More about the Crystal Palace

By Judith Taylor

Following on from her post about the creation of the Crystal Palace, Judith picks up the story again:

It is hardly surprising that an event like the Great Exhibition and a building of such magnitude and glamour as the Crystal Palace would linger in one’s mind, “agitating the little grey cells”. There is still a great deal to be learned about it and even with intense application one would only scratch the surface. There is the prosaic matter of how the exhibition was paid for and the steps taken after it closed. With all the effort put into getting show ready it is hard to believe the exhibition only lasted for six months from May to October 1851. Queen Victoria took her family to see it three times. We need to put aside the seductive charms of ancient greenhouses and cast iron and think about drier things.

To refresh everyone’ memory, some visionary senior officials wanted to create a great exhibition of the world’s arts and manufactories to celebrate Britain’s imperial dominance. Prince Albert is usually considered to be the prime mover but he was always very wary of butting into potential political minefields. His enthusiastic scientific friends and colleagues planned to open the show on May 1, 1851.

The timing was not coincidental. Think about it. The date was precisely half way through the century. Then there were the recent troubles in Europe. In 1848 the Continent had seen major radical uprisings with the Communes in Paris, Berlin, Brussels and Budapest. England watched its citizens very carefully and probably breathed a big sigh of relief when very little happened there. The worst that  occurred was the movements of the Chartists.

One way the English authorities defused the situation was to offer the masses a few perks to distract them from their miserable conditions. The unprecedented creation of free public parks and the privilege of using formerly private parks was one of them.

The leading lights of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce began the process but when it did not move very quickly they managed to persuade their president, Prince Albert, to use his personal charm and get the government to set up a royal commission to turn the idea into reality. He had no statutory authority. The French had been holding similar exhibitions of their own products every year since 1798. Sir Henry Cole and the commissioners took their task very seriously, setting up an architectural competition for a building.

The Commissioners, 1851

The next big question was where to put it. London in the late 1840s was not built up the way it is now but even so, finding enough open land was a challenge. The established open spaces such as Hyde Park or Regent’s park had originally been closed royal property and had only recently become available to the larger public.

In the early 19th century London was still bounded to the west by Park Lane, Marylebone Road to the north, the South Bank of the Thames at Southwark and Bethnal Green and Spitalfields to the east. Technically, the City of London, with the great cathedral of St Paul’s which qualifies it for the title of city and being the seat of banking and finance, had its own ancient boundaries. Surrounding the capital were villages such as Hampstead and Kensington.  Westminster with Parliament and the Abbey was a separate city. The rest was open country, part of manorial land and parish titles. West of the park, William Kent had started the trend for commercial nurseries in places like Brompton.

Most of the land surrounding London was still owned by families such as the Harringtons, Alexanders and Lees. There were also smaller holdings. A massive increase in population led to the development of suburbs like St John’s Wood and Blackheath. London began to gobble up Middlesex and Surrey. There were one million people living in the city.

Railway Map of Central London, 1899

Speculative builders bought up as much land as they could and developed mainly two kinds of housing: large villas equipped with clean running water and plenty of space for a family with servants such as the Jekylls and much more modest terraced houses where the white collar employees of such family businesses could live.

Geography and architecture both helped to extend the separation of social classes, giving London its character. Upper class people lived in the West End or near it and really poor people in the East End. They had no running water. This is a huge oversimplification but handy for the moment.

In the end the commissioners chose Hyde Park for the exhibition but prudently set about buying the parcels of land they would need for the second phase of the plan. This land lay to the west and south. It was essentially Kensington, with parts of Chelsea and Westminster included.

The financing of the project held it up for a long time. This was why the prince had been so circumspect. He was concerned that he would be accused of wasting public funds for a pet project. When preparatory talks began in late 1849 the press was against the idea. The commissioners had very little choice but to attract private funding. They signed a contract for £20000 with Messrs. J. and G.  Munday, a large firm of public works contractors.

