British explorer, journalist and politician, Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904), was in kinship care, foster care and the workhouse as a child. Henry Morton Stanley was born John Rowlands. He never knew his father, who died shortly after he was born. He was abandoned by his mother, 18-year-old unmarried Elizabeth Parry, almost immediately on his birth and handed over to the care of his grandfather, Moses Parry, who lived in Denbigh, Wales. John was about 6 when his 84-year-old grandfather died in 1847. The boy was taken to live with another couple, Jenny and Richard Price, and his care paid for by 2 uncles. When the Prices decided the rate was too low, and the uncles declined to pay more or care for the child themselves, John Rowlands was transferred to the St Asaph Union Workhouse.