Covering the years 1918 to 1922, and taking Archie from 14 to 18 years old, this chapter explores the reasons Archie ran away from home and joined the Pender Troupe of acrobats at age 14. It explains the nature of the troupe’s act and Archie’s training as a stilt-walker and gymnast. It offers details about their tours of Britain, their home base in Brixton (south London), their move to New York to join the show Good Times (1920), and their subsequent tour of North America. It explores Archie’s relationship with Bob and Margaret Pender, who became surrogate parents to him, and also his burgeoning friendship with the American comedian Don Barclay.
The editors of A Biographical Dictionary of Actors … in London, 1660–1800 have overlooked an episode in the life of the popular late-Restoration actress Elizabeth Watson Boman which may help explain her rapid rise to the position of a principal actress in the United Company. Thomas Southerne tells us that after the death of her father in 1691, Elizabeth Watson was adopted and trained as a player by the great actor Thomas Betterton. However, from new evidence it appears that the childless Thomas and Mary Betterton, who often acted as surrogate parents to young actresses and the orphaned children of friends, had assumed the roles of Elizabeth's guardians before this date, perhaps as early as 1686.
This chapter shows how Dreamfields’ rigid discipline is made palatable and even welcomed by promoting a belief in the institution, its methods and its benefits to individual, aspirational futures. Repetition and morality tales are used to smooth over the various contradictions and ambiguities inherent in Dreamfields’ approach. Principal Culford assumes the combined role of saviour, hero, military commander and business executive in this rigidly hierarchical operation, leading a redemptive troupe of teachers-as-surrogate parents who assiduously labour to redeem a twenty-first century 'urban residuum'. Crafting 'appropriate' aesthetic appearances and reiterating Dreamfields’ superior position in the education market are also facets of this indoctrination process, offering powerful proof of institutional validity and providing a sweetener allowing the often unpleasant, tiring medicine of discipline to go down smoothly.
Utilization of Kinship Foster Care Using a Case Study of Grandparents as Surrogate Parents Both in Japan and the U.S.