The press now changed its attitude. A project created by a royal commission could not be seen to rely on private funds. If it were successful the backers could make a lot of money out of a national event and that was thought to be unseemly. Leading bankers, traders and merchants in the City issued a resolution in January 1850 condemning the private contract with the Mundays and insisted it be voided. Funds from the Department of Works would cover the initial steps. This decision was eased by the fact that one of the commissioners was able to explain the concept of pay as you go with money coming in as well as going out.

They then took the whole idea a step further. Considering this was to be a national event it was decided to encourage as many groups as possible to contribute voluntarily, primarily organized by municipality. The City of Glasgow sent £2666, Bradford gave £1605 and Rochester £13. The City of London contributed £26632. This can be considered to be an early version of “crowd funding”.

Land obtained for the Museum Quarter

By now the prince was fully on board and showed his vision for the future. The Great Exhibition was just the first salvo in his mind. Once the exhibition ended they would move the building to another, permanent site. In 1852 the commission used the profits from the exhibition, more than £180 000, to buy the land on which to build permanent artistic and cultural institutions which thrive to this day. These were the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal Albert Hall, the Science Museum and the Imperial College. The road which is the axis of their locations is Exhibition Road. This is the district now known as South Kensington but sometimes called “Albertopolis”.

Prince Albert died in 1861 and did not live to see the final results of his vision. Of all his descendants, only Prince Charles has shown similar interests.


References

Coleman, Eliza
https://greatexhibition1851.blogspot.com/2011/09/financing-of-great-exhibition.html


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Judith M. Taylor MD is a graduate of Somerville College and the Oxford University Medical School and is a board certified neurologist. She practiced neurology in New York and since retiring has written six books on horticultural history as well as numerous articles and book reviews on the same subject.

Dr Taylor’s books include The Olive in California: history of an immigrant tree (2000), Tangible Memories: Californians and their gardens 1800 – 1950 (2003), The Global Migrations of Ornamental Plants: how the world got into your garden (Missouri Botanical Garden Press 2009), Visions of Loveliness: the work of forgotten flower breeders (Ohio University Press 2014) and An Abundance of Flowers: more great flower breeders of the past (Ohio University Press  2018).  In 2019 she published A Five Year Plan for Geraniums: growing flowers commercially in East Germany 1946 – 1989.
Dr Taylor’s web site is: www.horthistoria.com

Henry Mayhew and the London Poor: The Streetwalker's Tale

by Mark Patton

In earlier blog-posts on this site, I explored the arrival of strangers in Nineteenth Century London, and the interviews conducted by the campaigning journalist, Henry Mayhew, with some of those new arrivals who found themselves precariously self-employed, as street sellers, whether of ham sandwiches, combs or apples, in the City or the West End. These men and women, many of them disabled, were rarely more than a few days of sickness away from destitution, and were frequently subject to abuse, but there were even worse positions to be in. Young women, in particular, were often lured or tricked into prostitution, and, in many cases, found themselves in a position of effective slavery.

An encounter between prostitutes and a potential client (image is in the Public Domain).

"The Haymarket, Midnight" (image is in the Public Domain).

Mayhew's collaborator, the lawyer, Bracebridge Hemyng, spoke to a number of these women, presumably gaining access to them by posing as a client (Mayhew was too well known to attempt this himself). One of these had recently arrived from Lyme Regis, in Dorset, and had been lodging with an aunt, whilst seeking a "position." She was groomed by a "gentleman," and persuaded to accompany him to a house: from the description she gave, this was clearly a brothel, but the naive country girl did not recognise it as such when first taken there.

"We found the door half open when we arrived. 'How careless,' said my friend, 'to leave the street-door open, anyone might get in.' We entered without knocking, and seeing a door in the passage standing ajar we went in. My friend shook hands with an old lady who was talking to several girls dispersed across the room, who, she said, were her daughters. At this announcement some of them laughed, when she got very angry and ordered them out of the room. Somehow I didn't like the place, and not feeling alright asked to be put in a cab and sent home."

