‘Ayah’ refers to South Asian women and ‘Amah’ to South East Asian women who served the British in Asia and other colonies as children’s nannies, nursemaids and ladies’ maids. This two part blog series explores the history of the Ayahs and Amahs’ Home and some of the women who lived there.
Who were ayahs and where did they come from?
Who were ayahs and where did they come from?
From the 1600s onwards, the British had a presence in India in Surat, Calcutta (Kolkata), Madras (Chennai), Bombay (Mumbai), and from the late 1800s, the northeast of India around Assam which was being exploited for tea cultivation. Many of the women the British employed as ayahs came from these areas. In 1810, there were only around 250 European women living in India. By 1901, this had surged to 42,000 British women. Caring for these women and their children led to a growing demand for ayahs, leading to a steady rise in the number of ayahs arriving in Britain during the 1800s and early 1900s.
There were different types of travelling ayahs and later, amahs. They broadly fell into these three categories:
those who stayed with the families and served them in their family home in Britain
those who accompanied British families on the sea voyage to Britain and returned to Asia after a short stay near the port they arrived at
those who sought lodgings and then returned ‘home’, usually employed as an ayah (or amah) for their return passage
It was this last category that the Ayahs’ Home supported.
The East India Company
A group of English merchants formed the East India Company, which traded with the Indian subcontinent from the 1600s. It gradually transformed from a company focused on trade, to one which took over territory and had its own army. After its army turned on the Company and the British in India during the 1857 Indian Uprising, the British Crown took over and directly ruled India.
The East India Company’s employees brought servants from India to the UK, and they were also responsible for their return. By the 1690s there were requests to the Company’s Directors for servants, including ayahs, to be granted passage from the UK back to India.
In the early 1800s something changed. A newspaper report suggests William Rogers was asked by the East India Company to provide shelter and lodging for an abandoned ayah in his home just off Fenchurch Street, in the City of London. Rogers treated her so well that in a few short years he was running a lodging house for ayahs. This business had four different locations in Aldgate and various people running it until it moved to Hackney just before 1900.
The Home’s First Matron
Amina Hanson (1847-1902) was a driving force behind transforming the general lodging house in Aldgate into a ‘Home for Indian Ayahs’. She was born on the border between Shacklewell and Stoke Newington, to an English mother and Moroccan father. Her parents did not marry and Amina spent her early life living wherever her mother, Mary Crooks, found work. In 1868 Amina married Christian Hanson, who had inherited the lodging business in Aldgate from his first wife. Christian was a Danish soldier and may have spent time in India around the 1850s.
This Danish-Moroccan-English couple struggled to make a success of their Home for Indian Ayahs. While there were more ayahs arriving, it was a seasonal trade, dictated by weather patterns and shipping routes, and not hugely lucrative. The final Ayahs’ Home in Aldgate at 4-6 Jewry Street was above a tin and slate warehouse, and could accommodate up to 100 women a year. The London City Mission, a Protestant evangelical and philanthropic foundation, started to support the Hansons and then formally took over the Ayahs’ Home in Aldgate, relocating it to Hackney.
The First Ayahs’ Home in Hackney
Around 1900, the Ayahs’ Home relocated from being in the heart of the ‘poor’ East End and found a new life at 26 King Edwards Road, Hackney. It had experienced a form of social mobility as its new location was quite different to Aldgate. Much of King Edwards Road was built with beautiful villas in the 1850s and 1860s for wealthy families. No. 26 was built in the late 1860s as a boarding school so its layout, the dormitories within, and available amenities suited the function of the Ayahs’ Home. Cambridge Heath train station, which had opened nearby in the 1870s, made the area easy to reach from central London for arriving ayahs and amahs, and for women seeking to employ them.
The Home provided accommodation for around 90 women a year. It was a business venture that offered shelter and accommodation for travelling ayahs, and also negotiated employment opportunities for their return passage, a bit like a modern temp agency.
Amina Hanson continued as Matron at the Home on a salary. She was addicted to alcohol and this led to her dismissal from the Home in 1902. She moved around before finding a place to live in Fassett Road, Dalston. One day, after drinking too much, she fell out of bed and hurt her head. She was taken to Hackney Infirmary (site of Homerton Hospital) and later died from her injuries. Her husband Christian was in Hoxton House Asylum when this happened and was discharged in 1903. He went to live in Hastings where he died many years later.
‘The Ayahs and Amahs’ Home’, Hackney
In 1921 the Home moved again, this time only a few doors down to 4 King Edwards Road. It was renamed as The Ayahs and Amahs Home as there were now more amahs staying there than ayahs. This building started as a family home and then became a base for the Sisters of Charity, who set-up nearby St Joseph’s Hospice. After the Sisters moved out, the building was transformed and opened in 1911 as a children’s day nursery and boarding school set-up by the Women’s Industrial Council, an organisation founded to investigate and improve the conditions of women workers.
The layout of the building suited the needs of the Home. On the second and third floors there was space for up to 14 dormitories and a matron’s bedroom. The room at the back of the first floor had been used as a day nursery for young children and the front room for older children, so these could have been communal rooms for the ayahs and amahs. The ground floor had a dining room-cum-classroom, a matron’s sitting room and office with a view into the garden. The kitchen, scullery and laundry were in the basement.
