‘The Begging Nuisance’
Chapter Six, A Visible Proof
What an excellent example of the power of dress young Oliver Twist was! Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar; —it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have fixed his station in society. But now that he was enveloped in the old calico robes, which had grown yellow in the same service, he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once— a parish child—the orphan of a workhouse—the humble half-starved drudge—to be cuffed and buffeted through the world-despised by all, and pitied by none.
Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender mercies of churchwardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the louder.
Thus, in Oliver Twist (1837), Charles Dickens drew the British public’s attention to the desperate plight of orphans. The book levelled a series of charges against the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which The Times in 1836 attacked as ‘that appalling machine ... for wringing the hearts of forlorn widowhood, for refusing crust to famished age, for imprisoning the orphan in workhouse dungeons and for driving to prostitution the friendless and unprotected girl’. The main aim of the new act was to stop the benevolent Allowance Systems—under which labourers’ wages were supplemented to subsistence level by contribution to the Poor rate—by abolishing relief to the able-bodied outside the workhouses. No able-bodied man would receive assistance unless he entered a workhouse; the workhouses themselves were to be, in the words of Edwin Chadwick ‘uninviting places of wholesome restraint’. Conditions in the work-houses became a social disgrace; and the children ‘imprisoned’ within their walls became quickly demoralised by the decrepit, insane and handicapped adults who also lived there.
Leah and Harriet Culliford lived in Bristol in 1835: Leah was five and Harriet nine. The girls’ parents were poor and—like so many of their contemporaries—had fallen victim to tuberculosis. Medical science was powerless to help: the future for poor Leah and Harriet was grim, if they could expect little from the State to compensate them for the loss of both their parents, the attitude of the public was, in general, equally unsympathetic. Dickens’ charge that orphans were ‘despised by all, and pitied by none’ is well illustrated by a letter which appeared in the Bristol Mirror and General Advertiser on Saturday June 23rd 1849:
‘The Begging Nuisance’
... It was only a day or two ago I was returning from Bristol, when I saw a woman—whom, from the number of children she had about her, I should imagine an Irish woman—exposing to public gaze a leg and foot in the most loathsome state of disease, and this, too, in one of the principal thoroughfares in Bristol— Park Street! There is also a little girl I see almost daily, with a wooden leg, who, to convince you she is not an impostor, shows you the stump of her amputated limb. This little girl I think one of the most hardened beggars I ever came into contact with. She seems to know the tactics of the police quite as well as the Superintendent himself, for, if you tell her you will give her in charge of the first policeman you meet with, she will laugh, as much as to say— ‘You may, if you can meet one’, and still importune. Now, Sir, I need not say what distressing effects such sights as those cited above may have upon females in a certain critical state of health, not to say a word about the disgust excited in all. To say the least wherever the fault is, the inhabitants and visitors of a fashionable place like Clifton, and the wealthy citizens of the second city in England, should be able to take their recreation without having their nerves and senses shocked by such shocking and revolting sights ... Allow me to subscribe myself, dear Mr Editor. A CONSTANT READER Clifton, June 20th 1849
It is surely not possible that such a harsh attitude to poverty can have been typical in the first half of the nineteenth century; but the fact that the editor printed the letter without comment is significant.
If the State did little, and the public were unsympathetic, what could Leah and Harriet—and their many contemporaries in a similar plight—expect from charitable institutions? In 1835 orphanages supported by private charity were rare. Dr Barnardo founded his first home in 1866, and Spurgeon followed in 1867; the National Children’s Home was founded in 1869 and Mr Fegan began his work in 1870. (Both Barnardo and Fegan were members of the Brethren.) The Church of England Children’s Society (then ‘Waifs and Strays’) began in 1881. But in 1835 private orphan homes were regarded as revolutionary experiments.
