Fundraising brochure, 1925
Karl Magee of the University of Stirling’s archives service shares a fundraising brochure for Aberlour Orphanage in Moray
Canon Charles Jupp of the Scottish Episcopal Church founded an orphanage for “mitherless bairns” in the village of Aberlour, Moray, in 1875, and 10 years later Aberlour Orphanage accommodated up to 100 children. Actor Anna Maxwell Martin’s maternal grandfather was a resident for five years in the 1920s, as she learnt in her Who Do You Think You Are? episode in 2022 – the same year that the University of Stirling finished cataloguing the orphanage’s archives. Here the university archivist Karl Magee shares a document from the collection.
Can You Describe The Document You’ve Chosen?
The item I’ve selected is a fundraising brochure for Aberlour Orphanage from 1925. The cover notes the location of the orphanage (Strathspey, Scotland) and its Jubilee Year (celebrating 50 years since its establishment in 1875). The 34-page pamphlet is richly illustrated with photographs of the exterior and interior of the orphanage buildings, groups of children, activities and events. It also records the visit that George V and Queen Mary made to the orphanage in August 1922.
Why Did You Choose It?
I chose this document because it provides a richly illustrated account of the orphanage and its activities from nearly 100 years ago. It presents a detailed description of the accommodation provided, with girls and boys living in separate wings of the building, and stresses the beauty of its surroundings, noting “there are few more beautiful places in Scotland”. Only a handful of photographs depicting life in the orphanage during this period survive, so those included in the booklet of groups of children, living conditions s and activities are e particularly important.
For those researching family members who were residents during the early decades of the 20th century, the booklet provides a vivid snapshot of what life was like. Today little of the orphanage complex remains. In the 1960s the nature of care provided began to change, with smaller residential homes being established by the Aberlour charity in towns across Scotland, and the orphanage closed in 1967. Its original buildings were demolished, and all that remains is the clock tower of the orphanage’s school.
What Does The Brochure Reveal About The Orphanage’s History?
This booklet represents the orphanage’s first public fundraising campaign. Since it began as a small charitable institution, fundraising was key to its continued operation. In its first 50 years it had grown from a small home for three orphans to a large institution caring for more than 500 children. The document reflects the impact of the aftermath of the First World War on its income, with regular subscriptions from established supporters declining. The 1925 Jubilee aimed to raise £100,000 to put the orphanage on a sound financial footing.
The booklet presents the aim of the orphanage as “making citizens worthy of the Empire”, and describes its residents in language that may appear rather stark and hard-hitting to our eyes: “There are children with not a relative in the world; there are children who would be much better off if they had none. There are children who are living amid debased and immoral surroundings. There are children who are brutally ill-treated by unnatural parents. There are children whose parents will not take the trouble to give them any moral training or discipline and who are growing up to be loafers and hooligans.”
Residents were given an education and training to gain employment
The work of the orphanage is described as “saving the children – physically, morally and spiritually”. Its residents were given an education and training to gain employment once they left, with girls generally entering domestic service, and boys going on to apprenticeships or to farm work.
Some of the residents of the orphanage also followed the route taken by many other children in similar institutions to new lives in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The benefits of the care provided at Aberlour are highlighted, the booklet noting that “visitors frequently remark that the children do not look the least like institutional children”.
Can You Tell Us A Bit More About The Aberlour Archive?
Today Aberlour is one of Scotland’s largest charities, providing a range of services that help disadvantaged children and their families ( aberlour.org.uk). Its archives preserve a detailed record of the organisation’s work caring for children across Scotland since the establishment of its first orphanage in 1875, with more than 6,000 children passing through the orphanage during its 90 years of operation. The collection comprehensively documents both the operation of the charity and the lives of those in its care through administrative records, case files, annual reports, photographs, publications and fundraising material.
The material has been transferred to the University of Stirling Archives and in 2022 it was fully catalogued, the work being supported by the Archives Revealed scheme. This provides archive services with funding to make collections accessible, and is jointly funded by The National Archives at Kew, the Wolfson Foundation and the Pilgrim Trust.
In terms of family history, the University Archives works with Aberlour to provide access to personal records for both the careexperienced and their families. More general historical material relating to the orphanage can also be consulted in the archives reading room.
Finally, the catalogue is now available online and contains links to a selection of digitised documents, including the booklet: collections.stir. ac.uk/collections/getrecord/ GB559_ACCT. More digitised content, including runs of the Aberlour Orphanage magazine, will be added in the coming months to further open up access to this remarkable collection.