This edited article about Andrew Carnegie originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 686 published on 8 March 1975.

A Christmas Reminder for Andrew Carnegie, who was often critisised for seeking fame

by founding colleges and  libraries instead of helping America’s chronic social problems

In the nineteenth century, America, and particularly the United States, represented hope and opportunity to millions of poor people in Europe. There, across the Atlantic, they hoped to find freedom from poverty, hunger and insecurity. Shipload after shipload of hopeful emigrants left ports in Germany, Italy, Russia, and the British Isles to cross the ocean and so gain a chance to get their share of the work and wealth which America offered them.

One of those ships was the “Wiscasset”, which left the River Clyde in Scotland on May 17, 1848, on a fifty-day journey to New York. Among the passengers was a fair-haired twelve-year-old Scot, Andrew Carnegie, the son of an out-of-work Dunfermline linen weaver.

Young Andrew knew a lot about poverty and above all, about the shame and degradation of poverty. He remembered only too well how grey and gaunt his father’s face had looked when lack of work and lack of money forced him to sell three of his four looms. Andrew also remembered vividly seeing his mother work night after weary night, stiching shoes in order to provide food for the family. Then came the dreadful day when William Carnegie, Andrew’s father, had to go to the manufacturer who employed him to beg and plead for more work.

“It was burnt into my heart then that my father, an honourable, upright, hard-working man, had been forced to humble himself just because he was poor,” Andrew Carnegie wrote later. “And then and there, came the resolve that I would cure that when I got to be a man.”

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This edited article about Dr Barnardo originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 670 published on 16 November 1974.

‘Nowhere to live’ – a homeless boy inspired the compassion and deeds of Dr Barnardo

Like most great men, Thomas Barnardo was both loved and despised. No one could feel indifference towards such a complex character who believed emphatically, and with good reason, that he was a man of destiny.

Nearly all who worked with him, found Barnardo’s relentless drive, energy and enthusiasm infectious, but there were a few who resented his frankness, his impatience, and even his stringent sense of humour. And while most people followed him with undying devotion and loyalty, there were some who wanted nothing better than to see Barnardo fall.

It is a sad fact that many of these ill-wishers were men and women who were carrying out their own work for the poor. But the noble spirit which urged them to do good did not, unfortunately, extend to lack of jealousy and resentment of Barnardo’s success.

In 1874 all those who opposed Barnardo joined together, and under a Baptist minister, the Rev. George Reynolds, they launched a most irresponsible and lamentable attack on the doctor and his work. This culminated in the publication of a booklet in which Reynolds accused Barnardo of all kinds of wrongdoing and misdemeanours in the running of his homes. It was not until Reynolds put the Barnardo Homes on his “cautionary list,” warning the public not to support them, that the doctor decided to defend himself against such an outrageous attack. The matter was submitted to a court of arbitration where Barnardo was fully acquitted of all the charges made by Reynolds. Much to his dismay, the Baptist minister soon found that, far from doing Barnardo harm, the affair had succeeded in making him a national figure with the result that more and more people felt urged to support his homes.

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This edited article about Dr Barnardo originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 669 published on 9 November 1974.

The Edinburgh Castle was a typical East End Gin Palace

It was the largest and most infamous gin palace in the East End of London. Its name was the Edinburgh Castle, but Thomas Barnardo called it the Citadel of the Enemy, and he decided, in the summer of 1872, that he would storm this citadel of evil with one full-scale attack on its notorious trade.

But Barnardo had no army, no weapons, and no bombs. Instead, he would use words to win his battle. He bought a large tent and planted it on a piece of bare land in front of the gin palace. Then, with his two friends, Joshua and Mary Poole, Barnardo began to try to lure the gin drinkers from their favourite nightly haunt. Joshua was a fine violin player and the sound of his music encouraged one or two people to enter the tent on the first night. Within a few weeks, though, the number had grown beyond even Barnardo’s highest expectations.

“The scenes we are permitted to witness nightly,” he later wrote, “are such as I never remember beholding during any previous period of my spiritual life. Last Lord’s Day evening 25 hundred persons crowded to hear the word of life, and for hours afterwards we were occupied in dealing with anxious souls . . . .”

By the autumn of the same year 4,000 habitual drinkers had sworn never to drink again, and the Edinburgh Castle, and other public houses in the area, had lost their most valuable customers. In October the Citadel itself fell. It had been forced to close down and was now up for sale.

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This edited article about the St John Ambulance Brigade originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 669 published on 9 November 1974.

Sea rescue by volunteers of the St John Ambulance Brigade, by Clive Uptton

At football and cricket matches, in cinemas and theatres, at exhibitions, tattoos and country shows or wherever public entertainment is staged, the navy blue uniformed men, women and ‘teenagers of the St John Ambulance Brigade maintain their unobtrusive watch, ready to comfort and treat the sudden accident victim.

The army that wears the eight-pointed white cross of mercy is just one branch of the Order of St John, the chivalrous crusade born in the Middle Ages and today a vast international medical movement of 150,000 volunteers: a sobering thought in an age of increasing materialism.

