Slumming

by Koven, Seth

  17. Almost from its inception, the COS tried to curtail charities that offered food and shelter to all in need, regardless of the economic and moral status of the recipient.

  18. The distinction between the Central Office of the COS, dominated by a few full-time employed officers, and its various branches scattered throughout the metropolis is quite important. The COS files indicate that some local branches of the COS were much more tolerant of Barnardo than others. Because most histories of the COS focus on official pronouncement emanating from its Central Office, historians have tended to assume that the practices and ideologies of the COS were much more uniform than they were. Robert Humphrey’s study, Sin, Organized Charity, and the Poor Law (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995) notably departs from this historiographical tradition by examining the work of provincial committees.

  19. See Gillian Wagner, Barnardo (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979); see also her “Dr. Barnardo and the Charity Organisation Society: A Re-Assessment of the Reynolds-Barnardo Arbitration Case of 1877” (Ph.D. diss., London School of Economics, 1977). These two works provide superb accounts of the arbitration, the COS, and evangelical charity in London.

  20. See Alan Trachtenberg’s review of the 1974 exhibition held at the National Portrait Gallery: “The Camera and Dr. Barnardo,” Aperture, 19, no. 4 (1975): 72.

  21. Charles Booth, London North of the Thames: The Inner Ring, vol. 2 of Life and Labour of the People in London, Third Series: Religious Influences (London, 1902), 46–47.

  22. East London Observer (August 4, 1877), 7.

  23. See Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement, The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), chapter 9.

  24. It was the term Hicks, the former governor of the London Debtor’s Prison, used to describe Barnardo’s performance at the opening of a coffee palace in West London. G. M. Hicks to Ribton Turner, January 12, 1877, A/FWA/C/D31/1, COS Files and Papers.

  25. “Cant,” Temple Bar (October 1866), 410.

  26. T. J. Barnardo, Rescue the Perishing (London: Morgan and Scott, 1875), viii.

  27. Barnardo’s views on the relationship of fact and fiction, real life and art were not always consistent. See Night and Day (May 16, 1877), 60; and Night and Day (November 1, 1877), 121.

  28. Anna Shipton, Following Fully (London: Morgan and Scott, 1865; 2d. ed. 1872). For her ideas about facts and fictions, see especially iii.

  29. R. M. Ballantyne, Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure (London: J. Nisbet, 1884), preface. On Ballantyne’s life and work, in particular his North American adventure fiction in relation to Victorian masculinities, see Richard Phillips, Mapping Men and Empire: A Geography of Adventure (London: Routledge, 1997), esp. ch. 2.

  30. G. Holden Pike, Pity for the Perishing: The Power of the Bible in London (London: J. Clarke, 1884), 85.

  31. Pike made only minor modifications to Barnardo’s original, such as substituting “he” for “I” to produce a third person instead of first person narrative.

  32. See Mary Poovey, Making a Social Body: British Cultural Formation, 1830–1864 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

  33. COS case records also constitute a narrative genre. For some recent work on humanitarian narratives in the early nineteenth century, see Thomas Laqueur, “Bodies, Details and the Humanitarian Narrative,” in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); and Sonya Michel, “Dorothea Dix; or the Voice of the Maniac,” Discourse 17, no. 2 (Winter 1994–95).

  34. Evangelicals had played central roles in interpreting and popularizing the political economy of Malthus, Smith, and Ricardo and in applying these ideas to social policies from the 1820s to 1860s. The leader of the reform-minded Evangelicals, Lord Shaftesbury, also served as an early vice president of the COS. See Mowat, The Charity Organisation Society, (London, 1960) 16. Barnardo himself presented a paper at the 1876 meeting of the Social Science Congress.

  35. T. J. Barnardo, Something Attempted, Something Done (London: E. and J. F. Shaw, 1890), 37.

  36. Barnardo published the paper he presented to the Social Science Congress in October 1876 in Night and Day (January 15, 1877), 3.

  37. See diary of Charles Stewart Loch, typescript, entry for September 14, 1876. Goldsmith’s Library, Senate House, University of London.

  38. Daily Chronicle (October 20, 1877).

  39. Perhaps the most famous critics from within of the COS who ultimately broke with it were two of its earliest members, Samuel and Henrietta Barnett. See chapter 5 on the Barnetts.

