A GREAT LITTLE MAN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21266, 21 February 1931, Page 4

A GREAT LITTLE MAN.

THE STORY OF DR BARNARDO. “Dr Barnardo: Physician, Pioneer, Prophet." By Dr J. Wosley Bready. London: George Allen and Unwin. (7s 6d net.) Who does not know Dr Barnardo? His name has been a household word for more than half a century. Barnardo’s Homes have been spoken of in season, out of season, land, in the aggregate, large sums of money have been sent from the dpminions to help in the work which this man began in London in 1866. But this does not in any sense exhaust the story. Whoever may say in airy fashion that he knows about Barnardo’e Homes for Homeless Children will state to those who have read this book by Dr Bready that he knows very little. Do you know anything about the Boys’ Garden City? What is the William Baker Technical School? Where is the Girls' Village Home? Give some notes on (a) The Watts Naval Training School; (b) The Russell Cotes Nautical School. There is a nice little examination paper on Barnardo activities, which one must be able to answer if he would aspire to any secure place in the roll of those who have a right to speak with some authority. No one could have been less romantic than this man of very mixed racial blood. A little man, brisk, dapper, with upturned moustache, wearing pince-nez. and moving about with an 'air of fussy authority, he might have been taken by any passer-by for a successful City manager or, as Sir Barnet Skettles said, “ Something to do with statistics.” Yet this man's career bridges the gap between our enlightened age of social service and the, to us) almost barbarous period of laissezfaire of the early nineteenth century. In truth, the change is due to him as much as to anyone. Dr Bready’s book will fascinate and inspire all who read it, for it is not only the story of a wonderful work for ill-used and destitute children. It is, above all, the story of a great advance in Christian civilisation. The author, wisely, we think, endeavours to assess the influences which went to the making of the time and through that of this remarkable man. The Cambridge Modern History in ite sixth volume says: “The earlier half of the eighteenth century in England is an age of materialism, a period of dim ideals, of expiring hopes; before the middle of the century its character was transformed, there appeared a movement headed hy a mighty leader, who brought forth water from the rocks to make a barren land live again. Dropping allegory, we can recognise in English institutions, in English ideals, in the English philosophy of this age, the same political materialism, the same hard rationalism, the same un-; reasonable self-complacency. Reason dominated alike the intellect, the will, and the passions; politics were self-interested, poetry didactic, philosophy critical and objective. Generalisations such as these are but rough approximations, for no age is without its individual protests and rebels, without men who seek to dam —to divert the streams of tendency. Of these men, Chatham among politicians, Thomson among poets, Berkeley among philosophers, Law among divines, all derived new thoughts, evoked new harmonies, or caught new inspirations from the age. But more important than any of these in universality of influence and in range of .achievement were John Wesley and the religious revival to which he gave his name and his life.”

Dr Bready’s first chapter is devoted to a short account of the period of the Evangelical Revival and of the outstanding characteristics of the period in which it arose. Barnardo is a product of the and his work the outcome of the enthusiasm for the welfare of men which was thus engendered. No one should skip this chapter. Its value is undoubtedly very great and its conclusions based on wide reading. Away in Ireland one of the later waves of the Wesleyan movement caught up this brisk youth and brought him into practical work in ragged schools. Nineteenth century Evangelicalism opened the springs of human compassion in men and women who found that physical and social degradation was an impassable barrier to spiritual influences. What laissez-faire had done to the poor children of great cities is thus described: “ In the big cities there existed a clan of street urchins, .living nowhere and sleeping anywhere; here to-day and gone to-morrow; a closed fraternity of the underwork! who knew no grammar and spoke largely by signs; whose only school was the school of debauchery and crime; who wore ignorant of the meaning of morality, and never heard even the primary tenets of Christianity; who had no means of livelihood, and ‘picked up’ their living as best they could . , . who felt, by an animal instinct, that society was at war against them, and knew well that they were at war againt society.” The story of Barnardo's conversion, of his work in Bagged Schools, of his chance meeting,with Jim Jarvis who led him to a ‘ lay ’ of homeless boys sleeping on a London roof on a winter night which turned him into the children’s champion. of the death of ‘ Carrots,’ which brought about the sign: No Destitute Child Ever Refused Admission; —all is told quietly and yet graphically. Barnardo had to fight battles against

prejudice and suspicion. It was all senseless and motiveless. Rumours were spread that he was “ making a good thing out of the Homes,” and that the children were ill-treated and exploited. Parents who had turned their children on to the streets and would have sold them for a bottle or two of gin, seeing them sturdy, educated, and skilled in a trade, and desiring now to exploit their labour, joined in the chorus of abuse. An Arbitration Board triumphantly acquitted Barnardo, making only two material criticisms. The work was too entirely personal in its control. Barnardo was impatient of committee control, and his short cuts to efficiency did lay him open to attack. The criticisms were justified and the fact that more discreet methods were at once and cheerfully adopted shows the “ bigness ” of the man.

The Gossage Case is well told, A worthless woman—described by The Master of the Rolls as an “ unnatural brute ’’—made a plea to recover her child from the Homes on the ground that she him brought up as a Roman Catholic. The law was against Barnado though the judges were in sympathy with him. The result, however, was gain, for Parliament passed what has since been known as the Barnardo Act, a measure which breaks through the old superstition that parental rights must never be interfered with, even in circumstances of gross neglect and cruelty. Dr Bready claims, not without good that Dr Barnardo’s work and the awakening of conscience which it brought about in England was the foundation on which was built the whole structure of the State's merciful dealings with children of poverty in our own time. We would heartily commend this book as one worthy of serious study. It is not one for the filling of a lazy hour. Rather would w r e say that, along with the authorities which Dr Bready quotes, it will guide an earnest man in a very profitable winter’s reading. G. H. J.