The Boy in the Dustbin
A lost boy is found in a bin; PLUS 2025 round-up and mixtapes
A couple of weeks before Christmas in 1885, a domestic servant made an alarming discovery in a household dustbin. Upon opening the lid of the bin, in a front garden in Richmond, south west London, the servant “observed a human hand projecting from under the dust”. The servant called for the police, and a constable arrived to examine the bin. Inside, the constable found a boy of around eleven years old, alive but “in an insensible condition”.
The boy, who was covered from head to toe in dust, was removed from the bin and revived with warm milk before being taken to Richmond Police Station. Once there and having fully regained his senses, the boy said he had been placed in the bin three days earlier by his mother, “a tramp”, who stated that she would return for him shortly. The boy had fallen asleep, and the mother had not returned. The household servant had not previously noticed him when opening the bin to throw dust into it. The boy, who was “without shirt, waistcoat, and stockings”, gave his name as John Moore. According to newspaper reports, the boy was taken to the Richmond Workhouse.
A few days later, at a meeting of the Board of Guardians, the local body that ran the workhouses and administered the Poor Law, a member of the board, Mr Blake, raised the boy’s case. At first glance, Blake said, it would not appear that this boy should be of much concern to the board. However, he said, the board might remember that some time ago a boy of about nine had been caught stealing fruit from a garden in Acton and had ended up at the Brentford Union Workhouse.
The boy was memorable, Blake explained, because he could read and write, and could sing Te Deum (a Latin hymn) very well. The boy claimed he had learnt this while “travelling in vans” as part of an itinerant Gypsy or Romany community living in horse-drawn caravans. But he could not recall the names of any of the vans.
According to Blake, the boy had resided at the Brentford Workhouse until the previous Saturday evening, when he and another boy escaped. The other boy was spotted in Richmond that same night and “collared” by one of the workhouse’s assistant masters, Mr Murphy. A few days later, after reading in the newspapers about the boy found in the dustbin, Murphy went to the Richmond Workhouse and, although the bin boy “had the impudence to pretend not to know him”, identified him as the other Brentford escapee. Instead of trying to revive his nerves with warm milk, Murphy suggested, “the best nerver would have been a thick stick.”
The story of being left in the bin by his mother was “a fabrication”. According to Murphy, the boy had dispensed with his workhouse clothes to avoid detection. And his real name was not John Moore but William Clark. There was no room for him to be returned to the Brentford Workhouse, so “Richmond would now have the trouble of him.”
A browse through earlier newspaper archives does reveal the earlier incident from 1883, when then-nine-year-old William Clark was apprehended with other boys for stealing fruit valued at 1s 6d (about £10 today) from the garden of Thomas Jeffreys in Acton. Clark, whose given address was 14 Chertsey Road, Chiswick, was sent to the Feltham Reformatory. This was an industrial training school for young offenders. He was subsequently moved the the Brentford Workhouse, which was an institute for the poor and destitute.
It’s difficult to say what happened to William Clark after 1885. There are various criminal reports from subsequent years involving a young man with the same name, but it’s impossible to say if it was the same individual. However, census records do provide a possible match regarding his earlier life.
According to the census of 1881, there was a boy named William Clark living as a resident of the Brentford Union Workhouse. This is two years before the dustbin William Clark was apprehended for stealing fruit. His date of birth is given as “around 1872”, which would mean he was a couple of years older than claimed in subsequent reports.
There is another William Clark on the 1881 census, also born in 1872, living in Chiswick — where the fruit-stealing boy was reported to live — with his cabinet maker father, mother, and six siblings. Records suggest this William Clark married Ada White in 1890 and had seven children. Which is potentially something of a happy ending. It is Christmas, after all.◆
2025 Round-up
What’s been going on in the wide world of what Paul’s been writing over the last 12 months? On the face of it, not a lot. I have written a lot this year, but most of it hasn’t been published yet. Expect a couple of new feature articles and some book news early next year.
