Imagined orphans: poor families, child welfare, and contested citizenship in London

Figure 1. A Punch cartoon from 1843 (vol. 4, p. 46) critiquing the New Poor Law of 1834, particularly the separation of parents and children within workhouses.

Figure 2. Florence Holder posed as a newspaper seller in the streets (June 1874).

Figure 3. Florence Holder as a servant (August 5, 1874).

Figure 4. The two younger Holder girls (June 1874).

Figure 5. "'Lost!' Alone in the streets of London" (1871). Barnardo's version of O. G. Rejlander's "Poor Jo" (ca. 1860).

Figure 6. A Barnardo contrast printed in his annual report for 1874-75. Based on earlier photographs, the drawings document a boy's condition before and after being rescued. The boy, Samuel Reed, later testified that Barnardo pressured him to smile for the photograph.

Figure 7. In this drawing based on photographs the artist accentuated the boy's physiognomic as well as moral transformation by switching from a mug-shot format to a portrait style. Published in Night and Day (February 1896): 9.

Figure 8. An anthropological-style drawing of boys attending one of Barnardo's tea meetings. Published in Night and Day (June 1887): 4.

Figure 9. The cover of Night and Day (December 1881), displaying the imperial influences on Barnardo's work.

Figure 10. "Little Mary." Based on a photograph, this drawing presented poor children as a race separate from the majority of the English population. Published in Night and Day (February/March 1881): 25.

Figure 11. "Once a Little Vagrant" and "Now a Little Workman." One of Barnardo's before-and-after contrasts, implying the boy's transformation into a productive worker.

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Figure 16. "The Thirty-first Annual Meeting of Dr. Barnardo's Homes" (Night and Day [November 1897]: 43). In the 1880s, Barnardo's began holding theatrical fund-raising events in which children performed on stage.

Figure 17. An overview of Barnardo's Girls' Village Home in Ilford, Essex (1877), which served as a model for children's institutions organized into cottage homes.

Figure 18. The lavatory of the North Surrey District School (ca. 1908). A typical and, to some, disturbing image of a district school. Short History of the North Surrey District School (n.p., ca. 1908), p. 33.

Figure 19. H. Saxon Snell's design for the Kensington and Chelsea District School main building, which included separate wards for casual and long-term inmates as well as separate school rooms and play areas for boys and girls. Marking a shift away from large barrack school designs, the school was eventually built as a model village designed by the architects A. & C. Harston with individual cottage homes for boys and girls. (Saxon Snell, Charitable and Parochial Establishments (London: B. T. Batsford, 1881), plate between 40 and 41.

Figure 20. "A Sketch Map of the Metropolitan Poor Law Schools," illustrating how most schools were miles from central London. From Walter Monnington and Frederick J. Lampard, Our London Poor Law Schools (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1898).