Catalogue Number
NMLH.2003.21.2
Object Name
Crippleage
Title
John Groom's Crippleage And Flower Girls' Mission (Incorporated) Formerly Known As The Watercress And Flower Girls' Christian Mission. We Respectfully Kind Acceptance Of This Little Buttonhole... ...
Place
Clerkenwell, London, UK
People
John Groom, Livability (charity)
Description
Cardboard box, with chequered pattern. Label on underside of lid âJohn Groomâs Crippleage and Flower Girlâs Missionâ. Contains a small bunch of fabric violets "...this little Buttonhole, made by one of our Crippled Girls..."
John Groom was an engraver and preacher from London. He became concerned with the plight of the poverty-strikcen and often blind or disabled girls and women who sold flowers and watercress on the streets near Farringdon Market; he founded the Watercress and Flower Girls' Christian Mission in 1866, providing access to hot meals, facilities for washing and mending clothes and a religious education. Groom set up a factory where disabled girls could work to make artificial flowers in 1876; the girls lived in houses nearby to the factory, rented by Groom.
The name of the charity was changed to John Groom's Crippleage and Flower Girls Mission in 1907, again in 1969 to John Groom's Association for the Disabled and in 1990 to John Groom's Association for Disabled People.
Today Livability is a national disability charity and the UKâs largest Christian disability charity. It was formed in 2007 after a merger between the Shaftesbury Society and John Grooms - https://www.livability.org.uk/about-us/our-story/
Guardian article about history and production: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2007/sep/26/guardiansocietysupplement.socialcare1
