Care and trauma: exhibiting histories of philanthropic childcare practices

This paper discusses two current exhibitions that offer new narratives of the history of poverty, childhood and philanthropy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - On Their Own: Britain's Child Migrants at the V&A Museum of Childhood and Ragged Children, Mended Lives at The Ragged School Museum, Mile End. Both exhibitions present the history of the development of philanthropic childcare practices that intended to improve the lives of poor children, providing unique insight into the individual experiences of children who passed through emergent childcare systems in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The exhibitions make a significant and impressive contribution to public understandings of children's responses to and experiences of historical welfare practices, and highlight both the positive and negative outcomes of childcare practices. They offer a unique opportunity to reflect on the development of the out-of-home care of children during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the legacies of which continue as resonant issues in child welfare debates today.