Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Alice Maynes

1868 –1932

A pupil of Shoreditch Industrial School and later a laundress

• Melanie Hilton

Unmarked grave Alice Maynes (1868-1932)

Alice was born in 1868 in Hackney.

1881 aged 14, “inmate” of Shoreditch Industrial School, Brentwood. Industrial school were offshoots of workhouses and were designed to train up poor and destitute children in trades and skills. This would have been a very gender-specific education and Alice would have been taught basic cookery, needlework and similar skills to fit her for domestic service.

In 1891 she was a laundry maid at Chantry College in Frome, Somerset, a girls’ boarding school.

Alice’s story has not been traced after that until 1929 when she was living alone at 9, Charles Street, Berkhamsted.

Alice died in the Union Workhouse infirmary in September 1932, aged 64.