There were swarms of children. At one time, in a narrow alley, I had fourteen or fifteen all around me, dirty, barefoot, one tiny girl carrying an infant, a baby still at breast but whose whitish head was completely bald. Nothing could be more dismal than those livid little bodies, the pale stringy hair, the cheeks of flabby flesh encrusted with old filth . . . Their mothers watched from doorways with dull, uninterested eyes.¹

One young man was so shocked by what he saw that he abandoned his plans to become a medical missionary ² to China, as more urgent work was required in the streets of London. That man became known as Dr Barnardo.

Childhood

Thomas John Barnardo was born in Dublin, the son of John Michaelis Barnardo, a furrier, and his English wife, Abigail. She was his second wife, and possibly he was the ninth son of the family, but stories grew around him as his fame spread, and facts about his youth are few and far between, with even his autobiographical works being questioned. There is one well known story that at the age of two he was declared dead, with diphtheria, but as the undertaker was placing him in the coffin, a trace of life was detected. He was educated at St Patrick's Cathedral Grammar School, where he was seen as eloquent and argumentative. He did not however pass his public examinations, and at 16 he was apprenticed to a wine merchant, Robert Anderson. Sometime before his 17th birthday he became strongly evangelical, his mother and brothers were members of the Plymouth Brethren, and he joined too, and taught bible classes in a Dublin ragged school.³ He also became a member of the Dublin YMCA, and gave talks there, and it was there he heard Hudson Taylor⁴ speak about his Inland China Mission. Barnardo thought this was where his future lay, and with a small allowance from The Brethren, he set out to study medicine at the London Hospital, to where he had an introduction.

The Start Of An Institution

Barnardo took lodgings in the East End of London, and became active in The Temperance Society, visiting beerhouses, and erecting mission tents outside gin palaces. This was not an easy pastime, and more than once he was physically assaulted.

Advancing into the centre of the room I declared that I came to sell the word of God and announced that I would give the whole Bible for threepence, the New Testament for a penny. 'Chuck him out,' cried one. For the most part all in the room were under the influence of drink, and although many were girls and boys they were wild and beyond control. I presently found myself on the ground with the flat part of the table pressing upon me, its legs being in the air, whilst several of the biggest lads leaped inside it, dancing a 'devil's tattoo' to my great discomfort.

In 1867 he began his medical studies, which coincided with a cholera outbreak, 5,600 died in London in a matter of days. Most were in the East End, because it had been excluded from Sir Joseph Bazalgette's sewering programme. Despite his lack of medical qualifications Barnardo visited the sick and dying to give comfort and prayer. He also taught at the Ernest Street ragged school. It was an encounter here that was to significantly change his life. Barnardo recounts in his book, Night and Day, of his meeting with Jim Jarvis.

One evening, the attendants at the Ragged School had met as usual, and at about half past nine o'clock, were separating from their homes. A little lad, whom we had noticed listening very attentively during the evening, was amongst the last to leave, and his steps were slow and unwilling.
'Come, my lad, had you better get home? Its very late. Mother will be coming for you.'
'Please sir, let me stop! Please let me stay. I won't do no harm.'
'Your mother will wonder what kept you so late.'
'I ain't got no mother.'
'Haven't got a mother, boy? Where do you live?'
'Don't live nowhere.'
'Well, but where did you sleep last night?'
'Down in Whitechapel, sir, along the Haymarket in one of them carts as is filled with hay; and I met a chap and he telled me to come here to school, as perhaps you'd let me lie near the fire all night.'

Barnardo felt he had to do something, and placed an article in 'The Revival' saying he would hold a tea meeting service for children. He held his first meeting in November 1867 and 2,347 children attended. He made a speech at that year's missionary Conference, and gained the support of the banker, Robert Barclay and the 7th Lord Shaftesbury. As an MP Shaftesbury had been involved in child causes for some 44 years by this time. Amongst other things he was largely responsible for the factories act (1833) and the coal mines act (1840).

In 1868 Barnardo was able to open his first institution.

