Report of Speeches delivered at THE MEETING held at THE MANSION HOUSE OCTOBER 19th, 1937 in aid THE CALDECOTT COMMUNITY FOR CHILDREN THE MOTE, MAIDSTONE Kent the Lunacy Act and who have returned from a mental hospital still unfit for family responsibility, and also cases of chronic alcoholism and border line cases, not certifiable. Many children found in such homes are being mismanaged and seriously handicapped for facing life. All such children are welcomed at the Community. They apply in their hundreds (300 were turned down in two years for lack of accommodation), through the agencies of Child Guidance Clinics, Doctors, Social Workers, Teachers, Parents themselves and the Community does all in its power, as far as may be, to give back to the deprived child from the broken home, his birthright of safety and happiness. The first essential is an ordered simplicity of daily life, for in order there is safety, together with a rich cultured soil (for many of such children are found to be of a high order of intelligence) and many varied activities dear to childhood. Beauty of surroundings, affection and much sympathetic understanding are also all essential, and on the physical side good food and clothing, physical training and games all prove invaluable. To herd such children together in the old-fashioned type of “ home or institution would inevitably lead to disaster. The Community has as far as possible to be a substitute for home, and those working there must be prepared to live on terms of daily intimacy with the children, reconstructing for and with them the broken fragments of their shattered world, helping them to adapt themselves without bitterness to the deprivations which a civilised world has imposed upon them. Printed by G. WHITE, :i06, King’s Road, Chelsea, S.W. 10. Report of Speeches delivered at THE MEETING held at THE MANSION HOUSE OCTOBER 19th, 1937 in aid THE CALDECOTT COMMUNITY FOR CHILDREN THE MOTE, Kent On the invitation of the 'RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD MAYOR OP LONDON (ALDERMAN SIR GEORGE T. BROADBRIDGE), a Meeting, in support of THE CALDECOTT COMMUNITY FOR CHILDREN, was held at the Mansion House, London, E.C., on Tuesday, 19 th October, 1937, at 3.30 p.m., to hear Addresses by HIS GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, THE EARL OF LYTTON, K.G., and MISS RENDER THE LORD MAYOR OF LONDON occupied the Chair. THE LORD MAYOR OF LONDON: I am pleased to have the opportunity of presiding over this meeting, since it is for a cause which cannot fail to touch your hearts, and I hope, pockets. In the main, this Community is a school—but it is a school that exists for normal children handicapped by being brought up in homes that are abnormal, and where the men-tal suffering that they have to endure might have tragic effects were it not checked in time as this Home endeavours to do. The Mansion House is lent, very willingly, for many good causes, but in the main I am bound to say they are for sufferers from physical ills. A work such as this community is doing is one which should have the support of all wdio have a heart to respond to suffering, and I feel there are many who would like to help in such a work, were it more widely known. You will hear speakers this afternoon who will give you details of the work. Chief amongst them is the Arch-bishop of Canterbury, and the fact that His Grace should have spared the time out of his busy life to come here and speak to you is in itself sufficient evidence that the cause is w7orthy of your support. Lord Lvtton, who will follow him, is the Chairman of the Governing Body of the School. He will tell you about its special character and its urgent needs. Lastly, you will hear from Miss Rendel, the founder and the Director of the School, some of her personal experiences of the many children whom she has so successfully started in life during the last quarter of a century. Miss Rendel has made for herself a remarkable reputation in the educational world. I trust the meeting will have the success such a cause deserves, and I call upon the Archbishop of Canterbury to address you. HIS GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP OE CANTERBURY (who was warmly received), said : My Lord Mayor, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. First of all let me say how grateful wTe are to you, my Lord Mayor, for your kindness in allowing this Meeting to be held here. We all know how much depends, for every sort of good cause, upon whether or not it has the imprimatur of the Mansion House, and all who care for the work of this School and Community must share my gratitude to you. When I am invited to speak at meetings of this kind my instinct, of course, is always to refuse, and it requires very exceptional circumstances to persuade me to get rid of that instinct. But in this case when my friend, Lord Lytton, asked me to speak, I could not refuse, partly because it was he who made the request, partly because this School is within my own Diocese of Canterbury, and chiefly because I was very anxious to have some chance of sharing my own very real interest in its work with a larger circle, and I am delighted that the circle this afternoon is so large. Children of all ages, of all sorts, of all classes, of course, appeal at once to our imagination, our amusement, our love —I had almost said our homage. But this afternoon you are being asked to consider a class of children who must, I think, very specially command our sympathy. They are the children who come from what have been called “ broken homes/' and I will ask you to consider for a little time what is meant by that pathetic phrase. There are homes, for example—and, alas! becoming much more frequent—where one or other of the parents has been divorced, where very