I was now in a way to be provided for; for though I was not a parish charge upon this or that part of the town by law, yet as my case came to be known, and that I was too young to do any work, being not above three years old, compassion moved the magistrates of the town to order some care to be taken of me, and I became one of their own as much as if I had been born in the place.

In the provision they made for me, it was my good hap to be put to nurse, as they call it, to a woman who was indeed poor but had been in better circumstances, and who got a little livelihood by taking such as I was supposed to be, and keeping them with all necessaries, till they were at a certain age, in which it might be supposed they might go to service or get their own bread.

This woman had also had a little school, which she kept to teach children to read and to work; and having, as I have said, lived before that in good fashion, she bred up the children she took with a great deal of art, as well as with a great deal of care.

But that which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very religiously, being herself a very sober, pious woman, very house-wifely and clean, and very mannerly, and with good behaviour. So that in a word, expecting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean clothes, we were brought up as mannerly and as genteelly as if we had been at the dancing-school.

I was continued here till I was eight years old, when I was terrified with news that the magistrates (as I think they called them) had ordered that I should go to service. I was able to do but very little service wherever I was to go, except it was to run of errands and be a drudge to some cookmaid, and this they told me of often, which put me into a great fright; for I had a thorough aversion to going to service, as they called it (that is, to be a servant), though I was so young; and I told my nurse, as we called her, that I believed I could get my living without going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had taught me to work with my needle, and spin worsted, which is the chief trade of that city, and I told her that if she would keep me, I would work for her, and I would work very hard.

I talked to her almost every day of working hard; and, in short, I did nothing but work and cry all day, which grieved the good, kind woman so much, that at last she began to be concerned for me, for she loved me very well.

One day after this, as she came into the room where all we poor children were at work, she sat down just over against me, not in her usual place as mistress, but as if she set herself on purpose to observe me and see me work. I was doing something she had set me to; as I remember, it was marking some shirts which she had taken to make, and after a while she began to talk to me. 'Thou foolish child,' says she, 'thou art always crying (for I was crying then); 'prithee, what dost cry for?' 'Because they will take me away,' says I, 'and put me to service, and I can't work housework.' 'Well, child,' says she, 'but though you can't work housework, as you call it, you will learn it in time, and they won't put you to hard things at first.' 'Yes, they will,' says I, 'and if I can't do it they will beat me, and the maids will beat me to make me do great work, and I am but a little girl and I can't do it'; and then I cried again, till I could not speak any more to her.

This moved my good motherly nurse, so that she from that time resolved I should not go to service yet; so she bid me not cry, and she would speak to Mr. Mayor, and I should not go to service till I was bigger.

Well, this did not satisfy me, for to think of going to service was such a frightful thing to me, that if she had assured me I should not have gone till I was twenty years old, it would have been the same to me; I should have cried, I believe, all the time, with the very apprehension of its being to be so at last.

When she saw that I was not pacified yet, she began to be angry with me. 'And what would you have?' says she; 'don't I tell you that you shall not go to service till your are bigger?' 'Ay,' said I, 'but then I must go at last.' 'Why, what?' said she; 'is the girl mad? What would you be--a gentlewoman?' 'Yes,' says I, and cried heartily till I roared out again.

This set the old gentlewoman a-laughing at me, as you may be sure it would. 'Well, madam, forsooth,' says she, gibing at me, 'you would be a gentlewoman; and pray how will you come to be a gentlewoman? What! will you do it by your fingers' end?'

'Yes,' says I again, very innocently.

'Why, what can you earn?' says she; 'what can you get at your work?'

'Threepence,' said I, 'when I spin, and fourpence when I work plain work.'

'Alas! poor gentlewoman,' said she again, laughing, 'what will that do for thee?'

'It will keep me,' says I, 'if you will let me live with you.' And this I said in such a poor petitioning tone, that it made the poor woman's heart yearn to me, as she told me afterwards.

'But,' says she, 'that will not keep you and buy you clothes too; and who must buy the little gentlewoman clothes?' says she, and smiled all the while at me.

'I will work harder, then,' says I, 'and you shall have it all.'

'Poor child! it won't keep you,' says she; 'it will hardly keep you in victuals.'

'Then I will have no victuals,' says I, again very innocently; 'let me but live with you.'

'Why, can you live without victuals?' says she.

'Yes,' again says I, very much like a child, you may be sure, and still I cried heartily.