The ambulance brigade, which celebrates its centenary in 1977, was set up by the order to cope with the flood of accidents that came with the Industrial Revolution. Today, the value of their voluntary work is underlined by the current accident rate in Britain: 20,000 deaths, 300,000 serious injuries and five million minor ones. The brigade treats 400,000 accident victims a year, involving four million hours of voluntary public duty. It is a high-speed medical corps that operates on land, at sea and in the air . . .

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This edited article about Dr Barnardo originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 668 published on 2 November 1974.

The great philanthropist, Lord Shaftesbury, was shocked to hear of the plight of London’s many homeless children, by Alberto Salinas

There were many horrors to be seen in the slums of East London during the nineteenth century. The most devastating effect of Britain’s Industrial Revolution had been to drive thousands of country dwellers into the cities to find work. Many of them did manage to find employment, but few could find somewhere to live. Even worse than the miserable dirty dwellings of the poor where ten, fifteen, even thirty shared two or three wretched rooms, were the workhouses and common lodging houses where the unemployed stayed. “Swarming with vermin and made pestiferous with the accumulated filth of years” as one observer described them, these lodging houses gave shelter to thousands of paupers for twopence and threepence a night.

Low wages and unemployment caused the most tragic hardships, but it was drink which brought the destitute to their final, fatal, end. Night after night, men and women would seek refuge from their sorrows in miserable drinking dens to spend their own and their children’s wages for which they had slaved all day to earn.

But of all the horrors which Thomas Barnardo had seen as a medical visitor in Stepney during the 1860s none struck so deep into his soul as the plight of the children.

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This edited article about Thomas Barnardo originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 667 published on 26 October 1974.

Thomas Barnardo, better known as simply Dr Barnardo, and the homeless London boys whom he would rescue from their perilous fate on the streets

On a cold winter’s night a half-starved ragged boy sought shelter at a school inside a donkey stable among the slums of Stepney. Thomas Barnardo, the man who was to devote his life to the care of unwanted children, had found his first homeless waif to save.

He wore no shoes, no shirt, and no cap. Only a few torn rags, held together by shreds, clung to his cold, shivering body. He was starving, and had been walking the streets all day, trying to earn a few pennies, and he had failed. As he had done the day before and the day before that. All he wanted that night was three pennies in his pocket; the price of a lodging house bed. But the light was now quickly fading so he prepared himself for another night’s sleep out in the cold, bleak night.

Then the small urchin remembered that his friend had told him about a night school in Stepney. It was run by a young gentleman who did not mind what the boys and girls looked like when they went to him for lessons. Most of all, he remembered his friend saying that there was a lovely warm fire in the school.

So the lad made his way to a tiny shed in Hope Place where a crowd of children dressed more or less like himself, were listening to their teacher. After the other pupils had gone, the young boy waited behind. The young, harassed teacher noticed him huddling over the fire and told him it was time for him to go home.

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This edited article about the Salvation Army originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 658 published on 24 August 1974.

An American First World War poster featuring a Salvation Army girl by George M Richar

“How wide is the girth of the world?” roared General Booth. The crowd of Salvationists that milled around him cried back, “Twenty-five thousand miles.” “Then,” bellowed Booth, triumphantly, “We must grow till our arms get right round about it!”

Within months, Booth had mobilised his Army, and the troops were setting off to war across the seas, ready to take the nations of the world by storm.

On March 10th, 1880, Commissioner Scott Railton and his soldiers landed in the United States of America. The siege of New York had begun. Two months after his first service, which was held in what one appalled minister had called “The most disreputable den in the United States,” Railton was able to report back to headquarters in London the figures for his American recruits: 16 officers, 40 cadets, 412 privates. One year later the number of converts topped 1,500. Railton travelled across the sprawling land mass of America, setting up headquarters north, south, east and west of the great continent.

Meanwhile, 23-year-old Kate, Booth’s eldest daughter, had opened fire in France. In Australia, two men from England had set out by themselves to take up the Salvationist cause.

In the summer of 1882, the man who was to become part-creator of Salvationist strategy for conquest abroad, had set out for India. Frederick St. George Lautour Tucker was a Greek scholar, and knew Hindustani, Urdu and Sanskrit.

When he arrived in Bombay, a huge police force came to meet him. The authorities in India, hearing that the Salvation Army was about to ‘capture’ India, believed that this meant invasion by thousands of troops. They were relieved to find that the thousand strong army they had expected was only made up of three men and a girl but they could not have known then that Tucker and his three assistants were to create more havoc than an army of one thousand could have done.

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This edited article about the Salvation Army originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 657 published on 17 August 1974.

One of the “Food for the Millions”  shops, better known as a Salvation Army soup kitchen by Pat Nicolle

Soon after three o’clock on a dark November morning, a young boy crawled out of bed, still half-asleep, and groped for his clothes. He tiptoed out of the house in Hackney. Then, tired and shivering, he made his way towards Covent Garden, four miles away, pushing an empty barrow along the silent streets.