  40. W. Y. Fullerton, J.W.C. Fegan, A Tribute (London, n.d. [c. 1925]), 9–13.

  41. J.W.C. Fegan to Mr. Scott, February 3, 1883, A/FWA/C/D68/1, COS Files and Papers.

  42. Fegan detailed the beginning of his career rescuing children in a small pamphlet which is remarkably similar to those produced by Barnardo. See J.W.C. Fegan, How I Found My First Arab (London, n.d.), 11.

  43. The honorable secretary for the Deptford COS described Fegan as “a gentleman of undoubted probity and having independent means.” Mr. Kemp to Ribton Turner, June 6, 1876, A/FWA/C/D68/1, COS Files and Papers. After the dissolution of the Deptford COS’s ties to Fegan, the Central Office investigated him more aggressively. See “Report of Charles Carthew’s Interview with Mr. Fegan to COS Central Committee on the Boys’ Home, Deptford” April 12, 1880, A/FWA/C/D68/1, ibid.

  44. See H. G. Henderson to Central Office, June 30, 1876, A/FWA/C/D10/1, ibid.

  45. Ralph Ellis to Ribton Turner, June 19, 1877, A/FWA/C/D10/1, ibid.

  46. See circular by C. T. Ackland, vice chairman, Kensington Committee, A/FWA/C/D10/2.

  47. Reynolds, Startling Revelations, 49–51.

  48. E. P. Thompson described Methodism as “psychic masturbation” in The Making of the English Working Class (London: Victor Gollancz, 1963), 368.

  49. Syrie Barnardo and James Marchant, Memoirs of the Late Dr. Barnardo (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1907), 33–34. On his lack of interest in women, see J. Wesley Bready, Doctor Barnardo (London, 1930), 166.

  50. James Eli Adams, Dandies and Desert Saints, Styles of Victorian Masculinity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 22.

  51. Letter to the editor from Thomas Barnardo, Tower Hamlets Independent (August 25, 1877).

  52. Barnardo wrote an indignant letter to the East London Observer on August 25, 1877, explaining the situation. “I understand that a very imperfect proof of a miserable photograph of myself, condemned when first taken, and never since circulated, has been recently exposed for sale in certain East End shops. The professed likeness is a wretched caricature…. I am compelled to authorize the publication of a carte-de-visite which shall faithfully depict my physiognomy for the satisfaction of those who are kind enough to care for the same either from motives of curiosity or feelings of regard” (6).

  53. On Lord Cairns involvement with Thesiger and Barnardo during the trial, see Cairns Papers, PRO/30/51/21 ff. 73–79 and PRO/30/51/9 ff. 36–38. See also Wagner, Barnardo, 171–172.

  54. “Thesiger’s Summing Up,” East London Observer (September 8, 1877).

  55. On Fitzgerald’s employment by the COS, see Alsager Hay Hill to Organising Department, COS, November 4, 1876, A/FWA/C/D10/1, COS Files and Papers. Wagner notes that Fitzgerald was employed by Charrington and was an important though not very effective witness against Barnardo. See Wagner, Barnardo, 141. On the social and cultural world of policemen as members of the “uniformed working class,” see Carolyn Steedman, The Radical Soldier’s Tale: John Pearman, 1819–1908 (London: Routledge, 1988), 58.

  56. Mrs. Andrews to Dr. Barnardo, September 13, 1876. Copy of letter in COS Files and Papers, A/FWA/C/D10/3.

  57. Tower Hamlets Independent (August 25, 1877).

  58. Edward Fitzgerald to George Reynolds, November 26, 1877, copy COS Files and Papers. A/FWA/C/D10/2.

  59. Manuscript fragment, no attribut
ion or date. A/FWA/C/D10/3, ibid.

  60. See chapter 1 for a detailed account of Greenwood’s casual ward experiences.

  61. Thomas Barnardo, “A Very Restless Night,” Night and Day (April 16, 1877), 40. Mrs. Barnardo reprinted parts of this story in Memoirs, 67–73.

  62. Barnardo, “A Very Restless Night,” 40.

  63. Ibid., 42.

  64. On the relationship between mimesis and nemesis, see Homi Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” October 28 (1984): 125–133. Incognito slumming reverses Bhabha’s trajectory: it is the powerful who “imitate” the powerless, albeit in order to gain knowledge about the powerless.

