Full download ebook at ebookname.

com

Surviving and Thriving in Care and Beyond Personal

and Professional Perspectives 1st Edition Sara
Barratt

https://ebookname.com/product/surviving-and-thriving-in-
care-and-beyond-personal-and-professional-perspectives-1st-
edition-sara-barratt/

OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWLOAD NOW

Download more ebook from https://ebookname.com

More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Managing the Matrix The Secret to Surviving and

Thriving in Your Organization 1st Edition Dawn Metcalfe

https://ebookname.com/product/managing-the-matrix-the-secret-to-
surviving-and-thriving-in-your-organization-1st-edition-dawn-
metcalfe/

Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care

Postmodern Perspectives 1st Edition Gunilla Dahlberg

https://ebookname.com/product/beyond-quality-in-early-childhood-
education-and-care-postmodern-perspectives-1st-edition-gunilla-
dahlberg/

Staying Lean Thriving Not Just Surviving Second Edition

Peter Hines

https://ebookname.com/product/staying-lean-thriving-not-just-
surviving-second-edition-peter-hines/

Fundraising When Money Is Tight A Strategic and

Practical Guide to Surviving Tough Times and Thriving
in the Future 1st Edition Warwick

https://ebookname.com/product/fundraising-when-money-is-tight-a-
strategic-and-practical-guide-to-surviving-tough-times-and-
thriving-in-the-future-1st-edition-warwick/
Surviving Health Care A Manual for Patients and Their
Families 1st Edition Thomasine Kushner

https://ebookname.com/product/surviving-health-care-a-manual-for-
patients-and-their-families-1st-edition-thomasine-kushner/

How and Why We Still Read Jung Personal and

professional reflections 1st Edition Jean Kirsch

https://ebookname.com/product/how-and-why-we-still-read-jung-
personal-and-professional-reflections-1st-edition-jean-kirsch/

Doing Academic Writing in Education Connecting the

Personal and the Professional 1st Edition Janet C.
Richards

https://ebookname.com/product/doing-academic-writing-in-
education-connecting-the-personal-and-the-professional-1st-
edition-janet-c-richards/

Person Centred Counselling Supervision Personal and

Professional 1st Edition Richard Bryant-Jefferies
(Author)

https://ebookname.com/product/person-centred-counselling-
supervision-personal-and-professional-1st-edition-richard-bryant-
jefferies-author/

Tracking Gobi grizzlies surviving beyond the back of

beyond First Edition Chadwick

https://ebookname.com/product/tracking-gobi-grizzlies-surviving-
beyond-the-back-of-beyond-first-edition-chadwick/
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page i

CHAPTER TITLE I

SURVIVING AND THRIVING

IN CARE AND BEYOND
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page ii

Systemic Thinking and Practice Series

Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel (Series Editors)
This influential series was co-founded in 1989 by series editors David Campbell
and Ros Draper to promote innovative applications of systemic theory to
psychotherapy, teaching, supervision, and organisational consultation. In 2011,
Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel became series editors, and aim to present new
theoretical developments and pioneering practice, to make links with other theo-
retical approaches, and to promote the relevance of systemic theory to contem-
porary social and psychological questions.
Other titles in the Series include
(For a full listing, see our website www.karnacbooks.com)
Innovations in the Reflecting Process
Edited by Harlene Anderson and Per Jensen
The Performance of Practice: Enhancing the Repertoire of Therapy with
Children and Families
Jim Wilson
The Dialogical Therapist: Dialogue in Systemic Practice
Paolo Bertrando
Systems and Psychoanalysis: Contemporary Integrations in Family Therapy
Carmel Flaskas and David Pocock
Intimate Warfare: Regarding the Fragility of Family Relations
Martine Groen and Justine Van Lawick
Being with Older People: A Systemic Approach
Edited by Glenda Fredman, Eleanor Anderson, and Joshua Stott
Mirrors and Reflections: Processes of Systemic Supervision
Edited by Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel
Race and Culture: Tools, Techniques and Trainings: A Manual for Professionals
Reenee Singh and Sumita Dutta
The Vibrant Relationship: A Handbook for Couples and Therapists
Kirsten Seidenfaden and Piet Draiby
The Vibrant Family: A Handbook for Parents and Professionals
Kirsten Seidenfaden, Piet Draiby, Susanne Søborg Christensen, and
Vibeke Hejgaard
Culture and Reflexivity in Systemic Psychotherapy: Mutual Perspectives
Edited by Inga-Britt Krause
Positions and Polarities in Contemporary Systemic Practice: The Legacy of
David Campbell
Edited by Charlotte Burck, Sara Barratt, and Ellie Kavner
Creative Positions in Adult Mental Health: Outside In–Inside Out
Edited by Sue McNab and Karen Partridge
Emotions and the Therapist: A Systemic–Dialogical Approach
Paolo Bertrando
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page iii

SURVIVING AND
THRIVING IN CARE
AND BEYOND
Personal and
Professional Perspectives

edited by

Sara Barratt and

Wendy Lobatto
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page iv

Excerpts from Jackie Kay, Darling: New & Selected Poems

(Bloodaxe Books, 2007) www.bloodaxebooks.com
Reproduced by kind permission of the publisher

First published in 2016 by

Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT

Copyright © 2016 to Sara Barratt and Wendy Lobatto for the edited
collection and to the individual authors for their contributions.

The rights of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work

have been asserted in accordance with §§77 and 78 of the Copyright Design
and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 78220 301 8

Edited, designed and produced by The Studio Publishing Services Ltd

www.publishingservicesuk.co.uk
email: [email protected]

Excerpt from Dewan, V. (2003). A truer image. In:

A. Douglas & T. Philpot (Eds.), Adoption: Changing Families, Changing Times
(pp. 120–126). London: Routledge. Reproduced with permission.

Printed in Great Britain

www.karnacbooks.com
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page v

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix

ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS xi

SERIES EDITORS’ FOREWORD xvii

FOREWORD by Peter Fonagy xix

INTRODUCTION xxiii

PART I
OVERVIEW OF THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND
CLINICAL CONTEXT FOR ALTERNATIVE FAMILY CARE

CHAPTER ONE
Family placement: continuity and discontinuity over time 3
John Simmonds

CHAPTER TWO
Working with professional systems 21
Wendy Lobatto

v
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page vi

vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER THREE
Approaches to working with foster carers and children 47
Sara Barratt, foster carers, and children

CHAPTER FOUR
Under our skins: developmental perspectives on trauma, 71
abuse, neglect, and resilience
Graham Music

PART II
EXAMPLES OF CLINICAL WORK
WITH CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE

CHAPTER FIVE
The journey to becoming a family 97
Adoptive parents with Sara Barratt

CHAPTER SIX
Working with vulnerability and resilience for separated 113
children seeking asylum: towards stories of hope
Gillian Hughes and Neil Rees

CHAPTER SEVEN
The best thing is the lunch! My friends! 135
Being with other people in the same situation!
Oh, and the slow walking! The Fostering, Adoption and
Kinship Care Team Children’s Group
Julia Granville

CHAPTER EIGHT
The strength to smile behind my mask 159
Chloe Charles

CHAPTER NINE
Helping children through working with their 169
adoptive parents
Sara Barratt
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page vii

CONTENTS vii

PART III
THE VOICES OF ADULTS WHO HAVE BEEN ADOPTED
OR EXPERIENCED THE CARE SYSTEM EITHER AS
CHILDREN OR AS THOSE WHO ARE CURRENTLY
PARENTING CHILDREN

Extracts from two poems by Jackie Kay 191

CHAPTER TEN
The lived experience of transracial adoption 193
Perlita Harris

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Positioning and respectful professional interventions for 217
working with the legacy of Irish institutional care
Valerie O’Brien

CHAPTER TWELVE
Never too late 239
Janet, Mark Brownfield, and Sara Barratt

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Co-creating a coherent story with adults who have been 255
fostered or adopted
Val Molloy

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“It turns your whole world upside down . . . but still 271
it brings immense pleasure”: perspectives on kinship care
Julia Granville

INDEX 293
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page viii
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Gwyn and Charlotte for their support and
patience during the development and fruition of this book. Particular
thanks also to Sally Hodges, who has been steadfastly supportive and
encouraging at times when we wondered if we would ever finish it.
Thanks to all the colleagues and trainees we have learnt from and
worked with in the Fostering, Adoption and Kinship Care, First Step,
and Tavistock Haringey Services.
For Sara, my thanks to my family, John, Daisy, Luke, Sam, Alex,
Vicky, Edith, Jimmy, and Eddie who have shown patience, tolerance,
encouragement, given ideas, read drafts, and shown me the impor-
tance of belonging.
For Wendy, my thanks to my children, Anna and Joe, who have
enabled me to find the mother in me and to Maureen, Stanley, Ralph,
and Diana who support me to work and use my creativity and my will
to make a difference.
Our thanks also to Mat Sparrowhawk, who designed the cover,
Agata Morgan for her illustrations, John and Kate Hills, Betty
Sheridan, Mike Napier, Sue Pearson, Eleanor Anderson, and other
friends, for suggestions, support, and stimulating and interesting
conversations. Thanks also to Jackie Kay and Bloodaxe Books for their
permission to publish extracts of Jackie’s poems.

ix
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page x

x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are very grateful to all who have contributed to this book, for
their hard work and patience. This book would not be possible with-
out the personal stories of adoptive parents, kinship and foster carers,
and children and young people who have shown so much openness
and generosity in telling their stories. Personal and clinical informa-
tion has been anonymised and, where appropriate, permission to use
material has been sought and granted.
Identifying information has been changed so that any resemblance
to a child or family is coincidental.
Finally, our thanks to you, our readers. We hope you find some-
thing of interest in this collection that will help you understand and
inspire you to go on.
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xi

ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Sara Barratt is a consultant systemic psychotherapist and social

worker who worked in the Fostering, Adoption and Kinship care team
at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust since its inception and subse-
quently managed the service. She also teaches on the Masters and the
Family Therapy Supervision courses. Sara has worked for most of her
career with children who are looked after, adopted, and in kinship
care, and their families. She also works as a psychotherapist in general
practice and consults to social service teams and individual practi-
tioners. She co-edited Positions and Polarities in Contemporary Practice:
The Legacy of David Campbell with Charlotte Burck and Ellie Kavner
and has contributed to a number of books and papers on systemic
psychotherapy, fostering and adoption, and systemic work in general
practice.

Mark Brownfield studied medicine at Charing Cross and West-

minster Medical School (London), trained as a GP in High Wycombe
(Bucks) and has been a full time general practitioner at Kings Langley
Surgery since 1994. Additionally, he worked for nine years as a GP in
Accident and Emergency and four years as a professional member on
a PCT Executive Board. Currently, he is a senior appraiser for NHS

xi
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xii

xii ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

England, working to support GP colleagues through appraisal and

revalidation. His special interests are in diabetes, minor surgery, and,
particularly, mental health. During his psychiatry training, he was
able to observe and learn from professionals offering family therapy
and explore the concepts of systemic work. As a GP of twenty-two
years’ standing, he values joint working and sees positive results in
using this approach to help vulnerable individuals increase their sense
of safety and enable them to contemplate emotional recovery. Within
the current constraints that bind modern-day general practice, he
prefers to pause, listen, and search to understand patients, even if this
means running over time.

Chloe Charles is a student at London Metropolitan University, study-

ing English Literature. Chloe has a passion for creative writing and
youth; she is now on the journey to completing her degree in the hope
of doing a PGCE, allowing her to teach English in secondary schools.
Her future goal is to set up a creative writing programme in youth
offending prisons across the UK, which she hopes will help to encour-
age youth to channel their emotions into something constructive and
creative, while also giving them some skills to go towards other
educational goals.

Julia Granville is a consultant systemic psychotherapist and social

worker who worked for many years in the Fostering, Adoption and
Kinship Care Team at the Tavistock Clinic. Julia has over twenty years’
experience in working with families in the voluntary and statutory
sectors. She has a particular interest and experience in working with
adopted and looked-after children and their families and with fami-
lies who have non-traditional family forms. Julia has trained Masters
level family therapists and teaches a range of mental health courses
for professionals on systemic approaches to working with families. In
addition, she is currently developing mindfulness-based approaches
in therapeutic work in the Tavistock Clinic.

Perlita Harris is a registered social worker with a background in

adoption support. Her research interests focus on child welfare, adop-
tion, and service user perspectives, particularly Black, LGBT, and
seldom heard voices. She has written a number of journal articles on
adoption support. Her edited books include: In Search of Belonging:
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xiii

ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS xiii

Reflections by transracially adopted people (BAAF, 2006), The Colours in

Me: Writing and Poetry by Adopted Children and Young People (BAAF,
2008), Something That Never Went Away: Reflections on Adoption, Being
in Care, Adoption and Searching for Family Members (Adults Affected by
Adoption, NORCAP, 2009), and Chosen: Living with Adoption (BAAF,
2012). She also co-authored the research study, Pathways to Permanence
for Black, Asian and Mixed Ethnicity Children (BAAF, 2010) and con-
tributed to the DVD, Readings from The Colours in Me (BAAF, 2009).
Her most recent publication, is the co-edited book, Safeguarding Black
Children: Good Practice in Child Protection (JKP, 2016). On a voluntary
basis, Perlita co-facilitates workshops for adults with an international
element to their search for information and/or birth family (hosted
jointly by the Transnational and Transracial Adoption Group, and the
IAC: The Centre for Adoption). Perlita holds a PhD in Social Work and
is Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Gillian Hughes is a consultant clinical psychologist and systemic

psychotherapist who currently leads the Child and Family Refugee
Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.
Throughout her career, she has worked in the NHS in inner city loca-
tions with marginalised communities as a practitioner and trainer,
where she has developed innovative community psychology, sys-
temic, and narrative approaches. She has recently edited a book, Liber-
ation Practices: Towards Emotional Wellbeing Through Dialogue, with
Taiwo Afuape.

Wendy Lobatto is a social worker and family therapist, and currently

manages First Step, an innovative psychological health screening and
assessment service for looked-after children in the London Borough of
Haringey, which is commissioned from the Tavistock and Portman
NHS Foundation Trust. She has worked in the child mental health/
social care field for over twenty-five years. Wendy has a particular
interest in working with others to create and deliver integrated
systemic service models, which allow us to make a real difference to
the lives of vulnerable children.

Val Molloy qualified as a social worker in 1972 and, after ten years
working with adults in the Criminal Justice system, changed direction
to work with a charity placing so called “hard to place” children for
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xiv

xiv ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

adoption. After a career break when her children were young, Val
returned to working with children and families in adoption and to
acting as an independent chair for adoption and fostering panels. The
last fifteen years of her working life were spent working with adults
who had grown up in adoptive families, or in care, and who wished
to access information from their childhood records. Val is now retired
but retains links with the agency in which she spent a good deal of her
working life.

Graham Music is a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist

and an adult psychotherapist in private practice. His publications
include The Good Life: Well-being and the New Science of Altruism
Selfishness and Immorality (2014), Nurturing Natures: Attachment and
Children’s Socioemotional, Cultural and Brain Development (2011), and
Affect and Emotion (2001). He has a particular interest in thinking about
the interface of developmental science and clinical work. Formerly
Associate Clinical Director of the Tavistock’s Child and Family Depart-
ment, where he currently teaches and supervises, he has worked ther-
apeutically with maltreated children for several decades, and
managed a range of services concerned with the aftermath of child
maltreatment. He currently works clinically with forensic cases at the
Portman Clinic. He teaches, lectures, and supervises on various
psychotherapy and other trainings in Britain and abroad.

