I sat down to chat over the very wide subject of child rescue in Dr. Barnardo's cosy room at Stepney Causeway. It was a bitter cold night outside, the streets were frozen, the snow falling. In an hour's time we were to start for the slums—to see baby life in the vicinity of Flower and Dean Street, Brick Lane, and Wentworth Street—all typical localities where the fourpenny lodging-house still refuses to be crushed by model dwellings. Over the comforting fire we talked about a not altogether uneventful past.
Dr. Barnardo was born in 1845, in Dublin. Although an Irishman by birth, he is not so by blood. He is really of Spanish descent, as his name suggests.
DR. BARNARDO. From a Photo by Elliott & Fry.
"I can never recollect the time," he said, "when the face and the voice of a child has not had power to draw me aside from everything else. Naturally, I have always had a passionate love for children. Their helplessness, their innocence, and, in the case of waif children, their misery, constitute, I feel, an irresistible appeal to every humane heart.
"I remember an incident which occurred to me at a very early age, and which made a great impression upon me.
"One day, when coming home from school, I saw standing on the margin of the pavement a woman in miserable attire, with a wretched-looking baby in her arms. I was then only a schoolboy of eleven years old, but the sight made me very unhappy. I remember looking furtively every way to see if I was observed, and then emptying my pockets—truly they had not much in them—into the woman's hands. But sauntering on, I could not forget the face of the baby—it fascinated me; so I had to go back, and in a low voice suggested to the woman that if she would follow me home I would try to get her something more.
"Fortunately, I was able to let her into the hall without attracting much attention, and then went down to the cook on my errand. I forget what was done, except that I know a good meal was given to the 'mother' and some milk to the baby. Just then an elder sister of mine came into the hall, and was attracted as I had been to the infant; but observing the woman she suddenly called out: 'Why, you are the woman I have spoken to twice before, and this is a different baby; this is the third you have had!'
"And so it came to pass that I had my first experience of a beggar's shifts. The child was not hers; she had borrowed it, or hired it, and it was, as my sister said, the third in succession she had had within a couple of months. So I was somewhat humiliated as 'mother' and infant were quietly, but quickly, passed out through the hall door into the street, and I learned my first lesson that the best way to help the poor is not necessarily to give money to the first beggar you meet in the street, although it is well to always keep a tender heart for the sufferings of children."
"Hire babies! Borrow babies!" I interrupted.