Never had a home : a very commonplace history / by T.J. Barnardo.

  • Thomas John Barnardo
Date:
[1890?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Never had a home : a very commonplace history / by T.J. Barnardo. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    & 0?rg Commcttplste Hiaf.org. to say which of the three girls was the raggedest. Their flimsy patchwork of worth¬ less. and uncleanly rags was obviously in the last stages of dilapidation. Not one of the three could boast a pair of stockings, and the little blue toes of the youngest were peeping from the rents of the very fragment¬ ary old boots that she was wearing, boots of which the uppers appeared to adhere to the soles only by a miracle. In the case of the woman, it was manifest that one thin torn garment constituted her sole covering. One of her feet was tied up in rags, having been cut, as I afterwards learned, upon the road. The condition of this poor broken-down mother and her little ones v^as alike pitiable and repulsive. Alas, it is not a task for squeamish people to succour those who have fallen by the wayside in the fierce struggle for existence! It is often the most unplea¬ sant, as it is always the saddest of busi¬ nesses, to help those who have for a long time lived in the undercurrents of city misery and destitution. Let me therefore hastily pass on with the mere remark that the dreadful odour or lodging-house factor exhaled by the group was so overpowering that, inured though I am, I became after a few minutes actually