Hope Place

Barnardo rented two cottages in Hope Place, Stepney and opened a school for boys in one, and one for girls in the other. He started various money raising schemes within the schools, including a penny bank, a shoeblack brigade, and wood chopping team. The school grew rapidly and Barnardo abandoned his plans to move to China. The minutes of the Ragged School Union from 10 June 1870 give a measure of his success.

The Day Schools where the scholars pay 1d or 2d per week has 250 children present. Evening schools are free, well attended, conducted by two paid masters and two paid mistresses. Sunday Schools - morning 180 scholars, evening 700 - 800 present. Conducted in separate premises is a Refuge for boys employed in wood chopping. Three houses in Hope Place and one in Commercial Road are used, a fourth in Hope Place is about to be taken. The whole is the energetic work of a young man, Mr Barnardo, a medical student.

In 1872 Barnardo set up a huge tent outside the Edinburgh Castle Public House. Two hundred people a night professed conversion, and attendance at the tent was affecting sales at the pub. It was put up for sale, and Barnardo, worried that it would re-open as a music hall, set out to raise funds to buy it. He succeeded, and opened it as the People's Mission Church and Coffee Palace. It became a significant centre for evangelism.

Marriage and Family

Barnardo had met a young woman who shared his interests in evangelism and philanthropy, her name was Syrie Louise Elmslie. They married in 1873 and had 7 children. Three of them died young, another, Marjorie, suffered with Down's syndrome. Another daughter, Gwendoline Maud Syrie, married Sir Henry Wellcome, a man 26 years her senior. Allegedly she had numerous affairs and definately one with W. Somerset Maugham. She bore him a child, Elizabeth, in 1915 and Maugham was cited in the ensuing divorce. Once this was finalised, they married.⁷Syrie Maugham, as she became known went on to be a successful interior designer.

As a married man Barnardo felt more able to establish an accommodation for young girls, and 12 girls came to live in a converted cottage, next to their home at Mossford Lodge. This was not a total success, and Barnardo decided to house the girls in a village home for girls - with a population of over 1,000 girls. The first 12 cottages were opened in 1876. Each featured a group of girls of mixed age, under the care of a 'mother.' The girls were trained for service, and on their 13th birthday were placed in one of 4 divisions. First division girls gained a uniform, value £5, which became their own property after 12 months. Second Division girls get a £3 10s uniform, and third division girls a £3 uniform, which they had to pay for out of their wages. The fourth division was described thus:

FOURTH DIVISIONGirls who are found to be dishonest, habitually untruthful, violent and uncontrolled in temper, vicious, unclean in their personal habits, will not be sent out to service under ordinary circumstances, nor will they have an outfit, but will be dismissed from the Village in disgrace or sent to a School of discipline.
Girls' village home, Ilford.

Barnardo's ability at developing money-making ideas was a major factor in his success, and one of the most valuable started in 1874 when he opened a photographic department at his Stepney home.

Before and After

Barnardo was meticulous about record keeping, and initially the photographic department was intended to facilitate record keeping. A picture was taken of the child when it arrived, then another taken some months later. This led to Barnardo's famous 'Before and After' cards. These sold in packs of 20 for 5 shillings⁸ and had titles like 'Once a little vagrant, now a little workman.' These not only raised money but helped publicize the work. Today, these photographs and records are invaluable to any 19th Century social historian. Here is an extract from his records on one child. admitted 26 July, 1875. The record also includes 3 photographs.

