s origins, we find him baptised in Heathfield in 1781, two years after a brother called Stephen. (Heathfield, Sussex is about halfway between Cranbrook and Brighton.) Their father was James Vine, who appears to be the one who died in 1826, leaving a farm of 17 acres to be sold. In his will he left ‘under £100’, which was substantial enough at the time, but quite low compared with others who were leaving wills. Both Stephen and Alexander received fractions of his estate but he had other children and grandchildren and these two don’t seem to have been the biggest beneficiaries.
So, James was a small farmer, and Stephen may have started out the same way in Cranbrook. Following the Napoleonic Wars, agriculture was hit badly by the depression in 1815, and small farmers would have had the biggest problems. There is no evidence that Orpah’s father was a farmer, but he did come from a slightly higher level of society than a typical labourer (after all, he had clothes worth stealing in 1831), so perhaps Orpah’s upbringing would have reflected that.
AUTHOR’S THOUGHTS
Orpah’s condition is an interesting one. At first sight, ‘supposing you are about to be married’ doesn’t really seem to require locking away. I’m sure she did wish she was married! Sources on the internet link the disorder to social isolation, low self-esteem, and childhood trauma/emotional neglect, all of which could have applied to Orpah. It can be a specific condition (de Clearmalt’s Syndrome), where that delusion is the only symptom present, or can be a symptom of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or dementia. Usually, the belief about marriage or love is focused on a specific person. There is no mention of that in the record, but it can lead to stalking-like behaviour and obviously her behaviour was disruptive enough for somebody to notice it. I wonder who that was. The Sussex admission records say that she had had several attacks of this condition, and that the current one had lasted 2-3 weeks.
Was Orpah’s condition inevitable, or was it a product of her life events? Both she and her sister Ruth found themselves pregnant and unmarried. The difference was that the father of Orpah’s child did not seem to be in the picture, whereas Ruth’s baby’s father married her and happened to have an occupation which gave him a very stable career in the servant class. In 1891, having both retired, David and Ruth Penfold were still living together in a cottage on the Trent Park estate.
So, there was in fact a similarity between aunt (Orpah) and niece (Ruth Jnr.), despite their different starts in life. Both seemed to be on the edges of society, finding it difficult to cope by themselves. Ruth Jnr. perhaps had the support of her parents, and her father might have been able to help her to retain her employment in domestic service. It could be significant that she was first admitted to an asylum around the time her father retired, and perhaps when her parents’ health was failing. Despite this, she went into the asylum system at a younger age than her aunt Orpah.
– Lynda Fase
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