Toward the end of the nineteenth century Reading was an expanding and prosperous town, owing much to the world-famous Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory which employed almost five thousand local workers. In addition, other burgeoning industries – breweries, seed merchants, ironworks and brickmakers – encouraged new workers from outlying rural areas to move to the town for employment. Rows of distinctive red- and grey-brick terraced houses – built from locally produced bricks – soon began to spring up to accommodate the growing population.
It was to these busy streets, filled with bicycles, hand carts and horse-drawn trams, that NSPCC inspector Charles Thomas Bennett moved with his family, in the mid-1890s, to take up his first official posting. His house at 11 London Road was a short distance from the crowded pavements of Broad Street with its profusion of chimneys and shop awnings shading the wide pavements. The muddy road was crisscrossed by carriage tracks and churned up by horses’ hooves; small islands of manure dotted its length. The grocers’, cigar and tobacco shops, the shoemakers and the linen and wool drapers all jostled for space among the oversize advertisements for India Pale Ale, Reading Sauce and the ubiquitous Huntley & Palmers biscuits. London Road itself was quieter, a mixture of fine mansions and large red-brick houses with towering chimneys, majestic gables and ornate brickwork.
The Bennetts’ home was a more modest affair. It had once been a shop, and Charles Bennett made use of the large bay window at the front of the house to display photographs of abused children while using the room behind as his office. The photographs on display were not for the faint-hearted and would have presented a shocking sight to the casual passer-by. This was no place to window-shop. Many of the children were victims of violence and neglect from within their own homes, but many more had been born illegitimate and had been sent out into the care of “nurses”.
In Victorian England single mothers were judged harshly. They were left unable to find any form of employment, save that of prostitution. Shame and poverty condemned many of them, and their children, to lives of destitution and starvation. An unmarried mother’s only alternative was either to abandon her child or foster it out into the care of a “nurse” or “baby farmer” for a weekly fee, or to have it adopted permanently for a one-off payment, or “premium”. Anyone fostering or adopting more than one child under the age of twelve months was required by law to register with the local authorities. It was a shoddy system, rarely policed and widely abused. Many children were sent to an early grave by unscrupulous “nurses” out to make a quick profit. They were often starved or drugged to death; some met a speedier end and were murdered outright.
The images in Charles Bennett’s window showed children and babies in distressing conditions: naked, skeletal, barely human figures with huge, haunted eyes, twisted limbs and swollen bruises; bones protruding from paper-thin skin which in some cases hung off their frail frames like hand-me-down clothes. Then there were photographs of the same children, the rescued ones, taken months later: plump-cheeked and smiling, dressed in clean, stiff jackets and sitting straight-backed on the photographer’s chair. Those found alive, in whatever deplorable condition, were the lucky ones. The systematic mistreatment and murder of children was commonplace in Victorian England and the NSPCC was one of a number of organizations leading a vigorous crusade to help prevent it.
NATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN
INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER.
PATRON – THE QUEEN
The sole object of this Society is to secure to every child in the land that its life shall be at least endurable. It does this with great success by enforcing and encouraging the reasonable treatment of Children by their Parents.
The following is a Record of the Numbers of the Children in the Nation on whose behalf it has employed its objects.
166,161– SUFFERERS from NEGLECT and STARVATION
41,226 – SUFFERERS from VIOLENCE
21,916 – LITTLE THINGS EXPOSED to SUFFERING to draw the lazy and cruel charity of the street
7,053 – Pitiable GIRL-CHILD VICTIMS of Horrible Sensuality
3,897 – LITTLE SLAVES of Improper and Hurtful EMPLOYMENT and DANGEROUS PERFORMANCES
1,067 – WHERE ILL-TREATMENT ENDED FATALLY
The hordes of illegitimate children born each year had prompted one government report of the time to state:
Their births are not registered, nor are their deaths; some are buried as still-born children, some are secretly disposed of, many are dropped about the streets.
It was impossible for the newspapers of the day to keep count of the numbers of bodies found strewn about the towns and cities. Scarcely a day passed without yet another report of the corpse of some young innocent being found abandoned beneath the seat of a railway carriage, under an archway, in a sewer grating or just carelessly dumped in one of the open spaces of a city suburb. Many cases were not even reported, such incidents being so commonplace as to be denied column space in favour of the latest gossip from the Royal Circle or the House of Lords. In almost every case the inquest into the death would return a verdict of “found dead” or “murdered by some person unknown”.
Return showing the number of infants (under one year) found within the Metropolitan Police District of “k” division during the year 1895.
|
Month |
Male |
Female |
Total |
Remarks |
|
January |
1 |
1 |
Found in a railway carriage at Bow works. Verdict “Inattention at birth” |
|
|
February |
2 |
2 |
1 found in cemetery passage. Verdict “Stillborn” |
|
|
March |
1 |
1 |
Found on bank of Regents Canal. Verdict “Wilful murder” |
|
|
April |
– |
– |
– |
|
|
May |
1 |
1 |
Found in sewer grating in Abbey Lane. Verdict “Stillborn” |
|
|
June |
– |
– |
– |
|
|
July |
1 |
1 |
Verdict “Supposed deceased died from inattention at birth” |
|
|
August |
2 |
2 |
1 found in a railway carriage. Verdict “Stillborn” |
|
|
September |
– |
– |
– |
|
|
October |
1 |
1 |
Found on the green, Stratford. Verdict “Exhaustion from inattention at birth” |
|
|
November |
2 |
2 |
1 found in Regents Canal. Verdict “Stillborn” |
|
|
December |
2 |
2 |
1 found in a barge in Royal Albert Works. Verdict “Inattention at birth” |
|
|
Total |
7 |
6 |
13 |
One of many statistical returns for a Metropolitan Police survey conducted in 1895 to establish the extent of infanticide in the capital.