Waif stories in late nineteenth-century England

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 52, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 67-98

  Davin, Anna ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34247736454     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/2001.52.67     Document Type: Review

References (222)

1. Anna Davin, 'What is a Child', in Anthony Fletcher and Stephen Hussey, eds, Childhood in Question, Manchester UP 1999;
2. Anna Davin, Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in London, 1870-1914, Rivers Oram, 1996.
3. This point is made by Nancy Cult, Ministering Angels, a Study of Nineteenth Century Evangelical Writing for Children, Five Owls Press, 1979, p. xi.
4. In a separate, and later, genre of books middle or even upper-class children manage independently. In E. M. Green, Left to Themselves (Wells Gardner, Darton, 1900), for instance, four children are left in impoverished circumstances after the death of their father, whose family they know nothing of. They live with a housekeeper on a small income; the eldest, office boy for a publisher, turns out to be a baronet and they are welcomed back by the family with whom their father had quarrelled. There is a sympathetic clergyman, but conversion is not in the picture.
5. C.f. E. Ferguson Black, Allen Ruthven, Knight, Religious Tract Society (henceforth RTS), 1907.
6. Hesba Stretton (pseudonym of Sarah Smith), Jessica's First Prayer, RTS, 1873, p. 42.
7. Cutt, Ministering Angels;
8. J. S. Bratton, The Impact of Victorian Children's Fiction, Croom Helm, London, 1981.
9. For instance James Janeway, A Token for Children: an exact account of the Conversion, Holy, and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths of several Young Children (1671 and 1672).
10. See Bratton, Victorian Children's Fiction (especially p. 34);
11. Paul Sangster, Pity My Simplicity: the Evangelical Revival and the Religious Education of Children, 1738-1800, Epworth Press, London, 1963 (especially chap. 3);
12. Gillian Avery, 'The Puritans and their Heirs', in ed. Gillian Avery and Julia Briggs, Children and their Books: a Celebration of the Work of Iona and Peter Opie, Oxford, 1989 (especially pp. 106-17);
13. Ralph Houlbrooke, 'Death in Childhood: the Practice of the "Good Death" in James Janeway's A Token for Children', in Fletcher and Hussey (eds), The Child in Question;
14. and Mary-Clare Martin, 'Children and Religion in Walthamstow and Leyton, c.1740-c.1870', PhD thesis, University of London, 2000.
15. See Davin, Growing Up Poor, 'Versatile Households', pp. 38-43;
16. also Ellen Ross, Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1993;
17. and Andrew August, Poor Women's Lives: Gender, Work and Poverty in Late-Victorian London, Associated University Presses, London, 1999, especially chap. 1.
18. See Davin, Growing Up Poor, pp. 157-64.
19. In Roland Leigh, the Story of a City Arab, RTS, 1857 (first serialized in Leisure Hour and very much concerned with religion),
20. George E. Sargent quotes Hector Gavin's Sanitary Rumblings (1848) on the conditions which bred typhus fever, and the 1857 report of Dr Letheby, London Medical Officer of Health (pp. 125, 290).
21. Published in four volumes (1861-2) as London Labour and the London Poor.
22. Although The True History of a Little Ragamuffin resembles a waif novel, religion is not a central theme. Greenwood goes into considerable detail on the daily life, relationships and survival of street children. See also his In Strange Company, 1873
23. and The Little Raggamuffin, Ward Lock [1884];
24. and S. R. Crockett, Cleg Kelly: Arab of the City, Smith Elder, 1896.
25. Greenwood's The Seven Curses of London, 1869, is based more on dramatised anecdotes and figures.
26. See Mary Carpenter, Reformatory Schools for the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes, Gilpin, 1851;
27. Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper), Speeches of the Earl of Shaftesbury upon Subjects Having Relation chiefly to the Claims and Interests of the Labouring Class (1868), Irish University Press, Shannon, 1971;
28. J. W. Bready, Doctor Barnardo, Physician, Pioneer, Prophet: Child Life Yesterday and Today, 1930;
29. Davin, 'When is a Child not a Child?', pp. 44-8.
30. See George K. Behlmer, Child Abuse and Moral Reform in England, 1870-1908, Stanford University Press, 1982. A related campaign also reflected in waif fiction was that against training and working children in circuses.
