One man’s vision of a safe harbour for children has lasted 140 years

It’s as far from the sea as you can get, but for years the mast and rigging from a sailing ship was on prominent display at a home for orphans.

Now, as Quarriers celebrates its 140th anniversary RACHEL LOXTON looks at the history of the charity which has given hope to hundreds of thousands of children…

It started out as a few humble cottages in Bridge of Weir but, in almost a century and a half,Quarriers has grown to help people across the whole of Scotland.

And as the charity celebrates its 140th anniversay, William Quarrier, who founded the social care organisation as the ‘Orphan Homes of Scotland,’ has been hailed one of the country’s greatest visionaries.

In the early days each cottage housed children who lived together under the care of house- parents.

By the 1890s there were 34 cottages, a school, a church, farms and a fire station in Quarrier’s Village with more than 800 children living there.

At it’s height, the village accommodated 1500 children, helping more than 40,000 children in all. More than 7000 migrated to Canada or Australia.

But Quarriers didn’t just look after the children, it prepared them for life. A purpose-built ship, the James Arthur was installed in the village in 1887, to train boys for a career at sea, and stayed there until 1918.

Quarriers chief executive Paul Moore said: “The whole point in Quarriers has always been to provide services to the most vulnerable in society, that was William Quarrier’s aim.

“We continue to do this –- and hope we’ll be here for the next 140 years.”

Quarrier’s vision was to establish pioneering child care practices completely different to the impersonal nature of institutional care in Victorian Glasgow.

    The whole point in Quarriers has always been to provide services to the most vulnerable in society, that was William Quarrier’s aim

Quarriers chief executive Paul Moore

Born in Greenock in 1829 Quarrier had an impoverished childhood but became a successful shoe shop businessman.

The devout Christian was driven by a need to ‘rescue’ Glasgow’s poor and destitute children, opening refuges in the city before building the village with the help of his wife Isabella.

Quarriers after-care worker Josie Bell has spent the past five years dealing with genealogy requests from former boys and girls who lived in the village and their descendants.

She has access to all the Quarrier records, back to the leather-bound handwritten diaries of 1872.

She said: “William Quarrier was ahead of his time in a lot of ways. He was doing 150 years ago what no-one had done before.”

Children came to live in the Quarriers village, until it closed in 1986.

Josie said: “There’s no happy story from Quarriers, something sad or tragic had to have happened before the children came into us. In the early years a parent maybe died.

“Then, of course, as medicine got better you had fewer orphans but then they came in because of family breakdowns. And there was a lot of alcohol abuse, neglect and abuse.”

Parents had to sign children over to the Quarriers until they were 16 and the young people were expected to work on behalf of the organisation for two years when they turned 14.

The boys learned trades including painting or farm work while girls worked in the laundry, or as domestic helps.

Josie said Quarrier “knew there was nothing for these children outside the village, they had to be able to earn their keep when they went out.

“A lot of the boys joined the Forces and most found jobs before they left.”

But as well as the sadness, Josie also hears inspiring stories.

She said: “When you can reunite families after years it’s a great thing. I can put people in touch, 60, 70, or 80 years after they’ve been separated.”

The village has not escaped controversy, though and was the centre of long–running investigations into paedophile activity.

Some former employees were convicted of criminal offences. Josie said: “That’s hard to deal with because it shouldn’t have happened.

“I had an elderly gentleman visit me recently. He was grateful to talk about things that had happened because people don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen.”

Josie says she thinks Quarrier would have hated the name of Quarriers Village.

She said: “He didn’t think it was his work, he thought it was God’s work.

“But I think he would be proud of the way the service has developed. He would think it was just wonderful.”