Children at play
I found this photograph within the archive this week. At play at the Central Refuge
Posts
The joys of football
With the excitement of the London Olympics and Euro 2012 , the summer has been filled with sporting achievement. There’s not really been time to sit back and relax however, as barely a week after the closing ceremony of the Olympics the football season kicked off again. As one friend commented "We now have something to live for again". The nation’s sport frustrates and thrills in equals measure. Football at the Summer Camp, c.1920s
A marriage and President of the cheese makers association
One of our more popular blogs entries on this website appears to be the story of William (14th February 2012). This was a boy of thirteen who was emigrated across to Canada and wrote back to the Refuge requesting for news of Nellie, a girl he fell in love with whilst in Styal Cottage Homes . As our audience seem to have a soft spot for all things romantic I thought I’d delve back into the archive and see what other stories of love could be found. From 1872 until the beginning of World War I various children were emigrated across to Canada from Manchester. From the Marchmont Receiving Home they were then placed out with various farmers (and in some cases, clergymen) in the district. Indenture, 1890s
The seaside home
“We are again in the midst of summer joys and sunshine, and to many of your readers it will mean happy times in the fields and woods, or by the cool seashore. But to hundreds pent up in the great city it will mean weariness and wasting. Dirt and squalor are bad enough in the winter, but sunshine and beauty of summer seem to exaggerate these miseries.” - Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser (May 1888). In the dreariness of our so-called summer in Manchester this year, the above quote may seem a little mocking, but so read an article in a local newspaper in 1888 calling for funds to send a ‘sick and pale-faced child’ to the Seaside Home at Lytham . Seaside Home, Lytham