31. See Brenda Assael, 'Sensational Imbalance: the Child Acrobat and the Mid-Victorians', in An Age of Equipoise?, ed. Martin Hewitt, London 2000; and her forthcoming book, especially chapter 6 'Circus Children and Moral Panics'.
32. Hesba Stretton, one of the most successful waif novelists, supported emigration, which is proposed in The Storm of Life, RTS, 1876,
33. and figures in the happy endings of Little Meg's Children, RTS, 1868,
34. and Lost Gip, RTS, 1873;
35. see also Cutt, Ministering Angels, pp. 140-1. Stretton was also a strong campaigner for the prevention of cruelty to children, through her books and through the society which she helped to found.
36. Katherine Chorley, Manchester Made Them, Faber and Faber, London, 1950, pp. 175-6.
37. Cutt, Ministering Angels, p. 135.
38. Books used at special Services of Song included Stretton's Jessica's first Prayer, 1867;
39. Mrs Walton's Christie's Old Organ, or, Home Sweet Home, RTS, 1874
40. and Little Dot, RTS, 1873;
41. Hocking's Dick's Fairy (Warne, 1883)
42. and Amy Le Feuvre's Teddy's Button (RTS, 1904). A special edition of Mrs Walton's Little Dot was produced for use in Services of Song in the 1880s.
43. See Cutt, Ministering Angels, n. 22, p. 205; and RTS advertisements.
44. In my undated copy of 'Brenda' (Mrs Castle Smith), Froggy's Little Brother (Shaw, 1875), 'Books Suitable for Sunday School Rewards' listed at the back include several waif novels, priced at two shillings and sixpence, as do the 'Eighteenpenny Present Books'.
45. The Methodist minister Silas Hocking felt compelled to write Her Benny, a Story of Street Life, Warne, 1879 (based on his years in Liverpool) after distributing prizes for the Sunday School Union and noticing that one, 'a story of street life, somewhat on the lines of Jessica's First Prayer',
46. 'was not true to life or to fact': Silas K. Hocking, My Book of Memory: a String of Reminiscences and Reflections, 1923, p. 79. There is a Silas Hocking Memorial Hall off Whittington Park, in Upper Holloway, London.
47. Hocking, Book of Memory, p. 82.
48. Leonora Eyles, The Ram Escapes: the Story of a Victorian Childhood, 1953, p. 43.
49. 'A sweet and touching little book for children, and if it does not make them cry, it will give the parents a chance to lift their hearts in gratitude to that God who careth for them': Weekly Review, quoted in RTS book advertisements at the end of my undated copies of Stretton, Lost Gip (1873),
50. and Mrs Walton, Christie's Old Organ (1874) (inscription 1917).
51. For example, 'Brenda', Froggy's Little Brother (1875)
52. is advertised in the back pages (paginated separately) of Catherine Shaw, Dickie's Secret (published by Shaw, 1887; my edition undated) as follows: p. 4 in a 'new presentation edition' at 3s 6d ('This edition of 'Brenda"s popular story, containing twenty-three illustrations and printed in an enlarged size, should make one of the most attractive Present Books of the Season'); p. 6, still at 3s 6d, under 'Brenda"s Stories; p. 5 under 'New and Attractive Juveniles' at eighteen pence ('This cheap cloth edition of one of the most popular stories of its kind should prove a welcome addition to Sunday School rewards and gift books'); and p. 16 as one of Shaw's Home Stories, 6d each with coloured wrapper and illustrations.
53. Athenaeum reviewer, on 'Brenda', Nothing to Nobody, 1875, 2s 6d,
54. quoted in my undated edition of 'Brenda', Froggy's Little Brother (1875).
55. Wesleyan Sunday School Magazine reviewer, on Jennie Harrison, Little Boots Grown Older, or, the Soldier of the Cross (1875), 2s 6d,
56. quoted in my undated edition of Shaw, Dickie's Secret.
57. Sentinel reviewer, on Silas Hocking, 'Chips', Joe and Mike, Warne (1890), (price 2s 6d),
58. quoted in the back of my Her Benny (1879) (undated; 1903 inscription).