Kate Hamilton's "Night House" (image is in the Public Domain).

Her "friend" agreed to this, and offered her a drink whilst she waited for the cab. She refused wine, but accepted a coffee, which, predictably enough (to us), was drugged. As she slept, the man raped her. He subsequently kept her as his mistress for a few months, but then abandoned her, leaving her with no alternative to prostitution. She would have had no protection from violent clients. Pregnancies were more or less inevitable, and would have forced her into painful and dangerous back-street abortions. Ultimately, a sexually transmitted disease was likely to end both her career and her life.

"Mornington Crescent Nude," by Walter Sickert, 1907 (image is in the Public Domain).

"The Iron Bed," by Walter Sickert, 1905 (image is in the Public Domain).

Certain streets in the West End became known for prostitution (the City authorities did not tolerate it within the "Square Mile"). John Gay wrote, in 1721:

"O! May thy virtue guard thee through the roads Of Drury's mazy courts, and dark abodes!The harlot's guileful paths, who nightly stand Where Catherine Street descends into the Strand!"

The Cock and Magpie, Drury Lane, at the heart of Victorian London's sex trade (image is in the Public Domain).

Feathers Court, Drury Lane - the figure in the arch is probably a prostitute (image is in the Public Domain).

One hundred and eighty years after John Gay penned his comments, the late Victorian social reformer, Charles Booth (whose research, in a sense, picks up where Henry Mayhew's earlier work had left off), noted that prostitution was continuing in the same streets and alleys.

Charles Booth's (1889-1903) "Poverty Map," showing Feathers Court, Catherine Street, and the Strand (image is in the Public Domain).

The colour-coding of Booth's "Poverty Maps" - prostitutes would have lived in the "very poor" or "lowest class" dwellings, their clients in the "fairly comfortable" or "middle class housing (image is in the Public Domain).

"I don't leave off this sort of life," Hemyng's informant from Dorset explained, "because I'm in a manner used to it, and what could I do if I did? I've no character; I've never been used to do anything, and I don't see what employment I stand a chance of getting ... I get enough money to keep me in victuals and drink, and it's the drink, mainly, that keeps me going. You've no idea how I look forward to my drop of gin ... I don't suppose I'll live much longer, and that's another thing that pleases me. I don't want to live and yet I don't care enough about dying to make away with myself. I arn't got that amount of feeling that some has, and that's where it is I'm kinder 'fraid of it." 

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Mark Patton blogs regularly on aspects of history and historical fiction at https://mark-patton.blogspot.co.uk. He is a published author of historical fiction and nonfiction, whose books can be purchased from Amazon.

London in 1800: A Stranger's Arrival

By Mark Patton.

Between 1801 and 1841, the population of London increased by an average of 22,500 people per year, or 1875 per month. The overwhelming majority of the new arrivals came, like the fictional David Copperfield; Nicholas Nickleby and his sister, Kate; from other parts of England, Scotland, and Wales (the most significant waves of Irish and Jewish immigration came later). Many had been uprooted from the communities of their birth by changes in their family circumstances: David's journey begins with the death of his mother; that of Nicholas and Kate with the loss of their father; Charles Dickens's own parents had moved to London in a forlorn attempt to escape a looming mountain of personal debts.

The Mail Coach, as taken by David Copperfield and Mr Quinion, was the fastest means of getting to London from the countryside, but was also among the most expensive (image is in the Public Domain). 

Private stage-wagons offered a cheaper, but less comfortable, means of transport (image is in the Public Domain).

In an age before the coming of the railways, almost all of the new arrivals, like their Medieval predecessors, would have made their way to London by road, and many of them on foot. Most of the road along which they had traveled were Roman in origin, but had been improved by the Eighteenth Century Turnpike Trusts, and the threat formerly posed by highwaymen removed almost entirely.

