The Twelve Days of Christmas

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Ian Wakeling

A festive post written by one of The Children’s Society Archive team, Clare McMurtrie.

As the First Day of Christmas, or the 25th December, draws upon us we look at twelve Christmas traditions that have formed part of The Children’s Society’s Christmas celebrations for over a century, from the time when it was known as the ‘Waifs and Strays Society’. Discover twelve festive images and stories from The Children’s Society Archive, each one representing one of the Twelve Days of Christmas (or Twelvetide), as you open our visual Christmas calendar.

Stirring the Christmas pudding in The Society’s homes , c1940s

1 – Christmas pudding: Stir-up Sunday is an informal term in Anglican churches for the last Sunday before the season of Advent. The Christmas pudding is one of the essential British Christmas traditions and is said to have been introduced to the Victorians by Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. The meat-less version was originally introduced from Germany by George I in 1714. Traditionally children gathered together in the kitchen of some of The Society homes to stir the Christmas pudding on Stir-up Sunday. (Oxford English Dictionary, Second edition, 1989 (first published in New English Dictionary, 1917).

Children in one of The Society’s children’s homes in the 1940s alongside their Christmas tree

2 – Christmas tree: The custom of the Christmas tree developed in early modern Germany, with predecessors that can be traced to the 16th and possibly 15th century, in which devout Christians brought decorated trees into their homes. It acquired popularity beyond Germany during the second half of the 19th century. The photo above shows children in one of The Society’s children’s homes in the 1940s alongside their Christmas tree. (Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann (1978), Das Weihnachtsfest. Eine Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte der Weihnachtszeit (Christmas: A cultural and social history of Christmastide (in German). Bucher, p. 22.)

A large Christmas party, c1950s.

3 – Christmas party time: This photograph from the 1950s shows children from one of The Society’s homes enjoying tea at a large Christmas party.

Hanging up Christmas stockings, 1950s

4 – Christmas stocking: A tradition that began in a European country originally, children simply used one of their everyday socks, but eventually special Christmas stockings were created for this purpose. The Christmas stocking custom is derived from the Germanic/Scandinavian figure Odin. According to Phyllis Siefker, children would place their boots, filled with carrots, straw, or sugar, near the chimney for Odin’s flying horse, Sleipnir, to eat. Odin would reward those children for their kindness by replacing Sleipnir’s food with gifts or candy. (Siefker, Phyllis, Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men: The Origins and Evolution of Saint Nicholas, Spanning 50,000 Years (chapter 9, especially pages 171-173, 2006).

Children in a Society home in the 1940s receive a present from Father Christmas

5 – Father Christmas: This fascinating archive photo show eight small children in a Society home in the 1940s queuing to receive a present from Father Christmas, who is distributing toys from a Canadian Red Cross packing crate. (© Photo Press Limited)

Two girls looking at a nativity display in one of The Society’s homes, 1950s

6 – Nativity scene: The tradition of constructing nativity scenes first flourished in an Italian context in the Middle Ages, and dates back to St. Francis of Assisi, who created the first living representation of the nativity in 1223 in Greccio, Lazio. The scene designed by St. Francis lacked Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus, however, and only the ox, the donkey and the manger with straw present in the cave. The first known complete nativity scene is that kept in the Basilica of Santo Stefano in Bologna. (http://www.swide.com/art-culture/nativity-scene-5-things-to-know-about-history-and-origin/2014/12/21)

Wartime festive spirit

7 – Wartime Girl Guides: Eight Girl Guides from Maurice Home for Girls in Ascot, Berkshire, show wartime festive spirit pulling a cart full of wood along a road in 1945.

Christmas fundraising flyer, 1890

8 – Feed My Lambs: This fundraising flyer, depicting an adult Jesus with two young ‘waifs’, was issued in Our Waifs and Strays magazine in December 1890.

Christmas flyer, December 1900

9 – Our Family: This fundraising flyer from Our Waifs and Strays magazine in December 1900, features an angel and sleeping child. Alongside is a plea for donations to The Society’s funds to support its children.

Fundraising flyer, December 1911

10 – ‘A Christmas Gift’. An illustration in a fundraising flyer for Our Waifs and Strays magazine, December 1911, depicting the Dove of Peace being held by a child.

The Dove of Peace: According to the biblical story (Genesis 8:11), a dove was released by Noah after the flood in order to find land; it came back carrying an olive branch in its beak, telling Noah that, somewhere, there was land. Christians used Noah’s dove as a peace symbol.

