Widows and orphans

It's all about coronavirus at the moment! So I'm going to touch on a different subject, still in this country, but in a different time. A short while back I did a post on the medical advertisements in the now-defunct but once-famous Ward Lock Red Guides. Tonight it's the ads for orphanages and deprived children.

Before me is a book written by Richard Du Cann, first published in 1964, though my revised edition dates from 1980. It's called The Art of the Advocate, and it's about all the courtroom skills a barrister needs when presenting a client's case before a jury. It's very interesting! With reference to a handful of cases in particular - but mentioning many others too - the author dissects the approach, language and courtroom impact of famous barristers of the past, such as Marshall Hall and Patrick Hastings. How they won their cases, and what sometimes went wrong. A way with words is of course a basic requirement. And sometimes a barrister can formulate sentences of exceptional clarity and beauty. For instance, this, from a 1956 speech made in court by W A Fearnley Wittingstall, in a fraud case:

When one thinks of trust funds one thinks of widows and orphans and the wistful savings of a vanished hand.

The perfect intro to my topic. Widows and orphans were always commonplace, but became more numerous during and after the slaughter of the First World War. Working-class women with young children who had lost their husbands, and of course unmarried women with babies, were especially vulnerable and might find themselves in dire straits. But there was no Welfare State then. No onus on local councils to find them accommodation, no benefits system as we have now, no NHS. The old workhouse still existed, but that was the last resort of the totally destitute. What could the ordinary widow or unmarried mum do? Menial work for a pittance? Unhealthy work? And what if the mother died, perhaps of influenza or tuberculosis, both of them killers in the 1920s?

The children had to go into a home. And there were many such homes, all seeking money and support from the general public. The need was great, and urgent. So perhaps it's not so surprising as it might seem, that children's homes and allied organisations made appeals in any publication that middle-class people (with money to spare) might read. Even in a Ward Lock holiday guide.

Let's have a look at ads of this type in my 1917 guide for Worthing, my my 1937 guide for Hastings, and my 1939 guide for Scarborough.

1917 first. Just the one.

This organisation, formed to look after the orphans of Church of England clergymen, claimed to originate in 1749, and ran two schools, one for boys and one for girls. Lay orphans were also admitted. The appeal for funding is rather low-key.  

There's no ad in that 1917 guide to back up my words above concerning war widows. So I'll skip forward to 1937 and 1939, which seem much closer to our own era. After all, TV was just starting (for a few, anyway). And anyone born in 1937 would be only 83 if still alive today. 

And yet the 1937 Ward Lock Red Guide still contained a lot of 'orphan' ads. The tone is not so staid now. These ads might well have brought in donations from conscience-pricked holidaymakers.

The Salvation Army was as ever fighting its corner against indifference: and there were indeed some very squalid slums. 

The Church Army was also promoting the idea that seaside air would reinvigorate the poor in its care. Undeniably, sandy beaches would have been a revelation to many kids from the slums. 

Broken homes and child abuse are nothing new.

A ragged school. Basic learning for kids living in real poverty.

Forward to 1939, just before the Second World War. Two ads.

That's a slightly more compelling version of their 1937 ad above. I'd say 'necessitous' means 'needy', but I don't know for sure. I doubt if the average holidaymaker knew either. 

Ah, they must - at last - have consulted an agency who knew their business! That's an appealing, effective ad. With a good slogan ('One Million Half Crowns needed every year'). There were eight half-crowns to the pound, so one million of them would be £125,000 - a really big sum then; worth about £8,250,000 now. 

Remember that these ads were in a holiday guide, which to modern eyes seems an incongruous place for them to appear. But there were a lot of children living in deprived conditions, or orphaned and needing care. It was very much a national problem. 

Should I argue that these unfortunate pre-war kids were in more dreadful distress than modern children? I'm not qualified to make that judgement. But there certainly weren't the safety nets that there are nowadays, and fewer people looking critically at what these organisations and institutions were up to. I'd put it his way: if I were a young kid, and an orphan, I'd rather be one in 2020 than in 1920.