In the whole of England and Wales it is possible to trace a dozen orphanages which date back to the 1830s or earlier. They were all small and there was none in Bristol. Eight of the orphanages were in London and the other four in the Home Counties. But even if the Cullifords had lived in this area they would still have been ineligible for nearly all the homes. In the first place, they would have been barred for reasons of expense. Only one of the twelve homes— known as King Edward’s Schools, Southwark—was intended for destitute children and required no payment; the other eleven homes stipulated that admission was by election by subscribers or by purchase of annual or life subscriptions. The cost of a life subscription ranged from about £100 to £250. Secondly, the Cullifords would have been barred from most of the homes on grounds of class. For instance, the British Orphan Asylum made it clear that it was for ‘children of middle-class parents... who in their life time were in a position to provide a liberal education for their children’ and the Royal Asylum of St Anne’s Society advertised itself as existing to help children of ‘parents who have seen better days, and have moved in a superior station in life’. The Infant Orphan Asylum at Wanstead, Essex, was prepared to accept children from all parts of the British dominions, but only ‘children who are respectably descended’. Its prospectus boasted that ‘of the children on the foundation many are the orphans of clergyman, officers, and professional men’. In fact ‘no candidate is admitted whose parents have not filled respectable positions in society and, ceteris paribus, its eligibility is proportionate to the former respectability of its family.’ The London Orphan Asylum made it clear that ‘Children of domestic or agriculture servants and of journeymen tradesmen are ineligible’. Many of the homes refused to accept children who were in any way diseased or deformed; some refused those who could not read, and a number barred children whose parents had at any time received parish relief. Once again, the only institution which made no restrictions on grounds of class or creed was King Edward’s Schools which had been founded in Southwark in 1830. Maintained by the funds of Bridewell hospital it had room for 500 children from any part of the United Kingdom. The minimum age for entry was twelve.
But even this forward-looking institution could do little to alleviate what had become one of Britain’s major social problems. It was a problem, however, which in the closing months of 1835 began increasingly to occupy the thoughts of one citizen of Bristol. While a student at Halle in 1826 Muller had lodged for two months in one of the great orphan houses built by the German ‘Pietist’ Professor A. H. Franke in the late seventeenth century. He never forgot the experience; and late in 1835 he was particularly reminded of Franke’s work. Muller’s diary contains the following entries:
November 20. This evening I took tea at a sister’s house, where I found Franke’s life. I have frequently, for a long time, thought of labouring in a similar way, though it might be on a much smaller scale; not, to imitate Franke, but in reliance upon the Lord. May God make it plain! November 21. To-day I have had it very much impressed on my heart, no longer merely to think about the establishment of an Orphan-House, but actually to set about it, and I have been very much in prayer respecting it, in order to ascertain the Lord’s mind ... November 23. To-day I had £10 sent from Ireland for our Institution. Thus the Lord, in answer to prayer, has given me, in a few days, about £50. I had asked for only £40. This has been a great encouragement to me, and has still more stirred me up to think and pray about the establishment of an Orphan-House ... November 25.1 have been again much in prayer yesterday and to-day about the Orphan-House, and am more and more convinced that it is of God. May He in mercy guide me!
Muller spent many hours during the next fortnight praying about his proposed orphanage. Repeatedly he examined his motives for the undertaking. He asked himself whether the whole idea did not originate in a desire to win glory for himself. He called on Henry Craik so that his friend could have the opportunity of probing his heart. Craik duly probed; but found nothing to which he could take exception. Indeed his verdict was encouraging.
Muller’s concern for the plight of orphans in nineteenth-century England began rather more than a year before Dickens popularised the situation in Oliver Twist. There can be no doubt either about the tragic proportions of the problem or that Muller’s anxiety was genuine. When he first arrived in Bristol he had been deeply moved by the common sight of children begging in the streets; and when they knocked on his own door he longed to do something positive to help. In October 1834, too, he had recorded in his journal his distress on hearing an ‘account of a poor litde orphan boy, who for some time attended one of our schools, and who seems there, as far as we can judge, to have been brought to a real concern about his soul... and who some time ago was taken to the poor-house some miles out of Bristol’. The entry concludes, ‘May this, if it be the Lord’s will, lead me to do something also for the supply of the temporal wants of poor children, the pressure of which has occasioned this poor boy to be taken away from our school!’ But there was another equally important reason why Muller contemplated founding an orphanage: he wanted to demonstrate to the world that there is reality in the things of God.
