1905: Sometimes God changes the noblest of plans. That was the case with Thomas Barnardo who had intended to be a medical missionary to China but ended up as the founder of homes for poor children.
Born in Ireland in 1845, Barnardo was converted in his teens to a deep faith in Christ, and right away he began working with poor children in Dublin. Hearing missionary Hudson Taylor speak of the China Inland Mission, Barnardo decided to study medicine and then travel to China. While studying at a London hospital he became aware of the urban poor, especially children. Encouraged by some Christian friends, he gave up his plans for China and in 1870 opened the first of what would be called “Dr. Barnardo’s Homes” in London. When he died on September 19, 1905, there were 112 of the homes in Britain, and more than 100,000 children had been rescued from the streets. The homes’ motto was “the ever-open door.”
London was full of orphans and “strays,” children detached from families, and many of these often turned to crime (a story familiar from Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist). The Barnardo homes took in these children, fed them, clothed them, and prepared them for useful occupations. Barnardo owned a sixty-acre rural tract which he used to create a model village for some of the children, building cottages that eventually housed more than a thousand. Collectively his homes were known as the National Association for the Reclamation of Destitute Waif Children (which explains the briefer and more familiar name “Barnardo’s Homes”).
The homes emphasized religious instruction with provision made for two “faith traditions”—the established Church of England and the Nonconformists (Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, and others). As for the children’s physical health, Barnardo found his medical training to be of great use. Barnardo’s is still an active charity in England, the legacy of a man who had a heart for the most vulnerable members of society.
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