An orphan who lived on London’s streets in the 1860s, Jim Jarvis is famous for having inspired Dr Thomas Barnardo to establish his first home for boys.

Barnardo had moved to London from Dublin in Ireland to train as a doctor and, after a cholera epidemic swept through the East End, leaving many children orphans, in 1867 he established the Hope Place Ragged School in Stepney where children could get a basic education for free.

Jim Jarvis, who was 10-years-old at the time (although Barnardo later said he looked older but had the body of a boy of seven or eight), was one of the children who attended the school.

Barnardo’s account is that one night, after he was about to close the school, the boy had begged to be allowed to stay and, when pressed, had told his story.

Jarvis explained that had been living in a workhouse with his mother (he apparently never knew his father) but after she died, he ran away. Living on the streets of Stepney, he was initially helped by a woman who sold whelks and shrimp. He subsequently did some odd jobs for coal lighter but was treated very cruelly – this included the lighterman, ‘Swearin’ Dick’ setting his dog on him when he was drunk.

Jarvis was able to escape and lived on the streets for a time, including being briefly detained in a workhouse. Eventually he attended Barnardo’s newly opened ragged school and asked for help.

Jarvis explained that there were many other boys in a similar position to his own. Barnardo asked him to show him where some of these boys were staying, so Jim took him to a rooftop near a hayloft where 11 boys were sleeping in a huddle.

That encounter helped open Barnardo’s eyes to the hardships faced by the children in the East End – in his words, “I had seen enough, and I needed no fresh proof of the truth of his story or any new incentive to a life of active effort on behalf of destitute street lads”.

After the fateful night on which Jarvis told his story, Barnardo paid for Jarvis’ lodgings. It’s been suggested that, thanks to the aid of a charity, he later went to live on a Canadian farm.

Barnardo meanwhile, established his first home for boys in Stepney in 1870 – a place where they could live and learn skills such as carpentry, metalwork, and shoemaking to help them secure apprenticeships.

Barnardo went on to open further homes and by his death in 1905 the charity he and his wife Syrie Louise Elmslie founded had some 96 homes caring for more than 8,500 children.

Jarvis’ story is encapsulated in Berlie Doherty’s bestselling children’s novel, Street Child.