Home / Albums / Keywords Century:19th
+ Place:London + Place:England 7
Post date / 2021 / November / 9
Dr. Barnardo’s Home, Stepney Causeway
Those who have read Defoe’s “Colonel Jack” will remember the wonderful picture which he presents of the London street boy. That boy has never ceased to live in and about the streets. Sometimes he sleeps in the single room rented by his father, but the livelong day he spends in the streets; he picks up, literally, his food; he picks it up from the coster’s barrow, from the baker’s counter, from the fishmonger’s stall, when nobody is looking. For such boys as these there are Barnardo’s Homes, where waifs and strays to any number are admitted, brought up, trained to a trade, and then sent out to the colonies. Five thousand children are in these homes. The history is very simple. Dr. Barnardo, a young Irish medical student, came to London with the intention of giving up his own profession and becoming a preacher. He began by preaching in the streets; he picked up a child, wandering, homeless and destitute, and took it home to his lodgings; he found another and another, and took them home too. So it began; the children became too many for his own resources; they still kept dropping in; he took a house for them, and let it be known that he wanted support. The rest was easy. He has always received as much support as he wanted, and he has already trained and sent out to the colonies nearly ten thousand children.
House in Stoke Newington in which Edgar Allan Poe Lived
Stoke Newington is connected with the name of Edgar Allan Poe. It was here that he was at school, where he was brought over by the Allans as a child. The house still stands; it is at the corner of Edward’s Lane, which runs out of Church Street. Let us hope that the eccentricities of this wayward poet were not due to the influences of Nonconformist Newington.
Mile End Almshouses
Homes and schools for the boys and girls, hospitals for the adult, there remain the aged. Dotted about all over London there are about a hundred and fifty almshouses; of these about half are situated in and about East London. Not that the people of East London have been more philanthropic in their endowments than those of the west, but, before there was any city of East London, almshouses were planted here on account of the salubrity and freshness of the air and the cheapness of the ground. Some of these have been moved farther afield, their original sites being built over. The People’s Palace, for instance, is built upon the site of the Bancroft almshouses, founded in 1728 for the maintenance and education of one hundred poor. Their original house has gone, but the charity is still maintained.
The Bridge of Hope
“The Bridge of Hope,” a Well-known East End Night Refuge.
The East London Mission
The Shooting-Gallery
Toynbee Hall and St. Jude’s Church