often one or other or both parents have entered into new homes and where the position of the children of one or other of the parties becomes necessarily peculiarly difficult and pathetic. Where the control of the children is divided between a father and a mother living apart from one another there must needs be a division of loyalties; there is often a most undesirable competition for the affection of the children, and they are deprived of anything that could be called the sort of home that we all value, where there is stability and security. The other day a child of very well-to-do parents, well known to me, who had been divorced and each of whom had formed a new family was listening to a story about a tramp, and she asked 4 4 What is a tramp ? " When she was told 44 a tramp is someone who has not a home," this child with comfortable parents said 44 Oh! You mean someone like me." How significant! It has a significance wider than I care to dwell upon this afternoon. Then again, there are the children from, let us say, homes where there is even friction between the parents; 1 understand that that not infrequently happens, and wffiere the parents—to their credit—do not wish their own unhappiness to cloud the lives of their children. There are homes wffiere there is, let us say, a special child, to whom nobody wishes to be unkind but whose place in the home life is very difficult to adjust. Or still more, there are cases where there may be an illegitimate or unwanted child. Now we all knowT what that terrible phrase 44 unwanted" means to the older people, to the unemployed, casting a shadow of hopelessness upon their wffiole life. What must it be for any child at the very beginning of its life to have it borne in, morning, noon and night, that it is really unwanted at home ? Then again there are homes where one or other of the parents has died and where the surviving parent is obliged to spend most of the day in getting support for the family, and the children are inevitably neglected. Or there are the homes where one or other of the parents is suffering from some mental instability, or sometimes from some chronic disease, and the result in one case is the inevitable restlessness and ill-adjustment of the child, in the other almost cer- tain neglect. All of these are samples of what is meant by “ broken homes.” Of course, for large classes of such children there are other opportunities of their being brought into more favourable surroundings. There are, for the very poor or destitute, the Homes provided by the Public Assistance Authorities, and there are the Homes which, so rightly, both deserve and secure wide-spread public support, like the Homes of Dr. Barnardo or of the Church of England Waifs and Strays Society. But these are Homes where the entire control of the child passes from the parents, where the parents are generally of the poorer class, and for the better-to-do there are the boarding schools, which at least afford, some partial solution of this difficult problem. But this Community deals with a class of children who come between those who are suitable for these Public Assistance or Philanthropic Homes and the Boarding Schools, the children of parents who themselves, or through their friends or relations, are able and willing to pay something for the education of their children and who do not always wish completely to divest themselves of responsibility for them. Now so far as I know, my Lord Mayor, this Caldecott Community, as it is called, is the only school in the country which deals with this particular class of children. What happens to them I shall leave to Miss Rendel and to Lord Lytton, who are so much more familiar with the working of the Community and School than I can be, to describe. I will only say this : There are at present in The Mote, that charming country house within the Park which Lord Bearsted gave to the Corporation of Maidstone, 82 children, and the need of them is sufficiently shown by the fact that in the last two years no less than 300 children have been refused admission. I do not wonder at the desire that such children should be received. Miss Rendel will be able to tell you what she does, and those who are associated with her in the Community, when the children come. Let me quote only one phrase which is used in the admirable account of the work of the Community which has been published. “ The de-valued child realises wffien he enters the Community that from henceforth he is an indi- vidual, loved and valued for his own sake, in spite of his faults—sometimes even because of his faults. Being loved brings with it a sense of security and the knowledge that life is no longer going to cheat him, and that he will not be asked to face it without help until he is fitted to do so.” 1 want to stress for a moment the use of the word “ Community,” because the whole character of this experiment is that the teachers, the children, the servants, all work together deliberately and consciously as members of one family, each giving to the whole family the spirit of service. Among the elder children there is some measure of self-government, so that a sense of responsibility is from the first called out from them. But, of course, always in the background, as there must be wherever there is wisdom in the home, there is the atmosphere of a known and established rule. The younger children have their nursery school or their infants5 school or their elementary teaching. When they reach an age beyond 11 they go to senior schools, secondary schools or technical schools, as the case may be, in the neighbourhood, so that they may mingle freely with other boys and girls and yet have always the background of their secure and stable home. And in the midst of all there is the Chapel, where intimate