I had no policy in all this; you may easily see it was all nature; but it was joined with so much innocence and so much passion that, in short, it set the good motherly creature a-weeping too, and she cried at last as fast as I did, and then took me and led me out of the teaching-room. 'Come,' says she, 'you shan't go to service; you shall live with me'; and this pacified me for the present.

The Picture Archive of The Illustrated London News (ILN) is most readily accessed through the website of the Mary Evans Picture Library. In principle, the Archive still has its own website, but in practice it is likely to prove inaccessible. Since 2007, following a change of ownership of the ILN Publishing Group, the archive has been housed at Mary Evans. This transfer is unfortunate in some respects, since Mary Evans is a commercial rather than an educational organization and it charges fees to download images. The original site also had extensive background material on the history and printing processes of the ILN that does not appear in the new setting. Nonetheless, one can browse the watermarked images of the Mary Evans Picture Library for research purposes – and its ILN section now has more material than the original site, as new pictures are scanned into it. And of course one can always move from the ILN to scan the whole Mary Evans collection.

The story goes that Herbert Ingram, who founded the ILN in 1842, noticed as a newsagent in Nottingham that when newspapers included pictures, their sales increased. Most journals at this point were still grudging in their resort to illustrations, so when Ingram moved to London and founded a paper committed to lavish use of images, he was immediately successful.

Pictures of dramatic events such as the 1848 Revolution in France and the Crimean War (1853-6) helped its reputation for exciting journalism. By the 1860s, the ILN was selling 300,000 copies per week, far outstripping the circulation of conventional newspapers. To begin with Ingram printed only black-and-white wood engravings, but the ILN later made use of color, and, especially from the 1920s, photographs. Ingram also started a policy of hiring famous illustrators and top writers, including Robert Louis Stevenson, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle. The archive has pictures from issues running from 1842 to 1971, including those from other journals in the "Great Eight" that came together in the 1920s, the best known apart from the ILN being The Tatler.

The search facility allows users to opt for ILN images only. Each of the 10,000 or so in the archive is well referenced with a number, date, description and further details. Searching under children brings up an eclectic collection of 282 images. Some only incidentally concern this heading, for example when King George V appears because there is a mention in the text to his six children.

Others are on the whimsical side: "Caught!" (ref. 10216446) shows children discovered by their parents in the larder scoffing jam from a huge jar. The text informs us that "sentimental or humorous scenes such as these were a popular addition to the ILN, especially over the Christmas period."

The royal families of Europe feature prominently as well as novelties, such as "Children being treated with ultra-violet light" (ref . 10216701). However Ingram, a Liberal MP, had some sympathy with the poor. Hence there are little clusters of pictures depicting children during such events as the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, the United States Civil War, and Jewish migration to London during the 1900s. "Children searching for potatoes" during the Irish famine (ref. 10220183), for example, conveys the desperation of their situation effectively.

More cheerful images from everyday life include "Audience of Children at a London Music Hall, 1882" (ref. 102216500) and "Children at the Circus, 1948," (ref. 10219941). There are also pictures of school strikes, somehow always with a portly-looking policeman in attendance (e.g. from 1889, demanding "shorter hours" and "no cane," (ref. 10219381), a Montessori school (ref. 10215457) and London youth clubs during the 1880s (e.g. 10220713).

In sum, the archive has a variety of delights for the historian of childhood, and a well-organized website, though no great depth of coverage or supporting material.

The British Parliamentary Papers of 1900 contain a chart on the proportion of Muslims and Christians in government schools in Egypt. The report following the chart reads:

"These figures would appear to show that the Mohamedan population generally are less fully alive than the Copts to the advantages of education."

Cartoons is a website produced by the British Cartoon Archive, a collection based at the University of Kent (England), dedicated to cartooning in newspapers and other forms of publication in Britain over the past century. It has a collection of around 150,000 cartoons drawn by approximately 300 cartoonists. This site provides students and teachers alike with a way of enlivening their approach to British political and social history as well as the history of children and youth. The website has a huge amount of material available, and it is well organized to help the researcher find cartoons from a particular cartoonist, or on a particular theme.