Fundraising flyer, December 1917

11 – Christmas is the Children’s Festival: The fundraising flyer issued in Our Waifs and Strays magazine in December 1917, and features the Biblical image of mother and child.

Fundraising flyer, New Year 1912

12 – ‘They presented unto him gifts’: Twelfth Night is a festival, in some branches of Christianity marking the coming of the Epiphany. The Church of England, celebrates Twelfth Night on the 5th and “refers to the night before Epiphany, the day when the nativity story tells us that the three wise men visited the infant Jesus”. The fundraising flyer above was issued in Our Waifs and Strays magazine in the New Year of 1912, and is illustrated by Italian Renaissance artist Bernardino Luini’s ‘Adoration of the Magi’. (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993).

The First One Hundred Children – a new beginning

Posted on December 18, 2015 by Ian Wakeling

Today we have the first part of a blog post written by one of our volunteers, David Lamb. The second part that looks at a few of the individual stories of the first one hundred children will follow shortly.

The Waifs and Strays’ Society, the original name of The Children’s Society, was founded in 1881. Applications for children to be taken into the care of The Society started in February 1882 and are kept in case files for each child. This piece is an analysis of the first hundred case files, all started in 1882, followed by summaries of sample cases. There is considerable variation in the amount and quality of information in the files, many containing just the application form often only partially completed, with brief notes of any subsequent moves on the back of the form. Some files contain correspondence, often about maintenance payments.

Age, Sex and Location

69 boys and 31 girls made up the first 100 cases. They included two families of three siblings, and one pair of sisters and one pair of brothers. Almost half the children were 7, 8 or 9 years old. Five were babies under 2; thirteen were 14 years or older. The ages of many children were estimated, particularly in cases of abandonment. Four of the children were declared illegitimate, although several more may have been.

Two brothers in The Society’s care, c1890

All but five applications were from London, mostly from inner London, particularly the East End. The others were from Sussex (2), Kent, Oxford and Suffolk. There are multiple applications by H Thornhill Roxby, a young man of independent means from Clapton, who found many destitute boys found sleeping rough around inner London, and worked closely with the Rector of Spitalfields Church in the East-End.

Family Circumstances

Most of the children had lost at least one parent, usually their father – 24 were orphans. Sixteen fathers had died in accidents, mostly at work; nine of them drowned, a common risk then of working on the Thames. Tuberculosis features regularly as the cause of parental deaths, particularly for mothers. Sunstroke was responsible for two parental deaths while on military service in India.

There are six cases of child abandonment, generally early teenage boys being left to fend for themselves. Parental desertion is mentioned in six other cases, three cases of paternal desertion and one of a mother leaving her three children.

Poverty and the sheer struggle to support large families come across in most cases. There are a few cases of children becoming difficult to control and falling into “bad company” with their widowed mother or widower father out of the home working from early morning until late evening. Truancy is mentioned a couple of times. There is one application to avoid the physical behaviour an aunt.

An element of moral guardianship by the church authorities that referred cases to The Society is evident in several cases. Drunkenness is mentioned in six times, in one of which the father “went wrong”, the mother “drinks” and the sister leads a “bad life”. “Perniciousness” of her new home is referred to in the case of a girl whose father had drowned. Theft occurs in ten cases.

Crossing sweeper in 1884 (by R L Sirus, courtesy of The National Archives

The Children in Care

Most of the children initially went into the receiving homes in Clapton for boys and Dulwich for girls. They were then often transferred to other children’s homes, five of the first fifty going on to St Mark’s Home in Kendal, Cumbria. 22 went to foster homes, with five of them going to Dorset. Fifteen ran away from their placement. 42 eventually returned to their families or friends. Seven children emigrated, five to Canada and two to America. Six more were proposed or considered for emigration, but refused to go.

Employment

Compulsory school attendance had been introduced in 1880 for children aged 5–10 years. Ensuring children attended school proved difficult, as for poorer families it was more tempting to have them working if the opportunity to earn an extra income was available. Children under the age of 13 who were employed were required to have a certificate to show they had reached the educational standard. Many of the cases refer to children working in various jobs including crossing sweeper, working on sewers, and being in the shoeblack brigade.

This girl was just about to start her career in domestic service, 1910. During her 12 years at the Bolton-le-Sands Home, she would have been well trained for her new life.

