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History

184519001945196021st Century

Black and white pic of a group of boys

For many people, the name Barnardo's is synonymous with orphans and orphanages. Today, there is no such thing as a Barnardo's orphanage, nor do we have residential homes in the old sense. Childcare experts agree that it is better for a child to be brought up in a family rather than an institution and that a stable family life offers children the best chance of growing into healthy well-adjusted adults. However, this wasn't always the case, and Victorians believed that orphanages were the only way to bring up unwanted orphan children.

1845-1900

When Thomas John Barnardo was born in Dublin in 1845 no one could have predicted that he would become one of the most famous men in Victorian Britain. At the age of 16, after converting to Protestant evangelicalism he decided to become a medical missionary in China and so set out for London to train as a doctor.

The London in which Thomas Barnardo arrived in 1866 was a city struggling to cope with the effects of the Industrial Revolution. The population had dramatically increased and much of this increase was concentrated in the East End, where overcrowding, bad housing, unemployment, poverty and disease were rife. A few months after Thomas Barnardo came to London an outbreak of cholera swept through the East End killing more than 3,000 people and leaving families destitute. Thousands of children slept on the streets and many others were forced to beg after being maimed in factories.

In 1867, Thomas Barnardo set up a ragged school in the East End, where poor children could get a basic education. One evening a boy at the Mission, Jim Jarvis, took Thomas Barnardo around the East End showing him children sleeping on roofs and in gutters. The encounter so affected him he decided to devote himself to helping destitute children.

In 1870, Barnardo opened his first home for boys in Stepney Causeway. He regularly went out at night into the slum district to find destitute boys. One evening, an 11-year old boy, John Somers (nicknamed 'Carrots') was turned away because the shelter was full. He was found dead two days later from malnutrition and exposure and from then on the home bore the sign 'No Destitute Child Ever Refused Admission'.

Victorians saw poverty as shameful as a result of laziness or vice. However Thomas Barnardo accepted all children and stressed that every child deserved the best possible start in life, whatever their background - a philosophy that still inspires the charity today.

Barnardo later opened the Girls' Village Home in Barkingside, a collection of cottages around a green, which housed 1,500 girls. By the time a child left Barnardo's they were able to make their own way in the world - the girls were equipped with domestic skills and the boys learnt a craft or trade.

Thomas Barnardo strongly believed that families were the best place to bring up children and he established the first fostering scheme when he boarded out children to respectable families in the country. He also introduced a scheme to board out babies of unmarried mothers. The mother went into service nearby and could see her child during her time off.