The alphabetical list of cartoonists in the Biographies section will include some names familiar to anyone brought up in Britain – and many others they will never have heard of. Fortunately the names of the most famous ones (and the most important newspapers that published them) are specified in the Search section, which helps to orientate the researcher. The site gives a brief biography of each artist, written with a nice light touch. For example, we learn that Barry Fantoni was thrown out of Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in 1958, accused of "wrecking the home of one of the teachers in a state of drunken madness." Fortunately for him, he was able to continue at the renowned Slade School of Art, and achieve fame and fortune as a pop artist as well as a cartoonist. A particular feature of the Archive is the Carl Giles Collection donated by the artist in 2005. This reviewer must confess to looking forward to seeing his cartoon in the Sunday Express each week during the 1950s and 1960s. His most famous creation was the Giles Family, a "bizarre fantasy," according to the biography, "of a working-class household living a comfortable middle-class life." The outstanding character was surely Grandma Giles, a ferocious looking character whose "anarchic vitality" led to her being heavily into drinking and betting. Also familiar to many will be the figure of Andy Capp, drawn by Reg Smythe under orders to appeal to readers in the north of England. Andy Capp, according to the biography of Smythe, emerged as the "flat-capped, pigeon-fancying, beer-swilling, work-shy northerner," with views on marriage going back to the "Neolithic Age."

The Search facility allows one to choose among numerous subjects. Each cartoon includes: a reference number, caption, embedded text (picking out detail not easily read in the reproduction), notes, the people depicted, and the subjects covered. The very abundance of the material may be a problem, especially as much of it will probably not appear useful to the modern reader. There are, for example, 6,099 entries under the heading of Children. In some cases, the cartoonist wishes to comment on events in contemporary society. W.K. Haselden, for example, turned out dozens of cartoons under this heading during the 1900s. Concerns over the declining birth rate in 1905 led the cartoonist to envisage a future in which babies become rare specimens, exhibited in cages and labelled "born in the managerie" (ref. WHO1490). In other cases, it is a matter of poking fun at politicians by depicting them as juveniles. "A row in the play-ground," by John Doyle, reduces politics in the 1830s to squabbling between Melbourne, Peel, Wellington and others (ref. mudyx9t). The cataloguers have provided numerous headings related to childhood and youth, such as girls, childhood romance, schools, schoolboys, juvenile delinquency, and mothers. Again the researcher will need to sift through the material to separate cartoons focused on that heading in particular from those with only a passing allusion.

The site includes advice on creating a group of cartoons as a teaching pack, to illustrate a particular theme. It provides a number of these but it is doubtless best to create your own, as the site advises. The site also points out in a section on Teaching Aids that "sophisticated searching" allows one to see, for example, what was happening on a specific day in history, by assembling all the cartoons that appeared in the newspapers on that day, or to grasp how politicians or major personalities (such as Princess Diana, with 321 entries) were perceived. This section promises five "resource packages" linked to themes in the British schools curriculum, and resources to help in the reading and analysis of cartoons. There is a section on Articles to help the teacher or researcher, though it remained obstinately stuck on "G" whenever consulted by this reviewer.

Overall, it is clear that a great deal of thought and effort has gone into making the vast collection of material available to the public, and into supporting the cartoons with relevant background information. The standard of presentation and the layout are excellent. It will need an awareness of the political stance of the newspapers involved to make much sense, and a feel for popular culture in Britain. Still, it is a cornucopia of delights.

Hidden Lives Revealed: A Virtual Archive – Children in Care 1881-1918 is an attractive and well-organized website. It bills itself as an "intriguing encounter with children who were in the care of the Children's Society in late Victorian and early 20th-century Britain."

At its heart is a collection of photographs, case files, and learning materials from one of the many philanthropic societies dedicated to the care of children in Britain at this period. Most of the archive material was previously unavailable to the public, as might be expected with files giving personal details of children who were in care – though of course the anonymity of the children is respected. "No other Internet archive," it asserts, "gives you the opportunity to browse through such unique material – a kind of resource which has the type of information not recorded elsewhere."

Perhaps this is so. In any case, it can claim quite reasonably that it offers something for those studying Victorian history or for university students interested in social work. The Waifs and Strays' Society, later known as the Children's Society, is rather overshadowed in the history books by the Barnardo Homes: further proof, if needed, of the aggressive publicity campaigns that have earned Dr. Barnardo a certain notoriety among historians. 1

A brief History of the Waifs and Strays' Society in a section of the website entitled Articles usefully provides background information. (A link to the website of today's The Children's Society provides further details for those interested.) The Society was founded in London in 1881 by a civil servant and Sunday school teacher named Edward Rudolf.

