Page images
PDF
EPUB

DR. BARNARDO: THE FATHER OF "NOBODY'S CHILDREN."

THE

PART I. GENESIS.

I. JIM.

The

HE world knows little of messengers of God. The Royal Albert Hall was filled last Midsummer Day by a brilliant and imposing audience. The heir to the throne of the British Empire was there with the Princess of Wales to do honor to the work of the father of "Nobody's Children." Duke of Sutherland was in the chair, and the Duchess, the uncrowned queen of North Britain, presented the prizes. The picked flower of English society, philanthropic and imperial, crowded the splendid hall. Everything that rank and beauty, art and music, discipline and enthusiasm, could effect was done, and done admirably, to insure the success of an appeal made for one of the worthiest causes ever submitted to the British public. It was a magnificent tribute to a magnificent work, one of the most distinctive of the glories of modern England.

And yet in the whole of that brilliant assemblage, of all those cheering thousands, was there more than one who, in the moment of assured triumph, remembered the humble messenger of God by whom the seed of the Word was brought as the fertilizing pollen is brought by the insect to the flower, from which the imposing congeries of benevolent institutions associated with the name of Dr. Barnardo have sprung? Dr. Barnardo, no doubt, remembered him well. But to the multitude he was as if he had never been. The very fact of his existence has perished from the memory of man. But the work, in the foundation of which he played so momentous a part, looms ever larger and larger before the eye of all.

But who was he, this messenger of the Lord? His name was Jim-James Jervis he said it was,

but he was only known as Jim. He was born when all England rang with the fool frenzy of the Crimean war, but he did not emerge into the light of history until nearly ten years later, just after the roar of the cannon in the war with Denmark announced the opening of the great world-drama of the unification of Germany.

No one knows where he was born, nor exactly when; nor has any one been able to trace his family belongings. He never knew his father. His mother was a Roman Catholic who was always sick, and who died in a workhouse infirmary, Jim looking on with wonder at the black coated priest whose apparition at the deathbed of his mother was the immediate precursor of her disappearance from the world.

When about five years old, Jim, being alone in the world and not liking the restraint of the workhouse school, made a bolt for liberty, and, succeeding, began independent existence as a free Arab of the streets. From that point his history is pretty clear, and may be read in an autobiographical interview which is not without a certain historic interest. For Jim, little Jim, may yet be found to have played a more important part in the history of our epoch than nine-tenths of the personages who figure in "Debrett," or even than most of the chosen few who are selected for immortality by Leslie Stephen and the editors of "The Dictionary of National Biography." Here, then, is his life story from five to ten, as told to an interviewer thirty years ago after coffee had loosened his tongue and kindly words had won his confidence:

"I got along o' a lot of boys, sir, down near Wapping way; an' there wor an ole lady lived there as wunst knowed mother, an' she let me lie in a shed at the back; an' while I wor there I got on werry well. She wor werry kind, an' gev' me nice bits o' broken wittals.

[graphic][merged small][merged small][subsumed]

Arter this I did odd jobs with a lighterman, to nelp him aboard a barge. He treated me werry bad-knocked me about frightful. He used to trash me for nothin', an' I didn't sometimes have anything to eat; an' sometimes he'd go away for days, an' leave me alone with the boat."

"Why did you not run away, then, and leave him?" I asked.

[ocr errors]

"So I would, sir, but Dick-that's his name, they called him 'Swearin' Dick'-one day arter he trashed me awful, swore if I ever runned away he'd catch me an' take my life; an' he'd got a dog aboard as he made smell me, an' he telled me, if I tried to leave the barge the dog 'ud be arter me; an', sir, he were such a big, fierce un. Sometimes, when Dick were drunk, he'd put the dog on me, 'out of fun,' as he called it; an' look 'ere, sir, that's what he did wunst." And the poor little fellow pulled aside some of his rags, and showed me the scarred marks, as of teeth, right down his leg. Well, sir, I stopped a long while with Dick. I dunno how long it wor; I'd have runned away often, but I wor afeared, till one day a man came aboard, and said as how Dick was gone-listed for a soldier when he wor drunk. So I says to him, 'Mister,' says I, will yer 'old that dog a minit?' So he goes down the 'atchway with him, an' I shuts down the 'atch tight on 'em both; and I cries, "Ooray!' an' off I jumps ashore an' runs for my werry life, an' never stops till I gets up near the meat market; an' all that day I wor afeared old Dick's dog 'ud be arter

me.

