Thomas John Barnardo

Thomas John Barnardo (4 July 184519 September 1905) was an Irish-born philanthropist and founder and director of homes for poor and deprived children. From the foundation of the first Barnardo's home in 1867 to the date of Barnardo's death, nearly 60,000 children had been taken in. Although Barnardo never finished his studies at the London Hospital, he used the title of 'doctor' and later secured a licentiate. Early life Barnardo was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1845. He was the fourth of five children (one died in childbirth) of John Michaelis Barnardo, a furrier who was of Sephardic Jewish descent, and his second wife, Abigail, an Englishwoman and member of the Plymouth Brethren. In the early 1840s, John emigrated from Prussia via Hamburg to Dublin, where he established a business; he married twice and fathered seven children. The Barnardo family "traced its origin to Venice, followed by conversion to the Lutheran Church in the sixteenth century". Barnardo wrote that, as a child, he was selfish and thought that everything that was not his should belong to him. However, as he grew older, he abandoned this mindset in favour of helping the poor.