Shaftesbury Homes and Arethusa

[1] Its aim, written in its current mission statement, is to support young people in care and need to find their voice, to be healthy, to learn, develop and achieve and to gain an independent and positive place in society.

As a personal response to his horror, he opened a ragged school in the St Giles rookery, in a hayloft in Streatham Street.

[3] Ragged schools taught the boys Christian beliefs, reading, writing and arithmetic and attempted to teach them a trade.

[4] The Elementary Education Act 1870 reduced the need for ragged schools and to reflect this the society changed its name again; this time to The National Refuges for Homeless and Destitute Children and 'Chichester' Training Ship.

The society was involved with accompanied emigration until the 1920s[5] In January 1866, the Pall Mall Gazette revealed the dire conditions suffered by boys in the casual ward of the Lambeth Workhouse.

Lord Shaftesbury became patron to the society, and he launched an initiative to take boys off the streets and give them onboard maritime training.

They were soon resident on board the Chichester, a redundant naval frigate moored off Greenhithe which could house 250 boys at a time.

[6] In 1919 the society renamed itself as Shaftesbury Homes and Arethusa and the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII became president.

The move to Upnor on the River Medway occurred in 1933, when the Arethusa was broken up and replaced by the steel-hulled, four-masted barque Peking.

Renamed Arethusa II, it was refitted in Chatham Dockyard and then moored across the River Medway, in Lower Upnor.

[7] Shore-side accommodation and a swimming pool was built, and this continues today (2017) as the Arethusa Venture Centre.

[8] The larger homes were disposed of and the society moved to providing support for adolescents leaving care.