communal life is brought to realise all that prayer and worship means. In these ways every effort is made not to suppress but, on the contrary, to discover, develop and perfect the personality of the child. And all this just with that background of love and security and stability which has been denied to them in their own homes. Now, of course, as you have rightly said, my Lord Mayor, at all the meetings at the Mansion House not only is there the desire to spread the interest of the cause which is advocated but also to get money for its support. That is quite inevitable. I shall leave it to Lord Lytton to describe to you the financial position of this Community, as he knows it better than anyone; I will merely say this, that I should be the last person in the world to attempt to divert from the Homes for children who need other homes than their own—some of which I have already mentioned—the support which they so richly deserve and widely receive, but our object is to try to elicit the interest of good-hearted people in a fresh endeavour, another sort of social experiment, and there must be many who, I think, would be specially attracted by this particular effort, carried out on these lines, to deal with a very special class of children. I do not think it is subscriptions that are needed so much as endowments, and what I venture to hope is that through this meeting, or through the new interest that it may create, there may be some who will come forward and enable an endowment fund to be created which will deliver the Caldecott Community from that very insecurity and instability from, which it tries to rescue the children. I cannot doubt that there must be many who, if they knew of the good work which is being done in this quiet way, without advertisement or pushing or publicity, would be eager, from their own happy homes, to do what they can on behalf of the children to whom the old familiar words “ There’s no place like home ” must be a bitter mockery. (Applause). LORD LYTTON : My Lord Mayor, Your Grace, Ladies and Gentlemen. A fortnight ago the Archbishop of Canterbury and I stood on the same platform at the Albert Hall to advocate the cause of humanity. To-day, we find ourselves together again on behalf of another phase of the same cause. On the last occasion we were protesting against the slaughter of one set of people by another in a far distant part of the world— to-day we are here to plead with you for funds to help those who are engaged in saving from the special dangers which surround them the children not of some foreign race but of our countrymen. If we were asking you to help Basque children, Chinese victims of Japanese aggression, or Abyssinian refugees, you would probably respond generously. Will you do less for the children of your own country ? I am quite certain, as the Lord Mayor has said, that if the particular social danger which threatens the children we are speaking about, and the effective means which the Caldecott School adopts to ward it off were known—known, I mean, to everyone as we know it—we should not have to be making this appeal. Everyone knows about the value of our hospitals, for instance, and though they don’t get all the money they want, it is wonderful how much they do get from the public. There is no country in the world where people give so generously and so willingly as they do in England; give not only money but service, and as an English man I am very proud of this fact. And when I think of all the causes which our generous public does support I know that the one we are recommending ,to you to-day is as worthy as any other. We don’t require a large sum of money —the capital that would give us an income of £3,000 a year is a very small proportion of the nation’s wealth. But our difficulty is that our work is not known. The need for it is not known, nor the existence and value of it, and so by the kindness of the Lord Mayor, the Archbishop and I are here to tell you about it. What then is this Caldecott School which perhaps some of you have never heard of ? The Archbishop has told you in what sense it is a community, and the name Caldecott is taken from Ralph Caldecott, the illustrator of children’s books. It was started some 25 years ago as a Boarding School in the country for the children of poor parents, because two ladies, one of wdiom von will hear presently, had a natural genius for teaching and wished to give to poor children some of those advantages that our Boarding Schools afford to the children of richer parents. Little did they know then that the experience they were to gain would reveal to them the existence of a social problem which no one was aware of and enable them to become the pioneers in dealing with it. Now7, it soon became clear that a Boarding School was chiefly valued by parents whose domestic circumstances made it difficult for them to keep their children at home. Such cases, for instance, as where one parent had died or was incapacitated and the other had to go out to work. You can easily imagine the kind of conditions in vdiich parents who loved their children and did not wTant to part with them altogether found a Boarding School a Godsend, and because these cases wrere the most urgent they were picked out by the Selection Committee. So it came about that the School became filled with children from such homes, everyone of which had been darkened by the shadow of some tragedy. Then it was that the staff of the School began to be aware that this shadow which lay across their homes had touched the children too. The children, of course, were not awmre of it themselves, nor their parents either, but they revealed to the discerning eyes of their very wise and loving teachers qualities which indicated that they were troubled in their minds, wounded