page_title: Limehouse Cut
section_title: The Outcasts' Haven
hierarchical_section_title: Limehouse Cut / Social and industrial history / The Burdett Road Bridge enclave / The Outcasts' Haven
caption_attribution_description: 'English: Engraving in Illustrated London News. The charity run by this couple was endorsed in glowing terms. It was afterwards exposed as a scam in Truth.
context_page_description: The Limehouse Cut is a largely straight, broad canal in the East End of London, England, which linked the lower reaches of the Lee Navigation to the River Thames. Opening on 17 September 1770, and widened for two-way traffic by 1777, it is the oldest canal in the London area. Although short, it has a diverse social and industrial history. It now connects to Limehouse Basin as a result of changes made in 1968.
  The Cut turns in a broad curve from Bow Locks, where the Lee Navigation meets Bow Creek; it then proceeds directly south-west for 1.5 miles through the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to Limehouse Basin.
context_section_description: In a disused warehouse at 1A Dod Street, opposite the Silver Tavern, was the Outcasts' Haven.  According to Charles Dickens Jr., the first rule of the establishment was this: 
  Any outcast boy or girl, up to the age of sixteen, without parents, guardians or friends, and who has no home but the streets, will be admitted at once, at any hour of the day or the night free, and be provided with a bath, warm clothes, food and a bed.
    Any policeman on the beat "who finds some poor outcast shrinking from the flash of his lantern", wrote Dickens, knew to send the child to Dod Street.
  But, according to an exposé in the investigative journal  Truth, it was part of a charity scam.  Run by a man called Walter Austin and his mistress Frances Napton ("the Lady Superintendent"),  the charity put on stunts (see illustration), sent out heart-rending appeals, collected large donations, but kept no proper accounts.  While it did spend some money on homeless children, its proprietor lived well.
caption: A charity stunt.  Walter Austin and Frances Napton lived well off charity appeals, keeping no proper accounts.
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