Forgotten histories: three stories of black girls from Barnardo's Victorian archive

The history of black women in Britain, particularly before the arrival of the Empire Windrush, is underresearched, and the histories we do have are largely ignored. In this article, biographies of young black women in Victorian London are revealed through the photographic and written archive of Barnardo's. These documents allow a history of black women to be examined in the context of their own time. They add complexion to our current understanding of the Black Atlantic, and the relationships and histories that impact upon our identities today, as well as being a tool with which to interrogate British history.