Valerie O’Brien is a College Lecturer at the School of Applied Social

Science at University College Dublin and is an Associate at Clan-
william Institute, Dublin. She is a social worker and a registered
systemic psychotherapist and supervisor. She has a particular interest
in action-based research and has been at the forefront in aiding
numerous developments in the child welfare system in Ireland. Her
main areas of research interest are family group conferencing, kinship
care, and adoption practice and policy. Clinically, she works predom-
inantly with complex blended families (kinship, adoption, re-formed)
and consults on complex multi-party cases.

Neil Rees is a consultant clinical psychologist and the Programme

Director (Clinical) of the Professional Doctorate in Clinical Psychology
at the University of East London. He also works in the NHS at the
Child & Family Consultation Service in Newham, East London, which
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xv

ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS xv

serves a very diverse borough with a significant population of refugee

families and separated children and young people seeking asylum.
Other activities include psychosocial emergency response overseas
with the British Red Cross.

John Simmonds is Director of Policy, Research and Development at

CoramBAAF, formerly the British Association for Adoption and Fos-
tering. Before starting at BAAF in 2000, he was head of the social work
programmes at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is a
qualified social worker and has substantial experience in child protec-
tion, family placement, and residential care settings. He is currently
responsible for CoramBAAF’s contribution to the development of
policy and practice in social work, health, the law, and research. John
has published widely including, in the 1980s, the first social work
edited book on direct work with children. More recently, he edited,
with Gillian Schofield, the Child Placement Handbook and drafted
BAAF’s Good Practice Guidance on Special Guardianship. Recent
research studies have focused on unaccompanied asylum-seeking
children in foster care with the Universities of York and Bedfordshire,
a study of 100 women adopted from Hong Kong into the UK in the
1960s with the Institute of Psychiatry, and a DfE funded study on
Special Guardianship with York University. John sits on the Adoption
Leadership Board, the Expert Advisory Group on Adoption Support,
and the Expert Group on Special Guardianship. John is the adoptive
father of two children, now adults. He was awarded an OBE in the
New Years Honours list 2015 and an honorary doctorate in Education
from the Tavistock NHS Foundation Trust /University of East London.
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xvi
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xvii

SERIES EDITORS’ FOREWORD

Charlotte Burck & Gwyn Daniel

This volume, edited by Sara Barratt and Wendy Lobatto, breaks new
ground in a practice area which calls out for an approach to deliver-
ing services to children, their families and carers which is collabora-
tive, which is integrated, and which holds systemic thinking at the
core. The editors have achieved the remarkable feat of producing a
volume that not only advocates these principles, but weaves them into
the book’s very texture.
The book comprises a series of contributions that are multi-
levelled, multi-vocal, and draw upon different modes of representa-
tion. Whether authored by practitioners or consumers of services,
they keep the perspectives of children and parents/carers at the centre.
The effect of foregrounding these voices is to enhance the emotional
impact for readers as we engage with the long term repercussions of
living within the “care system” and with the complexity of the
systems within which decisions are made and lives are lived. The
volume attends rigorously to many levels of context: from the chang-
ing political, social, and legal landscapes which frame the lives of
families and children and the positions taken by professionals, to the
intricacies of family interactions, and to the ways that early experi-
ences of deprivation, cruelty, abuse, and disruption are inscribed

xvii
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xviii

xviii SERIES EDITORS’ FOREWORD

on mind and body, requiring constant vigilance and revision over

time.
Yet, while many of the practitioners and family member authors
gaze unflinchingly into the shameful and shaming practices that have
been visited on children in the “care system”, from outright abuse and
exploitation to the erasure of crucial aspects of racial and cultural
identities, this book, as its title suggests, is, above all, about resilience
and about those creative actions that make a difference. These range
from the power of autobiographical writing and of the poetic imagi-
nation to the development of playful practices with children, and to
therapeutic interventions that engage with the particularity of human
experience and elicit the unique lived experiences and coping strate-
gies of individual children and their carers, rather than follow any
kind of normative or developmental template.
The contributions of users of services will be especially helpful for
practitioners, as they provide so much to learn from, including the
importance of attending to feedback and of responding to the changing
needs of families as they evolve over time. Unusually for a volume writ-
ten mainly by therapists, their attention to the views of family members
involves taking a position which is, at times, sceptical about the desir-
ability of therapy itself as the preferred solution for troubled and trau-
matised children. This questioning and flexible attitude is one of the
hallmarks of a volume that is both compassionate and rigorous and
which attends both to the patterns that connect the lives of children in
the care system and to the nuanced details of individual narratives.
We are proud and delighted to include this volume in our series.
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xix

FOREWORD

Peter Fonagy

As a parent of adopted children, I am all too aware of the complexi-

ties (a euphemism for pain, disappointment, and conflict, mixed with
unadulterated joy) that taking a person into your life whose biologi-
cal background is different from your own invariably entails. As our
knowledge of the genetic and biological basis of behaviour expands,
it becomes harder and harder to adopt a naive environmentalist view
that all predispositions can be modified and that epigenetic effects
will mitigate temperamental variations. To balance biological reduc-
tionism, we need a high level of sophistication that helps guide profes-
sionals as well as carers and adoptive parents to identify what they
can expect to be able to achieve in circumstances that, in many
instances, are very challenging, to say the least.
Part of the problem of fostering and adoption is that it is a social
system put in place to deal with a problem. The problem may be
extreme poverty, severe mental disorder, cruelty, societal violence,
such as war, or individual loss. Children in care do badly, and the
outcomes of adoption are also often suboptimal. The reasons for this
are well known but solutions are lacking. This means that those who
are brave enough to offer care to babies, children, and teenagers
are taking on board not simply the care of this person, but also the

xix
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xx

xx FOREWORD

sometimes complex sequelae that the possibly horrific experiences

bring.
Added to this are the difficulties that attachment imposes. The
paradox of attachment is that without the creation of a secure base
and a privileged emotional relationship that attachment provides,
fostering and adoption stand no chance of healing any of the psycho-
logical wounds that the child has sustained. However, the activation
of attachment undermines the capacity to be able to think clearly
about the perspective of another person. We only need to conjure up
the last time we felt intense romantic love for another: that was not a
time in which perspective taking or the judgement of social trustwor-
thiness could be readily undertaken. Intense attachment obscures
rather than clarifies the mental state of the person we are with. It is far
easier to deal with other people’s children than one’s own and, unsur-
prisingly, one’s own children seem to find little difficulty dealing with
other people’s parents. Thus, the creation of the essential bond
between carers and the child in some respects undermines the carer’s
capacity to provide the emotional support that the child needs.
Attachment creates a challenge for mentalization.
All this is just to say that there is much need for this book. It is a
unique collection of perspectives by those with the deepest under-
standing of this multi-faceted yet urgent problem. The book provides
a theoretical framework—in fact, several—for understanding the chal-
lenges faced by those who are part of an aspect of the process our soci-
ety has put in place to remedy the effects of trauma and abuse on
young children. It is a book that does not shrink from political com-
mentary, and one that faces head on the unsatisfactory experiences of
all the protagonists within the current system, be they the biological
parents, the carers or the child—and, indeed, the professionals who
surround the family, offering their assistance. As the book shows, in
order to be adequately evaluated, the outcomes have to be seen in the
context of the shaping of adult lives.
The problem of care is multi-layered. It involves the responsibili-
ties of the society we live in and the way professionals discharge these
on behalf of all of us. The instruments, however, are the foster carers
and adoptive parents who have to cope with what is thrust upon
them, which, as the book describes, may be an amalgam of biological
predisposition, the neurodevelopmental challenges that early trauma
brings, and the mixture of emotions that we may anticipate a person
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xxi

FOREWORD xxi

who has escaped from a life-threatening situation, but has been thrust
into an environment that is far from their own choosing, to have. The
best way of representing this difficult situation is through narratives—
stories that those who have experienced one or other aspect of this
situation can tell.
This is what makes this book unique and, in the most aesthetic
sense of the word, beautiful. The stories are not pretty, but the deter-
mination of all the protagonists to put right what was so wrong, to
survive and thrive in the face of adversity, to confront the inconceiv-
ably cruel experiences and find imaginative and uplifting solutions,
gives one courage to carry on with this work. The options available
are best understood through individual examples, and the stories that
emerge from the pages are all moving and succeed where another
medium could only reveal selective aspects of the experience. Personal
experience is more persuasive than statistics, as many writers know. It
is these stories that will offer the reader a comprehensive picture of
the current state of the field of adoption and fostering better than any
number of government reports and research papers.
Everything that is presented here is real and, as the reader will find,
some issues raise significant problems to which, currently, we have no
solutions. None of the chapters is superfluous; each conveys one or
more messages that require our urgent attention. While some chapters
describe substantial achievements that have made the lives of children
and carers more productive and happier, others focus on elaborating
the depth of the problems from either a neurobiological or a social
standpoint. Some chapters that consider racial issues are particularly
painful, and the picture that the lifelong perspective offers is indeed
challenging. The legacy of institutional care has appalled—and contin-
ues to appal—many. Clearly, we are doing better than those running
children’s homes half a century ago, when sexual abuse was rife, but
evidently we are not doing well enough. Maybe we never will. This
book, however, is a landmark contribution creating a platform of hard-
won insight that, if conscientiously read, should make all those who
are part of the process of foster care and adoption better at what they
do—which is probably the most important thing that any of us can.
Peter Fonagy, PhD, FMedSci, FBA, OBE
Professor and Head, Research Department of Clinical,
Educational and Health Psychology, University College London;
Chief Executive, Anna Freud Centre, London.
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xxii
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xxiii

Introduction

This is a book about children who have to grow up apart from their
biological families, the impact of this on their lives and on those who
look after them, and how we can respond to the challenges this poses
in order that they can grow and develop in healthy directions.
We use a systemic framework to describe working with children
and adults who are or have been in care or adopted, and with their
adoptive parents and carers, highlighting their own narratives as well
as those of professionals working with them.
We have tried to make space for multiple voices to speak and
describe aspects of the care system and life beyond. There are contri-
butions from those who have been brought up away from their
biological families, their adoptive parents, and foster or kinship
carers. There are contributions from researchers and professionals
with expertise in working with children in substitute care, who will
describe their theoretical and clinical approaches, privileging the
voices of those with whom they work. We have been deeply influ-
enced by the people we have worked with over the years and hope
that this book gives a flavour of the remarkable ways which carers,
adoptive parents, and children have found in order to stay together
while in the presence of so much pain and loss, and the trust that they

xxiii
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xxiv

xxiv INTRODUCTION

have to develop to be able to grow to love one another. This book will
bring their voices to the fore. We are also mindful of the position of
the biological parents who are not part of this work, their grief and
despair at the loss of their children and the yearning that they and
their children might be feeling for one another, no matter how much
they know that this might not be best for the children if they cannot
meet their children’s needs.

Sara’s voice
For the past fifteen years, following a lengthy career in social work, I
have been working both as team manager and family therapist at the
Fostering Adoption and Kinship Care team at the Tavistock &
Portman NHS Foundation Trust, a specialist CAMHS for children
who are not living in their biological families. I started working as a
trainee social worker in 1968 and, on qualifying in 1972, worked in a
generic team. At that time, the relationship between social workers,
children, and their families was considered important and I was able
to work with families in child protection, take children into care where
necessary, work with them in foster care, while also working with
their biological parents. I also assessed and selected adoptive families
and followed children through their journey towards adulthood. I
remember them very well and sometimes bump into young adults
who update me on their families because, for better or worse, for
many years I was an integral part of their lives. I was part of the Jane
Rowe and Lydia Lambert study which reported on decision-making
that led children to languish in foster care (Barratt, 2010; Rowe &
Lambert, 1973) and have seen many changes in the way social work-
ers are expected to work with families.
I have been privileged to work with children and their carers/
parents, and have learnt so much from them; in trusting me enough
to talk about their lives, they have greatly enriched my life. The inspi-
ration for this book came from many conversations with children who
have been separated from their birth families and brought up in
kinship, foster, or adoptive families.
In many years of work, both as a social worker and a family ther-
apist, I have realised that children who have been abused are very
unlikely either to have the language to describe their experiences or
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xxv

INTRODUCTION xxv

the confidence to let people know about life in their birth families.
Many years ago, as a social worker, I was working with a young
person who was subsequently in care and adopted. As there were
concerns about his safety, I took him out for a burger to talk to him
separately from his mother and stepfather. I was aware that he was
not safe at home and took him into care shortly after I started work-
ing with him and his family, but it was not until some three years later,
when he had been in care for two years and was living with his adop-
tive family, that he told me that he was badly beaten after I saw him
on his own. He was unable to talk about his life in his birth family
until he felt safe from further abuse. I learnt from him to be very care-
ful to pick up signals from children, to liaise closely with their schools,
and to try to understand what is happening by attuning myself to the
way parents talk about or to them, rather than seeing them alone or
asking them questions that it would be dangerous to answer.
More recently, when I have worked with adoptive parents whose
children start to display various signs of abuse some time into their
lives in the family, I am reminded that most children do not talk to
anyone about abuse they might have suffered until they start to feel
safe. This view is corroborated by Grayson Perry in the biography
written by Wendy Jones (2007), in which he describes a visit from the
NSPCC after he had told his grandmother of his stepfather’s violence
towards him. He describes his confusion when the social worker
arrived and spoke initially to him on his own. He goes on to describe
the family meeting in which she asked him in front of his stepfather,
who was abusive to him, whether he loved him. He says that he could
only say “Yes” because she would be leaving him with the person
who: “held the sword of Damocles hanging over me so I wasn’t going
to reply, ‘No! He’s an f…ing bastard! He’s a f…ing Bastard! The
woman was going to leave but I was going to have to go on living with
the old man’ ” (pp. 70–72).
In editing this book. we hope to show that children’s experiences
can be appreciated and made sense of despite the complicated nature
of their reality, not just in their biological families, but in their lives
going forward. We endeavour to show how children can move on to
positive developmental pathways through good and trusting rela-
tionships with carers, and that this can be a lifelong journey.
For many years, I have been involved in training family therapists
and one of my supervises during the 1990s was Wendy, also a social
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xxvi

xxvi INTRODUCTION

worker, who later moved into working with children in the care
system and whom I asked to work with me on this book.

Wendy’s voice
Like Sara, I was also trained as a social worker, and then later as a
family therapist. Unlike Sara, I did not spend years working with chil-
dren and families in a context where relationships were understood as
key to positive change. By the 1990s, when I qualified, children’s social
work was taking a more bureaucratic and procedural shape. When I
was able, I was happy to move into therapeutic social work in a child
mental health context, which is where I have worked ever since.
By chance really, I was offered a promotion in a specialist child
mental health team for looked-after children in 2003, at a time when
the government was investing significantly in child mental health
services and new models of good practice were being developed. I
began to meet children, young people, foster carers, birth parents, and
social workers and to appreciate the complexity, struggles, and small
triumphs that mark the lives of those in the care system and those who
care for them. I was astonished, time and time again, at the selfless-
ness, courage, and determination of the adults involved in caring for
children and young people in care. At the same time, I was also struck
by the energy of those children and young people who are growing
and moving forward, despite enduring the bitterest of life’s pills, the
loss of their parents.
We have attempted to incorporate a variety of perspectives in
depicting a landscape of life in and after care to enable those who
work and live in this land to appreciate more of its features. We hope
that the reader will find this a rich and textured collection of writings,
which will hearten and support us in this varied and complex terrain.

