It was a chance find which came to light during research on the Great War but the Manchester Guardian article “The Passing of the City Arab” was bound to stop me in my tracks.*
It was a report on a special service held in January 1916 commemorating the forty-sixth anniversary of the establishment of the Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges.
Like many who have a British Home Child in their family, the phrase City Arab or the more familiar Street Arab does not sit easy.
It is imbued with all sorts of loaded prejudice and says much about those who used the term to describe the destitute young people of our cities in the last quarter of the 19th century.
But the article is an interesting one which despite its unfortunate headline goes a long way to describe the work of one of the charities working with those young people.
The Manchester & Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges had been set up in 1870 to provide a bed and meal for homeless children but quickly expanded to provide much more.
This included long stay accommodation, training for work as well as campaigning against the use of young people as cheap labour and prosecuting neglectful parents.
And like all the charities dealing with children migrated some to Canada but maintained close links with the children carefully supervising their time there and was the first to stop sending young people.
It had in the words of words of its secretary during its fort-six years helped 10,831 children, and “besides these thousands of temporary cases have been helped [along with] poor delicate children sent to the seaside home, ........ poor boys sent to summer camps for a week’s holiday which have numbered no fewer than 55,891.” *
This was a record set against the desperate degree of poverty and hardship experienced by our homeless children back in the 1870s who were “getting their living by begging, selling papers and matches, or by blacking boots in the streets, and when they could not raise 3d. for a night in a common lodging house slept out.
They were to be found lying under stalls in Shudehill Market, in the various alleys under the railway arches, and among bales of cotton in railway yards.”
Forty-six years on the secretary commented “I could have taken you to half a dozen places where you would have found young lads sleeping out; today I do not know of one. Indeed I do not think boys and girls are to be found sleeping out, .... thanks to the work of our own agencies and of others in Manchester and Salford.”
All of which is a matter of proud record but the charity was also concerned for the future, because the cost of living during the war had put strains on its finances at a time when it was admitting more young people whose mothers were dead and whose fathers had been called up.
This is one of those aspects of the war and child care which is seldom written about, but which is well documented in the Trusts’ archives.
And those archives are a very important resource going back to the founding of the charity and covering many areas of its work, including registers, letters and pictures.
Some of these along with stories of the young people it helped feature on its blog site.**
All of which makes the archive an important starting point for anyone wanting to know about a member of their own family who was helped by the Refuges as well as those researching the subject.***
Pictures;, courtesy of the Together Trust
*The Passing of the City Arab Manchester Guardian January 3rd 1916
**Getting down and dusty, http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/
***The Together Trust, http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/p/about-together-trust.html
 |
| Outside the Refuge, 1914 |
Like many who have a British Home Child in their family, the phrase City Arab or the more familiar Street Arab does not sit easy.
It is imbued with all sorts of loaded prejudice and says much about those who used the term to describe the destitute young people of our cities in the last quarter of the 19th century.
But the article is an interesting one which despite its unfortunate headline goes a long way to describe the work of one of the charities working with those young people.
%2Bbefore.jpg) |
| Emma before admission |
This included long stay accommodation, training for work as well as campaigning against the use of young people as cheap labour and prosecuting neglectful parents.
And like all the charities dealing with children migrated some to Canada but maintained close links with the children carefully supervising their time there and was the first to stop sending young people.
It had in the words of words of its secretary during its fort-six years helped 10,831 children, and “besides these thousands of temporary cases have been helped [along with] poor delicate children sent to the seaside home, ........ poor boys sent to summer camps for a week’s holiday which have numbered no fewer than 55,891.” *
This was a record set against the desperate degree of poverty and hardship experienced by our homeless children back in the 1870s who were “getting their living by begging, selling papers and matches, or by blacking boots in the streets, and when they could not raise 3d. for a night in a common lodging house slept out.
%2Bafter.jpg) |
| Emma after admission |
Forty-six years on the secretary commented “I could have taken you to half a dozen places where you would have found young lads sleeping out; today I do not know of one. Indeed I do not think boys and girls are to be found sleeping out, .... thanks to the work of our own agencies and of others in Manchester and Salford.”
All of which is a matter of proud record but the charity was also concerned for the future, because the cost of living during the war had put strains on its finances at a time when it was admitting more young people whose mothers were dead and whose fathers had been called up.
This is one of those aspects of the war and child care which is seldom written about, but which is well documented in the Trusts’ archives.
And those archives are a very important resource going back to the founding of the charity and covering many areas of its work, including registers, letters and pictures.
 |
| Asking for help, 1906 |
All of which makes the archive an important starting point for anyone wanting to know about a member of their own family who was helped by the Refuges as well as those researching the subject.***
Pictures;, courtesy of the Together Trust
*The Passing of the City Arab Manchester Guardian January 3rd 1916
**Getting down and dusty, http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/
***The Together Trust, http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/p/about-together-trust.html
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