Hope in The City
The story is told of a group of ragged boys, slumped in the corner of the doorway of a broken-down building with no food, nowhere to sleep, and insufficient money for either. Their only option was to lie in wait for some unsuspecting victim and they didn’t have long to wait.
The short bespectacled man had no time to realise what was happening before he found himself flat on his back, whilst the boys scurried off with his hat, coat, watch and chain. Yet he hardly had time to stand up and dust himself down, before they were to be seen sheepishly making their way back to him, carrying his belongings. “Please, Sir,” began one of them, “We’re sorry, sir. We’d never ‘ave done it, sir, if we’d known it was you.”
Doctor Barnardo’s fame was spreading through all classes in the city of London as he undertook work to help many young boys and girls. Praise the Lord for His goodness and for the heart of Dr Barnardo and his wonderful service of work.
Dublin to London
Born and brought up in the city of Dublin, Thomas Barnardo did not express at an early age the caring characteristic for which he later became well known. At the age of sixteen, however, he started attending Christian meetings that were a far cry from the social activities he was used to. Gradually, and almost grudgingly, he began to recognise that there was some reality in the meetings and it wasn’t long before he came to know Christ for himself.
After his conversion, the young Barnardo filled his time with preaching, studying scripture, visiting slums, and teaching on Sundays at a ragged school. Just a few years later, he met the missionary to China, Hudson Taylor, and offered to join him in the work there. It was agreed that he should begin by studying medicine in London, and he arrived there full of enthusiasm to embark on his new career.
Rotten Eggs and Mud Pies
Whilst studying medicine, Barnardo did not shut himself off from the needs around him. He visited the poor, helped in the great Cholera epidemic, preached in the open air, and sought to bring people to his Saviour. His efforts were not always appreciated, however, and as a street Preacher, he was often an irresistible target for rotten eggs, mouldy fruit, and mud pies.
Once again Barnardo taught poor children in a ragged school, but his systematic work with children really began when he rented two cottages in Stepney. These were used for weekly children’s services, a special service for boys, and a reading room, designed to encourage the boys to read good books. But finding that many of them could not read at all, he enlisted a helper to read to them.
I‘ve Got No Home
Having decided not to go to China, Barnardo knuckled down to the work amongst the children of East London. His ambition of housing children was achieved when he rented a house and took in thirty-three lads. He always traced the inspiration for his work back to one winter’s evening, when he was about to leave the ragged school to go home, and noticed a little lad by the fire. The child begged to be allowed to stay in the warm, saying he had no home. Disbelieving the boy’s story, and also the idea that there were many such homeless children, Barnardo asked the young boy Jim Jarvis, to take him to them.
The sight of so many children huddled together for warmth under an iron roof was to haunt Barnardo for the rest of his life. “I felt so powerless to help these poor fellows, that I did not dare to interrupt their slumbers. It was to me a revelation and a message.”
Conversion of a Pub
Through his experience with the boys, Barnardo became convinced that drink lay behind much of the family distress in the East End. He set up a huge tent to seat 3000 outside the Edinburgh Castle public house and held nightly meetings where the gospel was preached. Enormous Crowds were attracted, hundreds came to faith in Christ and within months there were sufficient funds to buy the pub and convert it into a coffee palace and church.
He married at the age of twenty-eight and was now able to take girls in for the first time. Before long, however, it was obvious that the method that had worked so well for boys - dressing them alike, and subjecting them to a disciplined life – was a total failure for girls.
Barnardo’s Appeal
Barnardo, therefore, appealed to the public for funds to erect cottages where girls could be together as a family under the care of a Christian ‘housewife.’
In many ways, Barnardo was ahead of his time. Not only were the children cared for, but they were all taught a trade. The boys became wheelwrights, blacksmiths, bakers, or carpenters while the girls were trained for domestic service.
He knew most of his children personally and kept in touch with them after they left his care. When he died in 1905 at the age of sixty, he chose to be buried in the grounds of the girl’s village in Barkingside, which by this time had grown to sixty-five cottages housing 1250 girls. It is a wonderful tribute to Dr Barnardo that the charity he founded continues to this day.