Quaker Social Action (150 years)
Ian Kirk-Smith explores photographs by Horace Warner, Quaker and self-taught photographer in 1871
Horace Warner was a Quaker and a self-taught photographer born in 1871. He became Sunday school superintendent of the Bedford Institute Association, one of nine Quaker missions in London’s East End fighting alcoholism and prostitution, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries began recording the lives and living conditions of poor children – the ‘Spitalfields Nippers’. His images are a unique historical record of part of London’s social history. The purpose of his photographs was to accompany the annual reports of the charitable Bedford Institute Association (the forerunner of Quaker Social Action), which was based in Quaker Street, Spitalfields, and his powerful images helped raise funds for the Institute.
The children, ragged, filthy, and in bare feet, wear grave, careworn expressions. Life for them was hard work and a constant struggle. In the streets and alleys of Spitalfields children often fended for themselves while their parents worked fourteen-hour days in the nearby factories and docks. Infant mortality was higher in 1900 than in 1800 as increasing numbers of families sought work in the cities. In the East End nearly one in five children died before their first birthday.
Poor families often lived ten to a room with no clean water for washing and drinking. Diseases such as diphtheria, cholera and measles flourished. Organisations such as the Bedford Institute Association organised seaside and summer camps for the children to improve their health.
It was an example of Quakers putting their faith into action that continues with the work of Quaker Social Action in the East End of London today.
