He was an educationalist and the founder of St George's Homes, an orphanage-cum-school for abandoned and deprived children of Eurasians or Anglo-Indians in Kodaikanal, later renamed as The Laidlaw Memorial School, Ketti in the Nilgiris.
In 1899, he worked as probationer with the Foreign Missions, active with recording and officiating at Births, Deaths and Marriages at Wesleyan Methodist Church in Perambur.
After he returned from England to Madras, Breeden devoted most of his time to the cause of education of orphans of European, Eurasians, or Anglo-Indians origin, between 1911 and 1915 as his ministry was the English circuit in Madras, which meant that his flock were the families of British Raj soldiers, civil servants, and Eurasian population; during this time, he founded St. George's Homes an Orphanage, initially at Kodaikanal and later moved to Ketti in Nilgiris—St.
George's Homes was subsequently named as Laidlaw Memorial School[1][3][4] He returned to England in 1921 due to ill-health after missionary service of twenty-three years.
During World War II, he continued to work from St. Stephens House in Westminster which was used to provide relief for those displaced by the bombing of London.
Anglo-Indians were not accepted in better schools, and indigenous Indians were entirely prohibited — British parents often objected to their children rubbing shoulders with mixed-race students; accordingly, he made their education and accommodation as the central-point of his missionary work in Madras.
In 1910, J. Breeden first thought of establishing a home for orphans and destitute children of the Anglo-Indian community, also known as Eurasians — unwanted children of illicit and mixed relationships born out of wedlock — these offspring were of unofficial unions of Europeans (mostly English, Americans and Europeans) on the payroll of the British East India Company like soldiers and civil servants with Asians or local Indians — these children, usually had no identification with their country of birth — A study conducted in 1879 found that except pure European descent, most of the Anglo-Indians in Bengal, especially Anglo-Indians living in the slums of Calcutta and Madras received no formal education.
[1][3][5] In October 1910, he addressed the Madras Missionary Conference where he made his first appeal for the establishment of St. George's Homes evincing the plight of poor and deprived children.
[1][6] In May 1911, as part of fundraising efforts through donations for "European and Eurasian Education Fund" with Breeden as its Organising secretary, they published their appeals in major journals like The Times (in London).
Rev Breeden then adds clarification in his appeal writing that........missionary societies cannot, without a breach of trust, use money for Europeans when it has been donated for evangelization of non-Christian peoples.
In 1922, St. George's Homes was moved from Kodaikanal to Ketti of Nilgiris district in Tamil Nadu, after John Breeden left to England in 1921 due to ill-health that forced him to retire.
He also said, as reported in Madras Mail on 8 June 1915:...we have had experience with such 'beggars' in the past, and we have come to recognise that their secret of success has in all cases been the same — an unbound faith in the cause they espouse.
[1]He compared the work of John Breeden on behalf of St. George's Homes and the "European Education Fund" as qualifying him to be recognized as "the best beggar in the Madras Presidency."