Figure 1.18 The Children’s Friend Society established its Brenton Asylum for vagrant boys in the old Smith’s Silk Mill just outside the tiny village of Hackney Wick, about four miles from central London. In its heyday the mill employed 700 women, weaving silk and making crepe. There were 10 acres of land for cultivation and the boys were taught to be farmers for the colonies. The society was severely criticised for its tendency to kidnap children from their vagrant families, and eventually stopped exporting children to the colonies in 1839. Within 30 years the industrial revolution would transform Hackney Wick and its surrounding villages into crowded, heavily industrialised, suburbs known collectively as the East End. Segment of a 19th-century Ordnance Survey for London and surrounding districts.