Dr Frank Andrews has spent many years with Barnardos as an employee and as a volunteer. He gave us an insight into Thomas John Barnardo the person.
Barnado was born in Dublin in 1845 – a member of the Plymouth Brethren he was initially going to be a missionary in China and came to London to study medicine. Whilst in training he visited slums and taught in a Ragged School and one of his pupils, Jim Jarvis, showed him the homeless and neglected children on the streets of London. Barnardo abandoned his studies and plans to become a medical missionary and opened the East End Juvenile Mission in1867. Money was tight and his backers kept a tight hold on the purse strings. One night a young lad asked to come in but was turned away as there was no room. Two days later he was found frozen to death. This had a profound effect on Barnardo and over the door of the first Boys Home in Stepney Causeway (opened 1870) was the sign “No destitute child ever refused admission”.
Barnardo married in 1873 and his in-laws gave the couple Mossford Lodge Barkingside as a wedding present. It quickly became the first Girls Village Home and it is still the Barnardo's headquarters. Barnardo believed that a children thrived in a family setting and so he began the process of ‘boarding out’ i.e. fostering. Foster parents had to provide certain minimum standards as set out by Barnardo. He also believed that the children were prisoners of their environment and had an uncertain future in Britain and so embraced the policy of child migration. Thomas John Barnardo died in 1905.
A really enthralling talk by someone who obviously loves his subject.
Report by Janet Welch