  65. Times (October 19, 1877), 6.

  66. Ibid.

  67. Henry Labouchère’s assault on Barnardo and his photographs anticipated his later campaigns, conducted in the pages of his magazine, Truth, against deceptive advertisements, what we would now call truth in advertising. On Barnardo’s photographs, see Truth (July 19, 1877), 92.

  68. Barnardo reprinted this leaflet in Night and Day (November 1, 1877), 143.

  69. The use of posed before-and-after photographs to demonstrate the effects of missionary work was not limited to Barnardo. In the United States, American Indians were subjected to similar photographic poses. See David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas 1995), ch. 4. My thanks to Paula Fass for pointing this out to me.

  70. On the general issue of children and sexuality, see James Kincaid, Child Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992); Graham Ovenden and Robert Melville, Victorian Children (New York: St. Martin’s, 1972); see also Carol Mavor, Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), ch. 1. For a powerful critique of Kincaid, see Carolyn Steedman, Strange Dislocations: Childhood and the Idea of Human Interiority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), esp. 166–168. Harry Hendrick argues that poor children in Victorian culture were viewed as both victims of and threats to society. Thus reformers emphasized that children were simultaneously dangerous sources of criminality and disorder, on the one hand, and sentimental objects of pity and sympathy, on the other. See Harry Hendrick, Child Welfare: England, 1872–1989 (London: Routledge, 1994), esp. pp. 7–12.

  71. T. J. Barnardo, A City Waif: How I Fished for and Caught Her (London: E. and J. F. Shaw, 1883), 6. The dates of publication of Barnardo’s chapbooks bore no relationship to the date during which the events recounted in them transpired. For this reason, it is impossible to determine whether Barnardo encountered Bridget before or after the arbitration.

  72. Ibid., 20–21.

  73. See John Lupton to C. J. Ribton-Turner, January 10, 1877; T. J. Barnardo to John Lupton, January 15, 1877; John Lupton to C. J. Ribton-Turner, January 20, 1877; and T. J. Barnardo to C. J. Ribton-Turner, January 24, 1877, A/FWA/C/D10/1, COS Files and Papers.

  74. This story appeared in W. Y. Fullerton, J.W.C. Fegan, A Tribute (London, n.d.), 53. A longer version appeared in a pamphlet published around 1883, Mr. Fegan’s Work Among Our Waifs and Strays by a Lady (London, n.d.), A/FWA/C/D68/13/10, COS Files and Papers, 12–13.

  75. See Valerie Lloyd’s perceptive and informative, The Camera and Doctor Barnardo (Hertford, 1974), 10–13. A woodcut of Rejlander’s “Poor Jo” later served as the symbol of the Ragged School Union (and its successor, the Shaftesbury Society) until World War II. On Rejlander’s pseudo-documentary photographs of ragged children, see Jadviga M. Da Costa Nunes, “O. G. Rejlander’s Photographs of Ragged Children: Reflections on the Idea of Urban Poverty in Mid-Victorian Society,” Nineteenth Century Studies 4 (1990): 105–136.

  76. See Stephanie Spencer, “Art and Photography: Two Studies by O. G. Rejlander,” History of Photography 9, no. 1 (January–March 1985); and Malcolm Daniel, “Darkroom vs. Greenroom: Victorian Art Photography and Popular Theatrical Entertainment,” Image 33 (1990): 1–2.

  77. O. G. Rejlander, Journal of the Photographic Society of London (April 21, 1858).

  78. Photographic Notes, as quoted in Edgar Yoxall Jones, Father of Art Photography: O. G. Rejlander, 1813–1875 (Greenwich, CT: Newton Abbot, David & Charles, 1973), 23.

  79. There is an enormous bibliography on this question. For a contemporary summary of the debate, see The Photographic Times (May 1877), 103. Some examples that are particularly germane to Barnardo’s photographs include the treatment of the issue in Edgar Yoxall Jones, Father of Art Photography: O. G. Rejlander, 1813–1875 (Greenwich, CT, 1973); Aaron Scharf, Art and Photography (London: Allen Lane, 1968), esp. chapter 5; Jeff Rosen, “Posed as Rogues, The Crisis of Photographic Realism in John Thomson’s Street Life in London,” Image 36, no. 3/4 (1993): 9–39; John Tagg, Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988); Griselda Pollock, “‘With my own eyes’: Fetishism, the Labouring Body, and the Colour of Its Sex,” Art History 17, no. 3 (September 1994): 342–382.

