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In the arts and sciences 1866 was truly a vintage year. Henry Irving made his debut in London on the stage of the St. James's Theatre, while Smetana took Prague by storm with his tuneful The Bartered Bride and in Paris Degas painted his first ballet dancer. It was the year of Newman's Dream of Gerontius, of Ibsen's Brand and Dostoievsky's Crime and Punishment. Carlyle was installed as rector of Aberdeen University and Landseer, though he declined to serve, was elected president of The Royal Academy. In this year the laying of a telegraph cable under the Atlantic Ocean to send messages between Gt Britain and America was successfully completed. The task was carried out by Brunel's ship the SS Great Eastern. The Marquess of Queensbury codified the rules of boxing and M. Larousse produced his dictionary. Nobel invented dynamite and Mendel established the laws of heredity. The engineers on the Great Eastern at last completed the laying of the Atlantic Telegraph Cable, enabling Queen Victoria and President Andrew Johnson to exchange messages of good will. Great names these, great achievements sure of their place in history, so Dr. Barnardo is in illustrious company. The question of Parliamentary Reform dominated British politics in 1866 and, after his Liberal government had been defeated on a bill to widen the right to vote, Lord John Russell resigned and at the beginning of July Lord Derby formed a minority Conservative ministry, with Disraeli at the Exchequer replacing Gladstone, who had been forced in his budget to keep the income tax of 4d in the pound. London an the provinces saw many stormy political meetings for discussing Parliamentary reform as autumn gave way to winter and in the Ireland Barnardo knew so well insurrection was smoldering. Perhaps the most notable event of the year (though it attracted far less attention than the Queen's decision to open Parliament in person once again, or that quiet royal wedding at Kew when the popular Princess May of Cambridge married the Prince of Teck) was the holding of a Social Science Congress in Manchester under Lord Shaftesbury, soon to be brought closely in touch with our founder and the paper which really shocked delegates out of their complacency with the prevalence of infanticide in London. On the continent there were wars and rumors of wars. The well‑drilled Prussian army defeated the Austrians at Sadowa and Bismarck's Prussia swallowed up Schleswig‑Holstein, Hanover, Frankfurt and other German states to become, with the apparent exception of Napoleon Ill's France, the dominant power in Europe. Italy, too, took a further step towards unity and the islanders of Crete revolted against their Turkish overlords. This was a restless year of battle, murder, and sudden death as the map of Europe became redrawn. Yet England, too, had her share of disasters. Gales, floods, colliery explosions and railway accidents were in the news only too often. On New Year's day the St. Katharine's Docks were ablaze and later on much of Paxton's Crystal Palace at Sydenham, still the excursionist's paradise and the best concert hall in the South of England, was destroyed by fire. One of the finest new steamships, the London, foundered in a gale off Land's End on the first leg of the long voyage to Australia, with considerable loss of life and this prompted Queen Victoria to institute the Albert Medal for men who braved the elements to rescue their fellows. The failure of the firm Overend and Gurney sparked off a commercial panic in the City on "Black Friday" (May 11th) as a result of which many small firms went bankrupt: there was a fantastic run on cash by depositors at the savings banks and building societies, and it took a long time to restore confidence. For the first time foot and mouth disease took a heavy toll of English livestock, causing a shortage of beef. Much worse, there began in July a serious epidemic of cholera, which invaded England from the continent, where it had raged for the past year. The source of the contamination came on food that had been touched by an infected person. The disease can spread rapidly in areas with inadequate treatment of sewage and drinking water. The biggest cities were hit the hardest and in London 5,600 people died in a matter of days. It was seeing the destitute children, whose parents had fallen victims to this epidemic, wandering the London streets, This and four more events set Thomas Barnardo, who was just twenty one, on his life's work. In this year the new Cannon Street Station was opened, but despite the rapid development of the railways London was still dominated by horse drawn vehicles of every type. Such street lighting as there was in London by gas, and so crossing sweepers and lamplighters were an essential part of the busy London scene. Everyone who could afford a fire burnt coal in their grates, and for heating their ovens, so even in summer the air was always heavy with smoke, and the November fogs were a byword. Sanitation was still terrifyingly primitive and the gutter continued to be everybody's dustbin. It was a London on the one hand of the crinoline and the top hat, and on the other the city of ragged clothes and bare feet. The music halls were now getting into their stride yet the public houses were still relatively untamed by licensing laws; drink was too cheap and far too strong. Crime was rife. Gangs of pickpockets worked the west‑end streets methodically to amass loot that would have amazed the Artful Dodger, and eastward, down by the docks, smuggling, pilfering and much more than petty theft went on night and day all along the water's edge. There seemed an endless procession of boys and girls treading the primrose path to the Old Bailey. Was it surprising that there were more illegitimate children born in the capital than anywhere else in the world? Unlike most continental countries the state had as yet made no provision for education and a higher proportion of the population was illiterate than at any time in British history. The Crossness Pumping Station that had been built by Sir Joseph Bazalgette Chief Engineer to the Metropolitan Commission for Sewers as part of Victorian London's urgently needed main drainage scheme. It was officially opened by the Prince of Wales in April 1865. Prior to this London had suffering the big stink along with a serious epidemics of cholera which had been water borne killing many people. The drinking water was sourced from the River Thames, Bazalgette had been empowered to design and execute "a system of sewerage to prevent any part of the sewage within the Metropolis from passing into the River Thames in or near the Metropolis." The cholera epidemic had killed 10,738 inhabitants of London in the preceding 10 year period leaving many orphans to fend for themselves. by 1866 most of London was connected to a sewer network devised by Bazalgette. The East End was not included in the programme, and this area alone was ravaged by cholera in 1866/7. Afterwards people's attitudes to the causes of cholera changed, and there was a greater acceptance of the idea that the disease was indeed water-borne. Such was the London, which Thomas Barnardo observed, and these conditions persuaded him to abandon his plans for sailing to China as a missionary and concentrate instead on the waifs of London. To provide proper homes and a suitable training against a Christian background was a novelty, an entirely neglected sphere of social work which no statesman, no churchman had begun to consider, let alone tackle effectively. Idealist though he was, this young medical student tackled it as an urgent problem, as a practical man in the part of London he knew best. He never once looked back and before long this indefatigable pioneer had made the name of Barnardo the hall‑mark of compassion for those boys and girls who had known no love until they came to his care.
Some typical admissions in the year 1874 Dr. Barnardo called them his street Arabs A letter to Disraeli
BARNARDO, Dr Thomas John
(1845-1905), Sources: |
