Mother Mable of Bloodhelm

Every major city has an orphanage.  With war, attacks by humanoids and even just disease, there will always be orphans.  Most who lose their parents go to relatives, but some children just aren't that lucky.  In Bloodhelm, the city provides a small house for children run by Mother Mable.  She is a tall, imposing woman who never cracks a smile.  She runs her house with efficiency and expects everyone to toe the line, from smallest to oldest.  Bloodhelm gives her a small stipend plus living expenses for the orphans, which she has to make stretch, so few of her charges have hole-free clothes.  None go to trade schools or are apprenticed, but she does manage to get a teacher to come and teach her charges to read and do basic math.

Mable does not like her job, but because she is an unmarried woman of age, she has little in ways of prospects for anything else.  She knows many of her charges choose to live on the street instead of be with her, which she doesn't worry about.  She gets the same amount of money no matter how many orphans she has.  Mable also teaches her charges a few other skills, such as begging, pickpocketing and lock picking.  Being an orphan herself, once, she picked up skills and shows her charges how to do such things to help supplement her income.  She is not unkind to her charges, she just doesn't like them.