Although Black women and girls have lived in Britain for centuries, their stories have frequently been overlooked or ignored by historians, filmmakers and politicians, to mention just a few. Diving into the archives of Barnardo’s – Britain’s largest children’s charity – instead offers a look into the lives of Black girls in the Victorian East End. Their diverse histories, in turn, provide invaluable insights into gender, race and childhood in Victorian Britain.

Who was Dr Barnardo?

Dr Thomas John Barnardo was born in Dublin in 1845 to a German father and English mother. As a young man, he aspired to become a medical missionary in China and travelled to London in 1866 to undertake training for the job. When Dr Barnardo arrived in London, however, a cholera epidemic was ravishing the city and devastating the already overcrowded East End. The widespread poverty and suffering in the area inspired Dr Barnardo to abandon his missionary plans, focusing instead on helping the poor and orphaned children of London. In line with this goal, he opened Hope House – the first Barnardo’s home – in Limehouse in 1868.

Barnardo’s Homes for Girls

To begin with, Barnardo’s children’s homes only catered to boys from the Victorian slums. In 1873, however, the first Girl’s Village Home was opened in Ilford, Essex. Set across 13 cottages that surrounded a communal village green, the home provided shelter, food and clothing to its young inhabitants. Despite these benefits, the homes sometimes reinforced Victorian gender ideals, which demonised female sexuality and confined women to the domestic sphere. Indeed, Dr Barnardo said he wished to transform each young resident into “a present to the next generation of a virtuous woman and a valuable servant”, which I believe demonstrates his focus on Victorian Christian morality and his belief that working-class girls were best suited to domestic service.

Race in Victorian Britain

In the June 1877 edition of Night and Day (the Barnardo’s fundraising magazine), Dr Barnardo described Africa as an intriguing “never world” full of “hidden mysteries”. For me, this shows how Dr Barnardo, like many Victorians, reduced the diverse cultures of Africa to a homogenous and romanticised playground for white explorers. In the late nineteenth century, social commentators superimposed their fascination with Africa onto descriptions of the East End. For example, in his 1861 study of London Labour and the London Poor, Henry Mayhew converged class and racial prejudices, writing that: ‘In passing from the skilled operative of the West-end, to the unskilled workman of the Eastern quarter, the moral and intellectual change is so great, that it seems as if we were in a new land, and among another race.’ Despite his subscription to aspects of Victorian racism, Dr Barnardo distinguished himself from many of his contemporaries by resolving to help young Black working-class girls.

Black Girls at Barnardo’s

Barnardo’s archives contain 40,000 photographs of children admitted to children’s homes, of whom there were 26 young Black girls. The rest of this blog post is dedicated to exploring the stories of five of these children.

Elizabeth Mouncey

Elizabeth Mouncey was the first Black child known to be fostered in England, after Barnardo’s launched a foster programme in 1887. Born in Commercial Street in the East End in 1885, Elizabeth had a difficult start in life: her father was an alcoholic who physically abused his wife, apparently due to his doubts over whether he was Elizabeth’s biological father, since both he and Elizabeth’s mother were fair skinned. Elizabeth was orphaned at a young age and was taken in by some neighbours in Spitalfields, where she lived for a few months. Since Elizabeth’s relatives were either unwilling or unable to take her in, Barnardo’s sent her on their “boarding out” or fostering scheme. This programme aimed to remove children from big cities, which Victorians viewed as morally corrosive environments. Young participants were instead implanted in well-respected rural families who would provide food, clothing and schooling. In 1891, Elizabeth went to live in Headcorn, Kent, with “respectable foster parents of the labouring class”. She stayed there for six years before returning to Barnardo’s to train as a cook. In the 1911 census, Elizabeth is registered as a cook in Croydon, south London, suggesting that the organisation saved her from the acute poverty she had experienced as a child. Barnardo’s last record of Elizabeth was in 1946, when she asked the charity to provide her with a birth certificate so that she could obtain a pension. At this point, she was single and living in south London.

