Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

A local story in a national setting

The local story provides:

•         Descriptions of the lives of 50,000 Victorian east London pauper children, from age two, trapped in an institution, where:
•         abuse, neglect, ill-discipline and corruption were rife.
•         An account of a highly acclaimed naval training vessel run by the school in Grays, which tragically perished, after five years
•         Local heroes and villains emerge in Forest Gate, their stories told for the first time
•         A record of how Britain's first female workhouse school governor - Henrietta Barnett - led the charge to close the institution after public health and fire disasters in the 1890s
•         The successful struggles of future MPs - Will Crooks and George Lansbury - who cut their public service teeth closing the Forest Gate school
•         The onward journey of the buildings, which became a maternity hospital, and birth place of 50,000 20th century East Enders.

The national setting relates:

•         Details of state and religious responses to 1,000 years of child poverty in England.
•         An account of 200 years of institutional care of looked-after children, nationwide.
•         The failure of Victorian confused thinking and policy, in addressing the needs of pauper children.
•         Innovative moves from home, abroad and from Britain's first female public servant - Jane Senior - to address the question of looked-after children.
•        The 50-year record of how complacent and unimaginative Victorian governments failed to adequately respond to the needs and concerns.
•         How real change in approach from charities, churches and local initiatives were largely ignored by successive governments.
•         How a national campaign to close "barrack schools", was successfully led by Henrietta Barnett, following her Forest Gate experience
•         A detailed examination of dozens of other institutional solutions, over a 200-year period, addressing the needs of looked-after children in England and abroad.
•         How Forest Gate pioneers set the tone for 20th i...