THERE are few people who can be credited with genuinely making the world a better place- the Rev Benjamin Waugh was once of them.
He was a history changing social reformer – and the founding father of one of the largest and most successful charities in British history – the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). Although he was originally from North Yorkshire, Waugh lived in Hertfordshire during some of his most productive years.
Waugh was born on February 20, 1839, in Settle. His father James was a saddler and his mother, Mary, was known around the town as “the Good Samaritan”. She was a selfless woman committed to giving her children a charitable and Christian upbringing. Tragically she died when Benjamin was only eight years old but her son clearly inherited his mother’s compassion.
When he was just a boy he demonstrated this when he carried out one of his first acts of benevolence. It happened in his home-town of Settle when the local constable put two boys before the magistrates’ bench for stealing a turnip in order to make a jack-o-lantern. Despite his young age Waugh went before the bench to appeal for leniency for the boys and stressed that he too had committed the same offence, but had not been found out.
Later he attended theological college in Bradford before moving to Newbury in Berkshire, where his first pastoral role again saw him yet again fighting against the harsh prosecution of a child for the ‘crime’ of stealing turnips. Waugh made a speech to the court in the boy’s defence and he succeeded in stopping the youngsters from being jailed.
Waugh then moved to London and it was while he was working as a congregationalist minister in the slums of Greenwich, that he became appalled by the conditions he saw children being exposed to, Working in the slums exposed him to the cruelties suffered by the poorest in society. He soon created a church and founded a “Society for Temporary Relief in Poverty and Sickness” and set up a day home where working mothers left their children. He abhorred the workhouse system which saw children as young as five being sent down mines, up chimneys or working in dangerous conditions in factories.
In 1873 he wrote a book entitled ‘The Gaol Cradle, Who Rocks It?’ which called for the creation of juvenile courts and children’s prisons as a means of diverting children from a life of crime. In his book Waugh outlined the trials of children aged from six to 14 for the most trivial of offences – including taking bread, sweets or fruit or letting off fireworks, all which meant a jail sentence. In 1875 there were 7,173 children in prison in England and Wales – 927 of them were under 12.
Those who were fortunate enough to have a home or stable family weren’t always safe either. These youngsters were often sent – by their parents- to work in factories in hazardous situations for 14 to 18 hours a day. Others would be put to work as chimney sweeps and would come out of the chimney covered from head to toe with soot. Their arms, legs, elbows and knees would be bleeding, only to be washed off with salt water and sent up another chimney.
Waugh just couldn’t stomach these injustices. In 1884, he was a co-founder of the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (echoing a similar initiative in Liverpool), which was launched at London’s Mansion House on July 8. Five years later, with Waugh as its first director and Queen Victoria as its first patron. In another of his books: ‘Some Conditions of Child Life in England’, published in 1889, Waugh described his disgust as the sexual abuse of children: “It will be impossible to even mention the hosts of those special defilements and injuries done to girl children,” he wrote. “They are vast in number and incredible in kind and include large numbers of own fathers as the fearful criminals.” He also described the violent abuse often meted out to youngsters by their own parents. “There was the poor little boy of seven, the hated encumbrance of a father and stepmother, bound and sometimes gagged and thrust in an orange box – unfed all day long in a locked-up room,” he said.
He also touched on the notorious Victorian practice of ‘baby farming’ where youngsters would be fed chalk and coal and then left to starve – or drowned – in order to spare their parents the cost of feeding them.
Waugh and his wife Sarah Elizabeth had 12 children including a daughter, Edna, who would become a notable watercolour artist and draughtswoman and most famous for providing the illustrations to Emily Brontë’s blockbuster novel Wuthering Heights.
The family lived in Hatfield Road, St Albans from circa 1890 and Waugh would regularly commute to London from his Hertfordshire home. Census records show the large family lived with just one domestic servant; a local woman named Florence Rogers.
The National Portrait Gallery has a sketch of Waugh which was drawn by Augustus John during a visit to the St Albans home around this time. John was friends with Waugh’s daughter Edna, having met her at the Slade School of Art.
Waugh was popular in St Albans where he was dubbed ‘the archbishop of the children’. In 1891 when Waugh and several of his children were laid up in bed with influenza it made the local newspaper, such was the interest in this benevolent family.
Such was his determination is tackling the injustice to children that his supporters would often say he was on the “Waugh-path” as he battled the authorities to change laws and despite working round-the-clock, Waugh is said to have refused to accept a salary from the NSPCC.
During these years Waugh, along with the NSPCC fought to keep children safe in Hertfordshire and across the county. In 1892 at the Hemel Hempstead Sessions a girl named Ada Smith was brought to court after her parents had both sent to jail for child cruelty against her. The hearing was to decide if she would be placed under the protection of the Berkhamsted Board of Guardians, which most likely would have meant her going into a workhouse.
During the hearing a letter was read out by a lawyer from the NSPCC on behalf of Benjamin Waugh, saying she was to be entrusted to his foster care until she was 16. With this act of kindness, he effectively saved her from a miserable life in the poorhouse.
Although the Victorian age was almost over and people were becoming more enlightened when it came to the treatment of children, there were shocking cases of child abuse in every town in England.
Hertfordshire was no different. In In 1900 Alice Gurney from Watford was hauled to court for severely neglecting her four children. The children were mal-nourished, filthy and had no bedding. Gurney, who was a drunk, had pawned her children’s clothes and boots to buy alcohol.
1902 George and Ruth Green of St Albans were sent to prison for neglecting their three children, who were verminous, ragged, and starving. The couple had an additional six children, all of whom had died due to poor treatment. In the same year Alfred Swain and Maria Swain from Elstree were prosecuted for cruelty. Both were drunkards and made their children -aged from two to 11- sleep in an outhouse. One almost died of exposure. They were both sent to prison for 14 days.
In 1905, Waugh retired to live in Southend, Essex where he died three years later. He spent his final years in ill health and had travelled extensively to find a cure. It was not to be. Waugh died aged 69, yet his legacy will most likely endure forever.
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