Miss Olga Hertz another story from Tony Goulding

Last month Andrew Simpson posted a story of the work of this remarkable woman which prompted me to research her background.

Olga Hertz was born in Glasgow on 19th November 1851 the fourth of the four daughters of Theodor Hertz and his wife Mary Amelia (née Steinthal).   Her father was a wealthy iron merchant (1) who was born in Hamburg, Germany; her mother was born in Eccles, Lancashire in 1825, the daughter of German immigrants Ludwig and Ernestine Steinthal. By the mid-1840s the Steinthals had returned to Germany as it was in Hamburg, Germany that Olga’s parents married on 4th March 1846.

Theodor Hertz died in Glasgow on 15th May 1872. Following her bereavement his widow, Mary Amelia returned to her home city of Manchester, with her three unmarried daughters. (2)  In the first instance they lived next door to her brother Henry Michael Steinthal at Oak Mount, Oak Drive, Fallowfield in a property owned by Sir Joseph Whitworth, the fabulously wealthy engineer and philanthropist. In November 1886 the family moved to 49, Palatine Road, Withington, Manchester and this was to remain Olga’s home for the next 60 years. She was still living at this address when she died on 27th December 1946. Her estate was valued for probate at £62,956 -12s- 8d. (the equivalent today would be £2,142,439).

Due to her family’s extreme wealth Olga never had to seek paid employment, however she did work tirelessly on several public bodies. The Manchester Rate books of the mid 1880s record her as the secretary of the Ardwick and Ancoats District Nurses Home on Ardwick Green, Manchester. It was, however, her work as a Poor Law Guardian for the Chorlton Union detailed in Andrew’s piece for which she is best remembered. As part of this work Olga set sail from Liverpool on 3rd June 1909 aboard the Laurentic bound for Montreal, Quebec, Canada to check on the welfare of some of the children sent there by the Chorlton Union as part of the British Home Children scheme. Olga’s feminism was manifested in the demands that women should take full part in public bodies. In this capacity she often shared a platform with Margaret Ashton the first woman to be elected as a councillor for Manchester City Council. The two women likely became friends; the1921 census return further suggests this was the case as it shows Olga as a visitor at Margaret Ashton’s residence, Church Aston Manor, Newport, Shropshire.

  Two of Olga’s maternal uncles remained in England and became prominent Manchester citizens. The already referred to Henry Michael Steinthal was a textile and general merchant with interests in Bradford and Manchester and a director of The Manchester Fire Assurance Company.  He was variously in business partnerships with his brother-in-law Theodor Hertz and both his son Edgar Frederick and his son-in-law Frederick Francis Benjamin Zimmern. In his retirement he moved to Scarborough, Yorkshire where for a time he had a “tile and floor cloth” manufacturing business. He died at Myra Lodge, Alexandra Park, Scarborough on 3rd January 1905.

Henry Michael was also active in public life serving on a variety of civic bodies; he was a "visitor" to the Manchester Royal Infirmary, a member of the Royal Manchester Institution the precursor of the city's Art Gallery and one of the three joint treasurers of Indian Mutiny Relief Fund.

The “Hollies” as a convent school. 1959

His home, “The Hollies”, Oak Drive, Fallowfield, Manchester later became a Catholic Convent School also called “The Hollies”

 The second uncle was Rev. Samuel Alfred Steinthal who as a Unitarian minister was for a time assistant to Rev. William Gaskell (Elizabeth Gaskell’s husband) at the Cross Street Unitarian Chapel, Manchest

The original Cross Street Chapel circa 1835

At the elections for Manchester City Council in October 1908 which saw Margaret Ashton returned for the Withington ward Rev. Steinthal was the seconder of her nomination.

Pictures: - The Hollies 1959 (m65697) from Manchester Libraries, Information, and Archives, Manchester City Council. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Cross Street Chapel circa 1835 from Wikipedia in the public domain.

Notes: -

1) The family’s wealth is indicated by their entry in the 1861 census showing they employed 6 servants.