Outline of the book

We have organised this book into three sections; the first part offers
an overview of the organisational, political, and clinical context for
alternative family care.
In Chapter One, “Family placement: continuity and discontinuity
over time”, John Simmonds, from CoramBAAF, gives an overview of
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xxvii

INTRODUCTION xxvii

the subject. His theme is continuity and discontinuity and he talks

from a personal and professional perspective. John looks at some of
the current national debates, including recent legal judgments, which
have altered practice and decision-making in the adoption field, as
well as investigating the tension between the UK’s non-consensual
approach to adoption and the attempts of the state to promote co-
operation with parents. John frames these big issues alongside a
conversation with his young adult son about the development of his
identity. It combines a broad conceptual approach with a warm and
personal account of the impact of these issues at the family level.
In Chapter Two, “Working with professional systems”, Wendy
Lobatto looks at how to facilitate the creation of functioning parenting
teams for children and young people in care. It is not straightforward
to provide high quality, child-centred care as a group of disparate
workers from various agencies, but she shows how this can be
supported and enabled. It is so important for children that the key
adults in their lives find ways of working coherently together to make
good decisions for them, yet there are many pressures, which
constrain our ability to do this. Wendy looks at how to make a differ-
ence in these processes, illustrating with some moving case examples.
In Chapter Three, “Approaches to working with foster carers and
children”, Sara Barratt talks about ways of working with foster carers
and their different approaches to engaging with CAMHS services. She
outlines the “needs led” approach in which therapists draw on differ-
ent ways of working with children and their carers at different stages
of the work, based on what they feel would be most helpful. She
describes the importance of their engagement in helping children to
attend the service and the different ways in which they approach their
role. Some see themselves as parenting children and attune them-
selves to their children emotionally, while others feel they can be more
containing by responding on a behavioural level. Carers and children
contribute their own remarkable descriptions of their experience of
attending CAMHS.
In Chapter Four, “Under our skins: developmental perspectives on
trauma, abuse, neglect, and resilience”, Graham Music describes the
importance of an understanding of neurodevelopment for children
who have suffered early trauma. He examines the ways in which
adverse early experiences can affect our psychological, emotional, and
physical lives. He looks at some of the fascinating recent brain science
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xxviii

xxviii INTRODUCTION

and developmental psychology research, and what it tells us about

how the early family context of a child affects the way his brain is
sculpted, his autonomic nervous system develops, his hormonal
systems are programmed, and how children are, as a result, likely to
relate to other people and the social world. Although this perspective
can help us understand why some children can suffer as a result of
their early experience, it also shows us that there remains hope for
positive outcomes as our brains grow and mature.
In Part II, we move on to looking at particular examples of clinical
work with children and young people.
In Chapter Five, “Adoption stories”, two sets of adoptive parents
with Sara Barratt describe their experiences of becoming an adoptive
family and of attending the Fostering, Adoption and Kinship Care
Service (FAKCT). They talk about their experiences of assessment and
of bringing their children to CAMHS. Each family is headed by a
same-sex couple. One couple adopted three siblings and describe the
challenges of meeting the needs of three young children and their
experience of help and the different work undertaken, such as assess-
ment, sibling work, family work, and then parent work, which, they
say, at the time was bewildering but, in retrospect, was helpful. They
speak of the need for professionals to give more explanation or ratio-
nale for their interventions. The other parents describe the help they
received at the time of placement of their son and the work under-
taken with our team and the challenges they faced. They have now
adopted a second son and speak about the boys’ different needs aris-
ing from early life experiences.
In Chapter Six, “Working with vulnerability and resilience for
separated children seeking asylum: towards stories of hope”, Gillian
Hughes and Neil Rees describe the painful work undertaken with
asylum seeking young people who arrive in the UK. For these young
people, the experience of multiple losses and dislocation presents a
huge challenge to their sense of identity, with the obvious negative
impact this has on their emotional wellbeing. The authors describe
how this is amplified by political agendas seeking to reduce immi-
gration, which feed public perceptions of asylum seekers as people to
be feared and mistrusted. However, Gillian and Neil refuse to take a
pathologising view of these young people, describing some positive
and life-affirming approaches to helping them survive and thrive in
their adopted country.
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xxix

INTRODUCTION xxix

In Chapter Seven, “ ‘The best thing is the lunch! My friends! Being

with other people in the same situation! Oh, and the slow walking! The
Fostering, Adoption and Kinship Care Team Children’s Group”, Julia
Granville describes a group that is run with colleagues in FAKCT for
children aged between seven and eleven years old. The group runs
during a week of either half-term or a holiday. The programme is
manualised, using frameworks such as mindfulness and EMDR, and
offers opportunities for children to reflect on their responses while also
having fun. This heart-warming chapter describes the group, the work
with parents, and involves children in describing their experiences.
In Chapter Eight, “The strength to smile behind my mask”, Chloe
Charles shares some of her experiences of being brought up by an
extended family member in a kinship arrangement and has written
some powerful poems which we are privileged to include in this
collection. She says, “My poems were written as a form of anger
management. I was an extremely angry foster child who was torn
between the loyalty and love for my biological mother and learning
how to accept the love and care from my foster mother. I had to leave
a mother who was young, troubled, and struggling and felt forced
into a situation I wasn’t happy with! I lived with my younger brother’s
aunt, which was difficult for me to accept, especially coming from
parents who made it very clear that they were my parents and weren’t
going to be replaced. I acted out and pushed away all forms of kind-
ness, even though deep down all I wanted to be was loved. I didn’t
want to be happy knowing that my mother was all alone and proba-
bly unhappy.”
In Chapter Nine, “Helping children through working with their
adoptive parents”, Sara Barratt, together with three sets of adoptive
parents, describes how families can be helped without working
directly with their children. The first parent came initially with his
daughter, but continued on his own when she dropped out of the
work. He talks about the failures of professionals to understand and
respond to his family’s needs and his feeling of being on his own with
the problem. The other parents talk about the importance of being
seen without their children, whom they feel would be traumatised by
attending the clinic with the fear that another rejection was coming.
While there had been plans to include the children at some stage, the
parents felt that the work without them provided sufficient help and
support.
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xxx

xxx INTRODUCTION

Then there is a brief interlude, which features extracts from the

poems of Jackie Kay, who writes movingly about her experience of
being transracially adopted.
In Part III, we hear the voices of adults who have experience of the
care system, either when they were children or from their position as
the carers of children currently.
In Chapter Ten, “The lived experience of transracial adoption”,
Perlita Harris draws on many of the ideas in her book, In Search of
Belonging, to describe the political drivers for a colour-blind approach
to transracial adoption and the experiences of adults who were
adopted transracially. In the voices of those adults who talk about
their experiences as children in the care system, we can hear their pain
and confusion and we are offered the opportunity to understand more
about the nature of these experiences.
Chapter Eleven, “Never too late”, is written collaboratively by an
older woman, Janet, who spent her childhood in care, together with
her GP, Mark Brownfield, and Sara Barratt, and tells an inspiring story
of how it is possible to move towards recovery and healing later in
life. Janet had suffered a lifetime of mental health problems and
suicide attempts and her GP felt there was something behind them
that she had not talked about. In an initial session, she described phys-
ical and sexual abuse while in care in the 1940s. This chapter is writ-
ten from three perspectives, in which the GP talks about his work,
Janet describes the effect of her experiences in residential care on her
life, and Sara talks about her work with her, using EMDR and linking
closely with the GP. The care agency who supported this work and
were involved in going through Janet’s records with her also
comments.
In Chapter Twelve, “Positioning and respectful professional inter-
ventions for working with the legacy of Irish institutional care”,
Valerie O’Brien describes the effect of being brought up in the indus-
trial schools in Ireland, the political context, and the power of the
Catholic Church. The chapter draws on Valerie’s research and talks
about the legacy of the experiences on survivors. It offers a moving
and informative account of a traumatic period of Irish history in
which generations of children were hurt and abused.
In Chapter Thirteen, “Co-creating a coherent story with adults
who have been fostered or adopted”, Val Molloy describes her work
in undertaking life story work with adults who were in care. She uses
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xxxi

INTRODUCTION xxxi

case examples to describe the issues that those applying for know-
ledge of their birth families come with and the pain and distress when
the responses are not those they hoped for. She also talks about their
criticism of the agency when their care experiences have not been
positive and her work in helping them with the fallout of their expe-
riences.
In Chapter Fourteen, “ ‘It turns your whole world upside down . . .
but still it brings immense pleasure’: perspectives on kinship care”,
Julia Granville describes her work, both in running a group and in her
clinical practice with kinship carers. She explores some of the issues
that arise in work with this client group, drawing on experience of
facilitating a support group for kinship carers over a number of years,
and includes interviews with four members of that group. The themes
are those of hard work, the relationship with the parents of the chil-
dren, and the poverty and lack of support from social care. This chap-
ter offers a fascinating account of how carers cope in this complex
position between their own families and statutory agencies.
We are very grateful to all the contributors who have added their
perspectives to our wide portrait of life in care and beyond. We have
reflected on how our own relationship, which began with Wendy’s
professional dependency under Sara’s supervision, and then devel-
oped over time into a collegial connection, mirrors the hopes of all of
us that children can find the parenting they need, despite the
complexity and difficulty of their lives, and take their social place in
time as functioning adults. In creating this volume, we have enjoyed
our collaborative debates from which we hope that we have produced
something of interest to you, our readers.

References
Barratt, S. (2010). Test of time: children who wait (1973), by Jane Rowe and
Lydia Lambert. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 15(4): 627–631.
Jones, W. (2007). Grayson Perry: Portrait of The Artist As a Young Girl.
London: Vintage Books.
Rowe, J., & Lambert, L. (1973). Children Who Wait: A Study of Children
Needing Substitute Families. London: Association of British Adoption
Agencies.
BARRATT_LOBATTO Prelims_Kogan 1st proofs test8"?0B 14/07/2016 09:28 Page xxxii
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 1

CHAPTER TITLE 1

PART I
OVERVIEW OF THE SOCIAL,
POLITICAL, AND CLINICAL CONTEXT
FOR ALTERNATIVE FAMILY CARE
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 2
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 3

CHAPTER ONE

Family placement: continuity

and discontinuity over time

John Simmonds

en years ago, I drafted a note to myself.

T “My adopted son has just turned eighteen and finished his A-
levels. He is currently on a gap year and due to start at university next
year studying ‘Product Design’. His plans for this year are to train as
a chef. This marks a long-standing ambition of his. His flow in the
kitchen is quite remarkable to the benefit of the family that can have
a Jamie Oliver meal on a Monday night. His kitchen cleaning skills are
not quite so remarkable. On the cooking front, his girlfriend is
undoubtedly outclassed—in fact none of his friends can compete with
him in this area. He has recently been taken on as an assistant chef at
one of our local well-known modern European restaurants in London
after a short trial.
“In a fairly academically orientated family, his flair and motivation
in the kitchen stand out and as with many families, the question is
asked ‘Where does this come from?’ Is it his early life experience of
watching Ready, Steady, Cook or indeed being given Jamie Oliver cook-
books as presents? All of this might be true, but can’t explain why he
took to actually cooking rather than just passively watching the TV
programmes as many of his friends have done. Did he pick it up from

3
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 4

4 SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN CARE AND BEYOND

us? Well not really—my wife can turn out an excellent meal but like
many working families, this tends to be on special occasions rather
than Monday nights. And cooking was not something that his school
prized or encouraged at all.
“It might not come as a complete surprise to hear that his birth
mother was a cook. He knows this but I am not clear what this means
to him. Is this his way of staying in contact with her emotionally—he
hasn’t had any contact with her given he was adopted 18 years ago so
this does seem a bit far-fetched. Is this something that he has inher-
ited from her? This also seems a bit but not completely far-fetched. In
one way the explanation doesn’t really matter—he needs to fulfil his
own ambitions, build on his aptitudes and energise his motivations.
Who he takes after in this respect and where this comes from is inter-
esting and sometimes emotionally charged but if he ‘finds himself’
over the next few years, then that is what I want for him.”

Where are we now? My son graduated as planned. University was a

bit up and down as it probably is for most undergraduates. The
process of finding oneself in the late teenage years and early twenties
is complex—highs and lows, uncertainties and anxieties, achieve-
ments and successes. One success among a number of others was
being employed to run a small cafeteria on campus that reinforced the
cooking ambition. It was a downside, if not a nightmare, to graduate
at a time of economic crisis. However, an opportunity to be employed
as a chef at a “pop up restaurant” averted the problem that thousands
of other graduates were experiencing and that was quickly followed
by a fairly lengthy period of employment as a chef at a well-known
restaurant in the West End of London. It was a period of learning,
challenge, and exhaustion—a life of afternoon/evening and weekend
hours is not the most familial or socially conducive.
How does this personal story connect with the theme of this chap-
ter? First, this is the story of an adoption of its time and maybe has
little direct connection with what I know about adoption today (Sim-
monds, 2012). Our experience was rooted in a particular social struc-
ture where illegitimacy was still subject to stigma, resources to
support single parenthood accompanied by significant ambivalence,
and adoption agencies were geared up to place babies quickly when
they were relinquished by their birth parents. It was also an era that
had just emerged from the view that “secrecy” was best and adoption
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 5

FAMILY PLACEMENT: CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY OVER TIME 5

should be thought of as similar to “born to family life”. Telling chil-

dren that they were adopted had started to be accepted as necessary
and being open about origins was regarded as helpful. In some cir-
cumstances, there might even be communication and the exchange of
information through “letterbox contact” (Howe et al., 2003; Triseliotis
et al., 2005). Similar issues were being raised about children in foster
care and their understanding of why they were in care and what the
plans for them were. Research by Rowe (1983, 1984; Rowe et al., 1989)
identified serious issues resulting from the lack of openness and clar-
ity in these placements, which amounted to “drift”. These issues
reflect significant themes in adoption and all other types of family
placement: that of continuity and discontinuity, the many questions
that arise about how individuals, families, and society address their
thoughts and feelings between the past, present, and future. Where
did I come from? Who am I? Why did this happen? Could something
have been done then that would have prevented me from finding
myself in the position I am today (Harris, 2006, 2008, 2012)? This chap-
ter explores the complexity of establishing continuity in the context of
discontinuity within the changing professional and social discourses
that influence policy, practice, and family life.
Issues of continuity and discontinuity are fundamental to our
experience. There is little doubt that the pathway of family life is
marked by the need for continuity. Indeed, its strength is seen as the
continuity of relationships throughout life in providing stability, com-
mitment, and protection. Adults undoubtedly benefit from this conti-
nuity and it is a key underpinning of marriage, civil partnership, or
non-legally framed long-term relationships. Children, in particular,
require continuity. This theme has been well and deeply articulated
through the concept of attachment (Bowlby, 1968, 2005). The emo-
tional and social connection between young children and their parents
(and, indeed, a small number of other adults over time), driven by
sensitivity to the thoughts and feelings of the child at its core, is
profoundly important. This is the secure base for building children’s
sense of who they are, their connection with the world around them,
and their confidence to explore that world. However, we know that
there is much more to it than this. Continuity might be desirable in
adult and child relationships but discontinuity is likely to be a signif-
icant experience. Indeed, the rates of divorce bring us close to having
to regard continuity as unusual in adult relationships and family life.
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 6