The Roman and Medieval walls and gates of the City had, for the most part, been demolished, and the newly broadened roads were lined with coaching inns, where the better heeled among the new arrivals may have spent their first London nights, and held their first conversations with their new urban neighbours. There were doubtless offers of employment to be had, and business propositions to be negotiated, but there would also have been con-men, all too ready to relieve a naive country lad or lass of what little money he or she had in wallet or purse.

A young man or woman arriving in London from Kent might pause at Blackheath. His or her first impression of the capital, seen from afar, might well have matched David Copperfield's:

"What an amazing place London was to me when I saw it in the distance, and how I believed all the adventures of my favourite heroes to be constantly enacting and re-enacting there ... I made it out in my own mind to be fuller of wonders and wickedness than all the cities of the earth ... "

Lodging at Southwark's Queen's Head, he or she might have strolled across London Bridge the following morning, along the main thoroughfares of the City, and on into the West End. The prosperity of London's maritime commerce, obvious enough from the forest of ships' masts in the Pool of London, to the east of London Bridge, was reflected both in the grandeur of the public buildings (the Mansion House, the Bank of England, Saint Paul's Cathedral), and in the elegant dress and comportment of those passing between them. One did not have to search far, however, to find another side to London life.

The Queen's Head, Borough High Street (image is in the Public Domain).

"Imports from France," by Louis Peter Boitard, 1757 (image is in the Public Domain).

London's Mansion House (image is in the Public Domain).

Apsley House ("No.1, London"), home of the Duke of Wellington. The Duke encouraged his fellow aristocrats to spend part of the year in London, rather than on their country estates: this facilitated both the growth of the retail trade in the West End, and increasing demand for domestic servants.

In the shadow of the grandest buildings could be found men, women, and children eking out the most precarious of livings. In 1856, the campaigning journalist, Henry Mayhew, observed from the balcony beneath the dome of Saint Paul's Cathedral, the "sauntering forth" of the "unwashed poor:"

" ... some with greasy wallets on their backs to hunt over each dust-heap, and eke out life by seeking refuse bones, or stray rags and pieces of old iron; others, whilst on their way to work, are gathered at the corner of some street round the early breakfast stall, and blowing sauces of steaming coffee, drawn in tall tin cans that have the red-hot charcoal shining crimson through the holes in the fire-pan beneath them; whilst already the little slattern girl, with her basket slung before her, screams 'water-creases!' through the sleeping streets ... "  

Dust-sifters (image is in the Public Domain).

A watercress seller (image is in the Public Domain).

The fortunes of any man or woman, newly arrived in London in the opening decades of the Nineteenth Century, hung very much in the balance. Those who could call upon the support of a relative, or family friend, already established in the capital, were far more likely to find work (whether as City clerks, West End retail workers, or as domestic servants) than those who could not. Those who did not find a "position" had to create their own opportunities: selling watercress, coffee, or sandwiches on the streets; scavenging on dust-heaps; or, as a last resort, prostitution or crime. Social mobility was real, but it operated in both directions.

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Mark Patton blogs regularly on aspects of history and historical fiction at http://mark-patton.blogspot.co.uk. He is a published author, whose books may be purchased from Amazon.

Victorian Violence: Repelling Ruffians (Part Three)

by Terry Kroenung

I was not surprised when Holmes suggested that I should take my revolver with me. He had himself picked up the loaded hunting-crop, which was his favourite weapon. ---The Adventure of the Six Napoleons

The light flashed upon the barrel of a revolver, but Holmes’s hunting crop came down on the man’s wrist, and the pistol clinked upon the stone floor. --- The Adventure of the Red-Headed League

"I’m a bit of a single-stick expert, as you know. I took most of them on my guard. It was the second man that was too much for me.” ---The Adventure of the Illustrious Client

Weapons

When a lady or gentleman of the Victorian upper or middle class ventured into a less-than-savory district, a variety of defensive aids was available, from the lethal pistol and knife to the simple cudgel, walking stick, and umbrella. In this essay we shall eschew firearms and confine ourselves largely to the items most likely to be either carried by someone of refinement or by those rogues who preyed upon them. 

