Page:Wives of the prime ministers, 1844-1906.djvu/236

WIVES OF THE PRIME MINISTERS them their unemployed daughters, asked her brother to give her the use of an old house—a former dower-house—situated in the courtyard of the castle, fitted it up as a house for the girls, and had them trained in domestic work; as soon as they attained some degree of efficiency she found them situations. Others then came from Lancashire to take their places at the Home.

Later on, after the cholera outbreak in London, she brought to Hawarden some of the orphans she had taken charge of at Clapton and lodged them in a smaller house; they attended the village school and were taught trades. When the Lancashire trouble was past, and the hands had returned to the mills, the orphans were transferred to the larger house, where thirty children could be accommodated. It has only lately been given up. The smaller house then became a Home for aged women. When Mrs. Gladstone was at Hawarden, she paid frequent visits to the Orphanage and Home, accompanied generally by her daughters and any lady who chanced to be staying with them.

In the forties of last century the only political 200