When Robert Raikes lamented the plight of the poor in Gloucestershire an inhabitant said to him: “Ah sir, on Sunday these wretches spend their time in noise and riot, playing at ’chuck’ and cursing and swearing in a manner so horrid as to convey to any serious mind an idea of hell.” [1. B.Rodgers, The Cloak of Charity. 1949, p.101]

 

Previous experience of prisoners had convinced Raikes of their need of education and moral training. The wretched state of the local poor children and the trouble they caused impressed upon him their similar need. He told a correspondent that he was ’struck with concern at seeing a group of children wretchedly ragged at play in the streets’ [2. B.Rodgers, The Cloak of Charity. 1949, p.101]. He set out to arrange schooling for them at his own expense on the only day when they were not at work. The early Sunday schools included children from the lowest classes.

 

In a letter reproduced in The Gentlemen’s Magazine Raikes wrote: “Many were at first deterred because they wanted decent clothing … I argue therefore, if you can loiter about without shoes and in a ragged coat, you may as well coma to school and learn what may tend to do you good in that garb … If you have no clean shirt, come in what you have on.” [3. Letter to Col. Townley of Sheffield, Nov.25, 1783. Quoted in R.Harris, Robert Raikes: The Man and His Work. 1898, p.215].

 

Accounts of the inception of early Sunday Schools show that some organisers were faithful to this principle. The first children at Sunday school in Cleckheaton, Yorkshire, were all ‘unruly urchins’[4. G. Roberts and W. Hartley, Souvenir Service of the Old Red Chapel and Providence Place Sunday Schools’ Centenary, Cleckheaton, 1905, p.3] and those at Pendleton, Lancashire, in the Charlestown Independent School had neither ’shoes nor stockings’ [5. W. E. A. Axon, Annals of Manchester, 1871, p. 178].

 

At Wigan they were said to be ’little savages and young hooligans’: “The school was often uproarious and pupils were frequently admonished to refrain from swearing. Manners they had none and their habits were beastly.” [6. C. D. Little, Our Sunday Schools, 1933, p.17]. The Manchester Sunday School Committee emphasised that the Salford Sunday schools were for ‘poor children not likely to be found in day schools’ [7. A.V.Parsons, ‘Education in tho Salford District, 1730-1870’, University of Manchester M.Ed., 1963, Ch.2]. William Groser, recalling his father’s experiences of the early days in the Saffron Hill district of London, a notorious ‘rookery’ area, says:

 

“There was given him a class of boys, ragged and dirty, shirt less and shoeless, to whom he was commissioned to teach the alpha bet from a large board placed on his knee.” [8. W. H. Groser,  A Hundred Years’ Work for Children. 1903, pp.13-14].

 

The Sunday schools remained for the children of the working classes. Even at their peak of success in the 1870’s and 1880’s, when three out of every four children in the population attended, it was not usual to find the children of the middle or upper classes in them [9. 0.Chadwick, The Victorian Church. 1970, Vol.2, p.257].

 

Yet, at the beginning of the 1820’s, it was evident that the Sunday schools were no longer catering for the children of the most deprived poor. The evidence for this is embedded in the regulations which governed the various schools and in the complaints of those who were concerned with this group. It was usually the case that more children than could be admitted were anxious to attend.

 

This circumstance, arising from obvious financial limitations, led to a determination on the part of the organisers and teachers of the schools not to waste cash and time on pupils who were not prepared to be regular or careful of the rules. It was a circumstance exacerbated by the fact that there was usually only a very limited period in which the children could be given any schooling. Rules were framed to ensure that the best use was made of the available resources. In practice these excluded those not belonging to the ’respectable’ labouring poor. It was a commonplace to all sets of rules that:

 

“All scholars are to come clean, washed and combed [10. Rules of the Methodist Sunday School, Cleethorpes, 1827, Rule 4]. If a scholar be convicted of cursing or swearing, or quarrelling, or wilful lying, or calling nick names, or using indecent language, he shall be admonished for the first offence, punished for the second and excluded for the third” [11. Rules of the Methodist Sunday School, Stallingborough, 1824, Rule 8]. The children are to come perfectly neat and clean, or a mark of disgrace will be entered in the book for every offence: if often repeated it will lead to expulsion [12. Rules to be Observed in the Sunday School, Great Coates. 1837, Rule 2].

