Hungry Boys With Meal Tickets Outside the Edinburgh Castle Mission, East London, Ca. 1890.
Dr. Barnardo, a leader in the juvenile emigration movement, offered supper to waifs at his Edinburgh Castle Mission as a way in which to make contact with needy children in his district. The mission was used as a night school as well. Note the signs above the boys' and girls' entrances. Youngsters first reached in the mission dining halls or classrooms might later be admitted to the homes' residential institutions and thus become eligible for emigration to Canada. It is possible that the photographer selected barefooted and crippled youngsters for the front row here. The sight of a crowd of wan children seeking supper at charitable institutions to supplement meagre rations of bread and potatoes at home was not an uncommon one in industrial Britain at the turn of the century.
