I dream things that never were and say why not? ..... the first novels of Home Children and a challenge to the conventional idea

You see things; and you say “Why”?  But I dream things that never were: and I say “Why not?”

It is one of those great questions first posed by George Bernard Shaw and it cuts into the very heart of the debate about the placing of poor, abused and destitute British children on the farms and homes of Canada.

All too often the underlying apologist’s argument rested on that simple one that there was no choice and by extension there was no one at the time offering an alternative.

Well that never sat comfortably with me and bit by bit the research has shown that there was opposition both in the early period and well into the 20th century.  The Doyle Report as early as 1875 highlighted the core issue of sending our problem away as well as the lack of adequate supervision.

Thirty or so years later the socialist Poor Law Guardians on the Chorlton Union from 1904 mounted both an ideological opposition to the policy raising concerns of exploitation, inadequate information on the settlement of children and put forward alternative solutions for dealing with the problems in Britain.

And at the time of the Doyle Report the Methodist lay preacher and Salford councillor Thomas Davies had set about working with local government to improve conditions for street children through sanitation and education and wrote about them in Memorials of Irwell Street Wesleyan Chapel in 1876.

Even earlier Henry Mayhew had drawn attention to street children in London in the early1850s while James Kay-Shuttleworth in Manchester in 1846 wrote of the “increasing number of children” who with no education or trade, and estranged from parents “sleep under the open arches of the markets, or of the areas of the houses of ancient construction, in deserted buildings, out houses and cellars, and rise in the morning not knowing where or how to obtain a meal.”  

He advocated a programme of education and training to the government.

Now I have to confess I had no knowledge of the work of Thomas Davies and not looked at Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor or Kay Shuttleworth for some time.  So the work and opinions of these three is the product of a review I have just read in “Growing Up in the North West 1850s-1950s.*
Street Arabs and the urban waifs in the northern novels of Silas K. Hocking by Steve Collins, looks at how street children were portrayed in novels.  Now I am well aware of the fictional accounts which are being currently published in Canada, but did not know the extent of these earlier accounts.

They, as you would expect reflect the religion and politics of the authors and are very much of the time, and so here are themes of redemption, temporary falls from grace, and the ultimate triumph of the individual through hard work.  On the way there are the polemics by some on the role of demon drink and above all an attack on the feckless parents who at best neglected their children and at worse were abusive.  All of which fits the historical record but often misses an important point that the books are written in “the language of condemnation.  There is no sympathy of the parents, no real examination of the circumstances of the father who assuming he was unskilled, would be at the mercy of the causal job market, with few opportunities for steady employment, condemning his own family to shortage  of food, inadequate housing and a miserable existence.”

This is not to  defend the appalling behaviour of these parents merely that we do not really get to understand the issues without looking at the broader picture.

Now the novels by Silas K Hocking according to Mr Collins do exhibit that understanding and were rattling good reads which resulted in Her Benny published in 1879 becoming the first novel to sell a million copies.  It was based in Liverpool where he worked as a Methodist minister while his later book Dick’s Fairy was set in Manchester where he preached in the 1880s.

I am looking forward to reading Her Benny which is available on Kindle, and only wish Dick’s Fairy was in print.  There are some pretty detailed descriptions of the city at the time and Hocking is a good word master.  But also of course it allows you to get into the minds of these men and women who walked the streets of Liverpool and Manchester attempting to offer a different and more positive life of the street children.

For Hocking in Her Benny that alternative was the escape to the countryside and a rural haven. This back to the land solution for the homeless and abused children was part of that bigger vision which sought to contrast the simple attraction of country life with the increasing unpleasantness of and existence in new industrial towns and cities.

It is a theme Joy Parr develops in her excellent book Labouring Children** and one which she shows had an influence on all of those engaged in sending children to Canada.

But Hocking moved away from the land solution and in Dick’s Fairy published in 1883 the way to eventual success out of the streets is through a combination of help and hard work, which is not so different from what our socialist Guardians were advocating just two decades later.

So in their way the novels of Hocking are part of that alternative view of how children could be given a better life with wider horizons which didn’t rely on a Canadian plough or servants’ apron.

But I cannot close without mentioning the musical.  I have read that Home child the musical will be staged in Orangeville next year and have to say that our old friend Hocking got there first. Well to be truthful it was Ann Dalton who staged a musical version of Her Benny at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre in 1993, which was reprised in 2008 as part of the European Capital of Culture celebrations.

There was even a film made in 1920 featuring child actors Sidney Webb and Babs Reynolds. But as Mr Collins sadly reflects, “unfortunately no prints have survived, or at least none have been located.”  Now that would be a must to see, especially given that in the year it was made and only just forty years since the book was published we were still sending children to Canada and would do so for nearly another decade.

Pictures; from the collection of Lori Oschefski

*Manchester Region History Review Vol 22 2011. Many of the earlier volumes can be accessed on line at http://www.mcrh.mmu.ac.uk/pubs/mrhrind.htm
**Parr, Joy, Labouring Children, 2000