6 SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN CARE AND BEYOND

However, this is only one part of recognising that change, dislocation,

uncertainty, and loss are a core part of human experience and the
secure psychosocial base that lies at the heart of attachment enables us
to address these feelings.
As important as attachment has become as a core concept in under-
standing child development, there are many factors that promote the
healthy development of children and these are subject to lengthy and
complex debate. No one concept can do justice to the variables
involved, especially when there is complex interaction between what
happens inside people, what happens between them, and what hap-
pens when they are members of groups (Sroufe, 2005). As much as
the study of child development has become a serious and substantial
scientific subject, it cannot avoid the deeply embedded value issues or
choices that human beings make when striving to create meaning in a
social world. Over a generation, the Western world has shifted its
perspective from identifying heterosexual marriage and the nuclear
family as the only foundation for healthy development. There are many
other family forms, which are socially sanctioned and which offer both
benefits and challenges to their members and to society as a whole,
where there continue to be dominant discourses about how families
should be. These are discussed by Julia Granville in Chapter Fourteen.
Taking too limited a historical perspective on individual develop-
ment and family life is unhelpful, as the greater span of human devel-
opment indicates the significant adaptability of human beings to the
changing physical and social environment. There are two key themes
in this. First, co-operation is necessary for procreation and the survival
of the species in creating the next generation. Second, co-operation
enables human beings to respond to threats or challenges in the envi-
ronment to ensure that our species survives. The capacity to adapt, to
be flexible, to learn from experience, to transmit what has been learnt
to other people and to the next generation, plays a huge part in the
capacity to survive. The key significant issue in this is the develop-
ment of the capacity of human beings to co-operate and to trust
(Fonagy & Allison, 2014; Koenig & Harris, 2005; Sperber et al., 2010).
The ability of one individual to work with another individual or
group is central to survival, with trust being a key component. The
combined efforts of people to respond to, and solve, a new challenge
or threat is usually significantly better than where the problem is
worked on by just one person, but working with other people requires
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 7

FAMILY PLACEMENT: CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY OVER TIME 7

appropriate levels of trust based on experience and a belief that this is

a safe and effective strategy. The need to co-operate to survive often
means dealing with the possible threats posed by other people,
whether these are individuals, small groups, or whole populations.
Learning to co-operate is a complex psychosocial activity that
involves balancing the pursuit of self-interest with the belief that
fulfilling the needs of the other is not a threat but an advantage. Trust
is difficult to reliably establish when it is based on a single experience
that might be transitory. In most situations, trust develops through
experience repeated over time. For a child who has experienced
unpredictable parenting, it takes time for him to trust that his carers
will be there when he needs them and, for example, provide food
when he is hungry. Tensions and anger can erupt at mealtimes and
patience and calm predictability are required before children can
begin to rely on the adults around them. Successfully negotiating
these events over time is important to the establishment of a trusting
relationship. Repetition binds people together and the absence of trust
will become a major issue in the continuity of relationships and all
social groupings. When it becomes established, it is of such impor-
tance and value that it is defended through complex psychosocial
processes, which extend to every aspect of life, such as believing that
your parent or carer will be there when you expect them to be. Experi-
ence, belief, and trust established over time, become embedded in
institutions. This is an important part of survival; human beings need
to create joint memory that serves the function of releasing them from
continuously having to rediscover and re-create trusting and reliable
structures that enable them to survive.
Whether as individuals, groups, families, or communities, co-oper-
ation is enabled by identification with others unified by nationality,
religion, culture, language, or location. We co-operate with people we
believe to be the same as we are. If we are not sure about this, they
might pose a threat. This might not be immediately obvious and
might not even be true, but so important is the need to survive that it
would be foolhardy to ignore it. At times of danger, our instinct tells
us that we need to know who our friends are and these are most likely
to be the people that are “like us”. As uncomfortable as this might be
when it becomes the source of racism, religious intolerance, or other
forms of discrimination or oppression, what individuals, groups, and
whole communities might do when they are threatened cannot be
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 8

8 SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN CARE AND BEYOND

lightly dismissed under pleas of tolerance or understanding. Adapt-

ability comes with the price of a deeply embedded capacity to both
defend and attack. These factors lie at the heart of many issues in
family placement. Maltreatment may be thought of as a fundamental
breach of trust between the child and their parents. Removing the
child might be necessary to protect them but might, for the child, indi-
cate a further source of danger with unknown people and, therefore,
can elicit a heightened need for self-protection through attacking the
new parent figures. The process of resolving these issues and estab-
lishing a workable new family are, furthermore, likely to be full of
uncertainty and delay. The child’s capacity to trust could be the over-
arching casualty and, even when a resolution is being approached,
might continue to present painful feelings for the child and her carers:
for example, mealtimes might continue to be a source of tension
because these processes become activated.
Co-operation, then, relies on an individual’s belief that “the other”
is a source of help and support and not a threat. Trust in the other
cannot be naïvely assumed; making sense of one’s own mind and the
minds of others needs to be reliable, accurate, and insightful. The
room for error is significant because human perception and judge-
ment is fallible: misunderstandings occur, accidents happen, and
threats are perceived and might be real. Prior experience is likely to
play a key part, as the example above of children in care and the anxi-
ety and tensions around mealtimes illustrates. The recent develop-
ment of the concept of reflective functioning (Aber et al., 1985; Slade,
2005; Steele et al., 2008) has been particularly important in articulating
this. Reflective functioning recognises the unique capacity of the
human mind to accept and understand that relating to others means
learning that:

n the minds of other people are opaque: “Sometimes, I can’t quite

understand what she wants. She seems to be hungry but any
suggestion I make about food seems to spark off a mixture of fear
and anger—or at least that is what I think it is”;
n one’s own mind is difficult to understand: “I am not sure that I
really know what I feel about her when this happens. Am I too
sensitive in just wanting to be seen as a good mum?”;
n mental states change, and change over time: “I was feeling very
upset about what happened at supper yesterday but having
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 9

FAMILY PLACEMENT: CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY OVER TIME 9

thought about it, I can see why mealtimes are so stressful for
you”;
n the process of relating influences mental states: “I feel very upset
about what has just happened but maybe we can talk about it
when you have calmed down a bit to see if we can sort this out.”

It is important that parents and carers can facilitate children to

understand that their mental states are opaque, subject to change,
change over time, and are influenced by others during the process of
relating. Subjectively, children need to experience their own minds as
a reasonably safe place that they can trust in steering them through
the world, using opportunity, experiencing the challenge of learning,
managing risk and threat, adapting to new circumstances, and facing
transition and loss. In turn, their own experience and development
will set them on a path to being able to relate to the minds of others.
Being able to co-operate and work together is the outcome, which
drives adaptability and the capacity to survive. When children have
been maltreated, there are serious issues in rebuilding the capacity to
trust and the mental processes that enable this.

The threat in family placement

Family placement across the board finds itself embroiled in complex
issues of survival, threat, adaptability, and co-operation. As one exam-
ple, on 27 May 2015, the Daily Mail published a piece in which Denise
Robertson, their agony aunt, “after a lengthy investigation”, “reveals
the ‘rotten’ side of the adoption system in Britain”. The investigation
was based on 450 letters received over the previous year “from
desperate families”. The headline identifies the piece as the “Blood-
chilling scandal of the thousands of babies stolen by the State”
(Robertson, 2015) There could not be a more direct evocation of the
perceived threat that the state poses to some families in removing
their children to be placed for adoption. It is difficult to square the
claims of this article with the framework of law that governs the adop-
tion system. The European Convention on Human Rights is central to
this, with two key Articles providing an overarching framework to
ensure that the state acts fairly and justly. Article 6 establishes the right
to a fair trial and Article 8, the right to respect for one’s private and
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 10

10 SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN CARE AND BEYOND

family life, one’s home, and one’s correspondence, with no interfer-

ence with this right by a public authority except in very specific
circumstances. This is supported by various judgements of the
European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). It is important in the way
that domestic legislation is framed in England and Wales, in particu-
lar, the Human Rights Act 1998, the Children Act 1989, and the
Adoption and Children Act 2002. Domestically, the Supreme Court,
High Court, and local courts determine each case in accordance with
the law with local authorities, the Children and Family Court
Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS), and others preparing the
evidence according to the law and regulatory and professional proto-
cols. If there is a scandal, as Robertson argues, it is not one that is
legally sanctioned.
The issue with adoption is complex in the UK, as, unlike the rest
of Europe, it does not restrict adoption to those situations where birth
parents give their lawful consent to their child being placed for adop-
tion. If the court is satisfied that there is no alternative plan for the
child to secure his or her needs and welfare, including returning the
child to his or her parent/s or wider family, then an Order can be
made which authorises the local authority to place the child for
adoption. The legal availability of non-consensual adoption, some-
times described as “forced adoption”, is a child-focused solution to a
serious issue: the absence of a safe and loving family life for a child—
the key to their future.
The very existence of non-consensual adoption, as strong as the
argument might be in terms of a child’s long-term development, raises
serious questions about the theme of adapting and co-operation in
order to survive. If the identified threat to the child is from the parent/s
and their lack of capacity to successfully and appropriately provide a
family life for their child, resulting in State intervention, then, from the
parent/s point of view, the threat is from the state. The dynamic inter-
play between the parents, the wider family, the child, and the state is
driven by the issue of threat, but where the solution is still intended to
be framed by co-operation: assessing the degree of risk and opportu-
nity, finding solutions to the parents’ problems, discussing possible
plans, enabling them to participate and play their part in the plan. That
might include the return of the child to the parents with appropriate
support, placement with family members possibly framed by Special
Guardianship, and it might include adoption. The intended outcome is
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 11

FAMILY PLACEMENT: CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY OVER TIME 11

to establish a plan for the child that ensures a family for life, estab-
lished in law. Working co-operatively in partnership should drive this
process for it to be effective but significant uncertainty might hang
over every aspect of it.
These issues have recently been explored by the Supreme Court in
a way that has had a profound impact on adoption. In Re B (A Child)
(2013) UKSC 33, the court was asked to consider the plans for a child
who had had been removed at birth and placed in foster care. The
parents had significant problems; the mother had suffered serious
abuse herself and was in a highly vulnerable position with a range of
psychological difficulties. She had spent time in prison. The father
also had a range of problems, including a series of criminal convic-
tions. He also had four other children in whom he had taken very little
interest. Because the child B had been removed at birth, she had not
suffered directly from her parents’ care or lack of it and, in fact, they
had been seen to be very caring of her during contact visits. The legal
threshold, therefore, was one of “likelihood of significant harm”,
a predictive evaluation based on the serious issues in the history of
the couple. The local authority’s plan was that the child should be
placed for adoption, but the experts who gave evidence differed in
their view of the plan for the child. One argument was that B should
be returned to her parents with a comprehensive package of safe-
guarding and support services, building on the positively observed
care of the parents during contact. The other was that the parents
did not accept their need for help and there was no evidence of their
capacity to co-operate with services that might be arranged—indeed,
quite the reverse. Lord Justice Rix in the prior Court of Appeal judg-
ment (B (A Child) [2012] EWCA Civ 1475) concluded:

I also wonder whether this case illustrates a powerful but also trou-
bling example of the state exercising its precautionary responsibilities
for a much loved child in the face of parenting whose unsatisfactory
nature lies not so much in the area of physical abuse but in the more
subjective area of moral and emotional risk.

Judge Hedley, in Re L (Care: Threshold Criteria) (2007) 1 FLR 2050

states clearly,

It follows inexorably . . . that society must be willing to tolerate very

diverse standards of parenting, including the eccentric, the barely
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 12

12 SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN CARE AND BEYOND

adequate and the inconsistent. It follows too that children will

inevitably have both very different experiences of parenting and very
unequal consequences flowing from it. It means that some children
will experience disadvantage and harm, while others flourish in
atmospheres of loving security and emotional stability. These are the
consequences of our fallible humanity and it is not the provenance of
the state to spare children all the consequences of defective parenting.
In any event, it simply could not be done. (para 50)

These are complex issues. On the one hand, these judgements

clearly articulate deeply entrenched belief in the benefits that come
from the continuity of family life in all its various forms, whatever
dilemmas there are for the child in experiencing low standards of care
from the parent/s. The role of the state is not to socially engineer by
removing children into more beneficial family and social environ-
ments. However, there are particular circumstances where the state is
authorised to intervene and this is set out in law: evidence of the like-
lihood that the child will suffer, or has suffered, significant harm,
together with the court’s responsibility to ensure that, in any decision
it makes, the child’s welfare is paramount and the long-term conse-
quences are fully explored when it comes to decisions such as adop-
tion. This is made difficult where there are issues of judgement about
lifestyle choices or personal standards, as Judge Hedley and others set
them out.
In Re B, by a majority of four to one, the Supreme Court accepted
the local authority’s plan for adoption on the grounds of the parents’
inability to co-operate with services to ensure their daughter’s welfare.
But the impact of the argument in that judgment and a series of subse-
quent judgments have introduced significant doubt about the place of
non-consensual adoption. There has been no change in the law as
such, but a summarising paragraph by the President of the Family
Division, Lord Justice Munby, in Re B-S (2013, EWCA Civ 1146) makes
it clear what the standards are that must be met by local authorities
and the courts in considering adoption:

Orders contemplating non-consensual adoption—care orders with a

plan for adoption, placement orders and adoption orders—are “a very
extreme thing, a last resort”, only to be made where “nothing else will
do”, where “no other course [is] possible in [the child’s] interests”,
they are “the most extreme option”, a “last resort—when all else fails”,
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 13

FAMILY PLACEMENT: CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY OVER TIME 13

to be made “only in exceptional circumstances and where motivated

by overriding requirements pertaining to the child’s welfare, in short,
where nothing else will do”. (para. 22)

In addition, a further issue was identified about the standards of

current practice:

We have real concerns, shared by other judges, about the recurrent

inadequacy of the analysis and reasoning put forward in support of
the case for adoption, both in the materials put before the court by
local authorities and guardians and also in too many judgments. This
is nothing new. But it is time to call a halt. (para. 30)

Both of these summary paragraphs restate the standards required

of local authorities and the courts when planning and considering
adoption and centre on three issues:

1. The local authority and the courts taking the least interventionist
approach while continuing to support families and placing the
child at the centre of any decision.
2. Exploring all the feasible options: return home, placement with
extended family members or friends, foster care or adoption, and
demonstrating in evidence why they might or might not be in the
child’s best interests.
3. Identifying and providing those services which might be needed
to support the parents and family in rebuilding themselves to
adequately care for the child in the immediate and longer term.

