Surroundings that Baffle Description
Reading about the circumstances under which children came into the Charity's care it's clear why the Charity became increasingly involved in child protection cases, helping to bring some of these cases to court by opening a department specifically for child protection work in 1884. This branch of the Charity was in 1885 named the Manchester and Salford Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. In 1889 a new bill, the Prevention of Cruelty to, and Protection of, Children Act, was passed and the Charity's magazine, The Christian Worker, in January 1890 recounted a case under this new bill at Manchester Police Court in which five siblings aged 11 and under were found by one of their officers 'shamefully neglected.' Conditions were described in the magazine as follows: 'In a corner of the wretched room where this family of seven lived, without fire or light in the midst of winter, were a few rags, filthy in the extreme, which served them all for a bed. In s...