Nineteen girls and twelve boys went on to become domestic servants, most of them well away from London. Nine boys went to sea, two of them in the navy, although one had to quickly abandon that career on account of acute seasickness. Other occupations mentioned were carpentry and hairdressing for boys and dressmaking for girls.

Part two of the blog will look at the stories of seven of the first one hundred children.

For information about The Children’s Society Archive’s ‘Hidden Lives Revealed’ web site: http://www.hiddenlives.org.uk/

or you can consult the Archive’s on-line catalogue: http://www.calmview.eu/childrensociety/Calmview

If you would would like to know about how The Children’s Society continues to change children’s lives today, visit the charity’s website: http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/

Fundraising, advertising and the First World War

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Ian Wakeling

We continue our series of blogs that look at the impact of the First World War on The Children’s Society. This post written by one of The Children’s Society Archive team, Clare McMurtrie, considers particular issues during the First World War – fundraising and advertising.

The Children’s Society’s Archive holds a fascinating collection of 523 fundraising flyers that were inserts in The Society’s former supporter’s magazine Our Waifs and Strays. The inserts date back to The Society’s beginnings in the 1880s, when it was known as the Church of England Waifs and Strays Society, and were often beautifully illustrated. The Society’s fundraising flyers chart not only the history of The Society itself, but also its place within history – from the workhouses and Poor Law of the nineteenth century, to the First and Second World Wars of the twentieth.

For Church and Country, October 1914

During the First World War fundraising was important to The Society (and other charities) as it sought to raise extra funds through advertising to support families affected by the War. Flyers included the one above from October 1914, which has a photograph of a young man in uniform who was formerly in the care of The Society, alongside the caption ‘For Church and Country’ inside a flag. Another First World War flyer is one which includes an illustration commissioned from Bernard Partridge. This insert was used in January 1918, at the tail end of the War, in the same month as British Premier and Liberal politician David Lloyd George (1863-1945) gave a speech to Trade Union delegates to outline British War Aims. The insert and its caption ‘Stick It!’ reflect the resilient and determined wartime spirit and the message of Lloyd George’s speech.

Sir John Bernard Partridge, known as Bernard, was born in London on 11th October 1861, the youngest son of Professor Richard Partridge and Fanny Turner. His uncle was John Partridge, Portrait Painter Extraordinary to Queen Victoria and he was educated at Stonyhurst College at the same time as Arthur Conan Doyle, before attending Heatherley’s and the West London School of Art.

Partridge had worked as a decorator of church interiors, but freelanced as a cartoonist. His first published work appeared in Moonshine, and he also contributed cartoons and illustrations to publications including Judy, Illustrated London News, Vanity Fair, Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News, Lady’s Pictorial, Pick-Me-Up, Quiver and The Sketch. On the recommendation of George du Maurier, grandfather of author Daphne du Maurier, Partridge first contributed to Punch in February 1891. He joined the staff later that year, going onto work for the magazine for over fifty years, producing political and joke cartoons as well as theatre caricatures. In 1910 Partridge succeeded Edward Linley Sambourne (1834-1896) as Chief Cartoonist, a position he held until his death.

Stick It! flyer, January 1918

Partridge’s style included being particular about figures in his cartoons and disliking using more than two in any cartoon, while tending to draw elaborate, statuesque figures in classical poses. The ‘Stick It!’ illustration is therefore an unusual example of his work in that it includes three figures; a Navy man, a soldier and a baby. Its message ‘To all at home’ was both a plea for donations at a time of economic hardship across the country and one of solidarity to reader’s plagued by war for four years. He was knighted in 1925 by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. Bernard Partridge died in London on 9th August 1945.

Browse through publications of Our Waifs and Strays from 1882: http://www.hiddenlives.org.uk/publications/waifs_and_strays/

Browse the Punch Magazine Cartoon Archive: http://www.punch.co.uk

Learn more about conflict and the First World War: http://www.iwm.org.uk/

For information about The Children’s Society Archive’s ‘Hidden Lives Revealed’ web site: http://www.hiddenlives.org.uk/

or you can consult the Archive’s on-line catalogue: http://www.calmview.eu/childrensociety/Calmview

If you would would like to know about how The Children’s Society continues to change children’s lives today, visit the charity’s website: http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/

Hidden Lives Revealed blog

Children in Care 1881-1981

Monthly Archives: December 2015

The Twelve Days of Christmas

The First One Hundred Children – a new beginning

Fundraising, advertising and the First World War