Behind Closed Doors: Hidden Histories of Children Committed to Care in the Late Nineteenth Century (1882–1899) by Annie Skinner

Abstract

Reviewed by: Behind Closed Doors: Hidden Histories of Children Committed to Care in the Late Nineteenth Century (1882–1899) by Annie Skinner Claire Phillips Behind Closed Doors: Hidden Histories of Children Committed to Care in the Late Nineteenth Century (1882–1899). By Annie Skinner. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2021. xvii + 254 pp. Annie Skinner's analysis of child removal in nineteenth-century England starts and ends with the words of Cecily, who was removed from her parents in 1886, around age ten: "I don't know what they took me away for . . . I didn't think I had done anything wrong at home and now I have lost every body" (1, 236). Cecily's words bring out the lack of understanding that children who were removed from their parents had over their situation. Removed due to her mother's behavior, Cecily spent six years in the care of the Waifs and Strays Society (WSS) under section 14 of the Industrial Schools Amendment Act 1880. The Act allowed institutions such as the WSS to remove children from families if they felt there was due cause and the child was in danger. By removing the children and placing them in industrial schools, the WSS was effectively criminalizing children while claiming to save them. Skinner's book Behind Closed Doors shows the ways in which much of the discussion regarding children and their parents took place behind closed doors, without knowledge or understanding from parents or children. However, Skinner brings out the neglected voices of children and their parents as they navigated life in the care of the WSS. Attitudes towards removed children come through clearly within this book. The middle-class Victorian ideals that molded views on poverty evidently impacted the ways in which poor, and so called neglectful, parents were seen. Working-class parents who were unable to conform to these middle-class ideals, such as Cecily's mother, were seen as a danger to their children. The Victorian notion of children replicating their parents' poor lifestyles or behavior was core [End Page 309] to the child protection, and child saving, movements of the later nineteenth century. However, it was these "saving" and "protecting" procedures that led to removed children being criminalized under the Industrial Schools Amendment Act. Skinner argues that the simultaneous process of saving and criminalizing scarred the children for life—particularly girls, who were often removed for moral reasons. While in the care of the WSS, the children were educated, although as Skinner notes, this education was carefully crafted to keep them in their place. Girls were trained for domestic service while boys had more of a range of occupations open to them, and thus received a wider range of training. Yet children were expected to contribute to the domestic labor within the school, allowing the school to capitalize "on children's economic value rather than emotional needs" (118). The children admitted to WSS were effectively institutionalized, and this is something that stayed with them their whole lives, sometimes for the better but often for the worse. Skinner argues that the purpose of this book is to understand the processes by which children came into care. We see the various ways in which children were committed by the WSS and we hear from the children and their parents through letters that have survived. The letters show a different view of the removal process when compared with the legislation and the ideals of the WSS in terms of child saving and clearly show the middle-class ideals that prevailed versus the emotional bonds between parents and children that were so often broken. In her analysis of children's experiences of state removal, Skinner argues that letter-writing by WSS children upon leaving the institution "was a positive proactive step as it indicated an effort to take control over their lives" (149). It was one of the few areas of their lives that they had a say in, and this accounts for the number of letters that have survived. The children, upon leaving, wrote to the WSS to express their gratitude, as expected. Yet they also requested different positions, showing that the children had the agency to control their futures, at...