59. Church Sunday School Chronicle reviewer, on Mrs Lucas Shadwell, Maggie's Mistake, or Bright Light in the Clouds, 1887, 2s 6d,
60. quoted in my undated edition of Shaw, Dickie's Secret.
61. Woman's Work reviewer, on Out in the Storm, or, The Little Messengers, 1883, 1s,
62. quoted in my undated edition of Shaw, Dickie's Secret.
63. Nonconformist, on Silas Hocking, 'Chips', Joe and Mike,
64. quoted in the back of my Her Benny (1879) (undated; 1903 inscription).
65. For a helpful discussion of readers' reactions, see Bratton, Victorian Children's Fiction, introduction.
66. See Cutt, Ministering Angels, pp. 141-3 (Stretton), pp. 157-8 (Mrs Walton);
67. and Bratton, Victorian Children's Fiction, pp. 89-91.
68. Cutt, Ministering Angels, p. 135.
69. However, 'young and inexperienced' and 'hundreds of miles away from London', Hocking was unable to negotiate a royalty rather than a down payment. His publishers, Frederick Warne, gave him £20, and promised 'not to forget him' if the book proved a success. A further ten pounds was all he received! Later, because of Hocking's opposition to the Boer War, booksellers refused for a time to stock or display his books: Hocking, Book of Memory, pp. 82-3, 183.
70. Cutt, Ministering Angels, p. 151,
71. quoting Henrietta Keddie, Three Generations: the Story of a Middle class Scottish Family, 1911, pp. 341-2;
72. and p. 144, quoting Aunt Judy's Christmas Volume for 1877, p. 511 ('I can't wait till I get to the end . . . Ain't she a dear little girl? Wouldn't you have loved her? Shall I show you the pictures?')
73. Herbert Read, The Innocent Eye, 1933, pp. 46-7,
74. cited Cutt, Ministering Angels, p. 143.
75. Eyles, The Ram Escapes, p. 43.
76. Chorley, Manchester Made Them, 1950, pp. 175-6.
77. Winifred Frances Peck (born Knox c. 1885), A Little Learning, or a Victorian Childhood, Faber and Faber, 1952, pp. 30-1. The book was a requested birthday present, but she wasn't sure of title or author.
78. When her 'poor puzzled mother' came back with Silas Hocking's Her Benny (1879)
79. instead of Mrs Molesworth's Herr Baby (1881), and with Hans Andersen's 'tragic mermaid and weeping mothers' instead of Grimm's 'bears and birds, . . . princes and princesses'; she 'did not dream of explaining or complaining'.
80. Gerald Brenan, A Life of One's Own, 1962, p. 46.
81. Eileen Soper, The Green Years, Christchurch (N.Z.), 1969, p. 12.
82. Hocking, Book of Memory, p. 83.
83. Mary E. Tongue, 'The Books they Choose when they belong to a Sunday School Library', Girls' Own Annual 43: 10, 1921-2, p. 531,
84. quoted Cutt, Ministering Angels p. 156. Tongue was herself the author of devotional booklets published by RTS in the 1930s.
85. My copy of Stretton's Alone in London (1869) was presented to Dorothy Osborne in 1937, Whitton Baptist 1st prize.
86. Cutt notes that a Braille copy of Jessica's First Prayer was a favourite at the Blind School in Brantford, Ontario, still in the 1930s: Cutt, Ministering Angels, p. 135.
87. Kelly Boyd, Fiction for the Working Lad, forthcoming. For the history of children's magazines (and their bifurcation),
88. see Kirsten Drotner, More Next Week: English Children and their Magazines, 1741-1945, Aarhus 1985.
89. L. T. Meade, Dot and Her Treasures, Shaw, 1879, p. 3. Slavey's name seems to censure such work, but only for a child perhaps: at the end of the book, when Dot has died and the two boys are 'men doing men's work', Slavey 'works as hard for her husband and children as she once did for Dot and the boys'.
90. 'Brenda', Froggy's Little Brother, 1875.
91. See also Stretton, Little Meg's Children, 1868. Meg is at first only 'mother'; then when the money left by their mother has run out and their seafaring father is still not back, she is taken in as a maid by kindly Mrs Blossom, which means she can keep their little household going.