[ocr errors]

"Oh, sir,” continued the boy, his eyes now lit up with excitement, "it wor foine, not to get no trashing, an' not to be afeared of nobody; I thought I wor going to be 'appy now, 'specially as most people took pity on me, an' gev' me a penny now an' then; an' one ole lady, as kep' a tripe an' trotter stall, gev' me a bit now an' then, when I 'elped her at night to put her things on her barrer, an' gov' it a shove 'ome. The big chaps on the streets wouldn't let me go with 'em, so I took up by myself. But lor, sir, the perlice wor the wust; ther wor no getting no rest from 'em. They always kept amovin' me on. Sometimes, when I 'ad a good stroke of luck, I got a thrippeny doss, but it wor awful in the lodging-houses o' summer nights. What with the bitin' and the scratchin', I couldn't get no sleep; so in summer I mostly slep' out on the wharf or anywheres. Twice I wor up before the beak for sleepin' out. When the bobbies catched me, sometimes, they'd let me off with a kick, or a good knock on the side of the 'ead. But one night an awful cross fellow caught me on a doorstep, an' locked me up. Then I got six days at the workus, an' arterwards runned away; an' ever since I've bin in an' out, an' up an' down, where I could; but since the cold kem on this year it's been werry bad. I ain't 'ad no luck at all, an' its been sleepin' out on an empty stomick most every night."

"Have you ever been to school?" I asked.

"Yes, sir. At the workus they made me go to school, an' I've been into one on a Sunday in Whitechapel ; there's a kind benelman there as used to give us toke arterwards."

[blocks in formation]

room, and with a timorous glance into the darker corners where the shadows fell, then sinking his voice into a whisper, added, "HE'S THE POPE O' ROME."

II. THE DOCTOR.

So much for Jim. At the time when this interview took place Jim was ragged, dirty, pinched with hunger. He was one of the most disreputable little imps Providence ever employed to carry its message. But he did the work, and very effectively too, as will speedily appear.

The other party to that interview was a young man who had but just attained his majority, whose name was entered in the student books of the London Hospital as Thomas John Barnardo. He was a serious young man, about as unlike the typical Bob Sawyer as it is possible to imagine. And yet perhaps not so unlike. For Bob suffered chiefly from an absurdly wasteful method of working off excess of vitality. There are French physicians who maintain that girls at certain periods in their develop. ment display tendency which, if it is not diverted to mysticism or religion, will find satisfaction in vice; so there is some possibility that the two students, variously known as Sawyer and Barnard ›, are both object lessons as to the excess of energy, in one case operating to the waste of tissue by intemperate excessive indulgence, in the other to the waste of nervous energy by excessive sacrifice in using every moment for the helping of others. In both cases there is relief, but there is this difference: relief à la Sawyer is relief by suicide, relief à la Barnardo is relief by salvation.

He

Dr. Barnardo is a singular instance of the benefits which result from a judicious cross. His father was born in Germany, of Spanish descent. His mother was born in Ireland, of English blood. himself is thus a curious hybrid of German, Spanish, English and Irish. He was born in Ireland, a Protestant of the Protestants. He is not an Orangeman, but William of Ballykilbeg himself is not more valiant in the faith of the Reformation than Dr. Barnardo. Ireland may or may not be a fragment of the lost Atlantis, but it does undoubtedly possess an extraordinary faculty of intensifying human sentiment and human passion. If Dr. Barnardo had been born in England he would probably have been much more lukewarm in his hostility to Rome He would also in all probability have been less passionate in his devotion to the children.

When quite a youth he came under deep conviction of sin, experienced the change called conver sion, and in the first ardor of his zeal he resolved to dedicate himself to the cause of Chinese missions. Desiring to attain medical knowledge as well as theological training, he went to London, and entered himself as student at the London Hospital. He had hardly commenced working when the cholera broke out. A wild stampede took place, leaving ample room for volunteers. Dr. Barnardo, although then only a raw student, volunteered for cholera service. His offer was eagerly accepted,

[graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small]

less and unseen, toiled o'er his types one poor unlearned young man. That place was dark, unfurnished and mean, yet there the freedom of a race began. Barnardo's ragged-school was worse than Garrison's printing office:

Boards had been placed over the rough earth. The rafters had been whitened, and so had the walls; but much use of gas, together with the accumulated dirt deposits of three or four years, had changed the color to a dingier hue. Yet I and my student friends who helped me thought it an admirable room, for was it not water

must be admitted, with the slightest suspicion of the importance of the message with which he was charged. Neither had he come from any desire to be taught, as he frankly admitted. Another lad had told him of the school, or, as Jim put it, "He tell'd me to come up 'ere to the school to get a warm, an' he sed p'raps you'd let me lie nigh the fire all night." It was a raw winter night and a keen east wind was shivering through the dimly lighted streets, when, all the scholars having left the room, little Jim still lingered, casting a longing look

at the fire. He had neither shirt, shoes nor stockings. Small sharp eyes, restless and bright as a rat's, gleamed out of the careworn features of an old man which surmounted the spare stunted frame of a child of ten. It was the child, not so much of the slum, which is the fœtid lair of the savage of civilization, as of the street-the desert of the city Arab.

