Founding of the Children's Aid Society
The Children's Aid Society was founded in 1853 by Charles Loring Brace. He took notice to the gruesome conditions that many of the orphans and abandoned children had to face daily. These conditions included: poverty, disease, hunger and a lack of shelter.
The Children's Aid Society introduced the orphan trains: the process of “placing children out”. Even though the trains were not the best answer to New York's problems, they were at least an attempt to change the way children were dealt with. The Society is credited with the creation of the modern foster care system in the United States.
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My mother bore five children and she accepted responsibility for none. She just simply brought we children-- us children into the world and then let the rest of the world take care of us. We were hungry. I don't ever recall taking a bath in a tub of water. We slept on old, dirty mattresses on the floor and the rats ran over our heads and through our hair lots of nights and we'd wake up screaming with it. We don't know where our parents were. We never did know. |