Street Child

'Only thing I've got, is my name. And I've given it away to this man. Barnie, his name is, or something like that... "Mister," I call him, to his face, that is. But there's a little space in my head where his name is Barnie.' The Barnie of this story is Doctor Barnardo and the boy is Jim Jarvis, the lad who led to him founding his refuge for children of the street in Victorian times, and eventually to the worldwide institution of today. Escaping from the cruel regime of a workhouse school, Jim and Tip, his friend, walk the streets of London where they find work as carpet-beaters, but eventually Jim decides to find the grand house where he'd last seen his sister. London is a cruel and lonely place for a child and after many terrors and adventures, Jim meets the man who was to change his life and those of countless children in the future. An exciting, moving story of the appalling conditions of Victorian London and the deprivation suffered by those who often, through no fault of their own, lived lives of abject poverty and danger.