The prime mover behind the community was "sacred socialist" and mystic James Pierrepont Greaves, who was influenced by American Transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott, and Swiss educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.
It was in this home that Louisa wrote her novel Jo's Boys (1886), a sequel to Little Women (1868).
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In 1838, James Pierrepont Greaves opened Alcott House in Ham, London as a boarding school with pupils required to follow a vegetarian diet, understood as a vegan diet today.
Near his own residence on Ham Common he founded in 1849 the National Orphan Home, to which he admitted children left destitute by the ravages of the cholera.