Orphan at My Door

by Jean Little

  But many times during the past months I have known it is also a sad world and a dangerous one, a world where people like Cousin Anna can grow up with a mother who doesn’t want her, where a person like Marianna and Jasper’s mother has to give up her children just because she has not enough money to feed them, a place where girls like Nellie Bigelow can be cruel and not suffer for it. I could make a much longer list. It is not quite the world I thought.

  But it is MY world and so I am thankful for everything wonderful that is in it — like my friend Sparrow and my baby sister Emily Rose.

  My diary has only a few pages left in it. When I copy all this in, I believe I will have filled the whole book. I don’t see how people make one book last a whole year. My writing is not small and tidy, of course, but most people would not have as much to tell about as I have had.

  I was going to ask for another one for Christmas. But I just turned back the covers and I noticed something sticking out from under my pillow. It is a brand new diary with a ribbon to mark my place. And Mother has written in the front:

  For my beloved daughter,

  Victoria Josephine Cope,

  who is already a fine writer.

  With her mother’s love.

  It is not only our Queen who feels like jubilee!

  Epilogue

  Victoria Cope kept a journal all her life, but she did not become a published writer until she was fifty. She was twenty-four when she married a Presbyterian minister. The pair went to China to serve as missionaries. They had one daughter and four sons. Victoria wrote stories for them which they read and reread. These tales were packed with adventure. Years later her daughter, Marianna Rose, sent the stories off to a publisher, who brought them out in serial form in a children’s magazine. Both boys and girls waited eagerly for every issue.

  Victoria’s children were sent home to Canada to be educated. As she said goodbye to them, she thought with sympathy of Marianna’s mother leaving her children at the Barnardo Home. Victoria herself started a small school for orphan girls in China, and became well loved by her pupils. When her husband died, she returned to Canada, to live in a cottage in Guelph. There she told more stories to her spellbound grandchildren.

  Marianna Wilson trained as a midwife, and went out west to work in small prairie towns. She was famous for the number of healthy babies she brought into the world. Jasper lived with her until he found a sweetheart who loved his red hair and bright eyes.

  Marianna never married. She was engaged to be married at one time, but her fiancé was killed in Flanders during the First World War.

  Nor did she and Jasper ever learn the whereabouts of their younger sister. Marianna remained close to Emily Rose Cope, however, and never lost touch with Victoria, even though an ocean separated them.

  David did not marry, but Tom did. He and his wife had three girls, of whom he was terribly proud.

  Both David and Tom enlisted during World War I. Tom served as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps and came home without a scratch. David was shell-shocked, however, and had to be hospitalized for months after the war ended. He was never fully well again. His years in the trenches cured him of his narrow-mindedness, but left him permanently disabled. He died when he was just forty-seven, of pneumonia.

  Victoria and her husband named their first son David.

  Historical Note

  How would you like to go back in time? Most of us would say yes at once if we were given the chance. You have imagination and an enquiring mind. Let me send you back.

  It is 1897 and you now stand on Drury Lane, in London, England. You are so hungry that you feel faint. You ate the last of the bread you had yesterday noon, and you don’t know where you can get more. You are barefoot and it is a cold, rainy November day. You do have a ragged dress and an old shawl, but the icy wind cuts right through them both. Your hair is filthy and you have lice. You also have a sore throat and a bad cough. You feel utterly alone, very ill and in despair.

  What can you do? You have no relatives you know of. You could go to the poorhouse, but everyone says never go there. You won’t get enough to eat there anyway.

  You could try begging, but that takes courage you no longer have. You know of only one other choice. Other homeless children have told you, “You can always go to Barnardo’s.”

  So you make your weary way to London’s east end, to the Barnardo Home at Stepney Causeway. If you could read you would be comforted by the sign which says that no child like you will ever be turned away. With a gulp, you march up to the big front door and ask to be let in.

  The worst part of being a destitute child is now behind you. They wash you and cut your hair short and give you warm clothes and shoes. They feed you. They wake you early and keep you busy every minute of the day, training you for a job as a servant. They are teaching you to know your Bible and to read. You meet Dr. Thomas Barnardo himself. He is terribly busy, but he smiles at you and he actually remembers your name. He makes you feel you matter to him. It is a long time since you felt you mattered to anyone.

  Then you are offered another choice. “How would you like to go to Canada?” they ask.

  The Barnardo children who were chosen to go to Canada were told it was their chance to make a fresh start in a new land. Canadian families needed their help. They would be sent to school in Canada if they were younger than twelve. They would be paid for their labour if they were older — although the money would be kept in trust for them until they were set free to go their own way. To most of the children it sounded like an adventure.

  “What’s Canada like?” they asked each other. Nobody knew, but rumours flew: It was wonderful there. Some who had gone were now rich! Canadian families loved you as though you were their own children.

  Life at the Home was regimented and predictable, but life in Canada would offer opportunities undreamed of in England. Most children chose to go eagerly. Some who hesitated were sent along willy-nilly.

