Born: 16 November 1885
The first known black child to be fostered in England was through Barnardo’s.
Elizabeth was born on Commercial Street, in the East End of London. In 1891, six year old Elizabeth was found by a neighbour in squalid conditions, next to her dying mother. Within a year, her father was also dead. Her parents were said to have had a difficult relationship. Her docker father was “given to drink” and “constantly misused his wife”. He was said to question Elizabeth’s true paternity as, Barnardo’s records put it somewhat prosaically; she bore “strong evidence of having foreign blood in her veins” but both him and his wife had fair complexions.
After their deaths the neighbour looked after orphaned Elizabeth in Spitalfields for a few months, while appealing to relatives to take her in. Tragically, none felt able to give her a home.
Two missionaries from different churches in London’s East End appealed to Barnardo’s. She was boarded out to a couple living in leafy Headcorn, a small village near Maidstone in Kent.
After six years in the countryside, Elizabeth returned to Barnardo’s Girls Village where she undertook training to become a domestic cook. She left to enter service, and was recorded in the 1911 Census as working as a cook in Croydon.
Barnardo’s last contact with Elizabeth was in 1946, when she asked for help in obtaining a birth certificate so she could obtain a pension. At the time she was unmarried and still living in Croydon.