Hackney’s earliest ayahs and amahs
There are a few examples of ayahs and amahs living in Hackney before the Home for Ayahs and Amahs moved to King Edwards Road around 1900. Missionary families often returned to Britain with an ayah. One of these ayahs was Marian Newman. In 1891 census records show that at 19 years old she was living in Kenninghall Road, Clapton. with the Picken family. William Picken was a Wesleyan minister and he and his wife Mary had five children while in India. Marian probably helped the family on the voyage over and to settle into their life in England before she disappeared from records.
A year later in 1892, Minnie Green arrived at Brent House, a Salvation Army rescue home, in Devonshire Road in Hackney. Their record describes 18 year old Minnie as a ‘coloured girl’, an Ayah born in Madras. She had been treated badly by her master and mistress, both of whom drank heavily. As a result, ‘…the [Southwark] magistrate took her away and sent her to the Salvation Army for care. Her conduct in the Salvation Army receiving home was described as ‘very good,’ and her disposition ‘good tempered and contented’’. Minnie was sent to the Ayahs’ Home in Jewry Street, Aldgate and she secured a passage home as an ayah to a Mr & Mrs Rose, who were returning to India.
New research is being carried out to understand more about where amahs came from. In 1900 a newspaper advertisement was highlighting the services of an amah living with a family at 39 Kyverdale Road in Stoke Newington. She was quite keen to return to Singapore or China.
What was life like in the Ayahs’ Home?
Daily life for residents of the Ayahs’ and Amahs’ Home included playing with or caring for local children and those of the Matron’s family, preparing meals together and eating familiar things like noodles, rice and curry. Occasionally they had special day trips to the zoo, met with neighbours or greeted dignitaries and posed for many photographs. A rare image shows a group of ayahs and amahs casually standing with a group of children and women dressed in early 20th century clothing. These may be the children and staff of the Women’s Industrial Council which opened at 4 King Edwards Road in 1911.
The Ayah’s Home had a Christian ethos, in keeping with the London City Mission which ran it. The women living there were provided with different Christian activities, including meeting the Sisters of Charity who lived a few doors away. The Sisters were in the process of founding St Joseph’s Hospice, a local institution that still exists today, around the corner from the former Ayahs’ Home. These two groups of women may have found they had some things in common – they were far from home in this part of east London, the Sisters from Ireland and the Ayahs from India. They also had a common cause – to use their skills and compassion to provide care for others.
In April 1912 twenty Indian ayahs and Chinese and Japanese amahs helped at an Ideal Home Exhibition in London’s Olympia exhibition centre. Their role was to supervise 100 babies in a playground specially constructed in the exhibition’s concert hall to showcase child-friendly furniture. In August of the same year, another newspaper reported that some ayahs attended the funeral of William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army who was buried in Abney Park, Stoke Newington. Some or all of these women may have been from the Home in Hackney.
What happened to the ayahs and amahs during the World Wars?
During the First World War (1914-1918) women and children were not allowed to travel to India by sea. This meant there was less demand for an ayah’s services, and they couldn’t travel by sea either. The London City Mission fundraised to support the ayahs that were still living at the Home, as well as trying to find them employment in Britain.
On the eve of the Second World War (1939-1945) there were four amahs and an ayah living in the Home: Mao Liu Sze, 51; Sam Nip Ah, 41; Choy Lee Ah, 31; Tai Aw Yang, 35 and Siring Yache, 38. In 1940 amahs from all over London gathered at the Home to celebrate Chinese New Year together, one of the last events there. By 1941 the building housed local families bombed out during the war. We don’t know what happened to the ayahs and amahs who lived there.
This map shows where ayahs lived across the UK between 1841 to the 1950s.
The End of an Era
The Ayahs’ Home survived many changes since its creation in the 1820s. The impact of the Second World War (1939-1945) and the break-up of the British empire led to its closure. Bombing during the Blitz destroyed many properties around the Ayahs and Amahs’ Home. The Home’s services were no longer required because of a decline in the number of ayahs and amahs arriving in Britain. The building was transformed into ‘Redlands’, a hostel for the East London Tabernacle. Both of the previous Ayahs’ Homes on King Edwards Road in Hackney are now subdivided into private housing and one of them has a Blue Plaque erected by English Heritage. While the Ayahs and Amahs’ Home no longer exists, ayahs and amahs are still working in many different parts of the world.
Find out more
To find out more about the history of the Ayahs’ Home, listen to this podcast by English Heritage and this podcast by the GLA’s Our London, Our Spaces programme.
Watch this presentation to find out more about research into Southeast Asian amahs in the UK.
Content for this blog featured in the exhibition ‘Asian and Chinese nannies in Hackney: The Home for Ayahs and Amahs’ at Hackney Museum 16 June 2022 – 27 August 2022. It was inspired by the work of historian Rozina Visram. Additional research by Hackney Museum staff, Rebecca Preston, English Heritage, Victoria Haskins, Professor of History at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and Salvation Army information provided by Kevin Poole.