254 John X 11 Came here by himself on the above named date with the now common story of 'I have got no father nor mother and no home.' He last resided with his mother at 27, Albert Street Shadwell. His mother, he says is a dressmaker. The reason he came to the Home was because his mother went away for some days, and his mother's landlady told him he had better come here. His father was a ship's carpenter, and has been dead about 2 years. He died at Rio Janeiro. He says he has a sister somewhere in America.The street in which his mother resides bears a very bad name and is the resort of prostitutes, and there several 'brothels' there.John X STATEMENT'I was born in St George's in the East. Father died at Rio Janeiro out at sea. He has been dead two years. I have one sister away in America. My mother lives in Albert Street, Back Road. She is a dressmaker. Mother couldn't keep me no longer, so I came in by myself. When I lived with my mother I went to Shadwell Church School.'
Education - can read monosyllables. BEADLE'S REPORTJuly 30th 1875. This boy's father was a ship carpenter. He died 18 month's ago of yellow fever at Rio Janeiro, leaving the mother with two children, the above boy, and a girl of 14, who is in Canada. After her husband's death she received what money was due to him, which she soon spent, then took to the streets, and is now living at 27, Albert Street, a common brothel. She walks Ratcliff Highway, and is one of the worst of her kind. She has no regular home and leaves the boy sometimes for days to get his living as well as he can. On the 20th instant she left him with a woman named Doyle, who keeps three bad houses in Albert Street, who, not hearing anything of the mother sent him to the Home. Since then I found the mother in a brothel in Betts Street, drunk, with some more prostitutes and sailors. I told her where her boy was, when she said 'she did not care where he is; she wished he was dead.' I have made enquiries and find there is no one belonging to him alive except his mother and sister.

The size of the situation facing Barnardo can be judged by the growth of his ragged school. He rented some canal-side warehouses and converted them. The Copperfield ragged school opened its doors to children aged between 5 and 10 in 1876. By 1896 there were 1,075 children attending the day school and 2,460 at the Sunday school. Children were not only educated, but also received a breakfast and dinner. The school remained in operation until 1908, when the London Council condemned it, as unsuitable for schooling, thought the Sunday school continued until 1915.

Controversies

Barnardo was no stranger to controversy, and was wont to ignore rules he considered inconvenient. Thus by 1896 he had appeared in court on 88 occasions mainly on kidnapping charges. He freely admitted that 'I have rescued (or abducted if you will,) little boys and girls from the custody of parents and guardians who were, to my knowledge, leading infamous and immoral lives; or who were, by their conduct, about to inflict upon unfortunate children in their care grievous wrong.' He called this philanthropically abducting. Barnardo also found himself accused of maltreating children, faking the photographs, neglecting simple sanitary precautions, and failing to provide religious or moral training.⁹In 1877 Barnardo hit back at his critics by calling for arbitration under an Order of Court. The Arbitrators unanimously rejected all of the serious charges against him, though they were critical of some of his methods, and the lack of control over his actions.

Emigration

Barnardo devised a scheme to send children to Canada. This achieved several ends, it was a way of populating the colonies with 'British stock.' It provided cheap labour, and economically it cost £12 per year to keep a child. It cost £15 to send them away. It must be remembered that the export of destitute and orphaned children had a long history in Britain. Around 130,000 children were shipped around the Empire over a 350 year period, starting with a group being sent to Virginia, USA in 1618. The practise continued until 1967, when a group were sent to Australia. Barnardo presented this to the public differently.

'Overcrowding is a primary, if often unrecognised cause of the moral cesspools I and others are continually engaged in deodorising. It therefore behoves any scheme of large hearted Christian philanthropy to make at least an attempt to relieve the 'population pressure' in our congested cities. What avails it to take the weakest out of the struggle, to train them into robustness, and then to throw them back with their new accession of vital force into the crowd who are already engaged in snatching the morsels from each other's mouths? The miseries of those yet unhelped would only be aggravated and intensified by such a process.'

Doctor Barnardo

Jack The Ripper

The End

Barnardo's health declined and by the time of his 50th year it was clear he had some kind of heart problem¹¹, and doctors advised him to take periods of absolute rest. On the evening of 19 September 1905 he settled down by his wife and turning to her said 'My head is so heavy. Let me rest it on you.' A moment later his spirit left him. He was 60 years old.

At the time of his death Barnardo had transformed the lives of some 60,000 children. There were 8,000 in his 96 residential homes, around 1,300 of these had disabilities. More than 4,000 were fostered, and 18,000 had been sent to Canada and Australia. His work continues today and Barnardo's
is the largest children's charity in the UK. Though they no longer run children's homes, they continue with the fostering schemes that Barnardo started with his 'boarding out' programme. Barnardo set guidelines about physical and moral conditions in the foster homes and also sought to avoid making fostering into the central income to the parents.