The killers in my book, John Bishop and Thomas Williams, preyed upon the destitute, and in at least two cases, upon homeless children, of whom there were an estimated 30,000 in London alone. In June 1848, Anthony Ashley Cooper (pictured above), who would become the seventh Lord Shaftesbury in 1851, addressed parliament to urge mass emigration as the remedy to this particular social problem.
He was not alone in seeing emigration as the solution to unemployment, “overpopulation” and large-scale chronic poverty; but radical working-men’s organisations believed the only emigration that needed to take place was that of the landed idle rich.
Here, Shaftesbury reveals that his data was sourced from Sunday School teachers in very poor districts; 45 years later, Charles Booth’s Life and Labour investigations would also have as their starting point information gathered by London School Board visitors.
“Of the existence of the evil no one can doubt who perambulates the streets and thoroughfares of this vast city, and observes the groups of filthy, idle, tattered children either squatting at the entrances of the courts and alleys, or engaged in occupations neither useful to themselves, nor creditable to the locality… Till very recently, the few children that came under our notice in the streets and places of public traffic, were considered to be chance vagrants, beggars, or pilferers, who, by a little exertion of magisterial authority, might be either extinguished or reformed. It has, only of late, been discovered that they constitute a numerous class, having habits, pursuits, feelings, manners, customs, and interests of their own; living as a class, though shifting as individuals, in the same resorts; perpetuating and multiplying their filthy numbers.
“For the knowledge of these details we are mainly indebted to the London City Mission; it is owing to their deep, anxious, and constant research; it is owing to the zeal with which their agents have fathomed the recesses of human misery, and penetrated into places repulsive to every sense, moral and physical; it is owing to such exertions, aided by the piety, self-denial, and devotion, of Sunday-school teachers, that we have advanced thus far. Certain excellent persons, who gave their energies to Sabbath-training, were the first to observe these miserable outcasts; and hoping, by the influence of the gospel, to effect some amendment, opened schools in destitute places, to which the children were invited, not coerced. Hence the clue to a vast amount of information, a part of which I shall now proceed to lay before the House.
“Our first consideration must have reference to the numbers of this particular class. It is difficult to form an accurate estimate; but from all the inquiries that I have been able to make – and I can assure the House that no trouble has been spared – I should say that the naked, filthy, roaming, lawless, and deserted children, in and about the metropolis, exceeded, rather than fell short of, 30,000. There are, doubtless, many more in this vast city who may be considered as distressed children, objects of charity and of the public care; but I speak now of that generation in particular, which is distinct from the ordinary poor, and beyond the observation of the daily perambulators of squares and thoroughfares. . .”