The life of orphan Ann Tyrell, who rattled through the charitable institutions of nineteenth-century London, sheds light on the earliest years of religious philanthropy

There are only a couple of surviving images of the Refuge for the Destitute, the Georgian institution which moved to Hackney in 1815. One is a watercolour by T.H. Shepherd, painted in 1840. The Refuge, which looms up, grey and with barred windows, isn’t the focal point of the painting. The Badger’s Almshouses in Hoxton Street draw the eye instead, a low and attractive building, in front of which respectable women stroll, arm in arm, and two well-dressed children talk to each other.

Both buildings were torn down long ago and the Refuge footprint is now covered by a grotty car park, but every time I look at these images I think of the young girl, Ann Tyrell, whom I traced to the Refuge from Harleston, my Norfolk home town, after coming across the tragic story of her mother, Mary. She was staked through the heart after death for the crime of infanticide, leaving Ann orphaned (being base-born, or illegitimate) in 1813.

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