From The by Margaret Downing March 2009:
"Founded in 1914, LWH provided affordable, well managed, conveniently situated small flats for 'educated women of small means'. The Company was strongly supported by Abraham Davis's daughters, Ruth, who managed it for many years, and Irene. Abraham and his brother Ralph (a surveyor) formed the first Board of Directors, together with the ex-mayors of lslington and Camberwell.....
The flagship LWH mansion block, McWhirter House in St Johns Wood - the converted and extended previous home of artist John McWhirter - opened in 1914. It offered 26 flats and 130 hotel-style bedrooms, with a dining room, library, studio, gardens, and storage for bicycles. Tenancies were taken up fast, and the demand for them was clear."
On Holly Lodge Estate Davis built 765 units in "...31 blocks of flats for Lady Workers Homes, using a site on what was seen as the slightly less salubrious east side of the three long Avenues, lying next to the Cemetery. Here the mansion blocks would descend away from Hillway, from which they were set well back so as not to encroach on the character and views of the rest of the Estate."
2024: In J. B. Priestley's 1930 London-set novel Angel Pavement one of the characters lives in the Burpenfield Club, introduced on page 184 as "one of the residential clubs or hostels provided for girls who came from good middle-class homes in the country bur were compelled, by economic conditions still artfully adjusted to suit the male, to live in London as cheaply as possible." Through the rest of the novel you get a good idea of what living in these hostels was like.
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