Dr Barnardo’s ‘Young Helpers’: Agency, Philanthropy and Juvenile Periodicals
This chapter examines how Barnardo used narrative to create entrepreneurial roles for children as fundraisers. He wrote and published a plethora of stories for children in the periodicals he owned and edited for children, relying on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s qualification associated with Uncle Tom’s Cabin for proper narrative: that is, a reliance on ‘real’ events in order to motivate readers’ sympathies and provoke widespread commitment to eradicate the world’s evils. The chapter examines the generic aspects of children’s periodicals to show how Barnardo used existing modes of periodical publication to generate forms of agency for children, specifically relying on notions of embodied sacrifice. The chapter demonstrates how Barnardo’s publications for children ask readers to identify with other children as ‘like-to-like’ subjects, as both supporters and recipients. The discussion reveals Barnardo’s shift to motivate children through emotions linked with family, recognizing their work as of national and civic obligation as Christian duty. Thus, the chapter demonstrates Barnardo’s shift from evangelical conversion to the development of the healthy, productive citizen that would reverberate throughout the British Empire.