  80. Night and Day (November 1, 1877), 143.

  81. See the essays by Julian Treuherz and Susan Casteras in Julian Treuherz, Hard Times: Social Realism in Victorian Art (London: Lund Humphries, 1987); see also Ira Nadel and F. S. Schwarzbach, eds., Victorian Artists and the City: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Pergamon Press, 1980), esp. Sheila Smith’s essay, “‘Savages and Martyrs’: Images of the Ragged Poor in Victorian Art.”

  82. On Marks, see Rev. T. Mardy Rees, Welsh Painters, Engravers, Sculptors, 1527–1911 (Carnarvon: J. E. Southhalls, 1912), 104.

  83. Art Journal (June 1873): 467.

  84. On Frith’s means of finding various street roughs to sit for him as models for his paintings of the poor, see W. P. Frith, My Autobiography and Reminiscences (New York: Harper, 1888) esp. chapters 28, 30, and 39. On the model for the “Crossing Sweeper,” see pp. 208, 411–413.

  85. My discussion of Darwin’s photographs is drawn from Phillip Prodger, “Illustration as Strategy in Charles Darwin’s ‘The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals’” in Timothy Lenoir, ed., Inscribing Science: Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 140–181.

  86. See Janice Hart, “Photography, Pornography, and the Law: The First Fifty Years,” The Photographic Collector 4 (Winter 1983): 287–299. See also, Lynn Hunt, ed., The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Zone Books, 1993). On the sexual geography of Victorian London and its relationship to obscene images and texts, see Lynda Nead, Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), part 3. As Nead argues, “obscenity created a spatial economy in the city, which drew together into a dangerous proximity the centres of official power and their transgressive other” (150).

  87. In 1858, Dodgson posed and photographed in rags the daughter of the dean of Christ Church, Alice Liddell (the girl on whom he modeled the celebrated protagonist of Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass), thereby making her look the part of a street waif. Far from rescuing Alice, Dodgson’s image of her bared limbs and ragged clothes manipulated Victorian visual iconography to appear to place Alice in sexual danger. Carol Mavor argues that the photograph of Alice Liddell as a beggar child “allowed Carroll to play in a space of difference, a simulated difference of class,” which she sees as quite different from the effects of Barnardo’s photographs of real beggar girls. Carol Mavor, Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), esp. 39–42. See also Morton Cohen, Lewis Carroll, Photographer of Children: Four Nude Studies (Philadelphia: Philip H. and A.S.W. Rosenbach Foundation, 1978); Lindsay Smith, ‘Take Back Your Mink’: Lewis Carroll, Child Masquerade, and the Age of Consent,” Art History (September 1993): 369–385; Susan Edwards, “Pretty Babies: Art, Erotica,
or Kiddie Porn?” History of Photography 18, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 38–46.

  88. Mario Perniola, “Between Clothing and Nudity” in Michel Feher, ed., Fragments for a History of the Human Body (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 237.

  89. Raggedness could also be deployed to produce highly sentimental images of childhood innocence and insouciance. Mrs. H. M. Stanley called her first model “a dear little child in tatters” and called street children “little ragamuffins.” Mrs. Stanley was the wife of the famed African explorer. See Mrs. H. M. Stanley (Dorothy Tennant), London Street Arabs (London: Cassell and Company, 1890), 5.

  90. The Charity Organisation Society and the Reynolds-Barnardo Arbitration (London, 1878), 35.

  91. Night and Day (November 1, 1877), 130. This was originally published by Reynolds in Startling Revelations (1876), 7. The version of Reed’s testimony in the handwritten transcript of his testimony given at the arbitration in the files of the COS does not contain the phrase “After he had disfigured me.”

  92. The word “unnatural” was used by St. John Wontner. Given this sequence of events, it is difficult to understand why, in the version of Reed’s story that Reynolds published, Reed claimed that “in consequence of Dr. Barnardo having torn my clothes in pieces I was ashamed to walk through the streets to the Home.” Reynolds, Startling Revelations, 7. This raises the question of whether Reed was then forced to get out of the new uniform and put back on the ripped clothes.