Harold Nelson Burden

Reverend Harold Nelson Burden (20 March 1860 – 15 May 1930) was an Anglican minister, missionary and, with his wife, founder of institutions for the care of alcoholics and people with mental disabilities.

Early life and career

Burden was born in Hythe, Kent, the eldest of three children of Thomas Burden, a grocer, and his wife Sarah née Munk.[1]

He studied theology in Cambridge and was ordained in Carlisle in 1888. He afterwards moved to the East End of London, to do charitable work. On 26 September 1888 he married Katherine Mary Garton, daughter of a tobacco manufacturer of Hull. They moved to Uffington, Ontario in Canada, where they were missionaries among Ojibwe communities. They had two children, who later died, and Katherine's health declined.[1][2]

They returned to England in 1891, and took up the curacy of Shoreditch. From 1893 to 1895 Burden was chaplain of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and he studied at the university. He wrote two books about his missionary work in Canada.[1][2]

Bristol

In 1895 the Burdens moved to Bristol, where Harold became secretary of the Church of England Temperance Society and chaplain of Horfield Prison. They became concerned about poverty, alcoholism and mental disability. They established in Bristol in 1898 at Brentry House the Royal Victoria Home for Women, of which Katherine was superintendant; it was the first Inebriate Reformatory in the country. In 1902 they formed the National Institutions for Inebriates, which had 600 beds by 1904.[1][2][3]

The clock tower at Stoke Park Hospital (formerly Stoke Park Colony), erected to the memory of the Rev Harold Nelson Burden.

Burden had good relations with the Home Office, and he was appointed to the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded in 1904, in which he was influential. Subsequently the Mental Deficiency Act 1913 was passed; it advocated "colonies" for people with mental disabilities.[1][2][4]

In 1907 they opened at Sandwell Hall, near West Bromwich, the Industrial School for Mentally Defective Children, specified in 1908 to accommodate 200 boys. It was the first such school.[5] In 1909 they established at the Dower House in Bristol Stoke Park Colony. It was expanded in the years to 1917, when, housing 1528 people, it was the largest licensed institution in the country.[4]

Later years

In 1913 the Burdens set up a trust, the National Institutions for Persons Requiring Care and Control (NIPRCC), to take over ownership of their several institutions.[5]

Katherine Burden died in 1919; Harold Burden married in 1920 Rosa Gladys Williams (1889–1940), the superintendant of the Stoke Park Colony, with whom he continued philanthropic work. Harold Burden died on 15 May 1930 at his home at Clevedon Hall, and was buried at Clevedon parish church.[1][2]

Stoke Park Colony had become important for neurological and psychiatric research; in 1933, Rosa Burden founded the Burden Mental Research Trust, an expansion of the earlier research. The Burden Neurological Institute was founded at Stoke Park in 1939.[4] After Rosa Burden's death the NIPRCC became the Burden Trust.[1]

References
  1. "Burden, Harold Nelson". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/60300. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. "Burden, Harold Nelson 1860–1930" Science Museum Group. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  3. Historic England. "Royal Victoria Park (formerly Brentry House) (1000360)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
  4. "Stoke Park Colony" Science Museum Group. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  5. "Sandwell Hall Special Industrial School for Mentally Defective Children" Children's Homes. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.