2-970-233 - /Heritage Images

His Royal Highness Prince Albert laying the Foundation-Stone of the Strangers' Home, near Limehouse Church, 1856. Founding of a building '...affording all the comforts and advantages of a home to natives of India, Arabia, Africa, China, the Straits of Malacca, the Mozambique, and the Islands of the South Pacific, who may require them during their temporary sojourn in London. [It would address the] utterly wretched condition of many of the Lascar seamen and others from kindred climes - friendless, homeless, and destitute - in a country far distant from their own, speaking a language altogether unintelligible to the native population, and hearing one they are equally unable to understand...Maharajah Dhuleep Singh and several other distinguished Orientals were in attendance in their magnificent national costumes [as well as] Colonel Sykes, the Chairman of the East India Company'. From "Illustrated London News", 1856.