Expert’s Choice
Peter Higginbotham, social historian and author of Children’s Homes (Pen & Sword, 2017) and Workhouses of London and the South East (History Press, 2019)
The Hidden Lives website ( hiddenlives.org.uk) is a treasure trove of material from the archives of the Children’s Society (originally the Waifs and Strays Society), formerly one of the major providers of children’s homes in Britain. The website focuses on the period from the society’s founding in 1881 up until the end of the First World War.
Among its gems, the site includes copies of all the documents relating to about 150 anonymised case files, which provide a vivid insight into the often complex circumstances that could bring a child into care. Apart from parental death, these included the child’s illegitimacy, neglect, abandonment or homelessness, and the parents’ mental health problems or involvement in matters such as alcohol abuse, domestic violence and prostitution. Case 1109, for example, concerns ‘C’, a boy whose extremely violent father was put into Wells Asylum. C then went to live with his grandfather, who later committed suicide by cutting his own throat. C’s mother was too poor to look after him, so he went into a society home. The website also provides details and pictures of the many and varied homes it ran. These included rural cottage homes, houses in big cities, and even a country mansion or two.
Many of the society’s publications are digitised on the website, including a long run of its monthly magazine Our Waifs and Strays. Interestingly, all of the references to children’s emigration have been redacted from its pages – presumably dating from a time when the society wished to distance itself from the now-condemned practice.