in their natures or unbalanced in their characters. Let me give you two pictures. The first is taken from a Police Court record, Charlie—15 years old—was charged before the Children’s Court with stealing cigarettes and sweets by inserting metal discs into automatic machines. The Probation Officer was asked to make enquiries into the boy’s home conditions, and this was his report:— “ Visited on Sunday morning to be sure of finding parents. Two rooms, poorly furnished, in shocking disrepair; in one room two double beds, neatly made, but with coats and a shawl supplementing threadbare blankets; in the other a table set for a scanty meal which the mother was serving to three of the family—a girl aged twelve, a boy of ten and an infant of twelve months. A girl of seventeen was tidying the room. The house showed evidence of the mother’s pitiful attempts to make a home. Father deserted the family four years ago ; he still haunts the local public houses. Eldest girl and boy both working and bringing in 35s. 6d. a week on Friday nights. The rent is paid, a meal is bought and the balance invested in watercress or shrimps which the mother hawks on Saturdays and Sundays to support the family for the rest of the week.” There you have a picture of a broken home, and note that the Court which has to deal with the product of it can do nothing either to save the child or to protect society. It can impose a punishment or make out a probation order, but it cannot piece together again the shattered fragments of the home that has been broken. That is one picture ; now7 let me give you another. This time it is that of Ann, a little six year old child who, throughout her short life, had never known the safety of home. She has been received into the Caldecott Community and a day or two afterwards is writing her first letter to her mother. These are the words with which she begins her letter : “ David and I like it here—we feel very safe.” What a tremendous significance there is in the contrast between these two pictures. Social workers, Probation Officers, Magistrates, will tell you that of all environmental causes of juvenile delinquency the broken home is the commonest: it forms the background of almost every case that comes before the Courts, yet, as the Archbishop said, this is the only institution in the country that is doing this preventive work. Thanks to the treatment which the children receive in the School, the symptoms of instability pass awray. They become more confident of themselves, more settled, and stable in character; they prove able to help the home situation when they return, instead of being injured by it, and the evil which, if unnoticed and unchecked, would have ruined their lives, is warded off to the lasting advantage not only of the young people themselves, but of Society in general. If you ask me how this is done, I can’t tell you. Miss Bendel could not tell you, there is no rule for such things. It is accomplished by the discerning mind and the understanding heart. Well that is what the Caldecott Community is—that is what it is doing. But it has been a hard struggle to keep it alive, since the maximum sum which the parents contribute, namely £1 a week during term time, amounts to £40 a year, and as some urgent cases are taken for less the average does not amount to more than £36, whereas the actual cost of maintaining the child is £68. There are 82 children at The Mote, and the actual deficit which has to be made up by voluntary subscriptions, money-raising entertainments, etc., is about £3,000 a year. Let me tell you of the generosity of those who do know the value of the School, for this is perhaps the greatest tribute I could mention. First, we have our faithful friends who subscribe regularly. They are a small but growing body. The Corporation of Maidstone let us our present fine house at a very reasonable rental—they are kind and sympathetic landlords. Lord Bearsted, who might be expected to resent our occupation of his old home, sends us a generous subscription of £50 annually, and wuote to me the other day to say how glad he was that The Mote was now serving so useful a purpose. Our Maidstone and London Appeal Committees give us splendid service, but most striking of all is the fact that one member of our staff has given—-not from her salary, for we don’t pay on that scale: but from a legacy—no less than £1,500! With such an example to support me, am I not right in saying that if everyone knew as well as we do what we were doing we should not have to beg ? The uncertainty about the future is a terrible anxiety. “ God will provide ” represents the faith by which we are inspired, and up to now God has always provided, but God must have his agents and my prayer is that some of you may be willing to become His agents. Of course, there ought to be many more such schools in all parts of the country, and as soon as our work is generally known others will be started. But to make it known we must make our own future secure. One of our difficulties is this : the result of most of our appeals is to increase the number of our applications for admission, rather than our revenue. Almost everyone knows of hard cases that they want to help, and they are glad to hear of a place where such help is to be found. Let me impress upon you that we can’t help you by taking these cases unless you will help us by paying for them. If you want to know more details than we have been able to give • *i • • . O you m the time, you will find printed literature which will give you this information. If you can’t help us yourselves please make our needs known to others who can. As there are no votes of thanks on this occasion, let me conclude by expressing on behalf of the management of the School our deep gratitude to the Lord