Jump to content

Page:EB1911 - Volume 03.djvu/428

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
  
BARNARDO—BARNAVE
411

Castle” was brought into the House of Commons, but when the act was finally passed for the county and city of Durham, Barnard Castle was not included.


BARNARDO, THOMAS JOHN (1845–1905), English philanthropist, and founder and director of homes for destitute children, was born at Dublin, Ireland, in 1845. His father was of Spanish origin, his mother being an Englishwoman. With the intention of qualifying for medical missionary work in China, he studied medicine at the London hospital, and later at Paris and Edinburgh, where he became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. His medical work in the east end of London during the epidemic of cholera in 1865 first drew his attention to the great numbers of homeless and destitute children in the cities of England. Encouraged by the support of the seventh earl of Shaftesbury and the first Earl Cairns, he gave up his early ambition of foreign missionary labour, and began what was to prove his life’s work. The first of the “Dr Barnardo’s Homes” was opened in 1867 in Stepney Causeway, London, where are still the headquarters of the institution. From that time the work steadily increased until, at the time of the founder’s death, in 1905, there were established 112 district “Homes,” besides mission branches, throughout the United Kingdom. The object for which these institutions were started was to search for and to receive waifs and strays, to feed, clothe, educate, and, where possible, to give an industrial training suitable to each child. The principle adopted has been that of free and immediate admission; there are no restrictions of age or sex, religion or nationality; the physically robust and the incurably diseased are alike received, the one necessary qualification being destitution. The system under which the institution is carried on is broadly as follows:—the infants and younger girls and boys are chiefly “boarded out” in rural districts; girls above fourteen years of age are sent to the industrial training homes, to be taught useful domestic occupations; boys above seventeen years of age are first tested in labour homes and then placed in employment at home, sent to sea or emigrated; boys of between thirteen and seventeen years of age are trained for the various trades for which they may be mentally or physically fitted. Besides the various branches necessary for the foregoing work, there are also, among others, the following institutions:—a rescue home for girls in danger, a convalescent seaside home, and a hospital for sick waifs. In 1872 was founded the girls’ village home at Barkingside, near Ilford, with its own church and sanatorium, and between sixty and seventy cottage homes, forming a real “garden city”; and there Barnardo himself was buried. In 1901, through the generosity of Mr E. H. Watts, a naval school was started at North Elmham, near Norwich, to which boys are drafted from the homes to be trained for the navy and the mercantile marine. Perhaps the most useful of all the varied work instituted by Barnardo is the emigration system, by which means thousands of boys and girls have been sent to British colonies, chiefly to Canada, where there are distributing centres at Toronto and Winnipeg, and an industrial farm of some 8000 acres near Russell in Manitoba. The fact that in Canada less than 2% of the children sent out proved failures confirmed Barnardo’s conviction that “if the children of the slums can be removed from their surroundings early enough, and can be kept sufficiently long under training, heredity counts for little, environment for almost everything.” In 1899 the various institutions and organizations were legally incorporated under the title of “The National Association for the reclamation of Destitute Waif Children,” but the institution has always been familiarly known as “Dr Barnardo’s Homes.” Barnardo laid great stress on the religious teaching of the children under his care. Each child is brought up under the influence and teaching of the denomination of the parents. The homes are divided into two sections for religious teaching, Church of England and Nonconformists; children of Jewish and Roman Catholic parentage are, where possible, handed over to the care of the Jewish Board of Guardians in London, and to Roman Catholic institutions, respectively. From the foundation of the homes in 1867 to the date of Barnardo’s death, nearly 60,000 children had been rescued, trained and placed out in life. Barnardo died of angina pectoris in London on the 19th of September 1905. A national memorial was instituted to form a fund of £250,000 to relieve the various institutions of all financial liability and to place the entire work on a permanent basis. Dr William Baker, formerly the chairman of the council, was selected to succeed the founder of the homes as director. Barnardo was the author of many books dealing with the charitable work to which he devoted his life.

His biography (1907) was written by his wife (the daughter of Mr William Elmslie) and J. Marchant.


BARNAUL, a town of Asiatic Russia, government of Tomsk, standing in a plain bounded by offshoots of the Altai Mountains, and on the Barnaulka river, at its confluence with the Ob, in lat. 53° 20′ N. and long. 83° 46′ E., 220 m. S. of Tomsk. It is the capital of the Altai mining districts, and besides smelting furnaces possesses glassworks, a bell-foundry and a mint. It has also a meteorological observatory, established in 1841, a mining school and a museum with a rich collection of mineral and zoological specimens. Barnaul was founded in 1730 by A. Demidov, to whose memory a monument has been erected. Pop. (1900) 29,850.


BARNAVE, ANTOINE PIERRE JOSEPH MARIE (1761–1793), one of the greatest orators of the first French Revolution, was born at Grenoble in Dauphiné, on the 22nd of October 1761. He was of a Protestant family. His father was an advocate at the parlement of Grenoble, and his mother was a woman of high birth, superior ability and noble character. He was educated by his mother because, being a Protestant, he could not attend school, and he grew up at once thoughtful and passionate, studious and social, handsome in person and graceful in manners. He was brought up to the law, and at the age of twenty-two made himself favourably known by a discourse pronounced before the local parlement on the division of political powers. Dauphiné was one of the first of the provinces to feel the excitement of the coming revolution; and Barnave was foremost to give voice to the general feeling, in a pamphlet entitled Esprit des édits enregistrés militairement le 20 mai 1788. He was immediately elected deputy, with his father, to the states of Dauphiné, and took a prominent part in their debates. A few months later he was transferred to a wider field of action. The states-general were convoked at Versailles for the 5th of May 1789, and Barnave was chosen deputy of the tiers état for his native province. He soon made an impression on the Assembly, became the friend of most of the leaders of the popular party, and formed with Adrien Duport and Alexandre Lameth (q.v.) the group known during the Constituent Assembly as “the triumvirate.” He took part in the conference on the claims of the three orders, drew up the first address to the king, and supported the proposal of Sieyès that the Assembly should declare itself National. Until 1791 he was one of the principal members of the club known later as the Jacobins, of which he drew up the manifesto and first rules (see Jacobins). Though a passionate lover of liberty, he hoped to secure the freedom of France and her monarchy at the same time. But he was almost unawares borne away by the mighty currents of the time, and he took part in the attacks on the monarchy, on the clergy, on church property, and on the provincial parlements. With the one exception of Mirabeau, Barnave was the most powerful orator of the Assembly. On several occasions he stood in opposition to Mirabeau. After the fall of the Bastille he wished to save the throne. He advocated the suspensory veto, and the establishment of trial by jury in civil causes, but voted with the Left against the system of two chambers. His conflict with Mirabeau on the question of assigning to the king the right to make peace or war (from the 16th to the 23rd of May 1791) was one of the most striking scenes in the Assembly. In August 1790, after a vehement debate, he fought a duel with J. A. M. de Cazalès, in which the latter was slightly wounded. About the close of October 1790 Barnave was called to the presidency of the Assembly. On the death of Mirabeau a few months later, Barnave paid a high tribute to his worth and public services, designating him the Shakespeare of oratory. On the arrest of the king and the royal family at Varennes, while attempting to escape from France, Barnave was