INTERNATIONAL CHILD AND YOUTH CARE NETWORK

16 OCTOBER 2000
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HISTORICAL

The Church of England Children's Society* opened its first children's home in 1882. A small house, 8 Stamford Villas, Friern Road, East Dulwich, was rented for £30 a year ...

The first children

The Society was now ready to receive children, and among all the preparations which had gone on during the winter it had been necessary to prepare rules for the running of the Home. These were:

1. Children to rise in summer at 6.30, in winter at 7.00.
2. On leaving the bedrooms, beds to be stripped, and windows thrown wide open top and bottom, unless it be either raining, snowing or foggy weather, in which case they must only be opened a little at the top.
3. After prayers, breakfast at 7.30 in summer, and 8.00 in winter.
4. After breakfast, girls above nine to be set in turns, day about, to help the matron in the house, kitchen and laundry work; girls above eight may help to make beds, wash up, and such light work.
5. Dinner to be at 1.00 p.m.
6. Children to attend school twice daily.
7. Saturday being a holiday at school, all girls above nine are to clean the house from top to bottom.
8. Little ones to be in bed by 7 o'clock, those under nine by 8 o'clock, under twelve by 8.30, over twelve by nine o'clock.
9. Grace to be said before and after meals.
10. Prayers, with a short portion of Scripture, to be read before breakfast and after tea.
11. Tea to be at 5.30 in the winter, and at 6 in summer.
12. Children to be taught a simple prayer (in addition to the Lord's prayer) to be said at their bedsides morning and evening.
13. The matron is to see that the children are washed to their waists, before going to bed; that they wash their face and hands in the morning, and that they are bathed once a week; also that their hair is cut short on their admission and kept perfectly clean. They should wash it every morning when washing their faces and rub it perfectly dry.
14. Sheets must be changed once a fortnight, half the beds one week, and half the next; blankets and quilts to be washed once a year, in the summer.
15. Children are to go to church on Sunday morning, and to Sunday School in the afternoon, and those above ten who wish it may go in the summer evenings to church with the matron's approval.
16. Average cost of housekeeping to be 8s. per head per week for adults, 3s. 6d. for children.
17. If the matron wishes for a day or two's holiday at any time, she must put her request before the local committee at the monthly meeting on the first Wednesday in the month.

The Founder, Edward Rudolf, with some of
the old girls from this first Dulwich home

Rule 16 deserves comment, for this represents a considerable act of faith. At the end of 1881 the Society had less than one hundred and fifty pounds in hand. Of this, sixty pounds was committed to rent and furnishing. The matron's salary was twenty-five pounds per annum. Housekeeping for eight little girls at the recommended rates, plus the food for the staff, amounted to one hundred pounds a year. In February 1882 a second Receiving Home for boys was opened in North London. Edward Rudolf and his committee were embarking on their enterprise knowing that contributions had to go on rolling in or the whole venture would fail.

For 3s. 6d. a week each, what were these little girls fed on? A diet sheet had been drawn up:

Breakfast
Sundays, bread and butter, with cocoa. Weekdays, porridge and milk, and bread; and bread and
dripping, with milk and water, on alternate days.

Dinner
Sunday, meat, vegetables, rice pudding, or stewed rhubarb, or fruit in summer.
Monday, soup with thick round of bread and milk pudding, alternating with boiled apple or rhubarb pudding.
Tuesday, Irish stew with rice and carrots, or a dripping crust.
Wednesday, boiled suet pudding with treacle.
Thursday, meat and green vegetables, with a little bread.
Friday, soup and bread, and a milk pudding. Saturday, baked suet pudding with raisins, apples or carrots.

Tea
Sundays, bread and butter, and tea.
Weekdays, bread and dripping and bread and treacle alternating, with milk and water.

Of what it was like to be one of the very first children in the very first Home, no memory now remains; but during the summer of 1882 Canon Erskine Clark, the proprietor of Church Bells, sent a lady reporter to the Home. The reporter was presumably shown round by Mrs. White; and in due course wrote,

A small girl opened the door, and after looking at me with earnest inquiry for a full minute she ran away, leaving me standing in the hall. She quickly returned, however, with the matron, a kindly-faced young woman who was only too glad to show me everything she could and tell me all she knew. Both, however, amounted to very little; ‘For you see, mum, we're only beginning and this house isn't the sort of thing children want, though it's better than any of them have been used to.'
‘How many children have you here now?'
‘Only seven, mum. They don't stay long, only just till a place is found for them. Would you like to see them?'
‘Oh, certainly, if I may.'
With this the matron opened the folding doors dividing the one living room of the house in half, and five girls, of ages varying from six to ten, who were playing together with a large doll, started to their feet and courtesied vigorously.
I asked first one and then another where she came from; and except in one case, when the answer was ‘London Road', not one could tell me. The matron was equally ignorant, explaining that she just obeyed orders and asked no questions. ‘They are all so young you see, mum, and they easily forget the past when they're happy. Would you like to see the kitchen?' she went on ‘our eldest is learning to be a good cook there'.
I followed my guide into the kitchen where an old woman, aided by the future first-rate cook, was engaged in the prosaic operation of washing-up; and from the kitchen – a terribly small one – I passed into the slip of ‘garden'.
‘It's all so very small,' I couldn't help saying. ‘I expected a much larger place.'
‘We're only beginning, you see,' was the renewed explanation; ‘and they that put me here wants money to get larger houses. But I hear fifty children have been taken from the streets already, so that's not bad for a beginning.'
‘No, indeed,' I said, as I followed this simple-hearted obedient matron upstairs to the small rooms crowded with small beds, over each of which hung some text about God's love for the little ones.
‘The children make their own beds and do a deal to help, but it's more room we want.'
‘Is there any chance of more room?' I inquired.
‘Well, I don't know, mum,' was the answer. ‘I'm only just put in here; I've four children of my own: likely I shan't stay long.'

Another eye-witness of the Home, now dead, was also much struck by the smallness and the informality of the place. Neighbours couldn't make it out. No notice outside the door! No uniforms! 
‘I was struck by the fact that the children were in no way distinguishable from the other school children in the neighbourhood.'
This concept of what, in the twentieth century, was to become known as the Family Group Home was very new in 1882, and its advantages were not widely recognised until after the Second World War, so in this respect the Society was very advanced.

* Stroud, John (1971) Thirteen Penny Stamps: The story of the Church of England Children's Society (Waifs and Strays) from 1881 to the 1970s. London: Hodder and Stoughton