Mayor, who has lent us the Mansion House and himself presided over this Meeting, to the Archbishop of Canterbury for having spared the time out of his busy life to come here and support us, and for the eloquent words in which he has pleaded our cause, and lastly to you, Ladies and Gentlemen, for the encouragement which your presence here has given to us. M MISS RENDEL : Your Grace, Ladies and Gentlemen. The previous speakers have already given such extraordinarily accurate and vivid accounts of the Caldecott Community and the work that it is attempting to do that it remains only for me to tell you briefly my personal experience and of the necessity of our existence. Much is said these days about the instability and chaos of our civilisation. Do people yet realise to the full all that such insecurity means in the lives of young things ? From long and sometimes bitter experience I can only say that the menace to the sanity and peace of mind of our children cannot be over-estimated. Thousands of homes today are built upon the flimsiest of foundations, thousands more have already wrecked themselves and their wreckage has left behind confused, insecure, and often bitterly rebellious children. It is not an exaggeration to say that without security in youth complete sanity and stability cannot be obtained. Home should spell safety for the period of childhood. Where it does not, where and to whom can a child turn ? There are, of course, widely differing forms of insecurity in the homes of to-day and each presents its own particular problem. Sometimes abnormal conditions arise through no fault of either parent. Economic depression, illness, death, all play their part, but in all these types of distress the child unconsciously learns to accept such conditions as destiny, and with the help of wise parents or friends arrives without injury at a working philosophy. Where, however, the situation arises through the behaviour of the parents themselves, where owdng to the maladjustment of their own emotional life, they themselves are unfitted to meet difficulties and misfortune, external or personal, the whole aspect for the child changes ; the unrest and unhappiness, and the emotional life of the parents, dominates the household and no child can thrive. Such conditions are almost bound to reach a crisis sooner or later, and separation or divorce follow. One is often inclined to imagine that it is the final irrevocable step taken by parents which brings its tragedy. What has gone before, at best estrangement, at worst perpetual friction, quarrelling and emotional stress, is far worse. The break itself brings unhappiness enough and divided loyalties, and the confusion which follows is almost always too much for a child to cope with and difficulties of temperament and behaviour inevitably follow. Couple this tragic state of affairs with poverty, partial or entire, a poverty which does not allow either side to make adequate provision for the children and the evil is completed. Such children are often sent to second-rate foster homes or cheap schools, whose owners are faced with the problem of making a living out of the pittance which such parents can pay. Alternatively the children are thrust on unwilling and often over-burdened relatives. Children from such homes are the most pathetic of all, but others almost as tragic are to be found. Take the case o of the illegitimate child. He starts life at a disadvantage, and unless great care is exercised and he is helped to combat the sense of inferiority which inevitably appears he is a ripe breeding-ground for rebellion and resentment against society at large. In a lesser degree we are sometimes confronted with the problem of the step-child. It is not unusual to find maladjustment and unhappiness amongst these children even when kindness and consideration are shown by the stepparent. The home education of such children often causes marital friction wdiich in its turn reacts adverselv on the child. And lastly, no provision has been made for the child-dren of neurotic and mentally sick parents. This large group includes the children of those who have been certified under the Lunacy Act and who have returned from a mental hospital still unfit for family responsibility, and also cases of chronic alcoholism and border line cases, not certifiable. Many children found in such homes are being mismanaged and seriously handicapped for facing life. All such' children are welcomed at the Community. They apply in their hundreds (300 were turned down in two years for lack of accommodation), through, the agencies of Child Guidance Clinics, Doctors, Social Workers, Teachers, Parents themselves and the Community does all in its power, as far as may be, to give back to the deprived child from the broken home, his birthright of safety and happiness. The first essential is an ordered simplicity of daily life, for in order there is safety, together with a rich cultured soil (for many of such children are found to be of a high order of intelligence) and many varied activities dear to childhood. Beauty of surroundings, affection and much sympathetic understanding are also all essential, and on the physical side good food and clothing, physical training and games all prove invaluable. To herd such children together in the old-fashioned type of “ home or institution would inevitably lead to disaster. The Community has as far as possible to be a substitute for home, and those working there must be prepared to live on terms of daily intimacy with the children, reconstructing for and with them the broken fragments of their shattered world, helping them to adapt themselves without bitterness to the deprivations which a civilised world has imposed upon them. Printed by G. WHITE. ,106, King's Road, Chelsea, S.W. 10.