2) Olga’s three older sisters were, Louisa Elizabeth, who married in Scotland prior to the family’s move to Manchester, Alice Ernestina, and Amelia Theresa.

Like Olga neither of the last two ever married.

The remarkable Miss Olga Hertz and her work for the children of Manchester

I doubt I would ever have come across Miss Olga Hertz, had it not been for a report she wrote in 1909 which surfaced recently.

The report, 1909

What makes the report and Miss Hertz particularly interesting for me, is that she was one of the elected Guardians on the Chorlton Union which was the Poor Law authority covering my bit of Manchester and she lived almost all her adult life just round the corner.

Now I say I wouldn’t, but as the plan has always been to research this Poor Law Union, I suppose I would in time have met up with her.

The Chorlton Union covered most of south Manchester with its first work house in Hulme and its later one in Withington.  This second workhouse built in the 1850s, saw the Union out and developed into Withington Hospital only closing in 2002.

Like other Poor Law authority’s, Chorlton migrated some of their young people to Canada, and at the beginning of the century the three socialist Guardians argued against the policy, raising concerns about the degree of monitoring of children were highly critical of an economic and social system which accepted poverty and inequality as natural.

And that brings us back to Miss Hertz who in the June of 1909 sailed from Liverpool to Montreal and then across Ontario, visiting the Marchmont Home and by degree the farms and homes where Chorlton children had been placed from both Marchmont and Belleville.

It paints a positive picture of those who had been sent over, raising some concerns about the monitoring of some children given the large distances.

There will be those who wonder whether it was “too positive”, but Miss Hertz was very dedicated to the welfare of the young people in the charge of the Union and maintained close contacts with many of them long after they had grown up, even referring to them as “Miss Hertz’s grandchildren".

The offices of the Chorlton Union, 2009

So like so much to do with British Home Children there will have to be much more research, matching the assertions of the socialist Guardians with the quality and quantity of the reports sent back.

For now it is Miss Hertz who interests me.  She was born in Scotland in 1851 and moved to Manchester in 1871, settling on Palatine Road in Withington sometime after 1881 and where she died in 1946.

Her adult life was predicated on public service, and she was involved with administration of nursing in the city as well as her work with young people.

She was first elected as a Guardian to the Chorlton Union in 1892 and served until 1930, during which time she did five years as chair of the committee responsible for the Styal Cottage Homes for young people run by the Chorlton Union.

She remained a champion of such provision, arguing such small homes were preferable to the older and larger “barrack” institutions or the practice of boarding children out.

And she campaigned for feminist issues, opposing the practice of one hospital for refusing to employ women doctors, argued that at least one of the Union’s three doctors should be a woman and consistently pushed for the establishment of maternity centres across Manchester and in 1914 had been a delegate at  the Fifth International Council of Women held in Rome.

The entrance to the offices of the Chorlton Union' 2009

There is much more to find out about this remarkable women but I will close with her work for "the Girls’ Lodging House which existed to meet the needs of young homeless, inexperienced domestic workers during their off duty time and during periods of unemployment, girls brought up in the Poor Law homes having first claim”.**

It had been set up in the 19th century and while it closed in 1937, Miss Hertz had remarked that "she considers that there are still young workers to whom such a place would be a boon".

Leaving me just to reflect that while her house has gone, replaced by a car park for Christies' Hospital, there are the offices of the old Chorlton Poor Law Union and by an odd quirk some of the Canadian soldiers from the Great War were treated in the Unions' hospital in Withington Workhouse, and some who died are buried Southern Cemetery which is close by.

And if all that is a coincidence some of those Canadians were British Home Children.

Location; Manchester & Canada

Pictures; cover of Report to the Chorlton Board of Guardians, the offices of the Chorlton Union, 2009, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Research, the Manchester Guardian, 1894-1946, selected census records and street directories

*Copy of the Report to the Chorlton Board of Guardians on a Visit to Emigrated Children in Canada, by Miss O Hertz, Chairman of the Cottage Homes Committee

**Miss Olga Hertz Her 90th Birthday, Manchester Guardian November 19 1941