At the market, he begged for a few apples and oranges from the fruiterer. Together with these and some vegetables and a sack of bones stacked on to the barrow, he trudged the four miles home. Later that day, the young boy’s scraps of fresh food, carefully prepared and cooked, were given to the poor and starving of London’s East End.

It was a hard, gruelling life for Bramwell Booth, eldest son of the general of the Salvation Army. But from an early age, Bramwell had known that his life would be given to those in need.

Bramwell had already learned some hard, humiliating lessons early in his life. Deafness had made him a solitary, withdrawn child, and at school he had suffered for his faith. Scoffed at as “Holy Willie,” he had once been seized by a gang of bullies and smashed against a tree “to bang religion out of him.” Pleurisy and rheumatic fever had followed.

By the time he was thirteen Bramwell had already proved to be an efficient accounts manager for his father’s mission. He once worked 72 hours without rest or sleep, wrestling with a discrepancy in the accounts which no one else could solve.

Like all William Booth’s soldiers, he knew that there were thousands of men and women in the world who needed him. Once, walking with his father by Blackfriars Bridge, in London, he had seen men sleeping in their only home, the cold stone steps that led down to the river. With some impatience his father had turned to him and said: “Do something.” Bramwell and the other nine children of William and Catherine Booth were to do “something” for the rest of their lives.

In 1868, Booth and his family spent the whole of Christmas Day distributing 300 Christmas dinners to the poor of London. By 1872, the Army had five “Food For The Millions” shops established where the poor could buy hot soup night and day, and a three-course dinner for sixpence. By the first month of 1879, William Booth was in command of 81 Salvation Army stations, manned by 127 full-time soldiers, one hundred of whom were converts.

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This edited article about the Salvation Army originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 656 published on 10 August 1974.

A sea captain sings a hymn to the tune of “Champagne Charlie is My Name”, by Pat Nicolle

“Come drunk or sober,” urged the handbill, and among those who accepted the invitation that night to attend a Salvation Army meeting in Bradford, Yorkshire, was a man who promptly went home to roll a barrel of beer from his house and empty its contents into the gutter.

In the Rhondda Valley 2,000 men and women were converted within six weeks, and one public house in the area which had once housed the most drunken and degraded people in South Wales, sold only three pints of beer in a whole week.

When urged to make an immediate decision to renounce sin and evil, one man in Chatham insisted on giving the Devil two weeks’ notice. After all, he told the Salvationist, he would expect the same consideration if he were an employer.

William Booth and his soldiers knew, that to the men and women they were trying to save, the Devil was a very real and formidable being. A huge poster in a small Yorkshire fishing town announced ominously WAR! IN WHITBY! THE SALVATION ARMY FIGHTING FOR GOD! The Salvationists used military tactics, military titles, and military terms. Always the enemy was the Devil, and always the Devil proved to be the hardest enemy for them to conquer.

Booth’s unorthodox techniques shocked and horrified many Victorians, who felt that he was giving Christianity a brash, vulgar image. When Salvationists began to use brass instruments to accompany their songs, the words of hymns were put to the day’s pop songs. When a converted sea captain began to sing Bless His Name to the melody of one of the day’s popular tunes, William Booth was delighted with its catchy, rhythmical tune and asked its title. “Champagne Charlie Is My Name,” was the reply. At this, Booth stood thinking for a few minutes, then turned to his eldest son, Bramwell, and said: “That has settled it. Why should the Devil have all the best tunes?”

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This edited article about the Salvation Army originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 655 published on 3 August 1974.

Booth’s People’s Mission Hall at 272 Whitechapel Road (top) was a refuge for those trying to escape from poor society’s rampant alchohlism which Booth rightly recognised as a disease. Pictures by Pat Nicolle

Twelve hard, gruelling months had passed since that hot summer’s day in 1865 when William Booth had taken charge of the Christian Tent Mission in the East End of London.

Night after night he had staggered home, often with his clothes torn and nursing a cut in the head where mud, stones or a firework had struck, hurled by a jeering mob.

With a wife and six children to support, Booth was himself facing poverty. Only his passionate desire to help the destitute and degraded, and the loyal, encouraging support of his wife, Catherine, had kept him going during these months of hardship. Sometimes, even Booth found his ardent faith flagging under such burdensome struggles. With only sixty supporters standing beside him after one year of work at the Tent Mission, his moments of near-despair were understandable. A few men and women had left him to follow their destinies. One of these was a young medical student called Thomas Barnado who had helped Booth at many of his meetings. He left the mission to concentrate on the rescue of London’s orphan boys, and to found an organisation which was to become famous throughout the world. Booth had seen an inspired faith and determination in this young man, and when he wished his friend goodbye, he added, with great foresight: “You look after the children, and I will look after the adults. Then, together, we will convert the world.”

But many of those who left Booth during that year were men and women who had found the dangerous atmosphere of the East End intolerable. Their attitude was forgivable. At almost every meeting, a violent incident would take place, and Booth himself needed a private bodyguard to protect him from aggressive roughs and urchins.

Soon, however, Booth’s movement, which became known as the Christian Mission, began to spread beyond the East End to the suburbs of Bromley and Croydon.

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