Talk:Thomas John Barnardo

Child with Down's Syndrome?
The article mentions Barnardo as having a child with Down's Syndrome. His memoirs, however, make no mention of this, and in none of the photographs of his five sons (neither of the girls have photos in the book)are any of the usual physical characteristics of Down's Syndrome in evidence (though that's obviously not conclusive of anything). I wondered where this information came from and what its veracity was.

Murray Simpson —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.36.60.101 (talk) 15:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Citation/Evidence Needed?
"The fact that in Canada less than 0% of the children sent out proved failures confirmed Barnardo’s conviction that"

Could we please have some statistics to back this up, or some source material. An example of a Barnardo boy/girl who 'made good' or became a pillar of the comunity would be a nice adidtion too.

Cheers —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Perfectblue97 (talk • contribs).

One story I came across while compiling a web site about Barkingside, of Victorian times:Barkingside --Goldoni 10:20, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the religious upbringing within Dr Barnardo’s the children were all brought up as Protestants. No other faith was available, parents who signed their children over were made aware of this fact section 2 of the document.

In the late 60s early 70s Children were encouraged to attend outside church services as there were many more faiths to deal with. The problem of Catholic and Jewish children was agreed after a court hearing where Dr Thomas Barnardo was charged with abduction in 1888 Goldoni 09:36, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone have details of the part of the funeral journey said to have been one of only ever two instances of coffins being conveyed on underground trains. Articles about the funeral elsewhere state that a special train took the coffin from Liverpool Street to Barkingside. But that journey could not have been taken by Underground in 1905. Not until the 1940's was the conversion of the relevant lines into Essex to underground carried out. (82.29.215.250 21:58, 29 March 2007 (UTC))

Does this give you information the information you want? http://www.agoravox.com/article.php3?id_article=4808 Prime Minister W E Gladstone and Dr Barnardo were the only two people to have their coffins transported by Tube. --Brenont 05:52, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I added the "Life in Dr. Barnardo's Homes" section. This section needs to be expanded, in my opinion - it is just the kind of thing that was never included in the "Encylopedia Britannica". I heard of the appalling conditions in Dr. Barnardo's Homes from my mother, who was a doctor in England and sometimes visited the homes to investigate public health issues. To maintain a neutral POV, we need to have some of the dark side exposed, as well as the bright side. -- Duncan C. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.176.183.58 (talk) 18:47, August 28, 2007 (UTC)
 * I find it incredible that you called John Searl a "Professor." Yes, I know he called himself one on the linked document.  But his errors of grammar and spelling give the lie to that.  My eleven year old son can do better than that (No, I'm not exaggerating, and no, my son is just a normal kid, not a genius).  Call the guy a "professor" - how gullible can you get?  He's not an educated man by any stretch of the imagination. I've left the link there, but without that spurious title. David Cannon 23:16, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I was only going by what Searl himself said. Are you accusing him of lying about his credentials? If so, Wikipedia is NOT the place to do it. Perhaps we could call him a "self described professor"? He includes full contact info on the linked document if you would like to ask him about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.80.222.104 (talk) 22:39, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, I will go along with the "self-described" label. That said, I still think we shouldn't be giving any credence to something that is obviously false.  I have spent the best part of 20 years teaching newly arrived immigrants from the Far East, and even on arrival, their spelling and grammar is, in a great many cases, superior to Searl's.  I very much doubt that he even knows what the inside of a university looks like.  I am not, and I want to emphasize the word not, passing judgement on the content of his work.  It may well be partly or even completely factual - who knows?  I'm not even saying that he "lied" about his credentials - there are mail-order "universities" in the USA and possibly in England as well, where one can buy all sorts of spurious "qualifications."  Even I have one - for a lark I paid a small fee and got myself "ordained" as a "reverend" by a "church" that exists only on paper, over the internet.  Searl's "professorship" is most likely of the same variety.  I would never dream of using my "ordination" in anything but a jocular way.  Similarly, to present as fact a claim that is so obviously spurious can only make Wikipedia appear to be a laughing stock in the eyes of the public.  That said, saying that he is a "self-described professor" is acceptable.  I'll go with it. David Cannon (talk) 10:16, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

== what made him make a home for destitute boys?

