Over 250 years ago, in 1756, trader Jonas Hanway established a far-sighted organisation that helped poor boys, and later girls, escape the poverty trap. It was known as the Marine Society.

The 44-year-old Hanway had lost his father early. After being apprenticed to a Lisbon merchant he became a merchant trader himself, travelling round Russia and Persia. However, Hanway was worried that his crew would be poached to fight in the navy, as Britain was on the verge of war – what would become the Seven Years’ War against France. He had a solution: he established the Marine Society, which recruited poor boys and trained them for the navy. This protected his own crew and business, but it also enabled these boys, who would have had uncertain lives back home, the opportunity to have a career.

The first meeting of the Marine Society, attended by a range of London merchants, took place at the King’s Arms Tavern in Cornhill on 25 June 1756. Sponsors were sought for the society funds, and adverts were placed both in newspapers and on the streets:

Notice is hereby given, that all stout lads and boys, who incline to go on board His Majesty’s Ships, with a view to learn the duty of a seaman, and are, upon examination, approved by The Marine Society, shall be handsomely clothed and provided with bedding, and their charges born down to the ports where His Majesty’s Ships lye, with all other proper encouragement.

Ten boys were duly gathered by magistrate Sir John Fielding, half-brother of novelist and magistrate Henry Fielding, and clothed thanks to money donated by the Duke of Bolton. They were then sent to serve on board the ship Barfleur. More subscriptions were then received, and by the end of its first year of operation, the society had sent nearly 2,000 men and 1,600 boys to the navy.

The Marine Society had only helped poor boys when it was first established, yet girls were often in a precarious situation too. As early as 1757, the pseudonymous Philanthropos lamented in the press that there being no Remedy for the Girls, answerable to a Marine Society for the Boys, it is to be feared, we shall now and then see them patrolling the Streets, deprived of that Innocence and Ease they enjoyed in their own Countries .

But in due course, the Marine Society became able to help poor girls as well as boys, by apprenticing them into trades. In 1763, merchant William Hicks died, leaving no close relatives. He had developed a friendship with Jonas Hanway while they were both working in Hamburg and, when he died, he left £22,000 to the Marine Society. Once invested, this produced £300 a year in interest; Hicks’s will specified that in wartime it should be spent to fit out boys to serve in the navy but in peacetime £150 a year of the money should be spent on apprenticing poor boys to ship-owners and masters in the merchant service and on coasting vessels. The other half was to be spent placing out poor girls to trades, whereby they may earn an honest livelihood. Under the conditions of William Hicks’s will, girls who were helped had to be either orphans or otherwise distressed, the children of poor parents and between the ages of 12 and 16. Strict conditions were attached to the apprenticeships: parents or friends should be consulted as to the eligibility of the trade proposed for the girls, and the person to whom they would be apprenticed, and that there should be a month’s trial, with all parties being satisfied before a formal indenture was issued. Although there were delays in obtaining the money, due to legal difficulties, by 1769 the bequest was able to be invested and started to help those at the bottom of the social ladder.

The society continued to be successful after the death of its founder in 1786, and received donations from a wide range of sources. In 1788, the Times reported that it had received a legacy of £2389 5s 6d in the will of the late Lindley Simpson of Babworth, Nottinghamshire. The society was seen as a great success at the time and every year an anniversary dinner was held at the London Tavern, its existence being noted in the press between at least 1792 and 1848. As part of the dinner, boys who had been helped by the society were brought in and paraded around the room while the gentlemen of the society dined, and an Ode was sang proper for the occasion. The newspapers noted that the late Jonas Hanway gave great vigour to this undertaking, which may be truly said to be an honour to the age we live in, and hope it will never want proper support. (The Times, 16 March 1792).

It is no wonder that many of those boys helped by the society remembered it fondly. In 1847, a five guinea donation was made by a man who had been helped by the society as a boy 40 years earlier. He believed that he was now successful enough in the city to allow him to offer this donation as a small testimony of the benefits he had derived from the charity .

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the role of the Marine Society in keeping children from a life of poverty and crime was recognised. In 1850, it was noted that the careers of boys helped by the society would otherwise in all probability have been one of destitution and crime and that the incentives to join the navy were poverty, or the loss of friends, or an adventurous disposition. Charles Dickens wrote warmly about the Marine Society, and described those it helped as including truanting apprentices, those in abject distress, boys with no employment or education but who were hardy and daring (in other words, suitable personalities for naval service), boys who were the sons of poor widows or other worthy labouring persons in distress, and those from the country who were seen as being in the paths of danger in civil society. Boys who were in receipt of parish relief or in the workhouse were allowed to take any spaces spare on the training ship, as long as the parish officers paid a fee.

It was made clear that no boys would be taken whose ‘friends’ had the means to pay for them to join the navy – the Marine Society aimed simply to help the poorest boys in society. It recognised that once boys started committing crime to survive, they had little chance of leading a respectable life or of bettering themselves, and so it aimed to catch them and train them before they embarked on that life of crime. In aiming to help the poorest members of society, it had a surprisingly modern attitude and perhaps, then, it is no surprise that the Marine Society still exists today, working to give practical and financial help to young people and seafarers, and to help with their education and training.