A dark-blue, medium-sized, hardback book with the title and author imprinted in large gold, sans serif type along the spine. There is a fly leaf carrying the title only, on the front, and the title page carries simply the title and author in black print at the top, and the publisher, from London, at the bottom, followed by the publishing date of 1966. On the reverse is printed the author's copyright dated 1966, and at the bottom Ebeneezer Baylis and Son, Ltd. from Worcester as the printer.
The Author's Note, which is quite as valuable as many a preface, states that the book is not meant to be a serious sociological study, but a book of celebration, for 1966 marked the hundredth year of Barnardo's work. She writes 'It is a book of thanksgiving, for Barnardo's are my family.' She then acknowledges John Drinkwater's poem A Slum Piece printed in full overleaf, and specially written for and dedicated to Dr. Barnardo's Homes.
The contents lists XI Chapters, all with simple headings directly applicable to Dr. Barnardo's Homes, and three appendicies, occupying in all 160 pages.
There are eleven well-chosen illustrations.
Comment: A valuable anniversary book written by an ex-Barnardo girl.
Chapter I is titled The Doctor, and quickly establishes that he went to London in 1866 burning with zeal to be a missionary in China, and hence the anniversary date. She then describes him as 'tiny, scarcely five feet three in height, delicate and short-sighted. As a child he had once been considered dead, and the funeral arrangements had been made. His recovery appeared to be miraculous, and there are thousands who are still thankful for that delayed interment. All over the the world there are descendents of people who lived to their adult years only because of him.' She attributes this achievement to have come not only from missionary fervour, nor hard work, nor courage, but from being what she calls a 'multiple man'.
Succinctly she outlines the historical background to the poverty and squalor in the East London into which Barnardo, with lodgings in Stepney, and a medical student's position in the nearby London Hospital, had come. From the former he began teaching and preaching, and from the latter helping with the care of patients during the cholera epidemic of that time. It was from his teaching that he learnt most of the plight of children, and she briefly relates the Jim Jarvis incident that revealed the extent of child destitution around him; thereafter he became deeply inolved in his street work, and his medical studies became secondary. His philanthropic work was zealous, and, by raising the issue of child destitution to a level of recognition by the public, he became provocative and unpopular. Nevertheless, he persisted, from 1866 to the time of his death, in 1905. She lists the twelve Guiding Principles behind the Homes(p.14), and, with regard to the first - 'No destitue child ever refused admission' points out, with brief reference to the death of the boy Carrots that precipitated it, and its principled pursuit throughout the years, that it was no longer necessary at the time of writing; child destitution had gone.
The author quotes a few early case reports to illustrate Barnardo's detailed record-keeping, and in Appendix I is a full length 'Case History of "Mary"' of the form that has become well-known in recent years following the freedom of access to such records kept by Barnardo's.
After detailing statistics of welfare provisions by Barnardo's such as free meals, lodgings, garments, and boots, the author diverts into the Doctor's recognition of the status symbol of the last of these, a point described anecdotally and well illustrated in a Barnardo autobiography (see Notes 19).
Among the various other well-known statistics quoted she records Barnardo's provision of healthy literature for girls, the family magazines Our Darlings and children's comic Bubbles that he edited, and his provision of training for domestic service for the older girls rather than factory work.
In accounting for what kind of man he was, the author was able to speak to some of those who knew him and were still alive at the time of her writing, and gives evidence not only of his deep compassion for children, but also his ability to relate to them with ease and humour, and of the reciprocal popularity he enjoyed among them. In this context, she briefly mentions his marriage to Syrie Elmslie, their own seven children, his emphasis upon music in children's lives, and the support by his wife of his work throughout his lifetime and many years thereafter. Appendix II is a more detailed account of the distignuihed Barnardo family history.
Barnardo's was founded by 'a man of faith, in faith and kept going by faith' and with regard to Barnardo's faith in relation to the answering of prayer, she provides a perceptive anecdote from her own time in the Girls Village Home at Barkingside(p.20), and also explains that the place of religion in the Homes was more related to music and communal worship than oppressive dogma - a point made in some Barnardo autobiographies (see Notes 38).
Describing the Organisation, in chapter II, she begins with 'Stepney', geographically and historically the start of his work, and for years thereafter, synonymous with the Headquarters of Dr. Barnardo's Homes, and she provides a vivid account of it during the London Blitz. In discussing management she naturally concentrates on the Girls Village Home that she knew so well, and emphasises the family cottage arrangement, illustrating Barnardo's own inclination towards restoring or making a family life for children under his care, and resortimg to institutional care as a last extreme - a position not always appreciated in his own lifetime.