These are sound principles, but the impact of the quoted case law
on the number of children with adoption as the plan in England has
been dramatic, with a fall of some 50% in the two years since the judg-
ment. It is difficult to predict whether this signifies a longer-term fall,
but the vulnerability of planning and decision-making in adoption is
clearly demonstrated in what has happened since these judgments.1
The legal framework sets out a powerful institutional response to
what is at the core a set of fundamental beliefs about human beings,
their survival, and the relationships and other processes that enable
this. It is also a powerful reminder of the complex role of the state. It
has a responsibility to be supportive of, and engaged with, individu-
als and families in providing safe and effective structures and services
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 14

14 SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN CARE AND BEYOND

which enable society to prosper in the present and survive through to

future generations, with the family at the centre of this. At the same
time, the state must identify any significant threats within and from
the family and take action to address these where children are
concerned. Co-operative and supportive engagement, the capacity to
adapt and change and the ability to experience loss and incorporate
this into learning are critical parts of this process. At an individual
level, it lies at the heart of Re B, where the parents’ inability to openly
and positively co-operate and engage with services in order to create
the conditions where their daughter could thrive was the primary
question. Rather than the parents experiencing the offer of services as
supportive engagement, it was experienced as an unnecessary, unwel-
come, and probably a significant threat. Trust was non-existent and
the predicted impact of that on B as a child was such that the parents
in turn could not be trusted to provide the care she needed. From a
psychosocial perspective, the evidence about parental capacity and
competence in Re B can be explained as a failure of reflective func-
tioning. The detail of the judgment identifies that the mother did seek
help on numerous occasions, but the problems she perceived were
seen by professionals to be, at best, a false construction of her diffi-
culties. They were concerned about the consequence of these false
beliefs on her daughter’s well-being and development. The conse-
quential impact on her daughter to trust, to work co-operatively, to
learn, and to adapt might then be severe. Children need to directly
experience the relationships that they have with their parents or carers
as supportive and companionable (Simmonds, 2010) as they begin to
engage in the world around them. It is essential that, as they increas-
ingly explore the world of opportunity, they develop the mental
capacities to enable them to engage with that personal and social
world based on an increasing familiarity with the qualities outlined in
the concept of reflective functioning. At the same time, children need
to know that when the going gets tough, they can return to a reliable,
safe haven of relationships where, whatever the nature of the prob-
lem, there is a sensitive, thoughtful, reassuring, and encouraging
response, framed by the principles of reflective functioning. Whatever
the placement type, or the legal framework that supports it, this issue
is fundamental.
The theme of continuity and discontinuity is a powerful issue
across all family placements, whatever the form of the legal order:
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 15

FAMILY PLACEMENT: CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY OVER TIME 15

adoption, special guardianship, care orders or child arrangement

orders. The involvement of the state and its capacity to act in remov-
ing children from their parents wrestles with the intention to be
supportive and companionable, but with the real risk that it will be
experienced as the state being dominating and expecting submission
from the family. The consequences of this movement between the
supportive–companionable and the dominant–submissive (Heard &
Lake, 2009) can be confusing.
The beginning of this chapter described adoption and other place-
ments emerging from a perspective where they were thought of as a
new beginning for the child unencumbered by whatever had pre-
ceded it. As is now well known, information and knowledge about all
the factors that resulted in an alternative form of family life created
by the state are seen to be essential to the child—a right to know, a
right to explore, a right to be consulted, and a right to be listened to.
In fact, information about, and contact with, birth parents, siblings, or
others is seen as increasingly significant in state-arranged family life
although disputes about its benefits continue (Loxterkamp, 2009; Neil,
2010; Neil et al., 2014, 2015; Selwyn et al., 2015). Over this time, there
has been a significant change in adoption in particular, with a move
from understanding the structural arrangements for contact—who
with, where, and when—to the concept of “communicative open-
ness”. Brodzinsky (2005) explains what it is that makes a difference:
“the creation of an open, honest, non-defensive, and emotionally
attuned family dialogue, not only about adoption related issues” and
a willingness in that dialogue for family members

to consider the meaning of adoption in their lives, to share that mean-

ing with others, to explore adoption related issues in the context of
family life, to acknowledge and support the child’s dual connection to
two families, and perhaps to facilitate contact between these two
family systems in one form or another. (p. 149)

Although developed in relation to adoption, communicative open-

ness is a concept that readily lends itself to all forms of family place-
ment. As such, Brodzinsky is essentially describing a state of mind—
how one thinks, feels, and talks about something that is emotionally
charged. These thoughts and feelings do not easily lend themselves to
resolution by rules or procedures and may be experienced in different
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 16

16 SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN CARE AND BEYOND

ways by different people at different points in their lives. Communi-

cative openness relies on those qualities identified in reflective func-
tioning as well as a belief in, and the operation of, a supportive and
companionable form of relating. It also means recognising the con-
tinuities and discontinuities in a child’s life and those of her current
parents or carers, as well as those that have played a part in the past.
What has the child learnt, how has she adapted, and how does she
experience herself in the intimate world of relating and relationships,
whatever form her family placement takes?
What communicative openness cannot mean is an idealised
version of the issues related to the placement of the child, the new
family, or the birth family. The experiences and memories from the
past, especially of poor, if not dangerous, care, abandonment, and
loss, of the failure to establish forms of relating that engender epis-
temic trust, are likely to be significant issues for the child and new
carers as they rebuild a foundation from which to build a new future.
However, where there are campaigns supported by the media that
portray adoption, in particular, as a conspiracy on the part of the state
to remove children from parents who are “too slow” or “too poor”,
then this is likely to create a toxic mix. When this then appears to be
supported by government targets and cash incentives, the question
becomes: does this then result in local authorities being on a spree of
child snatching to grasp the pots of gold on offer? As portrayed by the
Daily Mail, it is a scary and sinister story. Yet, there are critical issues
about the impact that this kind of story has on children placed by the
state. What might they be asking themselves lying in bed at night—
was I stolen by a group of thieving magpies organised by the state?
What impact does this have on adoptive or foster families—was this
child who was presented to me with a painful and disturbing history
of abuse and neglect really removed from their birth family to meet
my local authority’s overspend?
While these headlines must be understood for what they are—the
media at work—the issues they raise are complex although not in
quite the way that the Daily Mail is trying to get at. Carers, whether
adopters, foster carers, kinship carers, or others, children and birth
families are confronted with a powerful and painful set of issues.
Nobody is likely to be involved in this complex unravelling and recon-
struction of family out of choice. Neither are they likely to have
planned or anticipated that this was a pathway on which they would
BARRATT_LOBATTO Book_RoseShulnan 1st proofs 14/07/2016 11:55 Page 17

FAMILY PLACEMENT: CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY OVER TIME 17

find themselves. Uncertainty and loss have already been identified as

common and these might well be expressed with a sense of injustice,
anxiety, and feelings that important aspects of life are out of control.
The headlines indicate something of the sense of scandal and outrage
that might be experienced by those directly caught up in trying to find
a solution to the most painful of human circumstances—the need to
re-create a family life for a child who, without state intervention, is in
danger of never having that family life.
The process of rebuilding will inevitably mean establishing a posi-
tive sense of continuity—acknowledging in a meaningful way the
significance of the past for the present—on beliefs, on thoughts and
feelings, and on behaviour. But this will inevitably mean acknowl-
edging the likelihood that discontinuities are a part of that experience
as well: in one sense, a new beginning, in another, a significant break
from the past. The impact of these daily reminders of discontinuities
and dislocations can be unexpectedly disturbing. They have an impact
on everybody. For carers, these discontinuities and dislocations will
have been imported into their lives from elsewhere. For a grandpar-
ent carer, there will be the advantages of the continuity of family
history and culture, but the discontinuity that directly results from
one’s own child not being able to care for the child that he or she
brought into the world. For the child, there will be the discontinuity
from inadequate care or the effects of maltreatment and also the conti-
nuity of the associated memories and experiences of this. Preferences
and choices will play their part as well. Integrating continuities and
discontinuities to build a new family life will be a continuous chal-
lenge, with some of the fears and anxieties that are generated along
the way never finding expression in a tolerable way because they are
too painful and threaten the integrity and safety of the individual and
the family unit. Some might be expressed in an intolerable way and,
indeed, threaten the integrity and safety of the individual child or the
carer/parents or entire family (Selwyn et al., 2015). It is remarkable
that ordinary people find the resources and resilience to manage these
challenging and highly emotive issues creatively and positively and
with determination and commitment, but it cannot be surprising that
sometimes this is a real struggle.
It is the reason why support is so central to any placement.
Support needs to be planned and made available from the point at
which an alternative family life for the child is being considered and
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
you will yet be a great general over men when you grow up to be a
man yourself.” A few years ago an aged man entered Mr. Kelly’s
crowded office at 117 Nassau street, and sent in his name with the
rest. When his turn came he was admitted. “Do you not know me,
Mr. Kelly?” said the old man. “No,” was the reply, “I do not recall
you.” “Do you remember when you were a boy the fight you had
with that big swarthy fellow in Creamer’s factory yard, when one of
the men told you you would one day become a great general over
men? Well, I was that very man, and didn’t I tell the truth, sir?” Mr.
Kelly remembered the occurrence and his visitor too, immediately,
whom he had not seen for many years, and laughed heartily over
the reminiscence of his youth as he shook the old man’s hand.
He worked industriously at his new occupation, and is said to have
displayed mechanical skill of no mean order. In due time he set up in
business for himself, made friends rapidly, and secured an excellent
line of custom. He became a prosperous young man, and was
remarked upon for sobriety, modesty of deportment and attention to
business. It was not long before he found himself able to branch out
on a more extensive scale, for his friends were numerous and willing
to lend him a helping hand when the needs of his business made it
expedient to ask credit. While yet a very young man, his success
was sufficiently assured to justify him in establishing a soap-stone
and grate factory at 40 Elizabeth street, and he also opened an
office where he took business orders, in a frame building on Broome
street, next door to the church over which Dr. Maclay at that time
presided, and of which Dr. Cohen, in subsequent years, became the
pastor. Among his customers were Thomas O’Conor, father of
Charles O’Conor, the lawyer; John A. Dix, afterward Governor of New
York; Horace F. Clark, and many other influential people. John Kelly
had now become a prosperous man. His first care was for the
beloved mother who had shaped the days of his youth in the ways
he should walk, but who departed this life in the most edifying
sentiments of piety when he was quite a young man, scarcely
twenty-one years of age. His next care was for his younger brother
and five sisters, towards whom he acted as a father, and for whose
education and welfare he was now able to provide in a suitable
manner. His own early struggles for education had taught him to
appreciate it highly in others, and he secured to his brother and
sisters advantages which disciplined their youthful years and
qualified them for the duties of after life. Later on he took his
brother into partnership with him, but that brother and all his sisters,
save one, Mrs. Thomas, who lives near Mexico, in Oswego County,
New York, died many years ago. Mr. Kelly, as already mentioned,
owed to his mother’s care the blessing of right training in his youth,
and the consequent formation of his character in the practice of the
Christian virtues. An old New Yorker who knew his mother, has told
the writer she was a thorough disciplinarian, and taught her children
to love the truth in all things, and that the beginning of wisdom is
the fear of the Lord. His mother died before her son’s brilliant
success began; she who had equipped him for the battle stayed not
to enjoy its triumphs.
At this period of his life John Kelly had not a dream of ever
entering upon a political career. In this respect he resembled another
distinguished New York statesman, the late Daniel S. Dickinson, who
began life as a mechanic, became a woollen manufacturer, and,
beyond being an earnest Democrat, passed several years with no
inclination whatever for the field of politics. It was true, however,
that even from his boyhood John Kelly displayed rare capacity to
lead others, and he now found himself, in spite of preoccupation in
the manufacturing business, constantly called on by neighbors
seeking his advice and instinctively following him. He was once
asked by a newspaper reporter if he ever sowed wild oats in his
youth. “That may be called a leading question,” he replied; “I was in
a gambling-house once in my life, but it was on business—not to
gamble. And I never was in a house of assignation in my life. I don’t
know what the inside of such a house is.” “It is charged against you,”
the reporter said, “that you attend church very regularly, and that
you do it for effect.” “Well,” Mr. Kelly said, “that’s a queer charge to
make against any one. I had a good careful mother who sent me to
the Sunday-school regularly. I have been to church regularly ever
since. Under such training, no doubt, I ought to be a great deal
better Christian than I am. I suppose I have been very wicked
sometimes, and yet I can’t recall any time when I have been wilfully
bad.”[3]
“During Tweed’s ascendancy in New York politics,” said the well
informed Utica editor, in the article already quoted from, “Mr. Kelly
retired from Tammany Hall. Between him and Tweed the bitterest
hostility always existed. It is pleasant to believe that Kelly’s superior
virtue made him distasteful to the burly champion of corruption. But
that does not account for their feud. During the glow of his guilty
glory, Tweed’s ambition was to secure the endorsement of men of
unimpeachable character. By turning back a page in political history,
we might show how well he succeeded. But he could not make
terms with John Kelly, for Mr. Kelly would accept no position but that
of ruler. William M. Tweed swore a solemn oath that John Kelly never
should control Tammany Hall—and we all know what came of it.”
Shortly before his death, while he was a prisoner in Ludlow Street
Jail, Tweed was interviewed by a New York Herald reporter, and gave
with undeserved freedom his impressions of the leading men he had
known in politics. “Whom,” said the reporter, “do you regard as the
most successful city politician of New York in the thirty years of your
experience?” “John Kelly,” said Tweed. “He was always a plodder—
always saving something and learning something. He stood well with
the Church—rather a high class man in the Church—and got his
support there. I never did but one thing for him; twenty years ago I
helped him beat Walsh for Congress.” “When you came to politics,”
asked the reporter, “did you ever remotely entertain the idea of such
proportions as the Ring afterwards assumed?” “No,” said Tweed.
“The fact is, New York politics were always dishonest—long before
my time. There never was a time when you couldn’t buy the Board
of Aldermen, except now. If it wasn’t for John Kelly’s severity, you
could buy them now.”[4]
The reporter of the World, with an odd sort of unconscious humor
in his interview, not unlike Tweed’s commercial valuation of piety as
an investment, so naively suggested by the words, “rather a high
class man in the Church,” bluntly told Mr. Kelly that it was not only
complained against him that he attended Church, but that he
aggravated the matter by attending it very regularly. No wonder
Kelly should have thought that a “queer charge” to make against
him.
An old citizen of New York, acquainted with him from his youth, is
authority for the statement that Kelly was as fully a leader of the
young men of his neighborhood when he first grew up, as he
became of the Tammany Democrats at a later day. He was of a
social disposition, and while always temperate in his habits, he
would go occasionally, after getting through with his day’s work, to
the Ivy Green, a famous hostelry in those days in Elm street, kept by
Malachi Fallon, who went to California in 1849, and which was
afterward kept by John Lord. The Ivy Green, like Stonehall’s in
Fulton Street, was a popular gathering place for politicians and their
friends. John Clancy, Peter B. Sweeny, Matthew Brennan, David C.
Broderick, and many other active young fellows, who afterwards
became prominent in politics, were in the habit of visiting the Ivy
Green, and John Kelly would sometimes call there for a chat with the
boys. Less frequently, but once in a great while, Kelly and Broderick,
the latter being a warm friend of Kelly’s, also dropped in at the
Comet, another place of resort of the same kind, kept by Manus
Kelly on Mott street, where they would meet the same jolly crowd
that frequented the Ivy Green, and whither came quite often the
celebrated Tom Hyer, Yankee Sullivan, and other champions of the
manly art of self-defence. “But,” said the writer’s informant, “none of
these fighting men ever intermeddled with Kelly or Broderick. The
best of them would have had his hands full if he had done so.” Poor
Broderick, who afterwards became a United States Senator from
California, finally fell in a duel in that State.
Young Kelly was very fond of athletic sports. He was a good
oarsman, was often on the water, and pulled a shell with the best.
There was a crack company called the Emmet Guards in New York,
when Kelly was a young man. He was first lieutenant of this
company during the captaincy of James McGrath, upon whose death
he was elected captain, and being fond of military matters, he
brought his company to a high state of efficiency. Captain Kelly
retained the command until he was elected Alderman in 1853. The
Old Volunteer Fire Department was then in its zenith. He was a
member of it, and one of its leading spirits. While he was in the Fire
Department an incident occurred which has exercised a restraining
influence over him through life. At a fireman’s parade, while he was
in line of March, a burly truckman attempted to drive through the
ranks. Kelly was near the horses and kept them back. The driver
sprang to the ground, and made a furious attack on the young fire
laddie. He received in return a blow from Kelly’s fist which ended the
battle by rendering the truckman insensible. He was borne to a
neighboring doctor’s office, and was resuscitated with much
difficulty. For two or three days the truckman was disabled. Kelly,
who had acted strictly on the defensive, nevertheless was greatly
distressed for his antagonist. He had been unaware of the almost
phenomenal force of his own blow, and his tremendous hitting
power was first fully revealed to him by the effect of his fist on the
truckman. To one of his intimate friends he declared that he deeply
regretted this affair, but that, perhaps, it had served a good purpose,
for he was now unalterably resolved never again as long as he lived
to strike any man with all his force, no matter what the provocation
might be.
His herculean strength and known courage have sometimes been
seized upon by opponents for disparaging paragraphs in the
newspapers, just as the combativeness of Andrew Jackson, in his
earlier days, was often commented upon to his detriment. But as
there was nothing mean or domineering in the temper of Jackson,
any more than there is in Kelly, only the high and unconquerable
spirit that felt “the rapture of the strife,” Old Hickory did not suffer in
popular esteem on account of his early scrimmages. In 1828 Dr.
James L. Armstrong, one of his old opponents in Tennessee,
gathered up and published as a political nosegay a list of nearly one
hundred pistol, sword and fist fights in which Jackson had been
engaged between the ages of 23 and 60. Jackson replied to this by
promising to cudgel Armstrong on sight. The courage of some men
is so conspicuous that they are recognized at once as heroes. In his
admirable life of Nelson, Southey relates many acts of apparently
reckless intrepidity on the part of the hero of Trafalgar; but, as it
was with Jackson, so was it with Nelson, his conduct was not the
result of real recklessness; it was not the courage of the bull-dog,
the maddened bull or the enraged lion, but rather the play of a spirit
which rose with the occasion, the exhibition of a will not to be
appalled by dangers common natures shrink from. It was such a
courage the poet had in view when he made Brutus say—

“Set honor in one eye, and death i’ the other,

And I will look on both indifferently.”

