National Refuges for Homeless and Destitute Children
and
Shaftesbury Homes & Arethusa
The organisation was originally concerned with the ragged school movement. This began out of the horror that William WIlliams, a clerk in a London solicitor's office, felt when he saw a group of boys chained together in readiness for being transported to Australia.
He opened a ragged school, offering free education to poor and homeless children in 1844 in Streatham Street.
Other ragged schools were in Bloomsbury.
Lord Shaftesbury then became involved as the Ragged School Union president.
A refuge for boys was opened in Arthur Street, and for girls in Broad Street (and some years later, moved to Ealing).
In 1866, the society bought the Chichester, a redundant friggate moored off Greenhithe, to use as a type of residential maritime training school for poor and homeless boys. This type of vocational training was known as industrial training.
The society changed its name to The National Refuges for Homeless and Destitute Children and 'Chichester' Training Ship.
So successful was the Chichester venture, that a second boat was bought, the Arethusa, and moored alongside the Chichester.
By 1919, the name of the organisation changed again to Shaftesbury Homes and Arethusa.
Land-based children's homes
The organisation not only had the training ships but a number of homes including:
Boys' Home, Fortescue House, Twickenham
Girls' Home, Sudbury Hall, Wembley
Farm School, Bisley (1867)
Shaftesbury Boys' School, Bisley (1873)
Esher Place, Surrey (girls)
Royston, Hertfordshire
In 2006, the organisation changed its name again. This time to Shaftesbury Young People
See also Shaftesbury Society
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