Antiques: Intricate needlework produced by Victorian orphanage girls

One-third of households were without a male breadwinner and women were forced to go out to work, leaving children as young as six to look after their younger siblings, running errands, sweeping the streets, cleaning windows or making matchboxes and paintbrushes.

Poorly paid, exhausted and malnourished children were prone to diphtheria, cholera and measles as diseases flourished on streets littered with rubbish, excrement and dead animals. High rents, even for hovels, meant that when there was no work, families fell into arrears and thrown onto the street.

The New Poor Law of 1834, establishing workhouses for the destitute, was a sound enough idea, with homeless families housed in large dormitories and eating in big dining rooms while earning their keep by washing laundry, growing vegetables and sewing clothes.

But conditions were brutal, with residents forced to endure long hours, poor food and physical abuse. Children were often caned or flogged.

Most early orphanages were barely any better, despite depictions of smartly dressed nurses and teachers tending their young charges in bright, clean buildings.

But as the Victorian age wore on, social reformers and England's growing wealth forced a sea change in attitudes, with Charles Dickens highlighting the plight of often abusive conditions.

Perhaps the most enlightened of those pioneer institutions was established in Bristol in 1836 by Christian preacher George Muller (1804-1898), moving to Ashley Down House in 1845 to accommodate 300 girls. Prussian-born Muller believed in making sure all his charges were properly equipped with skills to help them find employment when they left the institution, including needlework.

Regular readers with long memories may recall my piece a few years ago on orphan Celia Bell, recalled through the survival of a sampler she embroidered as a 10 year old 123 years ago during seven years at Ashley Down, far from her home in Sunderland.

Her father Thomas died in 1894 and her mother Sarah of TB two years later, leaving Celia and her four siblings orphans.

Their granny somehow managed to place three of the girls in the orphanage, which would, thanks to donations and the power of prayer, care for 10,000 children between 1836 until Muller’s death in 1898.

While orphans at other institutions, some unregulated, endured terrible deprivations, those at Ashley Down were well cared for and trained for trades or household positions.

Celia obviously paid attention to her needlework teacher (a Miss Dorman), producing in 1901 a beautiful, decorative sampler which fetched £1,920 at Tennants. Now, three more antiques samplers made by girls at Ashley Down have surfaced in Leyburn from a private collection.

Provenance is not so exhaustive, however, with one specimen dated 1884, only identified by the embroidered name AF Broton, which sold for an unexpected £5,580, another by "Emily" for £1,975 and a third by "EB" for £975. At the same textile sale, an 18th century French Aubusson Verdue tapestry, depicting a bird surrounded by a pastoral landscape, made £2,230.

Earlier sales at Tennants included a delicately embroidered 19th century sampler worked by a young Ashley Down girl called Jane Ann in 1871, which realised £7,200. She embroidered three-digit numbers into the sampler, bed numbers, perhaps, of other girls who helped her.

Back to Ashley Down and one visitor who looked around the orphanage in the 1870s reported that "the orphans struck up a cheerful song and all marched out in single file, with as much precision in their steps as any of our modern volunteer corps would exhibit. The effect was striking and he who can witness unmoved these helpless orphans winding their way between the desks to the music of the touching songs...must indeed be made of very impenetrable materials. "

A final word on Celia Bell and her siblings. Her elder brother, Ernest, stayed in the North East as an errand boy and her youngest sister, Rhoda, three when her mother died, was adopted by a local woman. As for Celia, Ashley Down proved a godsend. On the strength of her needlework and good character she was given a job as a parlour maid to a Mrs Stancome of Weston-super-Mare, leaving Ashley Down on June 22, 1903, aged 17.

*At Tennants on October 5, a Le Lac de Come (Lake Como) glass vase, circa 1925, by Émile Gallé (1846-1904) is expected to fetch £4,000-£6,000.