Rudolf aimed to set up a central home for the poorest and most neglected children cared for by the Church of England. It made a particular point of integrating its homes with the local community, aided by the parish organizations of the Anglican church. Other articles, incidentally, give a short biography of the founder, and introductions to poverty, juvenile delinquency and reformatories during the Victorian era. There is a concise and reasonably up-to-date Bibliography in these areas as well. 2

Photographs is divided into 12 sections, covering such areas as the work, schooling, pets, clothing, illnesses and disabilities, and sporting activities. Each photograph is carefully documented with a date, location, creator, and description. The Homes includes photographs and a detailed description. By 1918 the society had a total of 175 homes. These photographs inevitably look a bit grim now, though the society did have a policy of providing a family atmosphere in homes of around 10 children aged five to 14.

The sample of about 150 Case Files will interest those who want a feel for historical research. Each one contains the detailed application form, including information on family background, health, education, current circumstances, and reasons for application. There is also interesting supplementary material in the form of personal letters, photographs, and school reports. All of these documents are reproduced in the original, and (mercifully) transcribed in print form. They can be browsed by keyword, running from "Abandonment" to "World War I ."

An example under "Running Away" documents a girl who ran away from a home in Croydon, claiming ill treatment and concerns about having her hair cut off because of lice. The file even includes a reproduction of a Christmas card sent by her brother in 1891. Finally, there is a collection of Learning Materials, with exercises to find out "what it was like to be REALLY poor in Victorian and Edwardian times." A sub-section, entitled Rescued from Poverty has, for example, a fact file and questions for students concerning life on the streets and "who would you choose?"

Inevitably with this kind of website, the society responsible gives a positive view of its activities. One might wish to ask further questions such as: whether the laundries and other commercial activities in the homes risked becoming exploitative, the relations between children and those running the homes, and why the photographs suggest that all the girls became maids and the boys soldiers! All the same, the Society is to be commended for providing a very approachable educational site, and for its innovative approach to publicizing its existence.

A useful site for the study of children in the Pacific Basin is The South Seas, a resource database dedicated to European voyages from 1760 to 1800. Currently in its first phase of development, the site makes accessible online for singular or comparative research the full manuscripts of the journals of James Cook, John Banks, and Sydney Parkinson from the Endeavor voyxage of 1768-1771. Also available are all three volumes of John Hawkesworth's Account of the Voyages undertaken. . . in the Southern Hemisphere. . . (1773). While this is currently a literary resource database only, there are links for future access to the National Library of Australia's (NLA) collections of historical images, rare maps and drawings from this period.

Easily navigable for browsing, the site has all the key headings intuitively placed. It is well indexed and, while basic, functions adequately with manageable returns. Although not part of the historical collection, there are a few maps presented that are particularly interesting as they chart the day-by-day progress of Cook's Endeavor. The South Seas Companion is the main searching page from which you can browse such topics as: Concepts, Parties, Cultural Artifacts, Natural Phenomena, People, Places, Repositories, and Functions. Unfortunately, these are not clickable and one must browse alphabetically within each heading. Thus it is not really browsing and is actually quite time consuming to achieve a real overview using this method. There are four different search menus catering to different research needs, Keyword, Structured, Bibliography and Archival Sources.

South Seas provides primary sources for research on the people encountered on Cook's voyages, by himself, Banks and Parkinson. From the home page keyword search for "child," for example, there are 78 results that include original sketches and journal descriptions of children, their place and function Tahiti and New Zealand. In James Morrison's Account of Tahiti, he describes the rituals associated with the birth of a new child, feeding and touching taboos, and filial obligations and rights.

Because of the way South Seas has designed the keyword search, "child" will also return other results such as, "child-like" and "childish," which typically refer to adult behavior not children's. As well, results for specific terms, such as "boy" actually include all words containing the consecutive letters, including "boys" and "boyer." With 63 returns under the keyword "girl or girls," there is an interesting variety of information indexed with topics ranging from tattooing to cannibalism and the "rites of Venus." Considering the character of these resources written by men on long sea voyages, it should come as no surprise that most of the references to girls are of a sexual nature. As with all texts describing first contact, what the men chose to write about, the judgments they made, and the situations they created is more revealing of their own characters and culture than the one they are "observing."

