Inheriting a mink coat is no easy legacy nowadays. Not only is fur so politically incorrect that there is a danger of receiving unflattering comments or even having missiles hurled in one's direction, but there is also the difficulty of finding places to wear it.
My sister, who inherited the coat, is now eager to attend any elegant outdoor event and can be seen roasting in marquees up and down the country. She was once mistaken for a grizzly bear when peering through the dahlias at an autumn garden party.
Our aunt, who was the original owner of the mink coat, made a great fuss every spring about putting it into cold storage in Barnardos, who have been furriers in Dublin for almost 200 years; their shop in Grafton Street is still run by the family. They are now the oldest manufacturing furriers in Europe.
John Barnardo came to Ireland from Germany in 1823 and started the business in Dame Street. He married Abigail O'Brien as his second wife and his ninth child, Thomas, was born in 1845 and educated at St Patrick's Cathedral Grammar School. He remembered the master as being "the most cruel and most mendacious I have ever seen".
Not considered academic, Thomas Barnardo was apprenticed to a wine merchant. But he abandoned this employment after he joined the Plymouth Brethren, a sect that had originated in Dublin during the Protestant religious revival that swept through Ireland in the 19th century. He volunteered for the Chinese inland missions and in preparation went to London to study medicine.
Throughout his studies he continued his evangelical work - not always successfully. Once, when he was preaching in the street, he had a pail of slops poured over him from an upstairs window and another time a lump of mud went straight into his open mouth, stopping him in full flow.
He was teaching in a ragged school, when one night a small boy pleaded to be let stay by the fire, as he had no home. Barnardo made the boy take him to the "lay" where he usually slept. There he found 11 boys clad in rags, huddled together for warmth, on top of a roof with a few wisps of straw but no shelter from the sharp and biting wind.
Shocked, Barnardo rented a house as a refuge for 33 boys. The number of children was limited until an 11-year-old boy who had been denied admission pending a vacancy was found dead in an empty barrel. Immediately, Barnardo made a rule that no destitute child would ever be refused admission, and from then on the homes expanded rapidly.
On his marriage a well-wisher gave him and his wife a house, part of which was used as a home for girls. It was here he built his first children's village where cottages accommodated 10 girls with a housemother.
By this time Barnardo had given up all idea of going to China and had also stopped attending medical school (he eventually took his degree in Edinburgh after being accused of calling himself "Doctor" under false pretences). He had an incredible capacity for hard work and was forever implementing new projects which, he said, came to him in dreams; but he would allow no one but himself to be in charge and it was only after a painful court case that he reluctantly accepted trustees and a committee for his homes.
Thomas Barnardo was a small man, 5ft 3 inches tall, with very poor sight; and as he grew older had to use an ear trumpet. He was always dapper and had his cuffs specially made to button on to his shirt, carrying a spare pair so he could change them if needs be. As a parent he expected his children to follow his strict evangelical discipline, though later his eldest daughter married Henry Wellcome, the American founder of Burroughs Wellcome. After their divorce, she married the writer W. Somerset Maugham; the liaison was brief. She then became a influential interior decorator, introducing the "all-white drawing-room" to fashionable London.
Financing Barnardo's homes was a perpetual anxiety, but he determined never to turn a child away. When he died the homes were found to have debts of £249,000 - in spite of his imaginative ideas for fund raising. Once he hired the Albert Hall to show the activities of the homes in a series of tableaux. Blacksmiths, printers, wheelwrights, tinsmiths, cooks, tailors and bakers all at work filled the stage and then a few minutes later the space was filled with babies, cots, tea-tables, rocking horses and even a miniature hayfield to show the environment for the youngest children. A game of cricket was demonstrated by disabled boys - Barnardo said to have kept them away would have been to admit they were inferior to other children.
His first donation had come from a servant girl who heard him describing the poor children in London and handed over her savings, a little parcel of 27 farthings. He sought money from both the rich and poor. He held the first street collection in London and had fundraising open days, founders' days and birthday parties in the homes. He solicited contributions through the two magazines he edited and he formed the Young Helpers' League, with 11,000 members, for the children of the well-to-do to extend practical help and support. During his lifetime, he received about £3 million in aid of his work.
Thomas Barnardo died at the age of 60 on September 19th, 1905, 100 years ago today. Sixty thousand children had passed through his homes - children whom society had ignored and allowed to subsist in utter misery and degradation on the streets until they were found by Dr Barnardo.