High Minds

by Simon Heffer

  What Forster does not mention was that Dickens consoled himself, from 1857, with a nineteen-year-old actress, Ellen Ternan, twenty-six years his junior, and known as Nelly. In 1858 he sought a legal separation from his wife, publishing a statement in The Times and in Household Words to the effect that rumours about his dalliance with another woman (rumours, it is thought, put around by members of Catherine’s family) were untrue. There was nothing amicable about this separation. A letter to a friend hinting that Catherine was mentally unstable ended up in the public prints. Burdett-Coutts sought to act as an honest broker, only for Dickens to tell her that Catherine was causing him ‘unspeakable agony of mind’ and that he wanted no more to do with her. From that moment on she was the enemy. Until his death twelve years later he sent her only three short letters, all in reply to enquiries from her.

  From then on Dickens lived in a decidedly odd ménage. His house at Gad’s Hill near Rochester – which, in Smilesian fashion, he had bought decades after admiring it as a small boy, having made something of himself – was run not just by one of his daughters (which was usual for the times) but also by his sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth, sister of his much-maligned wife (which was not). Most of his numerous surviving children took the view that their father, once their mother had gone, could not have cared less about them, and had them out of the family home as early as possible. Meanwhile Dickens bought Nelly a house in north London, where she lived in some style with her mother and two sisters. Just as we know no exact details of the Carlyle marriage, we do not know whether Nelly Ternan was Dickens’s mistress or an adopted favourite daughter. Given Dickens’s interest in procreation, it may be safer to assume the former.

  These upheavals caused Dickens huge expense. He spent much of the last decade or so of his life giving public readings to earn money. A final reading tour of America and of Britain in the winter of 1870 wore him out. Shortly before his death he had an audience of the Queen, in which he complained about class divisions and expressed the hope that they would decline. He had a stroke while working at Gad’s Hill on 8 June 1870 and died the next day. Another version of his demise, that he had an apoplexy while visiting Nelly at Peckham, to where she and her mother had removed, and was brought back in secret in a hackney carriage is discounted as ‘wild and improbable . . . but not entirely impossible’ by Claire Tomalin, his latest biographer.41 It is profoundly ironic that a man so much of whose philanthropic energy was devoted to fallen women should have had so much havoc in his own personal life. His final wish, to be buried in a graveyard next to Rochester Castle, was ignored: England’s most famous man went where her famous men often go, to Westminster Abbey.

  V

  Thomas Barnardo was another great man with a darker side to his life. He started work among destitute children in London’s East End in the late 1860s. Barnardo developed a refreshingly twentieth-century approach to fund-raising: he faked ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs of rescued children to inspire people to give him money for his work, and for a time lied about his qualifications by describing himself as a ‘doctor’. As with Dickens, there was something of a contradiction between public intent and private behaviour. The son of a Dublin furrier of Jewish-Prussian origins, Barnardo was lower middle class and of limited means. He represents the other strand of Victorian philanthropy from that exemplified, and led, by Angela Burdett-Coutts. Having all her outrage about the condition of the poor, but lacking her resources, he gave, instead, his time and energy, both to alleviate misery directly, and to encourage others to fund his work.

  Barnardo shared with Burdett-Coutts a deep Christian faith. This motivated his philanthropy and how he did his work. He was born in 1845, and under the influence of his mother and elder brother converted to Protestant evangelicalism at sixteen, joining the Open Plymouth Brethren. He came to London in 1866 and enrolled as a medical student at the London Hospital. He was 5 foot 3 inches tall, but made up in pugnacity what he lacked in stature. As he examined the city around him, he was shocked to find children living on the streets, starving and begging, some maimed after industrial accidents. One in five in London’s most insanitary districts was dead before its fifth birthday. His first foray into philanthropy was teaching at a Ragged School in Ernest Street in Stepney, through his link with the Plymouth Brethren, during the cholera epidemic of 1867. He also became a street preacher during the worst of the outbreak, on waste ground in Mile End where William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, would also preach. An estimated 3,000 people died in the epidemic, including many breadwinners, leaving their families destitute.