While South Seas is full of primary references and resources useful for research, it is not geared towards teaching. There are no tools, widgets, or favorites to assist in saving searches, returns or sharing the images or data. This is described as the first phase of a greater project that the NLA is undertaking to create a clearinghouse of resources related to European voyaging in the South Pacific and cross-cultural contact. Yet it is not quite complete as there are several pages in the "About" section still being built. The Cultural Atlas section has maps available to track the path of the voyages, the images section has this message on its homepage: "We aim also to have a multimedia-guide to using South Seas to discover historical images and rare maps online here in early 2004."

Much of the true functionality of this website has yet to be achieved. However, judging from the year of the last updates, a second phase may not be forthcoming.

The images and documents presented on this website consist of material on Das Bund Deutscher Maedel in der Hitlerjugend, or "League of German Girls in the Hitler Youth." This organization for girls and young women was founded in the 1920s and became part of the Hitler Youth in 1932. At that time, all other scouting and religious groups were disbanded and their membership amalgamated into the BDM. While members included girls as young as 10 years of age, the site states that "Most of the League's leaders were women with completed university degrees or vocational training who were between their mid-20s and their late 30s in age." Many remained in the League until they got married, pregnant, or went to work. Another organization, Das Werk Glaube und Schoenheit, or "the Belief and Beauty Society," that became affiliated with the BDM, emphasized aesthetic movement activities, arts and crafts, fashion, home economics, and childcare.

However spare, the BDM site design is consistent and the materials are easily accessed. There are hundreds of images, significant texts of the movement, printed illustrations and drawings, and photos of artifacts. The explanatory materials, in which historian Chris Crawford has taken on a leading role, include translated personal narratives, background, and descriptions of the structure and leadership of daily and family life.

The materials were posted by a group of historians who are also re-enactors of the BDM, and state that the site represents an under-researched aspect of the period. A prominently placed disclaimer clarifies that the site does not represent a neo-Nazi position, but is intended to be historical and non-political, for the use of re-enactors and historians. One of the motivations for constructing the site is to expand understanding of the BDM beyond its association with the Hitler Youth, and the photographs, booklets, magazines, and other evidence shows this multi-faceted function. It was the only organization available for German girls, and fulfilled many associative and recreational functions. The girls went on trips, camped out, played sports, and created theatrical productions, crafts, and fashions. The photographs indicate that like those in modern girls' organizations elsewhere, many girls bonded with each other and enjoyed BDM activities.

The website notes that it differed sharply from the Hitler Youth for boys in that it did not include paramilitary training, and only awarded medical badges. The organization began much like the Girl Scouts in terms of its focus on bodily exercise, life and outdoor skills, and community activities, justifying these as a response to more sedentary contemporary lifestyles for youth in contrast to the hard work imposed on children in earlier times. The difference is that membership and participation under the National Socialist government was not voluntary, but compulsory. This quotation from the 1940 Youth Leadership pamphlet is evidence of the tone of the organization: "You, too, belong to our leader. He asks of you, and of all within our community, that we grow up to become obedient, service-minded and dutiful, and live in comradeship with those in our community. This is why you join the Jungmaedel League at the age of 10. Aside from your duties at home and in school, service in the Jungmaedel now also asks you to do your part voluntarily and joyfully."

On one level, the site illustrates German Christian girlhood under the Nazis. The historical materials provide glimpses of girls' activities and appearance, and the primary source images and text illustrate the friendships among young women and girls. It also depicts the ways in which a modern state could appropriate girlhood. A quotation from the BDM Service Manual indicates the way in which the state regimented even the most personal motivations to be healthful, beyond what might be classified as public health concerns: "Sport should not become a goal in itself with us; we do not want to break records; we perform bodily exercises in order to become happy and healthy members of the national community. 'Community and homeland solidarity' should be the motto of our bodily exercise regimen." 1 A hand-written dedication in the book, which may have been the printed guidance of a high official, referred to the pleasure of selfless service to the nation. A section on the Ostdienst—work with resettled Germans in eastern Poland—as well as some images of war relief work shows the transition from relatively carefree beginnings to doing quite demanding work on behalf of the Reich. The materials are wide-ranging, from the most prosaic images of girls on outings to snapshots of girls thrust into situations that went beyond normal expectations of young womanhood, but were seen as necessary in the later years of the war.