2-982-197 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Centenary Fete of the Asylum for Female Orphans - the Archbishop of Canterbury Saying Grace, 1858. 'The object of the charity is to provide a home for orphan girls, who are admitted between the ages of eight and eleven years. They are brought up as domestic servants, and at a proper age are apprenticed into respectable private families...During the one hundred years this benevolent design has been in operation 2880 orphans have been admitted, nearly the whole of whom have been apprenticed...it was thought that, if a number [of orphans] could be assembled together, it would be the best evidence to offer to the public of the benefit the charity was conferring, not only on a forlorn and unprotected portion of our fellow-creatures, but on the public at large, by providing them with faithful domestic servants...a spacious tent had been erected and a dinner prepared, consisting of joints of cold meat, salads, and pies...The party consisted of about 380...the arrangement being that the children now in the asylum...occupied the upper part; next came those young women now serving their apprenticeship; and beyond them those who had been brought up in it, and, having served their apprenticeship, were filling various stations in life'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.