On several occasions in his career John Kelly has exhibited this

heroic quality. Through his agency, at a stormy political convention in
New York, when several of the most notorious partisans of Tweed,
while clutching to retain the power which had been wrested from
their fallen chief, were beaten at every point, a resort to brute force
was threatened, and several of the vilest desperadoes in the city
were despatched from the hall to waylay Kelly and take his life as he
passed along the street. Some of his friends divined the purpose of
the would-be-assassins, and admonished Mr. Kelly of their
movements. A carriage was sent for, and he was urged to get into it
and be driven home, in order to avoid the bravos. Augustus Schell,
Horace F. Clark, and several other friends tried to persuade him to
enter the carriage. Mr. Kelly replied that he generally went home by
a certain route, pointing to the street where the thugs were in
hiding, and it was his intention to go that way then. If anybody
wanted to kill him, the opportunity would be given, as he would
neither seek nor avoid such miscreants. “My friends,” he quietly
remarked, “if you run away from a dog, he will be very apt to bite
you.” He went out of the hall and approached the corner, keeping his
eyes steadily fixed on the sinister group gathered there like beasts of
prey, passed on, and was not molested. Determined to take his life,
but deterred by cowardice when Kelly confronted them, the villains
made a plan to secrete themselves in a small unoccupied frame
house on Lexington Avenue, between 33d and 34th streets, on the
following morning, and to shoot him as he went down town to
business. An old man living in the neighborhood, by the merest
accident overheard a part of the muttered plot of the conspirators,
and saw them early next morning enter the deserted house. He was
a friend of Mr. Kelly, and suspected that he was to be attacked. He
went out, and meeting Mr. Kelly, told him of his suspicion, and
pointed out the house in which the men were concealed. John Kelly
crossed the street, and proceeded deliberately to enter the house
and room from which the Ring desperadoes in dumb astonishment
watched his approach. Thinking they had been betrayed—for it must
have flashed upon them that Kelly would not have the madness to
do such a thing unless he had assistance at hand—the terrified
assassins fled from the rear of the house as he entered at the front.
He went into the room they had just quit, and saw four men running
through a vacant lot as fast as their legs could carry them into the
next street. Alone and absolutely unassisted, save by the cool
judgment and unflinching courage which eminently distinguish his
character, he adopted this hazardous line of conduct as the most
effective way of confounding a gang of murderous ruffians, and
stamping out their cowardly plots. He succeeded. The Ring men
beset his path no more.
Those acquainted with John Kelly are aware that there is a
humorous side to his character, and that he possesses mimic powers
of a high order. It is not generally known, but it is a fact however,
that when he first grew up to manhood he was one of the organizers
of an Amateur Dramatic Association, which had its headquarters in a
hall at the corner of Elm and Canal Streets, and which sent forth
several professional actors who afterwards attained eminence on the
stage. Charles Place, Samuel Truesdale, Mr. Godwin, John Kelly and
other well known citizens of New York were members of this
company; and several great tragedies, notably some of the now
neglected ones of Shakespeare, were essayed by these aspiring
youths. “Many of Mr. Kelly’s friends,” said a writer in September,
1880, in a New York weekly paper called The Hour, “will be surprised
to learn that he once, in the character of Macbeth, sturdily
challenged Macduff to ‘lay on’; that as the sable-clad Hamlet he was
accustomed to win applause as he expressed the wish that his ‘too,
too solid flesh would melt’; and that his passionate outbursts as the
jealous Moor in ‘Othello’, were wont to bring down the house.
Equally astonished will they be to hear that, in the versatility of his
genius, he was as much a favorite in ‘Toodles’ and other of Burton’s
eccentric comedy parts as in the higher walk of tragedy.”
In Kelly’s younger days religious persecution and hostility to
foreigners had begun to be shown in not a few localities. This
intolerant spirit, which had lain dormant in America from the days of
Washington to the end of Monroe’s administration, broke forth with
great fury in several parts of the country after the close of the “era
of good feeling.” The fathers of the Republic were liberal men who
kept this spirit at a distance. Archbishop Carroll of Baltimore, the
friend of Washington, was chosen by a unanimous resolution of
Congress, and in compliance with the desire of the clergy and laity
of all denominations, to deliver the first anniversary address upon
the father of his country after his death. The address was delivered
February 22, 1800, and is still preserved. Bishop Cheverus of Boston,
afterwards Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux, France, was the warm
personal friend of John Adams, and when the Bishop was about to
build a church in Boston, the first name on the list of his subscribers
was that of President Adams. When Bishop Dubois, the friend of
Lafayette, was driven into exile by the French Revolution, he found a
place of refuge in Virginia, a home in the private residence of James
Monroe, afterwards President, friends in his host and Patrick Henry,
and, having no church of his own, a chapel in the capitol at
Richmond which the legislature of Virginia placed at his disposal to
be used for the offices of religion. These halcyon days of Christian
charity and toleration in America were now about to be rudely
interrupted. In 1831, the same Dubois, then Bishop of New York,
had the mortification to see his church of St. Mary’s, in that city, set
on fire by an incendiary and burned down. The first Catholic college
in the State of New York was built in the neighborhood of Nyack, on
the Hudson, in 1833, by this prelate. Religious bigotry incited by Rev.
Dr. Brownlee and other enemies of the Catholics, soon applied the
torch to the structure and reduced it to ashes. In 1834 the Ursuline
Convent at Charlestown, Massachusetts, was burned and sacked.
Two or three years later an anti-Catholic mob formed the design of
burning St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. A pious churchman,
Bishop Dubois was also a man of courage. If the civil authorities
would not stay the fury of the mob, he determined to protect
himself, and defend his church from destruction. John Kelly, then a
well grown youth and a favorite of Bishop Dubois, was selected by
him on account of his prudence and extraordinary courage as a sort
of aid de-camp to Lawrence Langdon, the leader of a large body of
citizens who assembled in the vicinity of the Cathedral for defense.
The streets were torn up for a considerable distance; paving stones,
wagons and omnibuses were used for barricades; armed men filled
the Cathedral, and the walls of the adjoining grave-yard glistened
with swords and bayonets. The Bishop enjoined the utmost
forbearance upon his people, and gave them positive orders not to
begin the assault, and to avoid collision with the mob until the
Cathedral might be attacked. Conspicuous in carrying out the orders
of the leader, and in directing the movements of the defending party,
and maintaining constant communication between Langdon and his
followers, was young John Kelly of the Fourteenth Ward. The mob
approached through Broadway, a dense body extending for several
blocks, marching in solid line and filling the street from one side to
the other. They turned into Prince Street and approached the
Cathedral. Kelly carried the order at this moment for the defenders
to lie down in the grave-yard and keep perfectly quiet. It was night,
and the mob marched on until stopped by the barricades, when they
found the whole neighborhood in a state of siege. The ample
preparations to receive them disconcerted the church-burners, and
the silence of the defending party, of whose presence they had
become aware, made the incendiaries wary and apprehensive. They
faltered and lost heart, and slunk away in the direction of the
Bowery, terrified from their wicked design by the intrepid courage of
one old Bishop. They passed along the sidewalk adjoining the burial-
ground in lines six deep, with frightful oaths upon their lips, while
the men in the city of the dead remained as still and motionless as
the tenants of the tombs below, but every finger was on a trigger,
and every heart beat high with resolve to defend St. Patrick’s
Cathedral and the graves of their fathers from sacrilege and
desecration. Driven by cowardly fear from the church, the mob
crossed to the Bowery, wrecking the houses of several Irishmen, and
the tavern called the Green Dragon, on the way, and finally their fury
was let loose on the private residence of Mr. Arthur Tappan, the
famous abolitionist, whose windows and doors they broke, and
otherwise injured his property. Thus by the prudence of the
Cathedral defenders in avoiding collision with the mob, a terrible
sacrifice of life was escaped, and young John Kelly, inspired by the
counsel of the Bishop and his own coolness and sagacity, played a
prominent part in preventing bloodshed and saving the Cathedral.
The prejudice against foreigners, an outgrowth of that aversion
which the old Federal party leaders manifested towards Frenchmen,
Germans and Irishmen, indeed to all foreigners except Englishmen,
continued to increase in bitterness after the close of the “era of good
feeling.” A political party was at last organized on a platform of
disfranchisement of the Irish and “the Dutch,” the latter being a
commonly used misnomer for the Germans. This party took the
name of Native Americans. It advocated laws prohibiting Irish and
German emigrants from landing on these shores, and practical denial
of the right of suffrage, or of holding office, to those already here.
For some years this unwise and unstatesmanlike policy of exclusion
and proscription seriously checked the tide of emigration from
Europe. Had the Native Americans prevailed, instead of the fifty odd
millions of population in the United States to-day, there would have
been less than twenty millions, and the wealth and greatness of the
country would be diminished in like proportion. Instead of being,
perhaps, the greatest nation in the world, the United States would
occupy the position of a fourth or fifth-rate power, a little but not
much ahead of Canada on the north, and the South American
governments on the south.
As the greater number of the foreign population were Roman
Catholics, a sectarian element was infused into the new party, and
with bigotry superadded to a widespread jealousy of foreigners, the
Native American party soon signalized itself by burning down
Catholic churches and colleges, and by bloody chance-medleys and
deliberate riots with German and Irish adopted citizens. In the year
1844 these disturbances reached a climax. A terrible riot occurred
that year in Philadelphia, in which many lives were sacrificed, and
the Catholic church of St. Augustine was laid in ashes by the mob.
The scenes in that city bore resemblance to some of the godless
excesses in Paris during the reign of terror. To be a foreigner was to
brave death, to be a Catholic to court martyrdom in free America.
It was at this juncture the Native American party in the city of
New York again threatened the destruction of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
The New York Courier and Enquirer, and Evening Express fanned the
passions of the people to white heat by appeals to sectarian and
race prejudices. But there was a man then at the head of the
Catholic Church in New York who possessed many of the qualities for
which Andrew Jackson was distinguished. Bishop Hughes belonged
to the tribe of the lions. He perceived that it was the favorite policy
of the Native Americans to make New York city an anti-foreign
stronghold. There, Catholics and adopted citizens were powerful;
crushed there, it would be an easy matter to prostrate them
everywhere. In the month of May, 1844, the Native American leaders
in New York, invited their brethren of Philadelphia, who had most
distinguished themselves in the deplorable events in that city, to visit
New York, and to bring with them emblems of the horrible scenes in
Kensington at the time of the burning of the church of St. Augustine,
the better to fire the New York heart. A delegation of Philadelphians
promised to accept the invitation and carry on the emblems. A public
reception, and a procession through the streets, were to take place.
It became evident that the purpose of this sinister movement was to
re-enact in New York the scenes which had just disgraced
Philadelphia. Bishop Hughes took decisive action. He admonished
Catholics to keep away from public meetings and unusual gatherings
of the populace, and, to avoid in a special manner, all disturbers of
the peace. That great man, in looking over the city for prudent and
conservative persons to aid him in carrying out his policy of
forbearance, found no one on whom he more implicitly relied, and
who proved more effective in the emergency than John Kelly. Bishop
Hughes and John Kelly’s father were natives of the same county and
neighborhood in Ireland. Between the Bishop and his fellow
countryman’s son a warm friendship existed. They were both
endowed with minds of singular originality and power, both natural
leaders of men, both possessed a remarkable hold on the respect
and affections of the people. Among the Whigs, at this perilous
juncture, Bishop Hughes also found several powerful supporters,
chief among whom were William H. Seward, Horace Greeley and
Thurlow Weed. As the time drew near for the Native American
demonstration, popular excitement and fears of a terrible riot
increased. Bishop Hughes now called on the Mayor of the city,
Robert H. Morris, and advised him not to allow the demonstration to
take place. “Are you afraid that some of your churches may be
burned?” the Mayor asked. “No, sir, but I am afraid that some of
yours will be burned,” the Bishop said; “we can protect our own. I
came to warn you for your own good.” “Do you think, Bishop, that
your people would attack the procession?” “I do not; but the Native
Americans want to provoke a Catholic riot, and if they can do it in no
other way, I believe they would not scruple to attack the procession
themselves, for the sake of making it appear that the Catholics had
assailed them.”
“What, then, would you have me do?” asked the Mayor. “I did not
come to tell you what to do,” the Bishop said. “I am a Churchman,
not the Mayor of New York; but if I were the Mayor, I would examine
the laws of the State and see if there were not attached to the police
force a battery of artillery, and a company or so of infantry, and a
squadron of horse; and I think I should find that there were; and if
so, I should call them out. Moreover, I should send to Mr. Harper, the
Mayor-elect, who has been chosen by the votes of this party. I
should remind him that these men are his supporters; I should warn
him that if they carry out their designs there will be a riot; and I
should urge him to use his influence in preventing the public
reception of the delegates.”[5]
This characteristic stand of Bishop Hughes had its effect. No public
reception of the church burners took place, but for nearly two weeks
the Cathedral was guarded every night, and the mob which
threatened its destruction was kept at bay. During those dark days
Bishop Hughes found John Kelly to be one of the most prudent
young men in the Cathedral parish, energetic in danger, conservative
in conduct, and always responsive to the call of duty. His manly
bearing then may be said to have laid the foundation of that
enduring confidence in his judgment, and respect for his character,
which the Bishop ever afterwards felt and expressed. Mr. Kelly was
not a zealot, and there is not a tinge of bigotry in his nature. He was
then, as he is now, a true liberal, and has always declared that
religion and politics should be kept as wide apart as the poles. But
he is the foe of intolerance, and while despising the arts of the
demagogue, no man in New York has done more to uphold foreign
citizens in their rights, and to emancipate the ballot-box from
persecution on the one hand, and fraudulent voting on the other.
The Native American party finally developed into the notorious
Know-Nothing movement, the party of grips, and signs, and dark-
lanterns. In many of the election districts of New York no foreigner
dared approach the polls. The primaries were even worse, and were
conducted in defiant disregard of the election laws. In John Kelly’s
ward, which was a fair illustration of every other ward in the city,
any Irishman or German risked his life by going to the polls. Gangs
of repeaters and thugs, as far as they could, kept all foreigners from
the primaries. These tools of the Know-Nothing leaders would fill the
room where the election was held, take possession of the line, crowd
out their opponents by threats or violence, return again and again,
force their way, after passing the spot where the votes were
received, once more into the line, and repeat the farcical act of
voting a second and third time, keeping up the villany until relieved
by another squad of repeaters, who continued to enact the same
scenes until the close of the polls. A friendly police force connived at
these rascalities, and openly backed up the repeaters and ballot-box
stuffers whenever a determined citizen, in the exercise of his rights,
resisted expulsion from the line, or attempted to defend himself from
assault. So great became the terror these law-breakers inspired, that
opposition to them was practically at an end. This state of affairs
was more humiliating, since the majority of voters in the Fourteenth