Despite the accompanying illustrations, violence upon propertied people was probably not as widespread as novels and press reports of the time, both depending on sensationalism for sales, would have us believe. That being said, incidents of self-defense against the criminal element did occur with enough frequency that a brisk trade in protective means existed.

Cudgel

A mere club, the cudgel was more likely to be employed against our unfortunate gentleman than by him. It could be as crude as a limb wrenched from a handy tree or as refined as a gaily-painted policeman’s truncheon. Shorter and more rudimentary than the walking stick (generally less than an arm’s length), its affordability and ease of concealment made it popular, particularly with the lower sort. 

Indeed, the late Victorian police truncheon was only fifteen inches in length and lived in a specially-built pocket of the officer’s trousers. For even though the servant of the law could claim authority to employ his cudgel, it was not considered proper to wantonly display the threat, since moral suasion was the first line of a Peeler’s defense. Particularly in the first half of Victoria’s reign these sticks would be ornately decorated, as they were the officer’s mark of authority as well as his weapon.

Cudgel tactics were unsophisticated compared to the exotic joint-locking techniques taught today. Chiefly it was a case of ‘brain him’ with a stunning blow to the offender’s cranium. As can be imagined, this often resulted in a dead suspect and rather less labor for the magistrate.

Life-Preserver

A variant of the club was the so-called life preserver, which a respectable man might carry, though not as often as he might a proper cane. Easily hidden at about a foot in length, it had a flexible shaft of whalebone or some such supple core, leather-wrapped, with a weighted knob at one end. Their construction ran the gamut from crude to almost artistic. Principal targets were the head and wrist.

The knobstick was closely related, but its weighted end was a lead ball wrapped in string, rather than leather. It cushioned the blow somewhat, though it remains a point of conjecture as to whether the recipient often appreciated the consideration.

Loaded Hunting Crop

As seen in the Arthur Conan Doyle excerpts above, Sherlock Holmes favored a variation of the life-preserver. The loaded hunting crop contained a steel or lead core wrapped in leather. Less legally problematic than a pistol, and not as likely to permanently ruin a man whose testimony might be required to solve a case, they would be employed much as a life-preserver or cudgel.

Knuckleduster

Rather on the more brutal end of the spectrum lay the knuckleduster, a remnant of the sword hilt which had always been used when a duel got to close quarters and blades could no longer be effectively brought to bear. This had the advantage of being readier to hand than a pocketed cudgel, since in seamier districts it could remain on the fist. One version, marketed as the ‘Highway Protector,’ sported a spike on the little-finger side for striking behind.

Even easier to conceal was the Apache ring, essentially a knuckleduster for one finger but operating in the same manner.

Named for the vicious French street gangs of the Belle Époque who favored them, they often had fearsome projections that would leave ghastly wounds on the faces of their victims to serve as warnings against future trespass.

Walking Stick

Naturally the gentleman’s weapon most associated with the Victorian era in the popular imagination would be the cane or walking stick. Appearing in a bewildering variety of shapes, sizes, materials, and gadgetry, the stick was essential equipment for a man or woman of means. A substitute for the sword as an article of refined dress, its phallic symbolism is best left for another essay. The actual employment of canes and umbrellas in defense will be discussed in part 4 of this series.

The 19th century saw the height of the aristocratic stick’s popularity, both as ornament and as weapon (Victorian London boasted some 60 walking stick shops). It sprang from Louis XIV’s adoption of an embellished stick as a symbol of his majesty, a form of scepter. He even banned commoners from sporting them. Overnight, as with so much else in the Sun King’s orbit, fancy sticks became essential at court. 

The 18th century saw both smallsword and stick carried together. After the Napoleonic era the former gave way to the less lethal (and arguably cheaper, for the masses) stick. Functional jewelry, sticks could be decorated to the level of the bearer’s wealth as a symbol in a very status-conscious age. Almost incidentally a stick also kept a gentleman upright in dodgy ground and in dodgy company.

