History is coming back to Quay Street …… today ....remembering 1870

Today at 11, there will be one of those events which the city should always remember.

The Refuge Quay Street, 1911

That event will be the unveiling o a commemorative plaque at Sunlight House on Quay Street to mark the site of the first home of the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges.*

The ceremony will be led jointly by The Lord Mayor and Giles Gaddum, Acting Chair of the children’s charity, The Together Trust.

It still beggars belief that in a city some called the “second city of the Empire”, which proudly displayed its trade links to the world in its brand new Town Hall and would ambitiously build its own route to the sea, children slept rough on the streets,  making a pitiful living selling matches, and shoe laces late in to the night.

But of course it happened and in response to the stories of children sleeping under a Salford Railway arch and another below an old staircase in a Deansgate entry, the Night Refuge for Homeless Boys opened its doors.

Its full title was “The Boys’ Refuge and Industrial Brigade” and on January 4 1870 it offered a handful of boys found on the streets of the twin cities, a bed and breakfast, before turning them out on to the streets again.

Within a decade the organisers had expanded into a  ranges of activities designed to help young people and a full half century later could point to a whole series of achievements, from rescuing children  off the streets to residential and vocational homes,  seaside holidays, and involvement both in the courts and in legislation to protect young people.

Sunlight House, 2013, site of the first Refuge

Along the way it also migrated some young people to Canada.

Painting; Sunlight House, © 2013 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

Picture; the Refuge on Quay Street, 1911, courtesy of the Together Trust, https://www.togethertrust.org.uk/

*The Manchester and Salford Boys' and Girls' Refuges, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Manchester%20and%20Salford%20Boys%20and%20Girls%20Refuges