Ward were known to be Democrats. John Kelly protested against
these outrages as a private citizen, and at a meeting of Democrats
declared his intention of attending the next primary election in the
Fourteenth Ward, then near at hand, and exercising his right of
voting at all hazards. Those who knew the man knew this was not
an idle boast, but many tried to dissuade him from the rash attempt,
which, if persisted in, would likely enough cost him his life.
The primary election was to take place in a hall, long since
removed, in the march of the city, which then stood on the corner of
Grand and Elizabeth Streets. The part of the room for the inspectors’
seats was protected by a high partition, and a box desk, like a bank
teller’s window, with a hole only large enough for a voter’s hand to
be put through in handing his ballot, to the receiving inspector, was
placed at one side of the partition. A narrow path in the main room,
fenced in by high rails, to allow but one voter to approach at a time,
afforded the only means of access to the polls. When the voter
handed in his ballot, that was the last he saw of it, as the partition
effectually shut off observation from without. As a matter of fact it
was the practice of the inspector to throw the vote into a waste
basket, on the floor at his feet, if it was not of the approved sort.
This mode of taking the vox populi had long been in practice, and
was not only an open evasion of the statute, which provided for the
presence of watchers for the several parties, whose legal right it was
to see that all had a fair opportunity to vote, but it was adopted with
the deliberate purpose of protecting the swindling inspectors from
detection while engaged in the nefarious work of making way with
legal ballots. On the day of the election John Kelly was early on the
scene, and was accompanied by a large number of the lawful voters
of the ward, who appointed him as their watcher at the polls. He
and his friends forced their way into the hall, and as the black hole,
behind which the frauds were practiced, was there in violation of the
statute, it was straightway demolished, in order to secure at least a
semblance of fairness to the voting about to take place. The Know-
Nothings were at first struck dumb with astonishment at this bold
step on the part of the Democrats. To defend themselves from
violence was as much as the latter had previously attempted. Rage
soon took the place of surprise, and a furious attack was made on
those who had removed the box screen from about the inspectors’
desk. John Kelly, who had been recognized as a Democratic watcher,
was also set upon by the gang of ballot-box stuffers. A fierce scuffle
ensued. But the Democrats outnumbered the Know-Nothings, and
drove them from the hall. The leaders of the latter party, uttering
vows of vengeance, declared they would soon return with
reinforcements, and make short work of Kelly and his party. They
repaired to the ship-carpenters’ quarters at the foot of Delaney
street, and soon the news of their discomfiture was spread abroad
among the thousands of mechanics in that part of the city. These
mechanics were, for the most part, engaged in ship building, for
those were the days when New York’s famous clipper ships whitened
the seas and brought back cargoes of commerce from all parts of
the world. The ship carpenters constituted a formidable body of
athletic men, whose influence at elections was cast on the side of
the Know-Nothings. It was not long before a body of these
mechanics, over a thousand in number, was drummed up in Delaney
street and vicinity, and marshalled by notorious Know-Nothing
bullies, the crowd started for the hall in Grand street to inflict
condign punishment upon John Kelly and the Fourteenth Ward
Democrats, who had shown the unprecedented audacity of
interfering with the usual Know-Nothing methods of carrying
elections in that ward. In the meantime the Democrats had not been
idle, but had recruited their own ranks to prepare for the threatened
attack. Soon the two parties came into collision, and a desperate
encounter took place. But for a second time the victory remained
with the Democrats. The Know-Nothings, unaccustomed to serious
opposition, were not prepared for it now, and advanced in a
promiscuous manner, expecting to bear down opposition and to have
everything their own way. The Democrats presented a compact
front, and fought in companies of ten each. The hall was cleared a
second time of the assailing party. A great multitude was now
gathered in the streets threatening to tear down or burn the
building, when the Democrats suddenly sallied forth with the
precision of veterans, and struck the Know-Nothing mob at a dozen
different points simultaneously. The mob being gathered from all
parts of the city greatly exceeded the Democrats in numbers, but
the sub-divisions of tens on the part of the latter worked so well that
their onslaught became irresistible. Soon the mob were flying in all
directions, some seeking refuge in stores, others in private houses,
and the rest were pursued into and through the Bowery with great
impetuosity. “The hour was come and the man.” None knew it better
than the Know-Nothing Dirk Hatteraicks of New York. The effect of
that day’s work in the Fourteenth Ward was felt all over the city of
New York for years afterwards, and its immediate consequence was
to break the backbone of Know-Nothingism in the ward in which it
occurred. Thereafter Democrats, whether native or foreign born,
were not afraid to appear at election places. The moral effect was
salutary. The timid were reassured, the indifferent were roused into
interest in public affairs, and fair elections became more frequent in
New York city. The one strong man who had worked this revolution
was John Kelly. The Irish and German population looked upon him as
their deliverer, and from that day forth the Know-Nothing power on
the East side of the city dwindled into insignificance, and no further
attempts to stifle the voice of the majority took place. Kelly became
identified in the minds of the adopted citizens of all nationalities, but
especially of the Irish, who were chiefly aimed at, as their champion.
Henceforth it was not possible for this strong man, this born leader
of his fellows, to follow the bent of his inclinations and remain in a
private station. He was elected to the Board of Aldermen, and next
to the Congress of the United States. The Know-Nothings, by their
excesses in New York, had raised up an adversary to their oath-
bound secret organization who was destined to accomplish as much
in the Empire State for equal rights to all citizens, native and foreign-
born, as Alexander H. Stephens, in a similar contest, wrought out in
Georgia, and Henry A. Wise, by his great anti-Know-Nothing
campaign accomplished in Virginia.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] Utica Observer, Sept. 16, 1879.
[2] Utica Observer, Sept. 16, 1879.
[3] New York World, Oct. 18, 1875.
[4] New York Herald October 26, 1877.
[5] Clarke’s Lives of the Deceased Bishops, vol. ii., pp. 111-112.
 CHAPTER III.
THE GREAT COMMONER OF GEORGIA—SPEECH OF A. H. STEPHENS
—HENRY A. WISE OF ACCOMAC—HENRY WINTER DAVIS—HIS
CHARACTER—JOHN KELLY MEETS HIM IN DEBATE—KELLY’S
STANDING IN CONGRESS—HIS CHARACTER DESCRIBED BY
LEWIS CASS, BY A. H. STEPHENS, AND JAMES GORDON
BENNETT—THE ERA OF KNOW-NOTHINGISM—KELLY’S PART IN
ITS OVERTHROW.
The future historian of the United States, when he comes to treat
of that extraordinary movement in American politics called Know-
Nothingism, will not do justice to the subject unless he assigns the
post of honor in the work of its overthrow as a national organization
to Stephens of Georgia, Wise of Virginia, and Kelly of New York. A
glance at the great work accomplished by these three men is all that
can be attempted in this memoir.
“True Americanism,” said Alexander H. Stephens in his memorable
Anti-Know-Nothing contest in Georgia in 1855, “as I have learned it,
is like true Christianity—disciples in neither are confined to any
nation, clime or soil whatever. Americanism is not the product of the
soil; it springs not from the land or the ground; it is not of the earth,
or earthy; it emanates from the head and the heart; it looks upward,
and onward and outward; its life and soul are those grand ideas of
government which characterize our institutions, and distinguish us
from all other people; and there are no two features in our system
which so signally distinguish us from all other nations as free
toleration of religion and the doctrine of expatriation—the right of a
man to throw off his allegiance to any and every other State, prince
or potentate whatsoever, and by naturalization to be incorporated as
a citizen into our body politic. Both these principles are specially
provided for and firmly established in our Constitution. But these
American ideas which were proclaimed in 1789 by our ‘sires of ’76’
are by their ‘sons’ at this day derided and scoffed at. We are now
told that ‘naturalization’ is a ‘humbug,’ and that it is an impossibility.
So did not our fathers think. This ‘humbug’ and ‘impossibility’ they
planted in the Constitution; and a vindication of the same principle
was one of the causes of our second war of independence. Let no
man, then, barely because he was born in America, presume to be
imbued with real and true ‘Americanism,’ who either ignores the
direct and positive obligations of the Constitution, or ignores this,
one of its most striking characteristics. An Irishman, a Frenchman, a
German, or Russian, can be as thoroughly American as if he had
been born within the walls of the old Independence Hall itself. Which
was the ‘true American,’ Arnold or Hamilton? The one was a native,
the other an adopted son.”[6]
Mr. Stephens had declined to be a candidate for Congress in 1855,
and the Know-Nothings taunted him with cowardice, because, they
said, if he should run he knew he was doomed to defeat. His letter
on Know-Nothingism to Judge Thomas, from which the preceding
extract is quoted, was denounced furiously by the Know-Nothings,
who loudly predicted that the letter would prove to be his political
winding-sheet. These taunts were published throughout the country,
and induced Mr. Stephens to change his mind, and re-enter the field
as a candidate for the Thirty-fourth Congress. In a speech at
Augusta, Georgia, in which he announced this purpose, he said: “I
have heard that it has been said that I declined being a candidate,
because a majority of the district were Know-Nothings, and I was
afraid of being beaten. Now, to all men who entertain any such
opinion of me, I wish to say that I was influenced by no such
motive. I am afraid of nothing on earth, or above the earth, or under
the earth, except to do wrong—the path of duty I shall ever
endeavor to travel, ‘fearing no evil,’ and dreading no consequences.
Let time-servers, and those whose whole object is to see and find
out which way the popular current for the day and hour runs, that
they may float upon it, fear or dread defeat if they please. I would
rather be defeated in a good cause than to triumph in a bad one. I
would not give a fig for a man who would shrink from the discharge
of duty for fear of defeat. All is not gold that glitters, and there is no
telling the pure from the base until it is submitted to the fiery ordeal
of the crucible and the furnace. The best test of a man’s integrity
and the soundness of his principles is the furnace of popular opinion,
and the hotter the furnace the better the test. I have traveled from a
distant part of the State, where I first heard these floating taunts of
fear—as coming from this district—for the sole and express purpose
of announcing to you, one and all, and in this most public way to
announce to the other counties, without distinction of party, that I
am again a candidate for Congress in this district. The
announcement I now make. My name is hereby presented to the
district; not by any convention under a majority or a two-third rule—
but by myself.
“I know, fellow-citizens, that many of you differ with me upon
those exciting questions which are now dividing—and most
unhappily, too, as I conceive—dividing our people. It is easy to join
the shouts of the multitude, but it is hard to say to a multitude that
they are wrong. I would be willing to go into one of your Know-
Nothing lodges or councils, where every man would be against me,
if I could be admitted without first having to put myself under
obligations never to tell what occurred therein, and there speak the
same sentiments that I shall utter here this night. Bear with me,
then, while I proceed.[7] It is to exhibit and hold up even to
yourselves the great evils and dangers to be apprehended from this
‘new,’ and, I think, most vicious political ‘monster,’ that I would
address you; and against the influences of which I would warn and
guard you, as well as the rest of our people. While the specious
outside title of the party is that ‘Americans shall rule America,’ when
we come to look at its secret objects as they leak out, we find that
one of its main purposes is, not that ‘Americans shall rule America,’
but that those of a particular religious faith, though as good
Americans as any others, shall be ruled by the rest.
“But it is said the ‘proscription’ is not against a religious but a
political enemy, and the Roman Church is a political party, dangerous
and powerful. Was a bolder assertion, without one fact to rest upon,
ever attempted to be palmed off upon a confiding people? The
Roman Church a political party! Where are its candidates? How
many do they number in our State Legislatures or in Congress? What
dangers are they threatening, or what have they ever plotted? Let
them be named. Was it when Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, established
the colony of Maryland, and for the first time on this continent
established the principle of free toleration in religious worship? Was
it when Charles Carroll, a Catholic, signed the Declaration of
Independence? But it is said that great danger is to be apprehended
from the Catholics because of a ‘secret order’ amongst them, known
as Jesuits. ‘No one,’ says a Know-Nothing writer, ‘knows, or possibly
can know, the extent of their influence in this country. One of them
may eat at your table, instruct your children, and profess to be a
good Protestant, and you never suspect him. Their great aim is to
make their mark in America. Perjury to them is no sin, if the object
of it be to spread Catholicism or acquire political influence in the
country.’ Whether this be true of the Jesuits or not I cannot say. But
I submit it to the consideration of candid minds how far it is true of
the new order of Know-Nothings, which is now so strenuously
endeavoring to make its mark in America, and to gain political
influence in the country, not only by putting down all foreigners, and
all native-born citizens who may be of Catholic faith, but also all
other native-born citizens who will not take upon their necks the
yoke of their power. Do not hundreds and thousands of them go
about daily and hourly, denying that they belong to the order, or that
they know anything about it? May they not, and do they not ‘eat at
your table,’ attend your sick, and some of them preach from your
pulpits, and yet deny that they know anything about that ‘order’
which they are making such efforts to spread in the land? I do not
say all of them do this; but is it not common with the ‘order,’ thus by
some sort of equivocation and slippery construction, to mislead and
deceive those with whom they converse? There is nothing worse
that can be said of any man or any people indicating a destruction of
morals or personal degradation, than that ‘the truth is not in him.’ It
is the life and soul of all the virtues, human or divine. Tell me not
that any party will effect reformation of any sort, bad as we now are
in this land, which brings into disrepute this principle upon which
rests all our hopes on earth, and all our hopes for immortality. And
my opinion is that the Protestant ministers of the Gospel in this
country, instead of joining in this New England, puritanical,
proscriptive crusade against Catholics, could not render a better
service to their churches, as well as the State, in the present
condition of morals amongst us, than to appoint a day for everyone
of them to preach to their respective congregations from this text,
‘What is truth?’ Let it also be a day set aside for fasting, humiliation
and prayer—for repentance in sackcloth and ashes—on account of
the alarming prevalence of the enormous sin of lying! Was there
ever such a state of general distrust between man and man before?
Could it ever have been said of a Georgia gentleman, until within a
few months past, that he says so and so, but I don’t know whether
to believe him or not? Is it not bringing Protestantism, and
Christianity itself, into disgrace when such remarks are daily made,
and not without just cause, about Church communicants of all our
Protestant denominations—and by one church member even about
his fellow-member? Where is this state of things to lead to, or end,
but in general deception, hypocrisy, knavery, and universal
treachery?
“Was ever such tyranny heard of in any old party in this country as
that which this new ‘order’ sets up? Every one of them knows, and
whether they deny it or not, there is a secret monitor within that
tells them that they have pledged themselves never to vote for any
Roman Catholic to any office of profit or trust. They have thus
pledged themselves to set up a religious test in qualifications for
office against the express words of the Constitution of the United
States. Their very organization is not only anti-American, anti-
republican, but at war with the fundamental law of the Union, and,
therefore, revolutionary in its character, thus silently and secretly to
effect for all practical purposes a change in our form of government.
And what is this but revolution? Not an open and manly rebellion,
