This book investigates how Dr. Barnardo, the Victorian children’s philanthropist, operated as both story teller and showman, using mass media to create a globalised support network. His philanthropic ‘empire’ operated as an exceptional Victorian manifestation of promotional and branding mechanisms that are perceived as commonplace in the twentieth century. Metaphor and narrative modes normally associated with fiction such as Charles Dickens’s novels, as well as public spectacles associated with showmen such as P. T. Barnum, provide the organising principle for the book. Ultimately, however, the analysis reveals an overlapping concurrence of these three categories because, in practice, each tends to inflect the other. The book is also crucially concerned with affect, theorising how corporal responses such as excitement, shame and disgust operate in Barnardo’s figures of speech, ‘stories’ and spectacles to arouse sympathy and provoke ideological and financial support. Part One takes a long look at metaphor in order to tease out how ‘the open door’, Barnardo’s central institutional icon, operated as a multifaceted metaphor to characterize and promote his version of philanthropy in a crowded charity market. Part Two examines how Barnardo shaped perception of his brand by storytelling practices based on the ‘re-creation’ of direct, first-hand experience and feelings. Part Three considers how collective benevolence also depends upon spectacle for widespread success.