  Dozens of boys and girls, each with his or her distinctive Barnardo trunk, marched up the gangways onto big ships. Siblings like Marianna and Jasper crossed the Atlantic together, but were often separated once they reached their destination. Many did not realize until they were at the railroad siding in Belleville, east of Toronto, that they would not continue to the same Barnardo Home as their sisters or brothers. This would have been wrenching for children who had already lost their parents.

  Girls settling in Ontario were first sent to Hazelbrae, the Barnardo reception home in Peterborough. Boys went to the Home on Peter Street (later moved to Farley Avenue) in Toronto. In fact, Marianna and Jasper’s finding each other on the same train to Guelph, after they had originally been separated, was a surprising but happy coincidence.

  Where did this idea of sending English children to Canada come from? Why did kind Dr. Barnardo send so many children overseas? Who was he exactly?

  Thomas John Barnardo was an intense young man who burned with the desire to be a missionary doctor under the China Inland Mission. Unable to pursue that dream, he turned to working at one of the Ragged Schools for poor boys.

  Then came Jim Jarvis, the boy who changed the direction of Barnardo’s life. In a story he wrote himself, Barnardo told of how, one night, when he was shutting up his Ragged School, he found one boy still there after the others had gone. He told the boy it was time he left for home.

  “I have no home,” Jim Jarvis said. Barnardo asked where his parents lived. The boy said he had none.

  “Where did you sleep last night?” the man asked.

  The boy took the young man to see where homeless boys slept — under bridges, in alleys, in cramped spaces under the roofs of tenement buildings. Dressed in rags, huddled together for warmth, and gaunt with hunger, they slept on the bare floor. They lived on whatever scraps of food they could beg or steal.

  Thomas Barnardo was shocked — and deeply moved. In the following days, he set about providing such children with a place where they would have safety, food and shelter. He
eventually opened a home for “waifs and strays” in Stepney, a poor district in East London. (He later founded a Girls’ Village Home at Ilford, Barkingside, Essex, and a Babies’ Castle in Hawkhurst, as well.) As word spread, so many boys came seeking refuge that one night a boy known as Carrots had to be denied entrance because there was no room for him. Later he was found dead of exposure. Dr. Barnardo was so appalled by this that he decided no child in need would ever be turned away again.

  Barnardo kept to his resolve even though it grew harder and harder to find enough money and room to house so many destitute children. Finally he decided to follow the lead of Annie Macpherson and Maria Rye, two women who had already sent children to Canada, where people were crying out for help on their farms.

  Some sixty thousand Barnardo Children were sent to Canada between 1875 and 1930. For many, the scheme worked. These children settled into their new lives quickly, and grew up to consider themselves Canadians. At least one Home Boy inherited the family farm under the terms of his employer’s will. Many of the children, however, were homesick for Britain. They were urban children who had never seen a live cow, never had to gather eggs from under clucking hens, never lived away from the noise of traffic and the press of people. They had accents different from those of Canadian children. Those who had lived by their wits, like today’s street children, often were not used to taking orders from adults who were impatient with their lack of knowledge or skill.

  Some men and women to whom Home Children were sent were far too harsh, and treated the children badly. Some boys were made to sleep in woodsheds, and fed only scraps. Some girls were abused and, when they sought help, were not believed. There were even a few cases where farmers were convicted of murdering the boys.

  Under such conditions, some Home Children responded in anger or tried to run away. If the Barnardo people learned of the treatment, these children might be relocated to other farms or homes, where it was hoped they would be happier. Some youngsters were moved up to ten times! Such heartbreaking stories are painful to read.

  The Barnardo inspectors, whose job it was to make sure the placements were safe and happy, made hurried and infrequent visits. The host homes and farms were often far out in the country and the distance to be travelled great. The inspectors also commonly interviewed the children in the presence of the adults — something that would not be done today — so the children might have been too frightened to speak up about any problems. A few who did tell of their misery were even given stern lectures instead of the understanding they deserved.

  Bit by bit people saw that the child immigration system was in need of a change. In 1924 the new Labour government in Britain decided that the Home Children, as British subjects, should stay home, at least until they were fourteen. The last child emigration scheme, the Fairbridge Farm School at Duncan on Vancouver Island, ended soon after World War II.

  What happened to Home Children in their later lives? Many became domestic servants or farm labourers. Many married and had families of their own. Some never told their children that they had immigrated as Home Children. Others were proud of what they had made of their lives, and shared their stories with all who asked. Some went on with their schooling and became nurses, teachers or doctors. Perhaps one of them was a grandparent of yours, or a great-aunt or great-uncle. Ask the older members of your family and see what you can learn.

  * * *

  My own mother’s grandparents took in a Barnardo Boy… named Tom, to help Great-Grandpa in the blacksmith shop. Tom had no memory of his surname, although he had been assigned one by the Home. Once he settled in, he asked my great-grandfather if he could take his name, since he wanted a name he could be proud of. Great-Grandpa told him he would be honoured, and the boy became Tom Mellis. He grew up to take over the blacksmith shop. Tom’s many descendants are known by the name Mellis today.