92. See Bratton, Victorian Children's Fiction
93. and Cutt, Ministering Angels.
94. A similar approach was taken by the Girl's Own Paper, started in 1882 and published by the RTS, which explicitly aimed to purvey a particular version of (fairly) pious girlhood across class. I don't think it carried waif fiction, though Meade wrote for it.
95. George E. Sargent, Roland Leigh, the Story of a City Arab, RTS, serialized 1857 in The Leisure Hour, reprinted 1878.
96. Advertisement from my copy of Christie's Old Organ (1874), RTS, n.d., 1880s, under heading "The Boy's Own Series'.
97. Hocking, My Book of Memory, pp. 73-8. Hocking expresses sympathy with the workers (p. 74), but he clearly opposes the strike rhetoric and activities.
98. Flora Thompson, Lark Rise To Candleford, Oxford University Press, 1954, pp. 277-8
99. (2nd part, published as Over To Candleford, 1942.)
100. Frank Bullen, Confessions of a Tradesman, 1908, pp. 22-3.
101. Mrs Edmund Juxon Whittaker, Rag and Tag: a Plea for the Waifs and Strays of Old England, Partridge [1878], chap. 6.
102. Hocking, Her Benny, 1879, chap. 12.
103. Hocking, Her Benny, 1879, p. 2.
104. Stretton, Little Meg's Children, 1868, chap. 1.
105. Walton, A Peep Behind the Scenes, 1877, chaps 1-12.
106. Hocking, Her Benny, 1879, chap. 12.
107. 'Brenda', Froggy's Little Brother, 1875, chaps 5 and 6.
108. Cutt, Ministering Angels, p. 136.
109. In Stretton, The Storm of Life (1876), Rachel goes to prison for letting her husband and a gang into the house where she is employed.
110. Released, she gets her daughter out of the workhouse but has no chance of work locally and in London finds nothing till she and Rosie are desperate and a chimney sweeper and his wife take them in. C.f. Stretton, Pilgrim Street: a Story of Manchester Life, 1867;
111. and Hocking, Her Benny, 1879.
112. See also Janet Maynard, 'Respectability in Dress in the novels of Hesba Stretton', Costume, 1998;
113. and Cutt, Ministering Angels, chap. 9 throughout.
114. C.f. Sandy and Gip's mother, in Stretton's Lost Gip, 1873, whose death as a vagrant is met with relief.
115. C.f. Carrots in M. Blanche Hayward, Dot and Go One, RTS, 1890;
116. Jack in Evelyn Everett-Green, Little Freddie, or Friends in Need, Shaw. (The British Library has this catalogued as by H. F. E., and dated 1882. My undated copy gives Everett-Green as author.) Precursors can also be seen in the tract fiction of Hannah More.
117. Catherine Shaw, Dickie's Secret, Shaw, 1887, pp. 29-31
118. (c.f. another Mrs Blunt downstairs, in Everett-Green's Little Freddie, c. 1888). Dickie's converts are old blind Mr Ross (whose wife had never lost her faith); the ignorant rivermen George and Amos (and possibly the lodging-house keeper where George dies); blind and crippled Mr Giles and his flighty daughter Jenny (whose reform also removes the unarticulated risk that her gadabout ways would lead to prostitution); and even Miss Florence, who though a curate's daughter is an observing more than a convinced Christian until the crisis when Dickie is feared drowned (p. 79).
119. 'Brenda', Nothing to Nobody, 1875, chap. 4.
120. Hocking, Her Benny, 1879, chaps 15-20.
121. Hayward, Dot and Go One, 1890.
122. Everett-Green, Little Freddie (1882).
123. Hocking, Her Benny, 1879, chap. 12.
124. C.f. Mr Bartholomew, the secularist bookseller in Louise Marston, Mr Bartholomew's Little Girl, Shaw, 1887;
125. Joe Wrag in Stretton, Her Benny, 1879;
126. 'Old Grumpy' in Walton, Nobody Loves Me, RTS, 1883;
127. Daniel Standring in Stretton, Jessica's First Prayer, 1867.
128. Stretton, Lost Gip, 1873.
129. Nellie Cornwall (pseudonym of Nellie Sloggett), Sprattie and the Dwarf, or the Shining Stairway, C. H. Kelly, 1891.
130. See also the Blossoms in Stretton's Little Meg's Children, 1868.
131. Brenda, Nothing to Nobody, Shaw, 1875, p. 19.
132. C.f. the role of Mrs Shafto and her son Johnnie in Stretton, Lost Gip, 1873.
133. Hocking, Her Benny, 1879, chap. 12; c.f. the clergyman in Little Freddie, who not only converts both boys but by tracking down Jack's lost mother and rescuing his father from drink makes possible the happy ending.
