Children’s village Neerbosch

The start of research into the history of youth care, lies in the anniversary book on the Neerbosch Children’s Village. For that project, Anton van Renssen made eight oral-history interviews on video with former residents of the Children’s Village.

In 1863, evangelist Johannes van ‘t Lindenhout founded an orphanage in a former inn in Nijmegen. In 30 years, his initiative grew in the polders outside the city into an orphan village with over 50 hectares of land, 41 buildings and over 1,100 residents. And that entirely based on donations from private individuals, municipal poor relief associations and church deaconies. This study describes the genesis of this orphan village, the largest residential institution in the Netherlands in the second half of the nineteenth century. Much attention is paid to the Protestant-Christian signature of the orphanage and how this was reflected in the educational principles of Van ‘t Lindenhout and in the daily upbringing of the children.