  Barnardo fell out with others at Ernest Street, not least because of disputes over the use of funds. It was the first, but not the last, time he would court controversy by sharp practice. Never at ease with the authority of others, he raised money to take over two workman’s cottages and set up a Ragged School and mission of his own. The new school was around the corner from the old, and those who ran Ernest Street were angry that Barnardo was distracting attention from, and possibly undermining, their work: it was one of many examples of competitive philanthropy that hustlers of the charity world such as Barnardo would sometimes engage in.

  In the winter of 1869–70, an orphan called Jim Jarvis took Barnardo around the East End to show him how many children lived: he saw some sleeping on roofs and in gutters. Jarvis had slept the previous night on straw at the haymarket in Whitechapel. They had the option of the workhouse: but the stigma of pauperisation, and the harsh regime of such institutions, deterred many. His witnessing of extreme poverty was life-changing for Barnardo. Hitherto his main concern had been with children’s spiritual welfare: now he saw the urgency of catering for their material and practical welfare too. However, he was shocked when Jarvis told him he believed Jesus was ‘the Pope o’ Rome’.42 He began raising money to set up a home for destitute boys. In 1870 he started the first of what would become a national network of such homes on Stepney Causeway. His medical studies went into abeyance.

  He went into the slums to look for inmates. The home’s reputation soon spread, and it filled up. One evening John Somers, an eleven-year-old boy, was turned away because it was full. He was found dead from malnutrition and exposure two days later, having slept in a sugar barrel. After this, a sign was posted at the door that read: ‘No Destitute Boy Ever Refused Admission.’43 Barnardo was determined to equip his children to earn a living. Soon after establishing the home in Stepney he developed the brigade principle that Burdett-Coutts had started, initially with brigades of City messengers and wood-choppers. He also had his own brigade of shoeblacks. When funds permitted, he set up workshops where boys could learn boot-making, brush-making and carpentry. In time there would be emigration programmes and training ships.

  At the end of his first year in his East End Juvenile Mission Barnardo reported that he had room for fifty destitute boys and had up to that point accommodated thirty-three. He had managed to raise (in part from rich evangelicals) the prodigious sum of £2,428 5s 4d, considerably more than the £933 16s 7d cost of the mission: he had also raised £53 2s 6d from lodgers – boys who worked and could afford to pay their way.44 It was at around this time that Shaftesbury heard of Barnardo, and invited him and leaders of other East End missions to discuss the problems they were dealing with. Shaftesbury’s reputation in the evangelical world did Barnardo’s appeal for funds no harm.

  Barnardo, like Booth, saw alcohol as the principal evil, and proselytised for the temperance movement. He computed that 85 per cent of the boys who turned up were destitute because of the effect of drink on their parents or guardians.45 A foray into a pub to try to spread the word of the possibility of redemption through abstinence resulted in his being beaten up and having two of his ribs broken. In 1872 he bought a pub and music hall of ill repute in Limehouse, the Edinburgh Castle, having appealed for funds to acquire this ‘citadel of Satan’ for temperance. He converted it into a mission church and coffee house called the British Working Man’s Coffee
Palace. The music hall became an evangelical mission. Huge meetings that had hitherto been confined to the summers, when they could be held in tents, could now happen all the year around.

  The following year he married Syrie Elmslie, whom he had met when addressing a Ragged School in south-west London: their daughter would marry Somerset Maugham. As a wedding present a wealthy supporter gave them a lease on a large house at Barkingside in Essex. The Barnardos wanted to help orphaned girls as well, and their property made this possible. Barnardo had been horrified by the extent of child prostitution. The Barnardos launched an initial, unsatisfactory, experiment of putting sixty girls in the coach-house of their home. They realised that girls needed a conventional home if they were to flourish. Barnardo’s vision – which he said came to him in a dream, but which had been tried on the Continent – was to build a ‘village’ of cottages for smaller numbers of girls to be housed in each, under the supervision of a ‘mother’. And, whereas the boys in Barnardo’s care were found work outside the home when not doing schoolwork, the girls acted as their own domestic servants.

