"About My Father's Business": Work Amidst the Sick, the Sad, and the Sorrowing

by Thomas Archer

The early minute-books of this charity, by the way, are models of serious penmanship. Grave achievements of caligraphy, with engrossed headings, elaborate flourishes, and stiff formal hedge-rows of legal verbiage, suggestive of the fact that the secretaries were either attorneys or scriveners, and regarded the entries in a minute-book or the opening of a new account as very weighty and important events not to be lightly passed over. In this they were probably right: and, at all events, just so much of the old methodical exactitude has come down to the present day in the history of the institution, that the published accounts of the Orphan Working School have been referred to by the Times as models of condensation with a clearness of detail, which may be regarded as the best indication of a well-ordered and economical administration.

It might not be too much to say that the old principle of carrying a scheme into execution only when there are sufficient subscriptions still characterises the operations of the institution. At all events, Mr. Soul had secured enough money for the completion of the new building at Margate before the actual work commenced, and his experience told him that funds would be forthcoming to maintain it.

The founders of the original Orphan Working School, however, laid their wigs together to obtain a house ready built, and at last found one adapted to the purpose, in what was then the suburban district known as Hogsden—since gentilised into Hoxton. Like all really good work, the enterprise began to grow—there were so many orphans, and this was still the only general asylum maintained by subscriptions—so that, as funds came in, two other adjoining houses were rented, and in seventeen years the number of inmates had increased from forty to 165.

Reading the formal and yet most interesting records of this parent institution for the care of the orphan and the fatherless, I fall into a kind of wonder at the enormous change in the method of "nurture and admonition," of teaching and training, which has taken place in the past eighty years. Even in this house at Hoxton, whereof the founders appear to have been kindly old gentlemen, the discipline was enormously suggestive of that stern restriction and unsympathetic treatment which was thought necessary for the due correction of the "Old Adam" in the young heart. We know how great an outcry has quite lately been made at the discovery of the remains of that mode of chastisement which seems to have been abandoned almost everywhere, except by a special revival in gaols, and at two or three of the public schools to which the sons of gentlemen are consigned for their education.

The discipline at the Orphanage at Hogsden was cold and repellent enough, perhaps—had very little about it to encourage the affections, or to appeal to the loving confidence of a child—but it was less barbarous than the code which at that time found its maxim in the saying, "Spare the rod, spoil the child." Only very flagrant disobedience, persistent lying and swearing, were punished with public whipping. But even in the case of ordinary falsehood, a child was placed with his face to the wall at meal-time, with a paper pinned to his back with the word "Lyar" written on it, till he was sufficiently penitent to say, in the presence of all the rest of the children, "I have sinned in telling a lie. I will take more care. I hope God will forgive me."

The name, "Working School," was then interpreted so strictly, that there was comparatively little margin for education. Arithmetic appears to have been regarded with peculiar jealousy by the founders of this institution, who, being perhaps bankers, accountants, and capitalists, looked upon such instruction as calculated to give the poor little boys and girls notions beyond their station.

For ten years the teaching of figures was altogether ignored; and it was only when some of the children, having heard that there was a science called "summing" known to the outer world, begged to be taught, that a solemn meeting of the Governors was called to consider the question, when it was conceded, after great deliberation, and no little opposition from the anti-educational part of the Committee, that arithmetic should be permitted to be taught, as far as addition.

Thus, to their few and rigidly ordered recreations, their hours of manual labour in making nets, list-carpets, slippers, and other cheap commodities, to their instruction in plain reading, and to their times for partaking of plain and even coarse food, served in not too tempting a way, was added the art of writing, and of the first two rules of arithmetic.

This was the condition of the orphans in 1775; but still the charity grew—grew out of house-room; and as the funds grew also, it was determined that it should have a building of its own, on a plot of ground in the City Road, where, improvements having set in, the grand old charity moved with the march of modern improvement. Life became less hard, and instruction more extended. The influences of modern thought and education had superseded the old severity, and new Governors succeeded the bewigged and powdered founders, who had, after all, so well ordered their work, that it increased with the growth of intelligence.

During the seventy-two years from 1775 to 1847, the institution had received 1,124 orphans; and again the dimensions of the house were unequal to the demands of the inmates; while the house itself, and the ground on which it stood, had become so valuable, that it was determined to buy a plot of land at Haverstock Hill, and there to found a truly representative Home for 240 orphan boys and girls—a number which has now increased (as the building itself has been extended) till 400 orphans are taught, fed, and clothed in one of the most truly representative charities in all great London.