Welcome to the first of a new series
looking at some of the innovators within the child care field

Homer Lane

Lane, who was born in 1875, was one of the pioneers of residential child care communities at a time when the only other options for looked-after children were workhouses, reformatories and orphanages.

Homer Lane was an American by birth but spent most of his life in England, founding the Little Commonwealth at Evershot in Dorset in 1913.

We would recognise his methods in today’s terms of group therapy and shared responsibility, but at the time, Lane’s approach was genuinely revolutionary.

The Little Commonwealth was home to around 40 children ranging from babies through to 19 years of age. Children over the age of 13 were placed in the community for some kind of crime, but the younger ones were merely victims of circumstance.

The children were housed like families in mixed communities with adult support – and amazingly for its day, the Little Commonwealth adhered to no rules and regulations, except those devised by the children themselves.

The school leaving age at this time was 14, so young people over this age did not receive any further schooling and instead were occupied with work. Together they worked in different areas of the community – kitchens, gardens, workshops etc, earning a living to pay for their own board and clothing.

In the first few months of operation, many of the young people struggled with a new life which to them seemed to have no boundaries. They came from big city slums where their young lives had been restrained by their grim surroundings and the narrow controls of police, parents and school officials.

Lane found that they had no knowledge of how to work together – when seen alone they could be apathetic, but together they were aggressive and anti-social with no real idea of social order. In their formative years, their only reason for co-operation had been for self-protection.

As the months progressed the experiment in self-government developed. The children had a strong sense of right or wrong but no real moral code. As leader they chose a boy who was destructive in his actions and defiant towards adults. But as they followed his destructive course, they learned that their actions – everything from raiding the larder to hooliganism – soon lost their appeal. Working together, the young people began to see their actions as unproductive, started to help with the work, and encourage or caution those who continued to behave destructively.

As an experiment, it seems to have had positive results, with the young people finally feeling the need for formal rules and laws, together with judgment and subsequent punishment. In case where the offence was disputed, all the children were required to vote with the majority show of hands the verdict.

Homer Lane’s approach was certainly ahead of its time in its method of dealing with deeply disadvantaged and troubled young people. The Little Commonwealth came to an abrupt end five years later when two girls from the community claimed he had immoral relations with them. Lane died, aged 50 in 1925.