  He held public meetings in 1874–5 to appeal for money for his cottages. He argued that girls needed to be treated differently, not just to domesticate them, but to give them ‘everything which can train them to honour their bodies and keep pure the souls God has given them’.46 He knew the workhouse failed in this respect: and told a story (which may be a fabrication: Barnardo and the truth were, from time to time, strangers) that of eighty girls from one workhouse all ended up prostitutes. The line worked, and money came in. Thanks to rich evangelicals, Barnardo built thirty cottages, eventually accommodating 1,500 destitute girls in a small village. Lord Aberdeen, another of Barnardo’s aristocratic supporters, laid the foundation stones of the first nine cottages in June 1875.

  The first cottage at the ‘Village Homes for Orphan, Neglected and Destitute Girls’ was given in memory of a dead child, as were several subsequent ones: Lord Cairns, the Lord Chancellor, opened the first fourteen on 19 July 1876. The slogan was now ‘No Destitute Child Ever Refused Admittance’. The Times’s report stated that Barnardo had spent £4,000 to £5,000 transforming the ‘singing saloon known as the Edinburgh Castle’ into a place of worship; and ‘upwards of 120 street Arabs are sheltered from evil influences and brought under the power of Christian teaching and example’ in Stepney.47 The purpose of the new village, under Mrs Barnardo’s supervision, was to take girls with ‘evil associations’ and produce ‘a band of kitchenmaids, dairymaids, parlourmaids, housemaids, laundrymaids and cooks, to meet the demand everywhere existing for cleanly and instructed female servants.’ A report of how this would be achieved was read out during the opening ceremony. ‘In a tent the band of the East-end Juvenile Mission played a succession of joyous tunes,’ The Times wrote. ‘Lady Cairns declared the laundry open by setting the machinery in motion.’

  When Barnardo set up his homes, he also laid out the principle on which they would be run. He would take in children without having them subject to any form of discrimination: by his definition, any child was part of the deserving poor.

  Before proceeding to detail, it may be well to set in the forefront the Religious Principles upon which the Homes are conducted.

  The Homes have from the beginning been conducted on definitely religious lines. They are Christian institutions, carried on in the spirit of the Gospel. They are, of course, Protestant, but no creed or party can claim their work exclusively for its own. Every candidate, or his or her responsible guardian, is plainly informed, at the time of application, that these are Protestant Homes, and that no other religious instruction is afforded than such as is in accordance with the teaching of the Word of God. As of yore, I could not allow any question of sect or creed to close my doors in the face of a really destitute and homeless child, and admission is in no single instance with a view to proselytism.

  The Homes are conducted on the broadest Christian basis consistent with loyalty to the truths of the Gospel. They are inter-denominational Homes in the following very important senses:

  They receive children of all creeds or of none, without any regard to denomination.

  They are supported by sympathizers in all sections of the Church of Christ, irrespective of sect.

  They are carried on and practically managed by workers who, like the subscribers, belong to almost every section of that Church Universal, which is made up of all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.

  An earnest endeavour is, therefore, made to bring up each child in the Church to which its parents nominally belonged. I am bound to add that the chief aim of all associated with me (irrespective of Churches or denominations) is to bring these children up, experimentally, in the fear of the Lord, and to draw them in faith and love to the feet of our Saviour Christ.48

  However, he began to attract the envy of less energetic and charismatic philanthropists. He dressed up some children in the filthiest rags better to accentuate the beneficial effects of his work, and raised funds by selling the notorious ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs. He was accused of using funds for his own ends, and calling himself ‘Dr Barnardo’ when he had no medical qualification. In what became a full-dress attempt to discredit him, there were also rumours he had had a carnal relationship with his landlady while a medical student. Some of the rumours about his private life and his financial integrity seem to have been propagated by his fellow evangelical Frederick Charrington, of the brewing dynasty, who resented Barnardo’s intrusion on his turf in Mile End. Charrington, ashamed of how his family had prospered, ran a mission in Tower Hamlets whose attendance had been depleted after the conversion of the Edinburgh Castle. The family brewery was in the Mile End Road, and its proximity to Barnardo’s area of operations was more of an affront than Charrington could take.