134. M. E. Winchester (pseudonym of M. E. Whatham), City Snowdrops, or, the House of Flowers, Shaw, 1888.
135. Cutt, Ministering Angels, pp. 139-40.
136. See for example Everett-Green, Little Freddie [1882], chaps 7-13;
137. Hocking, Her Benny, 1879, chaps 11-12;
138. Stretton, Pilgrim Street, 1867, chap. 21.
139. Hocking, Book of Memory, pp. 71-3; 155-68.
140. In Sargent's Story of a City Arab (1857) Roland is accused of being a pickpocket when he tries to go to church (pp. 107-8, 117); years later he starts to attend only when he has been able to save up for respectable clothes, and even then avoids the church whose congregation seems 'too grand and imposing', and finds a humbler one (p. 164).
141. In Hayward, Dot and Go One, 1890 (p. 25) Dot creeps into a church to listen to the music, and is encouraged to attend regularly; but he had been turned away previously by a man at the door who said 'they didn't want boys coming in to kick up a row'.
142. See also Hocking, Book of Memory, pp. 95-9 on the inadequacy of conventional church provision and the importance of outreach.
143. Stretton, Jessica's First Prayer, 1867, chap. 4.
144. Stretton, Jessica's First Prayer, chap. 10.
145. Winchester, City Snowdrops, 1888.
146. C.f. Mr Shafto in Stretton, Lost Gip, 1873, chap. 11: 'An Awakened Conscience'.
147. Shaw, Dickie's Attic, 1887, p. 35
148. Stretton, Pilgrim St, 1867.
149. Hocking, Her Benny, 1879, pp. 135-6.
150. For example Freddie and Jack in Everett-Green, Little Freddie [1882];
151. Dot and Carrots in Hayward, Dot and Go One, 1890;
152. Sandy and Johnnie in Stretton, Lost Gip, 1873. There is never any sexual reading of the close physical and emotional relationships, despite sexual assertion and innuendo about street children in the writings of Mayhew, Shaftesbury and the 1880s campaigners.
153. Walton, Christie's Old Organ, 1874.
154. Walton, Nobody Loves Me, 1883.
155. See also Stretton, Alone in London, 1869;
156. Walton, Winter's Folly, RTS, 1889.
157. See Hilda Kean, Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain since 1800, Reaktion Books, 1999.
158. Walton, A Peep Behind the Scenes, chap. 4.
159. See also Cutt, Ministering Children, pp. 85-6 (discussion of animals in ALOE's work);
160. and of course Anna Sewell, Black Beauty, 1877.
161. Cutt, Ministering Children, p. 112.
162. Bratton, Victorian Children's Fiction, introduction.
163. Stretton, Jessica's First Prayer, 1867;
164. Everett-Green, Little Freddie [1882];
165. Hayward, Dot and Go One, 1890;
166. Marston, Mr Bartholomew's Little Girl, 1887;
167. Cornwall, Sprattie and the Dwarf, 1891;
168. Shaw, Dickie's Attic, 1887;
169. 'Brenda', Froggy's Little Brother, 1875.
170. And note Lost Gip (Stretton, 1873), where the resolution is emigration to Canada.
171. Walton, Christie's Old Organ, 1874;
172. Hocking, Her Benny, 1879.
173. Hocking, Cricket, Warne, 1886.
174. Everett-Green, Little Freddie, c. 1888;
175. Stretton, Little Meg's Children, 1868.
176. See for instance Stretton, Lost Gip, 1873,
177. The Storm of Life, 1876;
178. Whittaker, Rag and Tag [1878]. (This is dedicated To Those who Desire the Luxury of Doing Good'.)
179. Everett-Green, Little Freddie.
180. Shaw, Dickie's Secret (1887), apart from its waif episode;
181. and the sequel, Dickie's Attic (1887).
