120 years ago on 11th July 1891, 120 ‘street vendors’ - children living on the streets set out from Newcastle on a day trip
to the seaside. The outing was paid for by the generosity of Mr. John Lunn, a
Gosforth shipping merchant and organised by his neighbour Mr. John Watson, who
had been concerned about the plight of street children for some years. It is
hard for us to imagine that in those days the centre of Newcastle was like today’s slums in Mumbai or
a Brazilian shanty town.
Children were living on the
streets because they were orphaned; rejected by a step-parent after the death
of a parent; or because their families could not afford to keep them. They made
a meagre living by selling matches, bootlaces and newspapers or sweeping street
crossings and running errands. Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouts
recorded being mobbed by the mass of ragged adults and children trying to sell
him things as he got off the train in Newcastle.
If they could afford to they ate and slept in unsanitary lodging houses maybe
15 to 20 in a room. If they were unlucky they slept where they could – in coal
cellars. A child froze to death in the station portico.
The seaside trip was to get
the children out of the smoke and dirt and into the fresh air and sunshine for
the benefit of their health. Fresh air was considered to be very important to
health, for example all the parks in Newcastle
were created between 1870 and 1900. The population of Newcastle grew sixfold during the 19th
century and poor people lived in very cramped conditions – whole families of 10
or more in one or two rooms. Fresh air and clean water were vital public health
concerns.
That was the start of the
Poor Children’s Holiday Association (PCHA) which quickly set up a club for
street children in Prudhoe Street,
Newcastle and a night refuge on
Bottle Bank, Gateshead where the Hilton hotel
now stands. For a nominal fee the children could get shelter, good food,
clothing, boots, an activity club and health checks by volunteer doctors and
nurses.
Unlike some other children's
charities, the PCHA was open to children of all faiths; its mission was to end
street vending by training children to earn a good living. The organisation soon
set up a ‘farm colony’ at Stannington, near Morpeth where boys were trained to
be farm labourers and a home in Shotley
Bridge that trained girls
to be domestic servants.
In 1907 the PCHA set up the
first children's TB Sanatorium in the country next to the farm colony which
supplied it with fresh farm produce. TB known as 'consumption' was the cancer
of the times and popularly thought to be a shameful disease caused by dirt and poverty.
We think of it as a disease of the lungs but many of the children at
Stannington had TB in their bones and the cure was traction which meant being
strapped into metal supports in bed for weeks or months.
In 1988 the PCHA changed its
name to Children North East. Today we no longer see children in rags with no
shoes but poverty and disadvantage are still with us. Children still go without
meals and live in overcrowded houses. In some parts of the North East three
quarters of all children live in poor families – mostly parents in poorly paid
work. Every year we remember the origins of the charity with a huge Sandcastle
competition for primary school children on South Shields
beach. Like the street children of 1891 many of today’s children have never
been to the sea before.
Children North East believes
it is just not fair some children do not get the same chances and breaks. Our
mission is ‘to promote the rights of children and young
people; and counter the effects of inequality on them, their families and
communities' or 'better lives for poorer children' and everything we do is to make
up for missed opportunitie.