Here on Singular Discoveries, I wrote about the strange village of Winlaton with its secret tunnels, self-help weirdo, feral wild man, witches’ circle, vampire’s grave, and red cross murders, all leading up to my article about Winlaton’s claim to be the Birthplace of the Working Class, which was published by Tribune magazine.
My Singular Discoveries article on Oliver Cromwell and the vampire’s grave was re-published in the Summer 2005 issue of Northern Earth magazine.
Also here on SG, I wrote about heatwaves blamed on Jupiter, a weasel attack, and an epidemic of steamroller flattenings. I also mused on UFOs, big tech, AI, Brian Wilson, Pavement, Sam Fender, Chernobyl, Ruhleben, and 20 years of The Rocketbelt Caper.
Books-wise, there weren’t a huge number of recommendations from me this year. I enjoyed reading Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase For Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson, Hellhound on His Trail by Hampton Sides, All That Glitters by Orlando Whitfield, and The Martians by David Baron. I reviewed Postcards from Santiago: The George Robledo Story by Spencer Vignes for When Saturday Comes magazine. You can find all of these books and more on the Singular Discoveries bookshelf.*
I did read, or at least started to read, more books this year in an effort to read at least one a month, but, truth be told, a lot of them weren’t very good. Life’s too short to stick with bad books, so they were abandoned after a few chapters, and their titles will never be revealed.
I don’t have any new wares to sell this Christmas, but I do have a handful of copies of The Tyne Bridge, my book about the iconic landmark and the people who built and used it, which was published last year in a handsome paperback edition with French flap covers and colour photo sections.
If you’re quick, you can get a signed copy available for the reduced price of £10 with free UK delivery. Which should make an ideal gift. You can add a personalised dedication message at the checkout. Last orders for Christmas by next Wednesday, 17 December 2025, please. (For non-UK deliveries, please drop me a message.) You can pay securely using Apple Pay, Google Pay, or credit card using this link. You can see more and get the book from other retailers here: The Tyne Bridge.
Offer link: Get my book The Tyne Bridge for £10 with free UK delivery
Finally, I recently found a box of mixtapes, including this one from 1992 (only 33 years ago). This was the first of my annual “best of the year” mixes, stuck on TDKs to be distributed to friends or mainly kept for my own amusement. (The “C92” title is a reference to the influential “C86” tape produced by NME magazine.) The crazy thing is, I’ve kept doing it every year since, although I’ve long since shifted from cassette tapes to evil big tech Spotify. I’ve also recreated my cassette versions on Spotify - the C92 playlist is here. I think it holds up pretty well! (And yes, I realise that is not how you spell “weirdo”.)
Anyway, here’s this year’s mixtape, Paul’s Best of 2025 Spotify Playlist. All new stuff from this year, one track per artist, 40+ tracks in total. The Spotify Playlist Analyzer gives it a solid 4.7 out of 5 stars, but you should probably avoid it if you don’t like indie/alternative pop/rock. I really liked the albums by Geese, Big Thief, Stereolab, and Divorce this year, and this one starts with tracks from all of those, and ends, to my great surprise, with a track by Miley Cyrus that sounds like an Andrew Weatherall dub remix of something from when I first started making my tapes all those years ago. All 30+ mixtapes are on my Spotify profile if you have far too much time on your hands.
More next year. Thanks for reading in 2025. Singular Discoveries will be back in 2026. In the meantime, the best festive gift you can give is to share this free newsletter with like-minded friends. ¡Feliz Navidad!
Note: Most British homes had movable metal dustbins by the 1880s, introduced to improve waste management in response to public health concerns. They were called “dustbins” rather than rubbish or waste bins (or trash or garbage cans) because they were originally designed to hold dry dust and ashes.
Main sources: Gloucester Echo, 16/12/1885; Acton Gazette, 25/08/1883 and 19/12/1885; 1881 Census: Residents of Brentford Union Workhouse, The Workhouse
*This publication features Amazon affiliate links. If you use them, I may receive a few pennies to help fund the newsletter. See our Amazon bookshelf here.