In 1901, Horace Warner, a Quaker wallpaper designer and Sunday School superintendent, photographed eight-year-old Adelaide Springett, capturing a rare glimpse of childhood in the impoverished Spitalfields area of East London.

Despite the photograph's title, “Adelaide Springett in All Her Best Clothes,” Adelaide’s bare feet, one wrapped in a cloth bandage, reveal the harsh realities of her upbringing.

Her family struggled with extreme poverty; her parents worked as street sellers and casual dock laborers, and she endured multiple family tragedies, including the deaths of her sisters and her mother’s early death.Records indicate that she lived in a Salvation Army shelter and previously in the notorious Miller’s Court, infamous for Jack the Ripper’s crimes.Adelaide went on to work in domestic service, survived both World Wars, and lived to the age of 93, passing away in 1986 without immediate family.

Warner’s daughter recalled that the portrait, nicknamed “Little Adelaide’s best and only boots,” was a reminder of the stark social inequalities between the children Warner knew and his own family.The photograph has since become emblematic of the resilience of children growing up under extreme hardship in early 20th-century London.