This film documenting the reunion of the Sailors’ Children’s Society at Newland Estate in 1936 is one of 24 films donated to the YFA by the Sailors’ Families’ Society, dating from 1936 and going up to a visit by Diana, the Princess of Wales, in February 1991. Other Royal visits include Princess Mary in 1949, the Queen in 1957 and Princess Anne in 1971. Many of these films are promoting the Society, or simply showing the Society’s activities, but others are explicitly appealing for funds....

This film documenting the reunion of the Sailors’ Children’s Society at Newland Estate in 1936 is one of 24 films donated to the YFA by the Sailors’ Families’ Society, dating from 1936 and going up to a visit by Diana, the Princess of Wales, in February 1991. Other Royal visits include Princess Mary in 1949, the Queen in 1957 and Princess Anne in 1971. Many of these films are promoting the Society, or simply showing the Society’s activities, but others are explicitly appealing for funds.  Another reunion film is 100 Years of Care (1963) documenting the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Society. Doubtless many that feature in this later film are also to be seen in this earlier one.  Among the fund appeal films are: Gladys Young Appeal Film (1951), Silent Appeal (1952), A Family Affair (1960), narrated by John Mills, and Brian Rix TV Appeal (1964). 

 

At the time most of these films were made the Society was known as the Sailors’ Children’s Society – a name it adopted in 1950. Before that, from 1917, it was the Port of Hull Society’s Sailor’s Orphan Homes. But it changed its name again in 1991 to the Sailors’ Families’ Society to reflect the wider scope of its work. The Sailors’ Children’s Society started out originally as the Port of Hull Society for the Religious Instruction of Seaman in 1821, moving from educational and missionary work, to taking on their first orphans in 1862, with six boys and six girls, in Castle Row.  This later moved to Park Street, Thanet House, in 1867, and then in 1895 to the Newland Home. For much more on the Sailors’ Children’s Society see the Context for A Family Affair  (1960).

 

This film, even more than the later reunion film, differs from the others in featuring almost exclusively adults, rather than the children, even in the ‘sporting activities’. The filmmaker is clearly more concerned to show the people attending the occasion than document anything about the Society itself. For anyone researching any past relatives who either attended the Society or were involved in some way this film will be of enormous value, showing very clearly as it does so many people from the 1930s. That there are many who are interested in this is evident on some of the threads on the ‘Rootschat’ website (see References). One of them – a thread on Port of Hull Society Sailors’ Orphan Homes on Rootschat – has an excellent aerial photograph of the Newland Estate.

 

This film was made in 1936, the year that the Old Scholars Association was formed to ensure that former residents of the Children’s Home, many of whom would have migrated across the globe, could keep in touch. It might well be that either the reunion in this film was the first meeting of this Society, or that the Society was formed at this reunion. But the film also shows many of the members of the management as well as former residents (old scholars is a rather grand way of putting it). Many of the buildings and facilities, not to say the day-to-day running costs, were funded by generous donations from wealthy benefactors. Among the better known of these are, for example, Thomas Ferens, who became Liberal M.P. for East Hull in 1906, and who provided the cricket pavilion, opened in 1903. Ferens was a supporter of women’s right to vote and similar issues, and, although a Methodist rather than a Quaker, he was also a leader of the temperance movement. Thomas Ferens also funded the Ferens Arts Gallery in Hull, and made a substantial contribution to the founding of the University of Hull.

 

Another benefactor was Hull born Joseph Rank, who contributed the hospital building to the Society. This is the same Joseph Rank who founded the famous film company, becoming Rank Organisation in 1937. Rank was also a Methodist, and it was through this that he came to set up in film, after the Methodist Church complained about the bad affects that films were having, in their opinion, on family life. In fact his first film, Turn of the Tide set in Robin Hood’s Bay, was made the year before this one, in 1935.

 

Perhaps the most important benefactors though were the brothers, Sir James Reckett and Sir Francis Reckett.  These were in fact connected to Thomas Ferens, who made his money working for, and eventually becoming joint Chairman of, the Reckitt family business in Hull, which manufactured household goods. The brothers lived next door to each other in Hessle. Like so many wealthy benefactors in Yorkshire, these were Quakers.  Sir James Reckett was the first President of the Sailor’s Children’s Society.  As well as supporting the Sailor’s Childrens’ Home, Sir James Reckett funded the first library in Hull, and supported Hull Royal Infirmary, purchasing a derelict hotel in Withernsea and converting it into a convalescent home for the Infirmary – he was a chairman from 1900 until his death in 1924.  He also established a Garden Village in East Hull, opening in 1908, comprising about 600 houses for slightly over 3,000 residents. Again following in the footsteps of other wealthy Quakers, most notably Joseph Rowntree, he founded a charity in 1921, three years before his death. His son set up the Sir Philip Reckitt Educational Trust in 1944. 

 

Hopefully those who are more knowledgeable on the supporters of the Society will recognise some of them in the film.

 

The reason why the film focuses on the adults is no doubt due to the fact that the homes could not be visited because of measles, as the film states. At that time almost every child caught measles – it is very infectious – and there were about 250 children in the home at any one time in the 1930s.  This viral disease produces a blotchy red rash, and has many other very nasty symptoms – with at one time a pretty good chance of being hospitalized. Prior to about 1915 a great many died from this, but it gradually stopped being such a deadly disease, so that by 1955 only 25 out of every 100,000 cases died from it. It has more or less stayed at this level ever since.   The main reasons for this sharp decline seem to a combination of better living conditions, nutrition and antibiotics.  A vaccine wasn’t introduced until 1963, and although this has drastically decreased the number of cases, the mortality rates have stayed about the same.  Today measles is rare in the UK, although some recent outbreaks have prompted a renewed campaign to ensure that parents fully take up the MMR vaccine.

 

As well as the Sailors’ Families’ Society, which run the Newland Orphanage, there was also the Sailor’s Orphan Society, which ran the Hull Seamen's & General Orphanage, or Asylum. It is easy to get confused between the two, but the latter started out in 1866 on Spring Bank (now Iceland, next to the Polar Bear pub), before later moving to Hesslewood Hall in 1921, closing in 1985.

 

For proper research into both Societies, and of the many who have been helped by them over the decades, a visit to the new Hull History Centre, which holds all their records – including entry and exit documentation relating to the many thousands of children who passed through the homes – is a must. Some of the more general histories are listed in the References (see also their online catalogue).

 

References

 

Mawer, Walter, Adventures in sympathy : being the story of the Port of Hull Society since 1821, A. Brown & Sons, 1935.

Hull Seamen's & General Orphanage, Reports 1858-1938-39

The Sailor’s Families’ Society

Hull City Council Records for Children’s Homes

Charitable Institutions in Hull from the Bulmer's Gazetteer published onGenuki

Thread on Hull orphanages on Rootschat

Thread on Port of Hull Society Sailors’ Orphan Homes on Rootschat

Measles

The Sir James Reckett Charity

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