182. For a contrasting later version of this plot, see Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess, Warne, 1905.
183. Stretton, Lost Gip, 1973;
184. Cornwall, Sprattie and the Dwarf, 1891;
185. c.f. Jessica's violent mother in Stretton, Jessica's First Prayer, 1867.
186. Hocking, Cricket.
187. Hocking, Her Benny, 1879.
188. Stretton, Lost Gip, 1873.
189. For instance in Stretton, Little Meg's Children, 1868;
190. Alone in London, 1869;
191. Lost Gip, 1873;
192. Cassy, 1874;
193. Whittaker, Rag and Tag [1878].
194. Froggy's Little Brother, 1875, p. 2.
195. Stretton, Lost Gip, 1873.
196. Silas Hocking, Her Benny, 1879, p. 2.
197. 'Brenda', Froggy's Little Brother, chap. 6;
198. c.f. Rosalie, escaping her stepmother after her father's death, who will not take anything from the larder for her journey: Walton, A Peep Behind the Scenes, 1877, chap. 17.
199. Everett-Green, Little Freddie, p. 2. His speech as presented is not remarkable.
200. Stretton, Little Meg's Children, 1868, chap. 1. This was a common theme of nineteenth-century writings about poor children.
201. In Stretton's Little Meg's Children (1868), however, Meg dares not dress them in their best clothes for fear of attracting predators; and eventually the clothes are pawned (chap. 4).
202. In Mrs Whittaker's Rag and Tag (1878), warehouseman John Burton is shocked and pained when the waifs reveal Tag's shoulders, 'swollen and striped black and blue' by a recent beating, to explain why they have run away. He and his wife take in the children and in due course Rag and Tag, civilized and converted, are christened Rachel and John.
203. Stretton, Jessica's First Prayer, chap. 1.
204. Stretton, Cassy, 1874, p. 39-40. Cassy catches sight of herself in a shop window and is shocked, realizing how hard it will be to find 'a little place' looking like that.
205. Stretton, Lost Gip, 1873, chap. 1.
206. Jessica too has 'bright dark eyes', Jessica's First Prayer, chap. 1.
207. Cornwell, Sprattie and the Dwarf, 1891. Fair hair corresponds predictably to goodness; but the negative use of black eyes and hair is less than I had expected.
208. Stretton, Little Meg's Children, 1868, chap. 1.
209. Stretton, Pilgrim Street, 1867;
210. Mrs Whittaker, Rag and Tag [1878];
211. Hocking, Her Benny, 1879.
212. Stretton, Little Meg's Children, 1868.
213. With secondary characters unlikely to move up in the world the situation is slightly different: in Walton, A Peep Behind the Scenes, 1877, Betsey Ann escapes from being lodging-house drudge to take on congenial domestic work for tiny Mother Manikin - whether for payment is not clear.
214. In Walton, A Peep Behind the Scenes, 1877, Rosalie and 'Britannia' escape from exhausting stage work; Betsey Ann from drudgery; and Rosalie from the her stepmother's threat to place her in the workhouse because 'a little puny thing like you wouldn't be worth her salt' (chap. 17).
215. For these issues see Deborah Gorham, 'The "Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" Re-examined: Child Prostitution and the Idea of Childhood in Late Victorian England', Victorian Studies 21: 3, spring 1978;
216. Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State, Cambridge, 1980;
217. Davin, 'When is a Child Not a Child?'.
218. C.f. Anne Summers, 'A Home from Home - Women's Philanthropic Work in the Nineteenth Century', in Sandra Burman (ed.), Fit Work for Women, 1979.
219. C.f. Cutt, Ministering Angels, p. 137-8;
220. and see Walton, A Peep between the Scenes (1877), where 'Britannia' and Rosalie escape their lives as travelling performers;
221. or Catherine Shaw, Dickie's Secret, where Jenny's reform removes the unarticulated risk that her gadabout ways would lead to prostitution.
222. Bratton, Victorian Children's Fiction, p. 94.