Canes could be utilitarian, of course, like a good Irish blackthorn. A certain type of confident gentleman would favor one of these, proclaiming to the world that he had no time to waste concerning himself with mere foppery.

There was the added benefit that such a stick made a more than serviceable weapon and its owner was less likely to wail if it shattered upon the thick pate of a luckless thug.

For self-defense two types stood out. A crook-handled stick had much to recommend it inasmuch as it could snare the limbs and even necks of assailants. As it lacked a solid punch, however, a gentleman might eschew it for a heavy knobbed affair that could cave in the skull of a determined adversary. The ultimate example of this sort of formidable stick would be the knobkerrie, originally a native weapon from South Africa that could even be thrown like a missile.

System Stick

Naturally some gentlemen preferred to employ less brute force and more surgical precision in a crisis. For them the discerning designers of the Industrial Age could provide system sticks, so called because they contained any number of clever devices, from brandy flasks to complete medical kits. Simplest was the classic swordstick, a steel blade inside the hollow shaft.

A few opted for spring-loaded stiletto points that could pop out of the end. One wicked French version had razors that would snap out along the whole stick, to the great inconvenience of anyone foolish enough to seize it. And the added advantage of a swordstick was that once drawn the user had a pair of weapons, for the hollow body made a splendid cudgel/parrying stick in its own right.

It goes without saying that any arms race will always increase in lethality. Once the criminal element in a particular region embraced firearms then a segment of the gentry would follow suit. Quite a few canes became vessels for powder and ball. Yet turning one’s stick into a shotgun could be considered a step backward for the genteel man.

Umbrella and Parasol

As ubiquitous as the walking stick, and seemingly an unofficial passport declaring one’s bone fides as an English citizen, the brolly may have been used in defense more often by women than men. Indeed, a significant body of literature exists outlining tactics to be employed by ladies with umbrellas (see part 4 for illustrations of such techniques). While specialized uses similar to stick-play were the norm, this did not exclude the manufacture of umbrellas with daggers, swords, etc.

Hatpin

While ladies’ fashions varied widely in the period, from enormous hoop skirts to bustles to leg-of-mutton sleeves, hatpins were a constant for much of the age. Particularly when bonnets tied under the chin gave way to hats perched atop the head, and even more so with the advent of wide-brimmed affairs easily caught by the wind, hatpins became utterly essential items for all women. So large was the demand that one Gloucestershire factory employed over 1,500 workers.

Pins grew very long, some over 14 inches, to accommodate the increasing size of hairstyles and chapeaus. Legislation had to be enacted to limit both the length of pins and the danger of their exposed points, requiring caps on the later so as to not scratch passersby. It took no great imagination, of course, to envision pins as weapons in a crisis. In point of fact, the very possibility of suffragettes wielding them against the police led to yet another law of 1908 restricting them.

Thus we have examined a number of common street weapons of the Victorian age. While no means an exhaustive account (the entire range of firearms and knives being reserved for another day, along with such exquisite rarities as belt buckle pistols and garrotes), the reader or author of 19th century literature may now be confident of a basic grounding in the more likely devices to be encountered or employed.

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Terry Kroenung is the author of Brimstone and Lily, a serio-comic fantasy novel set in 1862, and its sequel, Jasper’s Foul Tongue. Book 3 in the series, Jasper’s Magick Corset, will be available in November 2013. Paragon of the Eccentric, his Steampunk prequel to War of the Worlds, is pending. He has also written period dramas set in the 19th century, such as Gentle Rain, and Coolness and Courage.

The Plight of Victorian Children and Dr. Barnado's Homes

by Maggi Andersen

Hell is a city much like London

A populous and a smoky city.

--Peter Bell the Third, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1819

The Victorians were becoming more aware of the poor during Queen Victoria’s long reign from 1837 to 1901, but poor children still worked.

Matchbox making was the lowest paid home work. Women and children spent 12 hours a day pasting together strips of paper and wood to form lids and trays and paying for their own paste and fire to dry the boxes.

