Descendants of John Burgar

This article is mainly a summary of the comprehensive description contained in the following website:

Caroline Burgar (1847 - ? ) was only a year old when her mother died and only 6 when her father died. We are not sure who looked after her during her childhood but she eventually finished up in the above institution. Life as an inmate would not have been pleasant as shown in the following description.

The school was built between 1856 and 1861 at a cost of £45,000 by the the London Unions of the City, East London, West London, St Martins in the Fields and St Saviours.. The first of the 1200 children entered in 1856.

The school was situated in a 136 acre site, and took the form of an E-shaped building. Only a part of the front and a small part of the central spoke of the E remain. The columned front of the building housed offices, the Chapel (100' by 50') and dormitories above. The top and bottom spokes of the E were wings for the boys and the girls. Both wings were 3 stories high and about 260' long and comprised schoolrooms and dormitories. The dormitories were between 80' to 150' long by 18' wide. Each child had 300 cubic feet of space. This sounds a lot of space, but with the ceilings at 12 ' high, this means that each child had 25 square feet of floor area, about 6' by 4'. Not enough to swing a cat.

The central spoke of the E contained communal rooms, the dining room, kitchens, laundries, bath houses.

The school was highly automated. All windows could be open from a central point. The dormitories had grills at skirting level and vents at ceiling level to allow a plentiful supply of air through the buildings. There were boiler rooms, water pumping stations and by 1900 its own sewerage plant and gasworks.

The dining room could accommodate 1,500 children. By 1865 the boys were taught music and the brass band accompanied the meals.

School work was split between education and physical work since the school used child labour to reduce the cost of the establishment. From the age of nine the girls worked in the laundry and kitchens, cleaning the dormitories, dairy work etc. The boys worked on the farm, and learnt trades such as shoemaking, painting, tailoring. Subsequently, most girls went into domestic service and many boys went into the army (especially army bands) or became apprentices.

Ophtalmia was an eye disease that was rife in the school. A serious infection in 1862 (probably when Caroline Burgar was there) affected 686 children, about half of the children. Many children lost the sight in one or even two eyes. The disease was very difficult to eradicate, and was often brought in my new batches of children. By 1889 (following comments in the House of Commons) a separate ophthalmic school was opened on the site, separated from the main school by high fencing. It had beds for about 360 children and about one quarter of the staff were employed there. If there were vacancies, the London Unions could pay to send children to the ophthalmic school.

Discipline was strict discipline. Charlie Chaplin, who was briefly an inmate in the late 1890s, stated that all the boys were lined up in the gymnasium on Friday mornings to to watch the punishment sessions. For minor offences, the child was tied down on a table and given 3 to 6 lashes with a 4' cane. The recipients would cry appallingly and even faint. For serious offences, a birch was used and after 3 strokes the boy would have to be taken to the surgery for treatment.