but a secret and covert attempt to undermine the very corner-stone
of the temple of our liberties.
 “Whenever any government denies to any class of its citizens an
equal participation in the privileges, immunities, and honors enjoyed
by all others, it parts with all just claim to their allegiance. Allegiance
is due only so long as protection is extended; and protection
necessarily implies an equality of right to stand or fall, according to
merit, amongst all the members of society, or the citizens of the
commonwealth. The best of men, after all, have enough of the old
leaven of human nature left about them to fight when they feel
aggrieved, outraged and trampled upon; and strange to say, where
men get to fighting about religion they fight harder, and longer and
more exterminatingly than upon any other subject. The history of
the world teaches this. Already we see the spirit abroad which is to
enkindle the fires and set the fagots a blazing—not by the Catholics,
they are comparatively few and weak; their only safety is in the
shield of the constitutional guarantee; minorities seldom assail
majorities; and persecutions always begin with the larger numbers
against the smaller. But this spirit is evinced by one of the numerous
replies to my letter. The writer says: ‘We call upon the children of the
Puritans of the North, and the Huguenots of the South, by the
remembrance of the fires of Smithfield, and the bloody St.
Bartholomew, to lay down for once all sectional difficulties,’ etc., and
to join in this great American movement of proscribing Catholics.
What is this but the tocsin of intestine strife? Why call up the
remembrance of the fires of Smithfield but to whet the Protestant
appetite for vengeance? Why stir up the quiet ashes of bloody St.
Bartholomew, but for the hope, perhaps, of finding therein a
slumbering spark from which new fires may be started? Why
exhume the atrocities, cruelties, and barbarities of ages gone by
from the repose in which they have been buried for hundreds of
years, unless it be to reproduce the seed, and spread amongst us
the same moral infection and loathsome contagion?—just as it is
said the plague is sometimes occasioned in London by disentombing
and exposing to the atmosphere the latent virus of the fell disease
still lingering in the dusty bones of those who died of it centuries
ago. Fellow citizens, Fellow Protestants, Fellow Americans—all who
reverence the constitution of your country—I entreat you, and I
envoke you to give no listening ear to such fanatical appeals.
“When the principles of the Constitution are disregarded, when
those ‘checks and restraints,’ put in it as Mr. Madison has told us, for
‘a defence to the people against their own temporary errors and
delusions,’ are broken down and swept away, when the whole
country shall have been brought under the influence of the third
degree of this Know-Nothing order, if that time shall ever come,
then, indeed may the days of this Republic, too, be considered as
numbered.
“I wish to say something to you about this third degree, the union
degree, as it is called. For under this specious title, name or guise,
the arch-tempter again approaches us, quite as subtly as under the
other of ‘Americans shall rule America.’ The obligation taken in this
degree is ‘to uphold, maintain and defend’ the Union, without one
word being said about the Constitution. Now, as much as we all, I
trust, are devoted to the Union, who would have it without the
Constitution? This is the life and soul of it—this is its animating spirit.
It is this that gives it vitality, health, vigor, strength, growth,
development and power. Without it the Union could never have been
formed, and without it it cannot be maintained or held together.
Where the animating principle of any living organism is extinguished,
this is death, and dissolution is inevitable. You might just as well
expect that the component parts of your bodies could be held
together by some senseless incantations after the vital spark has
departed, as that this Union can be held together by any Know-
Nothing oaths when the Constitution is gone. Congress is to be done
away with, except in so far as its members may be necessary, as the
dumb instruments for registering the edicts of an invisible but all-
powerful oligarchy. Our present Government is to be paralyzed by
this boa-constrictor, which is now entwining its coils around it. It is
to be supplanted and displaced by another self-constituted and
secretly organized body to rise up in its stead, a political ‘monster,’
more terrible to contemplate than the seven-headed beast spoken of
in the Apocalypse.
 “I have seen it stated in the newspapers by some unknown writer,
that my letter to Col. Thomas will be my political winding-sheet. If
you and the other voters of the Eighth Congressional District so will
it, so let it be; there is but one other I should prefer—and that is the
Constitution of my country; let me be first wrapped in this, and then
covered over with that letter, and the principles I have announced
this night; and thus shrouded I shall be content to be laid away,
when the time comes, in my last resting-place without asking any
other epitaph but the simple inscription carved upon the headstone
that marks the spot—‘Here sleep the remains of one who dared to
tell the people they were wrong when he believed so, and who
never intentionally deceived a friend, or betrayed even an
enemy.’”[8]
Thus spoke Alexander H. Stephens, Georgia’s greatest statesman,
of the pernicious tendencies of the Know-Nothing party. On that
speech he ran for Congress and was elected by three thousand
majority. Know-Nothingism was thus slain in Georgia. Since the
death of Mr. Stephens some scribbler with a talent for forgery has
taken the quotation marks from the paragraph about the Jesuits in
the foregoing speech, affixed Mr. Stephens’s name to it, and sent it
on its rounds through the press as the declared opinion of the dead
statesman concerning the followers of Loyola. Mr. Stephens quoted
the paragraph from a Know-Nothing writer, not to approve the attack
on the Jesuits, but for the opposite purpose of showing it applied to
the Know-Nothings themselves. No man in this country could use the
weapon of retort with more effect than Alexander H. Stephens, and
his remarks on the paragraph in question afford a favorable instance
of his power in that line. That this stupid calumny on the great man
who battled so nobly for the equal rights of Catholics and
Protestants, Jews and Gentiles, foreign born and native Americans,
should have been palmed off on the public, is less surprising than
that it should have found its way into certain Catholic newspapers, in
the columns of at least one of which the present writer read it
shortly after the death of Mr. Stephens.
 The ever memorable conflict in Virginia of 1855, between the
Know-Nothings and Democrats, was led on the part of the latter by
the gallant Henry A. Wise. That conflict was one of great national
magnitude. If the Know-Nothings, theretofore victorious, had then
succeeded, it is likely a civil war precipitated by religious fanaticism
would have followed, not to be conducted between the States, as
later unfortunately occurred, but between citizens of the same cities,
and towns and neighborhoods throughout the Union, with a fury to
make humanity shudder—in every sense of the word a civil war. The
Virginia election of that year was, therefore, watched with intense
interest by the whole American people, and a feeling of feverish
excitement was everywhere visible. Henry A. Wise, the
uncompromising enemy of the Know-Nothings, was named as the
Democratic candidate for Governor of Virginia. Never was such a
canvass before. He went everywhere, pouring out fiery eloquence in
the Western Mountains, in the Blue Ridge that milks the clouds,
upon the Potomac, lovely River of Swans, on the Rappahannock, the
Piankatank, Mob Jack Bay, James River, Elizabeth River, down to the
North Carolina line; and wherever he went this second Patrick Henry
stirred the people’s hearts as they had not been stirred before. One
of the best stump speeches ever heard in this country was made by
Mr. Wise at Alexandria. He had declared hostility to the Know-
Nothings in a letter to a citizen of Virginia, written September 18,
1854.
In that letter he said: “I am a native Virginian; my ancestors on
both sides for two hundred years were citizens of this country and
this State—half English, half Scotch. I am a Protestant by birth, by
baptism, by intellectual belief, and by education and by adoption. I
am an American, in every fibre and in every feeling an American; yet
in every character, in every relation, in every sense, with all my head
and all my heart, and all my might, I protest against this secret
organization of native Americans and of Protestants to proscribe
Roman Catholic and naturalized citizens. As early as 1787 we
established a great land ordinance, the most perfect system of
eminent domain, of proprietary titles, and of territorial settlements,
which the world had ever beheld to bless the homeless children of
men. It had the very house-warming of hospitality in it. It wielded
the logwood axe, and cleared a continent of forests. It made an
exodus in the old world, and dotted the new with log-cabins, around
the hearths of which the tears of the aged and the oppressed were
wiped away, and cherub children were born to liberty, and sang its
songs, and have grown up in its strength and might and majesty. It
brought together foreigners of every country and clime—immigrants
from Europe of every language and religion, and its most wonderful
effect has been to assimilate all races. Irish and German, English
and French, Scotch and Spaniard, have met on the Western prairies,
in the Western woods, and have peopled villages and towns and
cities—queen cities, rivalling the marts of Eastern commerce; and
the Teutonic and Celtic and Anglo-Saxon races have in a day mingled
into one undistinguishable mass—and that one is American. The
children of all are crossed in blood in the first generation, so that
ethnology can’t tell of what parentage they are—they all become
brother and sister Jonathans. As in the colonies, as in the revolution,
as in the last war, so have foreigners and immigrants of every
religion and tongue contributed to build up the temple of American
law and liberty until its spire reaches to heaven, whilst its shadow
rests on earth. If there has been a turnpike road to be beaten out of
the rocky metal, or a canal to be dug, foreigners and immigrants
have been armed with the mattock and the spade and if a battle on
sea and land had to be fought, foreigners and immigrants have been
armed with the musket and the blade.
“We can name the very hour of our birth as a people. We need
recur to no fable of a wolf to whelp us into existence. As a nation we
are but seventy-eight years of age. Many persons are now living who
were alive before this nation was born. And the ancestors of this
people about two centuries only ago were foreigners, every one of
them coming to the shores of this country to take it away from the
aborigines, and to take possession of it by authority either directly or
derivatively of Papal Power. His Holiness the Pope was the great
grantor of all the new countries of North America. Foreigners in the
name of the Pope and Mother Church took possession of North
America, to have and to hold the same to their heirs against the
heathen forever. And now already their descendants are for
excluding foreigners, and the Pope’s followers from an equal
enjoyment of this same possession. So strange is human history.
Christopher Columbus! Ferdinand and Isabella! What would they
have thought of this had they foreseen it when they touched a
continent and called it theirs in the name of the Holy Trinity, by
authority of the keeper of the keys of Heaven, and of the great
grantor of the empire and domain of earth? What would have
become of our national titles to northeastern and northwestern
boundaries, but for the plea of this authority, valid of old among all
Christian powers?”
Writing thus in September, 1854, Mr. Wise, although he had been
a Whig years before, was nominated for Governor by the Democrats
in December of the same year. In his famous Alexandria speech,
before discussing Know-Nothingism, he told the people some
practical truths explanatory of the decadence of the prosperity of
Virginia, of the causes producing it, and the remedies to be applied.
“You have,” he said, “the bowels of your Western mountains rich in
iron, in copper, in coal, in salt, in gypsum, and the very earth is so
rich in oil that it sets the rivers in flame. You have the line of the
Alleghany, that beautiful Blue Ridge which stands placed there by
the Almighty, not to obstruct the way of the people to market, but
placed there in the very bounty of Providence to milk the clouds, to
make the sweet springs which are the sources of your rivers. And at
the head of every stream is the waterfall murmuring the very music
of your power to put spindles in motion. And yet commerce has long
ago spread her sails and sailed away from you; you have not as yet
dug more than coal enough to warm yourselves at your own
hearths; you have set no tilt-hammer of Vulcan to strike blows
worthy of gods in the iron foundries. You have not yet spun more
than coarse cotton enough, in the way of manufacture, to clothe
your own slaves. You have had no commerce, no mining, no
manufactures. You have relied alone on the single power of
agriculture; and such agriculture! Your sedge patches outshine the
sun. Your inattention to your only source of wealth has scarred the
very bosom of mother earth. Instead of having to feed cattle on a
thousand hills, you have had to chase the stump-tailed steer through
the sedge patches to procure a tough beef-steak. You are in the
habit of discussing Federal politics; and permit me to say to you,
very honestly and very openly, that next to brandy, next to card
playing, next to horse-racing, the thing that has done more harm to
Virginia than any other in the course of her past history, has been
her insatiable appetite for Federal politics. She has given all her
great men to the Union. Her Washington, her Jefferson, her
Madison, her Marshall, her galaxy of great men she has given to the
Union. Richmond, instead of attending to Richmond’s business, has
been too much in the habit of attending to the affairs of Washington
city, when there are plenty there, God knows, to attend to them
themselves. * * “Puritanism,” said Mr. Wise, has disappeared, and
we have in place of it Unitarianism, Universalism, Fourierism,
Millerism, Mormonism—all the odds and ends of isms—until at last
you have a grand fusion of all those odds and ends of isms in the
omnium gatherum of isms called Know-Nothingism. Having swept
the North, the question was: How can this ism be wedged in in the
South? And the devil was at the elbow of these preachers of
‘Christian politics’ to tell them precisely how.” [At this point Mr. Wise
was interrupted by cat-calls, derisive cheers and other
manifestations of the Know-Nothing element of the meeting.] “There
were three elements in the South,” continued the speaker, “and in
Virginia particularly, to which they might apply themselves. There is
the religious element, the 103,000 Presbyterians, the 300,000
Baptists, the 300,000 Methodists of Virginia. Well, how were they to
reach them? Why, just by raising a hell of a fuss about the Pope!
“Cæsar’s kingdom is political, is a carnal kingdom. And I tell you
that if I stood alone in the State of Virginia, and if priestcraft—if the
priests of my own Mother Church dared to lay their hands on the
political power of our people, or to use their churches to wield
political influence, I would stand, in feeble imitation it may be, but I
would stand, even if I stood alone, as Patrick Henry stood in the
Revolution, between the parsons and the people. These men, many
of whom are neither Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists,
Methodists, Congregationalists, Lutherans, nor what not—who are
men of no religion, who have no church, who do not say their
prayers, who do not read their Bible, who live God-defying lives
every day of their existence, are now seen with faces as long as
their dark-lanterns, with the whites of their eyes turned up in holy
fear lest the Bible should be shut up by the Pope! You tell the people
that Catholics never gave aid to civil liberty; that they never yet
struck a blow for the freedom of mankind. Who gave you alliance
against the crown of England? Who but that Catholic king, Louis XVI.
He sent you from the Court of Versailles Lafayette, the boy of
Washington’s camp, a foreigner who never was naturalized, but who
bled at the redoubt of Yorktown, when Arnold, a native, like Absalom
proved traitor.
“And, Sir, before George Washington was born, before Lafayette
wielded the sword, or Charles Carroll the pen for his country, six
hundred and forty years ago, on the 16th of June, 1214, there was
another scene enacted on the face of the globe, when the general
charter of all charters of freedom was gained, when one man, a man
called Stephen Langton, swore the Barons of England for the people
against the power of the King—swore the Barons on the high altar of
the Catholic Church at St. Edmundsbury, that they would have
Magna Charta or die for it. The charter which secures to every one
of you to-day trial by jury, freedom of the press, freedom of the pen,
the confronting of witnesses with the accused, and the opening of
secret dungeons—that charter was obtained by Stephen Langton
against the King of England, and if you Know-Nothings don’t know
who Stephen Langton was, you know nothing sure enough. He was
a Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. I come here not to praise the
Catholics, but I come here to acknowledge historical truths, and to
ask of Protestants—what has heretofore been the pride and boast of
Protestants—tolerance of opinion in religious faith.