  The last straw for Charrington was when Barnardo promised to open a coffee palace, called the Dublin Castle, in the Mile End Road. Charrington asked Barnado not to; but Barnardo, who seems to have veered between divine inspiration and megalomania, refused to comply, and published a pamphlet defending his right to do so. Charrington took this as a declaration of war. The Charity Organisation Society – whose work is detailed later – secretly helped another of Barnardo’s detractors, George Reynolds, a Baptist minister, to publish in 1875 a pamphlet attacking him, entitled Dr Barnardo’s Homes: Startling Revelations. Reynolds was in league with Charrington. With the matter brought to public attention, the COS could investigate him formally. In 1875, thanks not least to his showmanship, Barnardo raised £23,000. He did so without having trustees, or a treasurer: only he scrutinised how his money was spent. Even if he was entirely honest, the practice was highly irregular. The COS blacklisted Barnardo, which prompted him to slap a writ on Reynolds, whom he unwisely attacked. Even more unwisely, Barnardo produced a document that claimed he had qualified as a doctor at the University of Geissen, which was proved a forgery.

  The two sides slugged it out in the press. One newspaper published letters under the pseudonym of a clergyman who claimed to have known Barnardo since childhood, and who would vouch for what a fine fellow he was. Unfortunately, these testimonials – which as well as defending Barnardo’s honour also savaged his opponents – were written by Barnardo himself. Even he realised he had gone too far, and compounded the absurdity of his deceit by writing to the newspaper and condemning what he had already, pseudonymously, written.

  The way Barnardo ran his charity did not stand up to scrutiny. He recognised this – helped by some supporters, who had conveyed their disenchantment – and the charity was given a new management structure. Barnardo stayed, no longer as proprietor but as director, employed by and answerable to the trustees. The various properties, such as the Edinburgh Castle and the house at Barkingside – from which the Barnardos had moved because of the cost of its upkeep and its distance from Stepney – were put into trust. This should have restored confidence, but donations fell. Barnardo saw he had to play straight if his pr
oject were to survive, and (having from around the time of his marriage instructed others to call him ‘Dr Barnardo’), went up to Edinburgh to complete his medical education, which he did in four months, qualifying in 1876.

  The allegation of improper use of funds was among a number tested at a formal arbitration in 1877, the trustees having ordered Barnardo to withdraw his writ against Reynolds, and having succeeded in persuading Reynolds to accept the arbitration process. Barnardo was also accused of mistreating children and dressing them up to look better cared for than they really were when visitors came. Perhaps most damaging, it was alleged there was inadequate religious instruction in the homes. Lord Cairns organised a defence fund for Barnardo. The COS bankrolled Reynolds, its director, C. S. Loch, having developed a complete lack of confidence in the newly qualified doctor. It also used its resources to investigate Barnardo further, in the hope of finding more dirt to be used against him.

  The arbitration seemed to be going Barnardo’s way when Charrington admitted having paid for the pamphlets Reynolds had circulated against Barnardo. However, it ended unsatisfactorily because Reynolds withdrew from the process, and because Barnardo refused to admit he had written the pseudonymous attacks on Reynolds in 1875, in his retaliation for the pamphlets. Also, Shaftesbury came out on the side of Charrington (he was president of Charrington’s mission in Tower Hamlets) and against Barnardo, which stung him.

  The arbitration lasted thirty-eight days. Barnardo’s accusers occupied the first twenty, and his own evidence took eighteen. ‘This unjustifiable conduct of Dr Barnardo,’ said the official report, referring to his refusal to answer questions about his authorship of the attacks on Reynolds, ‘and this withdrawal at the latest hour by Mr Reynolds in the face of the Arbitrators’ remonstrance, deprived them of the full effect that would have been produced on Dr Barnardo’s evidence by its being subjected to cross-examination.’49 However, Barnardo was cleared of any wrongdoing. Some of the accusations were so extreme that they were easily dismissed. There was no proof, the arbitrators said, that a room in which bad boys were locked ‘swarmed with rats’ or that ‘the boys were nailed up as in a living tomb.’ The evidence that boys were dressed up especially was dismissed as ‘of the most shadowy kind’. And as for the claim of no proper religious teaching, the court found ‘a prominent place given to the moral and religious instruction, while evil habits and bad language and lying are guarded against and corrected.’ An additional allegation, that children were riddled with disease because of the appalling diet Barnardo inflicted on them, was described as ‘wholly without foundation in fact’.