As he visited the members of his two congregations in Bristol he discovered repeatedly that people needed to have their faith strengthened. On one occasion he visited a man who was in the habit of working at his trade for nearly sixteen hours every day. His health was suffering and his Christian faith meant little to him. Muller suggested that if he worked less, his health would improve and he would have more time to read his Bible and pray; his spiritual condition would then improve. The reply was sceptical:
‘But if I work less, I do not earn enough for the support of my family. Even now, whilst I work so much, I have scarcely enough. The wages are so low, that I must work hard in order to obtain what I need.’
Muller thought, ‘This is not trust in God. This is not belief in the words of Christ, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness: and all these things shall be added unto you”.’ He replied:
‘My dear brother, it is not your work which supports your family, but the Lord; and He who has fed you and your family when you could not work at all, on account of illness, would surely provide for you and yours, if, for the sake of obtaining food for your inner man, you were to work only for so many hours a day, as would allow you proper time for retirement. And is it not the case now, that you begin the work of the day after having had only a few hurried moments for prayer; and when you leave off your work in the evening, and mean then to read a little of the word of God, are you not too much worn out in body and mind, to enjoy it, and do you not often fall asleep whilst reading the Scriptures, or whilst on your knees in prayer?’
As he waited for the reply, Muller looked at his friend’s expression. It was clear that the man agreed that the advice was sound; but yet there was doubt. He was not fully prepared to take God at his word.
‘How ... how should I get on? How should I get on if I carried out your advice?’
Muller was not annoyed. He was sad. He thought, ‘How I long that I had something to which I could point this brother! Something that would act as a visible proof that our God and Father is the same faithful God as ever he was; as willing as ever to prove Himself to be the Living God, in our day as formerly, to all who put their trust in Him.’
Sometimes Muller met businessmen who professed to be Christians yet who were conducting their affairs in a way which was less than honest. In consequence they suffered, amongst other things, from guilty consciences. Some excused their actions by reference to the fierceness of competition or the depression of trade, and maintained that if they carried on their business according to the Bible, it would not do well. Only rarely was a stand made for God; only rarely was there a determination to trust Him for everything. In these cases, too, Muller longed to demonstrate that God had not changed: that He would reward those who did not ‘regard iniquity in their hearts’. Muller had proved God in his own life; he was anxious that others should enjoy the same experience. He wrote, ‘I judged myself bound to be the servant of the Church of Christ, in the particular point on which I had obtained mercy: namely, in being able to take God by His word and to rely upon it.’ He felt that God had used his encounters with Christians who lacked assurance and conviction in their lives ‘to awaken in my heart the desire of setting before the church at large, and before the world, a proof that He had not in the least changed; and this seemed to me best done, by the establishing of an Orphan-House. It needed to be something which could be seen, even by the natural eye’.
Muller had decided to embark upon an adventure, far more daring, far more exciting even than the construction by Brunei of his mighty bridge at Clifton. He put the challenge that faced him like this.
Now, if I, a poor man, simply by prayer and faith, obtained, without asking any individual, [Muller’s italics] the means for establishing and carrying on an Orphan-House: there would be something which, with the Lord’s blessing, might be instrumental in strengthening the faith of the children of God, besides being a testimony to the consciences of the unconverted, of the reality of the things of God.
Was the most important consideration which led Muller to found an orphan-home a desire to ease the orphans’ plight, or an attempt to demonstrate God’s reality? Let Muller answer:
I certainly did from my heart desire to be used by God to benefit the bodies of poor children, bereaved of both parents, and seek, in other respects, with the help of God, to do them good for this life;—I also particularly longed to be used by God in getting the dear orphans trained up in the fear of God;—but still, the first and primary object of the work was that God might be magnified by the fact, that the orphans under my care are provided, with all they need, only by prayer and faith, without anyone being asked by me or my fellow-labourers, whereby it may be seen, that God is FAITHFUL STILL, and HEARS PRAYER STILL.
One evening that December (1835), Muller was struck by the words in Psalm 81:10, ‘Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it’. Until that evening, although he had prayed much about the pros and cons of establishing an orphanage, he had not prayed specifically that God would provide the means to do so. But on reading this psalm he felt led to apply the Scripture to the needs of the orphan-house. He asked. God to provide the premises, one thousand pounds and suitable people to look after the children.
Muller had learnt to rely on God alone for the needs of his own family. Now he looked to Him to house, feed and clothe an altogether larger and needier family; he dared to ask God to give further proof of his reality and love.