The doctor having finished his teaching, and weary enough with the nervous exhaustion of keeping the attention of a pack of young rowdies, somewhat peremptorily ordered the boy home. Then Jim pleaded piteously to stay. sir, do let me stop. I won't do no 'arm."

66

'Please,

His incredulity was natural. How often I remember that marvelous tale of what could be seen here and there dissipated into thin air when I asked to be taken to see them. Jim, however, knew his facts, and could produce his vouchers.

After drinking as much coffee as he could swallow he imparted to his teacher-who was now the taught, learning a far greater lesson than he had ever given the reasons why he was sure that Jesus Christ was in very deed the Pope of Rome, for hadn't his mother crossed herself when she named the Pope, and the black dressed man who came when she died crossed himself when he said Jesus, and was that not enough proof to satisfy any one?

Stop in the schoolroom! The idea seemed absurd Now, although from his youth up the Pope of Rome to Barnardo.

[blocks in formation]

has been Antichrist in Barnardo's eyes, at that moment it was absolutely nothing to him whether the boy was a Roman Catholic or a Jew or a Mohammedan. He was moved by one fact onlythe poor little chap's utter friendlessness. His touching confidence in the strange teacher when he found he was likely to be his friend fairly took Barnardo's heart captive. So let the Don't-Live Nowheres sleep where they might, Jim must at once without losing a moment be rescued from that

"Ain't got no friends. Don't live nowhere." And when little Jim had thus delivered his ines-heathen darkness. So he turned to and told little sage, the man to whom it was delivered was sure he was lying. For the young medico, with all his experience of Stepney, had at that time never heard of the great Bedouin tribe of the Don't-Live-Nowheres.

III. WHERE THE DON'T-LIVE-NOWHERES SLEEP. Assuming his most inquisitorial air, the young doctor proceeded to cross-examine Jim in order to convict him of scandalous falsehoods. But Jim was a witness of truth, and not to be confounded. He told his simple story and stuck to it, begging lustily to be allowed to sleep all night by the fire, which seemed--no wonder-so fascinating in its light and warmth.

And as he was speaking a sense of the meaning of his message suddenly smote the young medico to the heart. For the first time in his life there rushed upon him with overwhelming force this thought: "Is it possible that in this great city there are others also homeless and destitute, who are as young as this boy, as helpless, and as ill prepared as he to withstand the trials of cold, hunger and exposure?" Is it possible? He must promptly put it to the proof.

“ Tell me, my lad, are there other poor boys like you in London without a home or friends?"

He replied promptly: "Oh! yes, sir, lots-'eaps on 'em; more'n I could count."

Now the young Barnardo did not like to be hoaxed. So being of a practical turn of mind he bribed Jim with a place to sleep in, and as much hot coffee as he could drink, if he would take him there and then-or at least after the coffee had been drunk to where the Don't-Live-Nowheres sleep.

Jim as graphically as he knew how the story of the Passion of our Lord. The lad was interested, for the tale was new, and to him it might have been the story of a poor bloke in the next alley. But when it came to the crucifixion, little Jim fairly broke down, and said, amid his tears, Oh, sir, that wor wuss nor Swearin' Dick sarved me!"

66

At last, half an hour after midnight, they sallied forth on their quest for the sleeping quarters of the Don't Live-Nowheres. Jim trotted along leading his new made friend to Houndsditch, and then diving down the shed like alley to the 'Change that leads by many passages from Petticoat Lane. Here they were at last, but where were the Don't-LiveNowheres? Barnardo thought that he had caught Jim out. There was not a soul to be seen. He struck matches and peered about under barrows and into dark corners, but never a boy could he discover. "They durstn't lay about 'ere," said Jim in excuse, cos' the p'licemen keep such a werry sharp lookout all along on these 'ere shops. But we're there now, sir. You'll see lots on 'em if we don't wake 'em up."

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »