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Education for the Neglected: Ragged Schools in Nineteenth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

H. W. Schupf
H. W. Schupf*
Affiliation:
Hunter College, CUNY
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Extract

The ragged school movement in England spanned the period from 1840 to 1870, but the number of years during which the schools were being founded and expanded is deceptively brief in terms of their contribution to the care of the neglected juvenile. Of the three types of institutions conceived for the children of the destitute and delinquent classes — reformatory, industrial, and ragged schools — only the last proved to be a temporary phenomenon and failed to secure permanent government recognition. Their aim was nothing less than the civilization and conversion of an entire segment of the urban poor, a task too large for the resources of private charity. The schools were intended for a class of juveniles as yet unreached by any other institution, an urban group brought into existence by the rapid and unplanned growth of England's larger cities. They were the children of costermongers, pig-feeders, rag dealers, part-time dock workers, in fact of all those whose work was menial, irregular, and ill-paid. Also included in this category were the offspring of those who laid claim to no job whatsoever, the lowest mendicants and tramps, and persons who get their living by theft, who altogether neglect their children; the children of hawkers, pigeon-dealers, dog-fanciers, and other men of that class. A great proportion of the children are those of worthless and drunken parents, and many others are the children of parents, who, from their poverty, are too poor to pay even a penny a week for schooling.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Summer 1972 , pp. 162 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Evidence of Locke, William, (Hon. Secretary of the Ragged School Union), Select Committee on the Education of Destitute Children, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 7 (1861), Q. 6.Google Scholar

2. “The Claims of the Destitute,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 3 (1851), 58–59.Google Scholar

3. A few schools were begun by members of other religious groups, such as the Quakers and Methodists, but their number was so small as to be insignificant.Google Scholar

4. Previously, instances of schools founded for the ragged had been confined to the work of such isolated individuals as Pounds, John, and Cranfield, Thomas, men of the poorer class themselves who took in neighborhood children. These had no demonstrable influence on the mid-century movement, and it was only after the fact that they were credited with being the ancestors of later efforts. Additionally, the temporary success of the ragged schools led several rival claimants to vie for the honor of their invention, further muddying the waters. See “The Charities and the Poor of London,” Quarterly Review, 97 (September 1855), 436.Google Scholar

5. Fifth Annual Report of the London City Mission Society (1840), p. 16.Google Scholar

6. Tenth Annual Report of the London City Mission Society (1845), p. 27.Google Scholar

7. Quoted from the original circular of the Ragged School Union in Carpenter, Mary, Reformatory Schools (London, 1851), p. 119.Google Scholar

8. Dickens, Charles, letter to Angela Burdett-Coutts, dated September 16, 1843, quoted in Johnson, Edgar, The Heart of Charles Dickens (New York, 1952), pp. 50–53. The account of a ragged school in Our Mutual Friend, pp. 202–3, was probably based on his experience at this school. Although Dickens later identified the school as the “West Street School,” in Hill, Saffron, it would appear that it actually was the Field Lane School, which he visited a number of times in the following years. (Johnson, , Charles Dickens, p. 49, n. 9.) See also Hodder, Edwin, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (London, 1883), I: 484–85.Google Scholar

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15. “Jealousy of Priests,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 3 (1851), 17. “Huntsworth Mews Ragged Schools, Dorset Square (A Papal Colony),” ibid., pp. 185–86; “Priestly Aggression,” ibid., pp. 195–96. One of the most notorious incidents involved a certain priest Noble of Liverpool, who threatened to refuse Extreme Unction to parents who permitted their children to attend the Hodson Street Ragged School. “Priestly Intimidation,” ibid., pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

16. “The Liverpool Ragged School Union,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 6 (April 1854), 62. There was a Catholic ragged school in Bristol, but it was Mary Carpenter's opinion that it did not adequately provide for the lowest group. Evidence of Carpenter, Mary, Select Committee on the Education of Destitute Children, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 7 (1861), Qs. 2165–66.Google Scholar

17. Report of Assistant Commissioner Cummin, P., Newcastle Commission, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 21, pt. iii, Appendix, p. 205; “Visit to Ragged Schools in Liverpool,” Chamber's Edinburgh Journal (1847), p. 93.Google Scholar

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19. A careful examination of the names of the teachers, usually found in accounts of separate schools, reveals none who are recognizably upper class or aristocratic. The most common occupations include lawyers, retail merchants, housewives, and “spinsters.” Some of the more famous volunteers have already been mentioned but the private records of the schools would undoubtedly reveal other interesting connections, as for example, the sister of Barrett, Elizabeth, Browning who taught for a time at the Grotto Passage School and provided the latter with inspiration for a poetical appeal on its behalf. (Williamson, Lord Shaftesbury's Legacy, p. 81.)Google Scholar

20. Although the number of volunteer teachers increased each year, it could not keep up with the rate of pupil growth, and pleas for workers grew increasingly common during the second decade of ragged school work. See for example Times (London), May 24, 1855, p. 10; “Our Sunday Evening Schools — What Can Be Done,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 8 (February 1856), 24; and “Our Voluntary Teachers,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 11 (September 1859), 177.Google Scholar

21. “The Labourers Are Few,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 8 (June 1856), 99–100.Google Scholar

22. Carpenter, Mary, Reformatory Schools, p. 123.Google Scholar

23. Even so, paid personnel never totaled more than a fraction of the whole. Depending on the size of the school, the ratio varied from one in six to one in ten or twelve. See “Our Voluntary Teachers,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 11 (September 1859), 177, for a comparison of the number of both groups in schools associated with the Ragged School Union, from 1845 through 1859.Google Scholar

24. “Workers in Kent Street,” Household Words, 17 (June 5, 1858), 595.Google Scholar

25. Carpenter, Mary, Reformatory Schools, p. 153.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., p. 150.Google Scholar

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28. Through the influence of one of his students, Gill, John, Stowe's methods were adopted as part of the curriculum in professional teacher training in the latter part of the century. See Adamson, John William, English Education 1789–1902 (Cambridge, Eng., 1964), p. 136.Google Scholar

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31. Accounts of such events are numerous but several of the most hair-raising can be found in “St. Giles Rookery and Its Ragged Schools,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 6 (July 1854), 127; and Carpenter, Mary, Reformatory Schools, pp. 131–32.Google Scholar

32. “The Ragged School Teacher; His Difficulties and Rewards,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 8 (August 1856), 155.Google Scholar

33. Times (London), August 14, 1846, p. 5.Google Scholar

34. Hodder, Edwin, Shaftesbury, 2: 410.Google Scholar

35. See the Reports of the Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 7 (1852); ibid., Parliamentary Papers, vol. 23 (1852–1853); and the Report of the Select Committee on the Education of Destitute Children, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 7 (1861).Google Scholar

36. Mann, Horace, Education in Great Britain: being the Official Report based on the Census of Great Britain, 1851 (London, 1851), p. 61.Google Scholar

37. “Ragged Schools in London and Its Suburbs,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 3 (1851), 206–8.Google Scholar

38. Kelynak, T. N., The Fourth Shaftesbury Lecture, “The Progress of Child Welfare” (n.p., 1922), p. 15.Google Scholar

39. Carpenter, Mary, Reformatory Schools, p. 141. Her own experience supported this conclusion.Google Scholar

40. The Ragged School Union instituted a system of prize-giving in order to encourage former pupils to maintain their good conduct, but the number of those who could be traced and so honored was a fraction of the whole and only provided information about those who were honestly employed. (See “The Fourteenth Annual Report of the Ragged School Union,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 10 (May 1858), 7, for the vague estimate which was all the Union could offer as to the disposal of the rest.)Google Scholar

41. “Ragged Schools and Schools of Industry,” Times (London), August 26, 1868, p. 10.Google Scholar

42. Hill, Frederic, Crime: Its Amounts, Causes and Remedies (London, 1853), p. 103 and Appendix 3, p. 380.Google Scholar

43. “The Charities and Poor of London,” Quarterly Review, 97 (September 1855), 438; “The St. Giles’ Rookery and Its Ragged Schools,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 6 (August 1854), 155.Google Scholar

44. “A Triad of Social Reforms,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 12 (August 1860), 173.Google Scholar

45. A poll taken at a Sunday evening ragged school showed that out of a total of 260 in attendance 42 had no parents whatsoever, 21 had only stepmothers, 7 were the children of convicts, 27 had been in prison themselves, 36 had run away from home, 19 lived in lodging houses, 29 never slept in beds, 17 were barefoot, 37 had no headcoverings, 12 had no underwear, 41 lived by begging, and an unidentified number supported themselves by selling coal and rummage gathered along the river. See: Shaftesbury, Speech at the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Ragged School Union, June 9, 1846, quoted by Beggs, Thomas, An Inquiry into the Extent and Causes of Juvenile Depravity (London, 1849), pp. 36–37. An equally depressing survey was made of 43 boys admitted to the Grotto Passage School in 1851, and it was found that 4 had no mother, 18 lacked a father, and 21 were orphans. See Ragged School Union Magazine, 3 (1851), 98. See also: Evidence of Locke, William, Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 7 (1852), Qs. 3311–15.Google Scholar

46. Montague, C. J., Sixty Years of Waifdom, pp. 201–2.Google Scholar

47. This refuge was the ancestor of the Shaftesbury Homes of today, although the Society's interest in crippled children dated only from the late 1890s. Such work was in addition to the orphanages run by the various Evangelicals and unconnected with them.Google Scholar

48. “Twelfth Annual Report of the Ragged School Union,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 8 (May 1856), 110.Google Scholar

49. “What They are doing for Poor Fathers in Hertfordshire,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 12 (September 1860), 209.Google Scholar

50. Beginning in the sixties, Field Lane instituted an infant nursery for working mothers.Google Scholar

51. Several schools did hold such meetings on a limited basis. See “What They are doing for Poor Fathers in Hertfordshire,” pp. 209–10.Google Scholar

52. Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education, August and December 1846, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 45 (1847), pp. 6–7. This provided grants toward the rent, purchase of tools and supplies, and assistance toward the teachers’ salaries in those schools that were considered industrial. In 1850 the St. James’ Back School was the only one qualified to receive this aid. See Bartley, G. C. T., Schools for the People, p. 382. By 1855 three others were also being assisted in this manner, the sum received amounting to £302. See “A Return of Children … In Industrial, Ragged, and Reformatory Schools Assisted Within the Past Year as Schools of Industry by the Committee of Privy Council for Education,” Parliamentary Papers, vol. 49 (1856), pp. 326–27.Google Scholar

53. Report of the Proceedings of a Conference on the Subject of Preventive and Reformatory Schools, Held at Birmingham, 1851 (London, 1851).Google Scholar

54. Ibid.; Resolutions: Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles, 1852–53, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 7 (1852) and vol. 23 (1853).Google Scholar

55. Evidence of Gent, J. G., Secretary of the Ragged School Union, Select Committee on the Education of Destitute Children, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 7 (1861), Q. 299.Google Scholar

56. “Abstract of the Report of the Annual Meeting,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 2 (May 1860), 131.Google Scholar

57. Speech quoted in the Reformatory and Refuge Journal (May 1873), p. 46.Google Scholar

58. “Educational Blunders,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 9 (September 1857), 166.Google Scholar

59. “Legislation on Juvenile Crime,” Ragged School Union Magazine, 6 (February 1854), 24.Google Scholar

60. Minute of the Committee of Council on Education, June 2, 1856, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 46 (1856), pp. 401–2.Google Scholar

61. Ibid. See also the explanatory circular issued in July and reproduced in Parliamentary Papers, vol. 33 (1857), pp. 18–21, and in the Ragged School Union Magazine, 8 (1856), 180–82.Google Scholar

62. Return showing the Amounts of Grants which have been made in accordance with the Minute dated the 2nd day of June, 1856, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 21 (1859), pt. 2, No. 227.Google Scholar

63. Minute, dated 21 December, 1857, setting forth the conditions on which Certified Industrial and Ragged Schools may be aided, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 46 (1857–1858).Google Scholar

64. Report of Assistant Commissioner Cummin, P., Newcastle Commission, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 21 (1861), pt. i, p. 395; Report of the Select Committee on the Education of Destitute Children, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 7 (1861). Sir Stafford Northcote prepared a draft report suggesting that aid be given on more generous terms but this was rejected for a less favorable one proposed by Sir James Graham.Google Scholar

65. The Privy Council circular of January 30, 1858, quoted by the Newcastle Commission, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 21 (1861) pt. i, p. 394 and “Education of the Poor,” Quarterly Review, 110 (October 1861), 154.Google Scholar

66. Times (London), November 18, 1870, p. 10; and Hodder, Shaftesbury, 3: 263.Google Scholar

67. Diary for January 6, 1862, quoted in Hodder, Shaftesbury, 2: 300.Google Scholar

68. See Williamson, , Shaftesbury's Legacy, p. 73, for a list of all those on the Board who might be considered supporters of the ragged schools.Google Scholar

69. Times (London), December 23, 1875, p. 5. Also see Kelynack, T. N., Fourth Shaftesbury Lecture, p. 15.Google Scholar

70. Montague, , Sixty Years of Waifdom, p. 312.Google Scholar

71. Stuart, Mary, “The Education of the People,“ Quarterly Review, 78 (1846).Google Scholar

72. Times (London), December 23, 1875, p. 5.Google Scholar

73. Kelynack, Fourth Shaftesbury Lecture, p. 15.Google Scholar

74. For example, the Children's Mission, Gamberwell; the Juvenile Christian Mission, Clerkenwal; the Millwall Juvenile Mission. Few London Schools unaffiliated with the Union underwent this change, probably because they lacked both support and an extensive social program on which to base a new existence. The Union itself gradually shifted its interest from the morally handicapped to the physically incapacitated and functions in this realm today under the name Shaftesbury Society.Google Scholar

75. “The Elementary Education Act,” London Quarterly Review, 39 (January 1873), 456.Google Scholar