By Baldwin Reichwein Gillian Hestad

Childhood in the 19th century was not at all what it is today.

The nineteenth-century is the starting point of the story of child saving in Lethbridge. It signalled the beginning of the "child saving era," or what we now know as child protective services and services for young offenders. During the later parts of the century, Alberta residents started to recognize childhood as an essential stage of life separate from adulthood. As this new ideology of youth spread, the Social Gospel movement and the Child Saving movement had radical impacts on the services provided to children and families.