On page 31 she describes in detail how the organisation changed from being entirely run by Barnardo himself to having a governing body: following the Arbitration case a Committee, presided over by Lord Cairns, was formed in 1878, and Barnardo served as Honorary Director and 'supported himself and his family by journalism and medicine, but when his literary agent failed he considered withdrawing from the work altogether and devoting his life to medical research. The Committee were aghast at this and thereafter paid him a modest salary.' She then details the complex registration that led to it becoming known as 'Dr. Barnardo's Homes' to the public, quite contrary to the founder's wishes, and that it was incorporated with ten other voluntary societies in the "National Council of Associated Children's Homes", which work in unison on many projects and publish a review called Child Care - another lesser-known fact contributed by this perceptive author.
The chapter on 'The Children' has similar valuable observations: the change from the common association of child destitution with drunkeness in Barnardo's time, to illegitimacy and impoverishment of educated families during the depression, and the effects of these factors upon the running of the Homes, which she perceives to have been more the contributors to the constructive recommendations of the Curtis Report(1946) rather than the objects of its criticisms.
The development of career training in Barnardo's from predominantly, and famously, domestic service for the girls, and cobbling for the boys, to the many trades provided in the William Baker Technical College at Goldings, the Naval Service in Watts and Russell-Cotes Schools, and the increased opportunities to enter the professions, is all very shrewdly presented. At the time of this book, actual orphans in Barnardo's were a rarity.
In presenting the Barnardo's of 1966 in the fields of Education and Medicine, Janet Hitchman makes brief reference both to Olver Twist and Peter Grimes and then relates the well-known early actitivites of Barnardo himself, when the Local Authorities provided Beadles, Workhouses and no education or health care.She traces the education within Barnardo's, well dressed with Evangelical Church of England religious teaching, to the modern integration with local authority departments of education, and, similarly, the outstanding paediatric medical facilities provided in the Jubilee Hospital in Stepney, and, later, alongside the Girls Village Home in Barkingside; both were very much determined by the professional medical role of Barnardo himself, including his all-embracing care of crippled children, all maintained in Barnardo'sinfor many years - until the advent of the National Health Service.
Her account of the boarding-out of Barnardo children with ostensibly good Christian families is less adulatory, and may well be influenced by her own experiences(op.cit) for she expresses misgivings over the reliability of the supervision of foster-parents, and justifiable criticism of the Barnardo policy of recalling back to the Homes all boarded out children at school-leaving age for career training, and thereby breaking well-formed family relationships.
In the chapter on 'The Money' Barnardo's ability to raise funds is related, using well-known anecdotes, and adding the more modern concepts of man's need to give and the recognised place of charitable organistions within a welfare state. The chapter on 'Barnardo's, the Law, and the Press' begins:'It comes inevitably to all men of fame. The good ones get debunked and the bad ones whitewashed. Fortunately for Barnardo, the debunking came within his own lifetime when he was able to make his own answers to the critics.' She then relates the essence of the Gossage case using the exchanges in the public press and her own professional expertise with felicity to bring Barnardo's up to date with its own Public Relations Department and Press Officer.
To quote a review written by an ex-Barnardo boy, at the time of this book's publication: "But who are the 'Sword Carriers'? The crucial chapter under this heading reaches, in a roundabout way, what I take to be the point of this book. From the early Childrens Beadles and the Deaconesses to the later House Mothers, Matrons, Superintendents and Welfare Officers, these workers for Barnardo's are assessed, both objectively and in the words of those who have been under their care. What are their qualities? Janet Hitchman's experience as a Barnardo girl speaks well for the kind of family life that they had under a House Mother with the sense of belonging to a community with its loyalties and disciplines. The boys Homes were larger and many were severely disciplined, for, in Dr. Barnardo's view, being cared for meant being instructed in a way of life, which was hard but strangely secure. We who had no home of our own understood this kind of Home and found our love within it, from the friendship among ourselves and from those looking after us who could show a little of that 'consuming love' - those were the 'Sword Carriers'. Their task has altered with the Homes and the development of the State Welfare System, but when all the case histories have been filled with the padding of our modern knowledge, and the labels 'destitute' and 'orphan' have been replaced by 'maladjusted', 'deprived', or 'spastic', a child still just wants to love and be loved."
Comment: There is much of special value in this account of Barnardo's by a perceptive author who had herself been in the Homes as a young girl, and remained in touch thereafter.
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