From the beginning of the century, there were huge changes in technology in England and the growth of an Empire abroad. Britain went from being an agricultural nation to an industrialized one with an emerging wealthy middle class of industrialists and businessmen as well as a poor underclass who had moved from laboring on the land to laboring in the factories. By the end of Victoria’s reign, four-fifths of her people lived in towns and the population had doubled in nearly half a century. A third of that population was aged under fifteen.

London had the biggest increase in population: by 1901, the city contained a fifth of the population of England and Wales. Housing had to be built to accommodate the influx, and was constructed quickly and badly.

Most were terraced houses, sometimes back to back, where the rear and side walls were shared, giving very little light and circulating air. Each house was small and invariable overcrowded, with two families in one house. The privy was shared by several other families and water for drinking was drawn from a standpipe. There were few drains and no sewers, and this led to several outbreaks of cholera mid-century.

Working families were large and the elder children, especially the girls, were expected to look after the younger ones and do household tasks including the washing and cooking. The family diet consisted mainly of bread, potatoes, soup and a little bacon. Milk was diluted with water, or tea with charcoal.

Poor diets and bug infestations were detrimental to children’s health, and overcrowding meant that epidemics spread quickly. In the Victorian era, 40 percent of annual deaths in England and Wales were children under the age of five.

Children made homeless by the death of a parent or the inability of parents to care for them were taken into the workhouses. When it came time to leave the workhouse, children were found employment by the guardians. Boys went into the army, navy, or were apprenticed as shoemakers, tailors or fishermen. The girls went into service, where they were sometimes badly mistreated.

Some destitute children that the Poor Law missed were taken in by charitable institutions established by individual philanthropists, such as Annie Macpherson and Dr. Barnado, or by the Church, such as the Anglican Waifs and Strays Society.

Women had few ways of earning a living and were frequently evicted. Many ended up in the workhouse.

Thomas John Barnardo, born in Dublin on the 4 July 1845, was the founder and director of homes for poor children. The first of the ‘Dr Barnardo’s Homes’ was opened in 1870 at 18 Stepney Causeway, London. From then on the workload of his humanitarian venture steadily increased until, at the time of his death in 1905, he had established 112 district homes, besides mission branches, throughout the United Kingdom. From the foundation of the first  Barnado's home in 1870 to the date of Barnardo’s death, nearly 100,000 children had been rescued, trained and given a better life.

At first, Dr. Barnado limited himself to the numbers he could afford to support, but when a boy was found dead from cold and starvation a few days after Dr. Barnado had turned him away, a notice went up outside his Stepney Home saying ‘No destitute child is ever refused admittance’.

Dr. Barnado was ingenious at raising funds. He founded brigades of boys to deliver messages or chop wood; he wrote human-interest stories, asking for donations, and he sold ‘before and after’ photos to show how pauper children had benefited from his care.

 

This boy was rescued from the streets by Barnado. 'Before and after' pictures were used by Barnado to show how his homes helped children and thereby raised funds.

When the number of needy children became too great, he did what Annie Macpherson had done and sent children to Canada. He believed that ‘what was needed in order to give them the opportunity they had missed … was, in a very real sense, a new heaven and new earth – the fresh conditions of a colonial life.’

He set up a system of emigration sending children by boat to homes in western Canada, where they went to help the farmers on isolated farms throughout Ontario and Quebec. It was impossible to check up on so many children. Some were treated as overworked servants and lacked affection, but others found families in which they were loved and cared for. In fact, out of the one hundred thousand British children who were sent to Canada, most of them made their lives there.

From the foundation of the homes in 1867 to the date of Barnardo's death, nearly 60,000 children had been rescued, trained and placed out in life. At the time of his death, his charity was caring for over 8,500 children in 96 homes.

Changing attitudes led to the recognition at the end of Victoria’s reign that children had a right to childhood.

Victorian Childhood by Janet Sacks, Shire Library.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia Commons

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Maggi Andersen writes romantic mysteries set in the 1900s. Her latest work is The Folly at Falconbridge Hall.

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