  There are still a few Home Children alive in Canada. I met one Barnardo Girl face to face, just two weeks before her death. Ethel Crane died in 2000 when she was 102 years old. She came to Canada with her brother and sister in 1914. Ethel was one of the unfortunate children who did not know until she reached that Belleville train siding that she and her brother and sister would be separated and sent to different Homes.

  Ethel had a hard life, but eventually found her siblings again, and later married. She named her son after her brother, Alfred. She was ill when I met her, but when she told me she clearly remembered Dr. Barnardo, I felt as though I was standing in the presence of history.

  “He was a very good man,” she said. “Everybody liked him. He cared about us all.”

  That is not a bad epitaph for Thomas John Barnardo.

  Images and Documents

  1.

  BARNARDO GIRL’S CANADIAN OUTFIT IN 1898

  new box 2 pair of hoses (thick)

  label 2 pair of hoses (thin)

  key 2 flannelette petticoats

  stationery 1 winter petticoat

  brush and comb 1 summer petticoat

  haberdashery 2 coarse flannel aprons

  handkerchief 2 holland aprons

  Bible 2 muslin aprons

  Sankey Hymnbook ulster

  2 stuffed dresses (blk/gold) tam o’shanter

  2 print dresses hat

  2 flannelette ’n dresses 1 pair of boots

  2 cotton ’n dresses 1 pair oxfords

  garters 1 pair slippers

  shoe and boot laces 1 pair plimsoles

  toothbrush 1 pair of gloves

  8 small towels in bag

  Haberdashery would be small items such as buttons and needles. An ulster is a long, loose undercoat made of rough cloth. Oxfords are sturdy leather shoes and plimsoles (or plimsolls) are rubber-soled canvas shoes.

  2.

  Queen Victoria was Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, ruling the Empire for sixty-four years, from 1837–1901. Victoria, B.C., is named for her, and Alberta takes its name from her beloved husband, Albert. Queen Victoria’s pug dog, May, also had her portrait painted, along with her puppies.

  3.

  Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee procession, on June 22, 1897, in London, England.

  4.

  Ethel Parton (right) volunteered to come to Canada as a Home Girl in 1914, with her sister Hilda and brother Alfred. The author was able to interview Ethel before she died in 2000 at the age of 102.

  5.

  In this 1912 photograph, the widow of Dr. Thomas Barnardo bids a group of Home Girls farewell. They’re about to travel on a special train, bound for Liverpool, where they will board a ship destined for Canada.

  6.

  A dormitory room at Hazelbrae, the Barnardo Home for girls, situated in Peterborough, Ontario. Girls stayed here a short time before being placed in Canadian homes.

  7.

  A classroom at Hazelbrae, with similarly dressed girls learning their lessons.

  8.

  Exterior view of Hazelbrae, a large home given rent-free to the Barnardo charities in 1883 by George A. Cox, Mayor of Peterborough and President of the Midland Railway Company of Canada. The large residence could house up to 150 children, and was the Canadian distribution home for Barnardo Girls between 1868 and 1922.

  9.

  The house where the story takes place, and where author Jean Little grew up.

  10.

  A Guelph street scene in the 1870s. Peterborough, where Hazelbrae was located, has a Barnardo Street named after Dr. Thomas John Barnardo.

  11.

  Old Nursery Rhyme

  Monday’s child is fair of face.

  Tuesday’s child is full of grace.

  Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

  Thursday’s child has far to go.

  Friday’s child is loving and giving.

  Saturday’s child works hard for a living.

  But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day

  Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

  Anonymous

  12.

  How to Ma
ke a Mustard Plaster

  Take a piece of old sheeting about 1 foot by 2 feet, depending on the size of the patient’s chest.

  Mix, in a cup: half a cup of flour, 1 rounded tablespoon of dry mustard powder and one teaspoon of baking soda.

  Add water to make a thick paste.

  Spread the mixture on half the sheeting. Fold over the other half of sheeting, tucking in the edges.

  Apply mustard plaster to bare chest of sufferer for twenty minutes. Take care that the paste does not go directly onto the skin.

  13.

  Recipe for Burnt Leather Cake

  ½ Cup Watkins Original Grapeseed Oil

  1¼ Cups White Sugar

  2 Eggs

  1 Teas. Watkins Caramel Extract

  1 Teas. Butter Extract

  2 Cups All-Purpose Flour

  1 Tbsp. Watkins Baking Powder

  ½ Teas. Salt, if desired

  1 Cup Milk

  Caramel/Butterscotch Filling and Frosting

  Mix oil and sugar, added gradually, beating between additions.

  Add eggs, one at a time; beating well after each addition.

  Stir in extracts.

  Combine flour, baking powder and salt; add alternately with milk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients; blend well.

  Pour into 2 greased and floured 8-inch round layer pans.

  Bake at 350 degrees F. for 30 to 35 minutes.