Well it was Jim Jarvis because he had a friend called carrots and he died so he gave it a shoot .So of he went to the school that barnardo ran and at the end of the day Jim didn’t go home because he didn’t have one and so he told barnardo and he showed him where the were. That was what made him run the home for destitute boys and soon there was one for girls to. by lauren checkley

See
See the Talk page of the article entitled Barnardo's. The web-site implies that he did not have a degree. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.194.200 (talk) 17:28, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * No one has come up with a proof that he had a degree for a long time. If he did have one, it would be easy to produce proofs of the same. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.194.200 (talk) 11:45, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Categories: Irish and British
Barnardo was born in Dublin in 1845. The country of his birth was called, at that time, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This is the justification for including the article in both "British ..." and "Irish ..." categories. To include it one set of categories, but not the other, might be construed as a non-neutral point of view. – Wdchk (talk) 21:31, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

He never earned a doctorate
The article currently contains the following sentence:
 * "However, he never earned a doctorate, and in later life he was prosecuted for falsely claiming he was a doctor."

There are two problems with this sentence. The first is it is not cited. The second is that under the British system wheren medicen and surgery are traditionally under different professions, the sentence is misleading -- as can be seen in the eyes of an Amrican patient in a central London hospital when he or she is told that "Mr Smith will be preforming the operation"! (see Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons -- as this biography says he was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons) -- PBS (talk) 16:47, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

It is a rare British doctor who "earns a doctorate". A medical qualification entitles a physician in the UK to call themselves a doctor. I have now removed the sentence, particularly as no quote for the alleged prosecution has ever come forward. A later passage in the article states he was working a as a physician to a hotel. Refdoc (talk) 09:19, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

- page 5 - he qualified in 1876 as a medical doctor. I guess that settles it. Refdoc (talk) 09:50, 15 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, but he had called himself "Doctor" even before that. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says: "Barnardo had never finished his studies at the London Hospital, but appropriated the title of ‘doctor’ and ordered that he should henceforth be known by that title. [...] Less successful rivals, in particular Frederick Charrington and George Reynolds, an obscure Baptist minister, spread rumours about Barnardo's [...] right to the title of doctor, and finally made allegations about his personal life. Asserting his doctorate Barnardo produced a letter from the University of Geissen [i.e. Giessen?], later shown to be forged. [...] Barnardo himself went to Edinburgh and at the end of four months had obtained his licentiate from the Royal College of Surgeons." By the way, compared to the ODNB the Wikipedia article appears rather hagiographical. – Schneid9 (talk) 22:51, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Introduction/emotive wording
The introduction refers to children having been "rescued" and "given a better life". Given the admission of kidnap or "philanthropic abduction" I would suggest that neither phrase is appropriate, and this phrase should be reworked to remove such references. 86.173.208.131 (talk) 23:07, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I see that over three years later, it still has the same biased wording, which sounds as though it came from his own publicity materials. I've added a template to draw attention to this issue for now, and might try fixing it at some point. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 17:19, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh dear... "Each child is now brought up under the influence and teaching of the denomination of the parents." This was written in 1911, Barnardo's Homes haven't existed for many years but the statement is in the present tense? I think this article is going to need a lot of work! Contains Mild Peril (talk) 17:29, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

The reference to "Barnardo's was implicated in the scandal of forced child migration, in which children from poor social backgrounds were taken to the former colonies (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Zuid Africa ) by churches and charities, without their parents' consent and even under false claims of death. Although this was a legal scheme, favoured by Government and society, in many cases the children suffered harsh life conditions and many also underwent abuse. This practice went on until the 70's. This merited an apology by PM Gordon Brown in 2010." This is a reference to the actions of the charity rather than of the individual Thomas Bernardo. If there is evidence that he as an individual was involved in this policy a citation is needed. If not the sentence should be removed and put in a separate article about the charity Father Edmund (talk) 13:10, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Jack the Ripper suspect
The way the paragraph is phrased lead us to believe Barnardo was suspected during his lifetime. It is not the case, if you read the article on casebook the reference came from. Barnardo surfaced as a suspect decades after his death. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.82.34.17 (talk) 01:12, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Thomas John Barnardo
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Thomas John Barnardo's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Telegraph": From Diana, Princess of Wales:  From Barnardo's:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 09:24, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Child migration scandal (Legacy section, subsection Controversies)
Did the practices that the Barnardo's organisation was criticised for eg placing children abroad on spurious grounds parents were dead - begin in the lifetime of Barnardo the founder? My impression was that the migration scheme gained traction rather after his death in 1904 further on in the 20th century. If it did not, coverage of the scandal belongs more on an article on the organisation than its founder. The wiki article on the organisation brackets the migration scheme in question between 1945 and 1974.Cloptonson (talk) 19:36, 2 August 2021 (UTC)