Uncovering the grim stories of Manchester's streets in the 1880s

The Manchester and Salford Boys and Girls Refuge was set up in 1870 to provide a night’s accommodation for homeless boys on the streets of Manchester.

Within a decade it had developed its role as a rescue organisation, extended this to girls, began work on giving youngsters a future and started campaigning against the exploitation of children as well as highlighting child cruelty.  Very early on the Refuge’s became involved with the British Home Children scheme.

Like many groups dealing with child care in the late 19th century the Manchester and Salford Boys and Girls Refuges saw it as one of the options open to them for dealing with abandoned and mistreated young people.

It is all too easy just to go with the general historical accounts of homeless and abused children giving only a nod to the indignation felt by those men and women engaged in rescuing our young from the streets.    Indeed there is a danger that we downplay their work in the light of the controversial policy of sending thousands of children to Canada and later Australia.

So here we are back on the streets of my city discovering the level of human suffering at first hand with that added benefit that I am writing about somewhere I know, with all the opportunities to visit the low haunts and dismal places frequented by these children.

At this stage there is no grand plan, just a series of posts retelling what I have unearthed with no attempt even to join it all up.  That will come later.  I can’t even claim that this is original research.  It is largely drawn from a history of the organisation which was published in 1921.*

Parental cruelty towards children is not new but I suppose as we moved into the last quarter of the 19th century we might have come to expect that they would have been protected much earlier.  After all it might be a cheap observation but nevertheless an accurate one that a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals had been set up in 1824 but the first such organisation for children did not emerge until 1883.

Likewise the 1835 Cruelty to Animals Act prohibited bear baiting and cock fighting and extended earlier legislation to protect bulls, dogs, bears and sheep from “cruel and improper treatment” but an “Act for the Better Prevention of Cruelty to Children” which made parental neglect cruelty and so punishable was not passed till 1889.

And so it often fell to the voluntary organisations to both campaign on the issue of child cruelty and to act to protect the children. In the July of 1884 the Manchester Refuge set up a Child Protection Department and during the next three months investigated 26 cases of child cruelty, which in turn led to the establishment of the Manchester & Salford Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children by the Refuge.

“The society was soon active in the interests of cruelly treated children, with 522 cases being dealt with during the first complete year in 1885.”** Of these 80 were admitted to the Refuge’s homes or other institutions and “in the majority of cases the parents cautioned.”

At the same time the Open All Night Shelter which had been established in 1884 first at Major Street and then Chatham Street Piccadilly had special provision for children who were the victims of parental cruelty.

This took many forms but their exploitation as cheap labour was one that the society was particularly active in highlighting as were others.  In the July of 1888 the Secretary of the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children asserted that 200,000 young people made a living on the streets of our towns and cities.

“The majority of street children maintain their parents in whole or part, and to his parents such a child is a valuable slave. Before he is fully grown even while still suffering from child ailments, when the stones under his feet are frozen he is sent out to wander, to plead, to pester, to get thrust out of the way and cursed by some, to get his match box the penny for which all the joy and health of his childhood are being sold”***

All of which is pretty emotive stuff and the cautious objective side of me wonders at the degree of exaggeration, but similar reports can be read in the Manchester Guardian, the Manchester Evening News and the archives of the Manchester & Salford Refuges.

And the evidence is there in the number of cases reported to the courts and the level of prosecutions.  In the ten years from 1885 the society dealt with 9,922 cases of mistreatment.  In 1892 alone “375 cases involving the welfare of 1,324 children were reported, investigated and dealt with.  Of these 375 cases 40 were carried to court and convictions obtained in 37.”  Two years later “out of 705 cases 100 were taken to court, resulting in 94 convictions.”

There is of course much more to do, but I am confident that the Manchester archives, along with the help of the Trusts’ archivist, Liz Sykes will begin to provide a better understanding of the problem and a clearer appreciation on my part of the work done by the Refuges.

*Edmondson, William, Making Rough Places Plain, Manchester 1921
** ibid Emondson page39
*** Waugh, Rev Benjamin, Secretary of the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in The Contemporary Review, July 1888, quoted by Edmondson

You can follow the Forward Trust which was once the Manchester and Salford Boys and Girls Refuges at http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/

Picture; Courtesy of the Together Trust and  Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council m68185