Nancy, Florence and Elizabeth Smith

Nancy (age 12), Florence (age 9) and Elizabeth (age 9) arrived in London on 11th November 1899. They had been living in Sierra Leone with their two grandmothers when they were found by an Englishman from the Hyde Park area. According to the Englishman, the girls’ grandmothers were negligent and intended to sell the children into prostitution. Furthermore, he claimed that “They lived and slept among surroundings which meant bodily and spiritual ruin, and which, in the case of girls almost white, seemed specially revolting and sad.” In my opinion, this description demonstrates the Englishman’s colourism and belief in white supremacy, as he viewed the girls’ potential “spiritual ruin” as particularly tragic due to their light skin. These racist beliefs may have convinced the Englishman that the girls would be better off in Britain than Sierra Leone, so he brought them back to London with him and admitted them to the care of Barnardo’s. Since the Barnardo’s archives do not contain testimonies from the girls themselves, we can only imagine how unsettling it must have for Nancy, Florence and Elizabeth to be removed from their friends, family and home country by a complete stranger. Though little is known about their lives upon leaving Barnardo’s between 1904 and 1907, Nancy clearly struggled to make ends meet as her son Mark entered a Barnardo’s home in 1920. Being “rescued” by Barnardo’s, then, did not always guarantee a better life as an adult.

Fanny Jefferson

Fanny Jefferson was born in Limehouse in November 1882. Her father, Louis, was the son of an African father who had escaped slavery and a white English mother. Her mother, Emma, was a white woman who had two white children from a previous relationship and a further four with Louis, including their daughter Fanny. Louis worked as a labourer for the United Telephone Company but died in a work-related accident in April 1888 after a pole fell on his head. Although Emma sued the United Telephone Company for £500 in November 1888, she lost the case and was unable to support her six children. While the older two (white) children were taken in by their maternal family, Emma’s relatives refused to help her youngest children due to the colour of their skin. This demonstrates the brutal racism facing Black children in Victorian London, as even their relatives might be unwilling to raise them. Desperate, Emma applied for three of her children to be cared for by Barnardo’s. Only Fanny’s application was accepted, however, because she was deaf and was therefore considered more vulnerable than her siblings. Fanny’s younger sister, Florence, was admitted a year later. Like many girls from Barnardo’s, Fanny left the children’s home at the age of 18 to take up a job in domestic service. She never married and died in Kent in 1974 at the age of 92.

Closing thoughts

Until recently, histories of Black Britain often began in 1948, when the Empire Windrush arrived in Tilbury carrying settlers from the Caribbean. The stories of Black girls at Barnardo’s, however, provide evidence of the multi-ethnic communities that existed in London well before the mid-twentieth century. While these stories are a sobering reminder of the long history of racism in Britain, they also offer a fascinating look into the diverse histories of Black women in the Victorian East End, whose legacies live on today.

Author

Alice McKimm is Masters student currently investigating domestic violence in Britain after the First World War. She grew up in south London and loves reading about women’s roles in shaping the city, particularly in the nineteenth century. In her spare time, Alice enjoys visiting and volunteering at museums, baking cakes and going for runs.

Sources

Caroline Bressey, ‘Geographies of Belonging: white women and black history, Women's History Review’, 22:4 (2013), pp. 541-558.
Caroline Bressey, ‘Forgotten histories: three stories of black girls from Barnardo’s Victorian Archives’, Women’s History Review, 11: 3 (2002), pp. 351-374.
Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful of Delight (Chicago, 1992).
Patrick Butler, ‘Barnardo’s archives reveal early lives of UK’s first fostered children’, The Guardian (Friday 26 August 2016), https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/26/barnardos-archives-reveal-early-lives-of-uks-first-fostered-children
‘Elizabeth Mouncey’, Barnardo’s, https://www.barnardos.org.uk/black-history-month/elizabeth-mouncey