| Description | Living with "a Lady & her daughter & 2 children whose parents are in India" - Digby Henry Cotes aged 7 and his sister Edith Mary Ann aged nearly 5. Describes the rooms, view of the Thames, garden, wallpaper, servants, gas lighting, New Year party. Writer's exact position in the household not stated - "I have a very easy genteel situation".
Engraving of the back (garden) view of Mall House on first page of notepaper.
In the 1851 census Mall House was a private lunatic asylum run by the widowed Elizabeth Gale and her unmarried daughter, Fanny. Mrs Gale's four-year-old grandson, Digby H Coles [sic], described as a "gentleman", was also a resident. Five patients (four ladies and one gentleman), one house servant and one nurse completed the household. (Ref: HO 107/1469 p481).
For over thirty years Mall House continued to be a private lunatic asylum for between five and seven ladies run by Charles E Cotes, a retired army major, who took over the establishment from his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Gale.
In 1884 the house was numbered 40 Upper Mall. It was purchased by the Latymer Foundation in 1893 and subsequently demolished (ref: Survey of London, LCC, 1915, p84-85) |