SECTION 8.—REFUGES FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE STREETS.
For the waifs and strays of the streets of London much commiseration is expressed, and far more pity is deserved than is bestowed. We have no direct purpose of entering on a crusade on their behalf, apart from our attempt at changing the hearts and lives and improving the circumstances of their parents.
Our main hope for these wild, youthful, outcasts lies in this direction. If we can reach and benefit their guardians, morally and materially, we shall take the most effectual road to benefit the children themselves.
Still, a number of them will unavoidably be forced upon us; and we shall be quite prepared to accept the responsibility of dealing with them, calculating that our organisation will enable us to do so, not only with facility and efficiency, but with trifling cost to the public
To begin with, Children's Creches or Children's Day Homes would be established in the centres of every poor population, where for a small charge babies and young children can be taken care of in the day while the mothers are at work, instead of being left to the dangers of the thoroughfares or the almost greater peril of being burnt to death in their own miserable homes.
By this plan we shall not only be able to benefit the poor children, if in no other direction than that of soap and water and a little wholesome food, but exercise some humanising influence upon the mothers themselves.
On the Farm Colony, we should be able to deal with the infants from the Unions and other quarters. Our Cottage mothers, with two or three children of their own, would readily take in an extra one on the usual terms of boarding out children, and nothing would be more simple or easy for us than to set apart some trustworthy experienced dame to make a constant inspection as to whether the children placed out were enjoying the necessary conditions of health and general well-being. Here would be a Baby Farm carried on with the most favourable surroundings.