Back in 2008, after a complete change of career, I went to work in a care home in Reading. Helena House was a Victorian building, well-worn and shabby in places, but as I settled into the routines and got to know the residents - 10 adults with learning disabilities - I soon learnt that it was a place with a lot of laughter and love.
Two years later, I was the manager and responsible for, among other things, managing the property.
Repairs and maintenance were an ongoing challenge. This Victorian house, or rather, three interconnected houses, was beautiful in parts, especially the part known as North House. Helena House had been extended and adapted for changing standards, not always well. The water tanks gurgled and the massive gas boilers were expensively reaching the ends of their lives. Plumbers muttered phrases like “never seen anything like it” as they inspected the tortuous route the pipes took from the bathroom to the drains. When some ceilings had to be replaced, the work exposed lathe and plaster and the insulation from a previous generation – bales of hay. But the house, shabby in places as it was, was a happy place for the people who lived there.
I started looking into the history of the house when one of the staff came to me with a concern that some of the night staff were afraid of certain parts of the building; they thought it was haunted.
A Google search in an idle moment came up with the records of the 1901 census and the 24 women who lived there. 24 women? I’ll confess, my first thought was “brothel.” But I read on. A Miss Frances Ransome was listed as head of household; then there were four nurses, five servants and 13 patients.
As I investigated further, I found out that Helena House had been in the business of caring for people for over a century. I knew snippets already; that the house had once been a home for widows of Anglican clergymen. One room had been used as a chapel; there is still, at the time of writing, a cross on the roof at the rear of the building. And when, months later, I had the time to do a bit more research, there was more; Helena House had been a place of specifically Christian care, with close links with nearby All Saints’ Church, almost since the house was built. Undoubtedly, many people had died there, but they had died surrounded by loving, Christian care.
Further digging in the newspaper archives would lead me back in time to the forgotten founder of the Helena Nursing Home; Miss Emilia Vincent.
Following the trail of census records, birth, marriage and death records and newspaper reports, I managed to piece together an account of Emilia’s life, from her birth in 1828, in the community of Westminster Abbey, to her death in Reading, Berkshire, in 1913. The lives she interacted with included royalty, aristocracy and country gentry, to the tradespeople and local politicians of Reading; I found the names of some of the patients she cared for, and reconstructed a little of their stories, too. I also discovered the poignant story of a little original Canadian girl who lived for just a short time in Emilia’s care, before she died, aged 8, from tuberculosis.
Emilia Vincent lived to the age of 85 and was laid to rest in Reading old cemetery. Her simple grave is inscribed with the words "A life devoted to others." It was this inscription that inspired the title of my book;
Devoted; the life and times of Emilia Vincent of Westminster and Reading (1828-1913).
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