 

As early as 1789 the Rev. William Myers, Curate of Tetney, Lincolnshire, reckoned that the Sunday schools would cater for those who attended day school so little ‘as to reap no advantage thereby’ and ‘for servants and apprentices who have no other opportunity of learning anything’. He imagined that this would enable the ‘poorest children’ to be instructed [13. W . Myers, The Benefits and Advantages of Sunday Schools Considered. 1789].

 

Even at this stage of development such provisions excluded a significant minority, particularly when applied to the growing urban industrialised areas. By 1851 the most needy children had been successfully, if unintentionally, excluded. No longer did the Sunday school regulations speak of the inpropriety of ‘despising another on account of his dress’ [14. Rules and Regulations of the Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School, Grimsby. 1820, Rule 7] that problem was no longer of any significance.

 

Schools like the one founded at Angel Street Church, Worcester, in 1797, were no longer instituted because the minister was worried by the misery of the street urchins who were forced to beg and steal to maintain their existence [15. H. W. Gwilliam, ‘The Provision of Education for the Poor in the City of Worcester During the 18th and 19th Centuries’, University of Birmingham Diploma in Education, 1966, p.30].

 

Instead there was general agreement that an established element of educational provision in the first half of the nineteenth century flowed through the Sunday schools. This was the case in both urban and rural areas, as many local histories demonstrate [16. E.g. Ed. B. J. R. Parker, Education in Bradford. 1970, Ch.2. R. C. Russell, A History of Schools and Education in Lindsey, Lincolnshire, 1800-1902. 1965, Vol.2. This is contrary to the opinion of M. G. Jones who describes the Sunday School Movement as primarily urban in character. Of. M. G. Jones, The Charity School Movement. 1938, p.144].

 

The wider responsibilities of the Church to the children of the working poor dominated the minds of ministers. From the 1820’s anxiety was expressed about those obviously not coming to the schools. The Rector of Easingwold wrote, in 1821:

 

“But are there not still many children . . . rude and ignorant and idle and not unlikely to fall into some more immoral habits by constant Sabbath breaking ?” [17. E. Paley, A Letter to the Inhabitants of Easingwold. 1821].

 

It was a rhetorical question on many lips. Attempts were made in Manchester to quantify the problem. Disturbed by the inaccuracies of returns made to Parliament on ’the Educational Supply in Certain Districts of Manchester’, the Manchester Statistical Society set up a committee in 1834. It examined the state of the Day, Sunday, Infant and Charity Schools in the Borough. Its returns, which were hailed nationally as truly scientific, showed that 23,185 children had as their only means of schooling some years at Sunday school.

 

The most disturbing feature of the report was the finding that about one third of all Manchester children between the ages of five and fifteen received no instruction at any school [18. Central Society for Education, Returns. 1837, p.29]. Within this group were the very poorest children. In his evidence to the Select Committee in 1834 Benjamin Braidley, Constable of Manchester, said that the most degraded children did not go to Sunday schools as they were generally of ’filthy appearance’ [19. Report of the Select Committee on the State of Education. 1834, p.177].

 

The Secretary of the Sunday School Union, W.F .Lloyd, admitted: “A very large part of the population we cannot touch at all; I refer to the most degraded of the poor; I mean the children of trampers, and beggars and gypsies, and people of that kind … The great impediment we have in Sunday schools, and in all schools, is the bad example and bad habits of the parents.” [20. Report of the Select Committee on the State of Education. 1834, p.177].

 

The ragged Sunday schools were the heirs to that concern for the most destitute children which many Christians had at the beginning of the Sunday school movement. In the 1830’s and 1840’s it was very evident to those working among the most deprived in the slum areas that the existing Sunday schools could not solve the problem of these children. City missionaries working in London set up their own schools for the most wretched children in the course of their normal pastoral duties [21. London City Mission Annual Report. 1836, p.12].

 

Their efforts met with such a degree of success that there was pressure from some supporters of the Mission to extend this work. Such an extension would, however, have altered the character of the work of the missionaries which was primarily evangelical, not social and educational. The Mission set its face against this, though it was sympathetic to the efforts of other groups to tackle the problem. It asserted:

 

“It is not the work of the Mission to conduct schools, although its missionaries have in several cases been the instruments of founding ‘ragged schools’ for the benefit of children who would be shut out of other schools.” [22. City Mission Magazine. 1841, p.192].

 

It appealed to the Home and Colonial Infant School Society to set up schools in areas of great need, particularly in Field Lane and Cow Cross [23. City Mission Magazine. 1841, p.192]. However, the response came from Sunday school teachers who formed themselves into a committee in 1842 to organise Field Lane Sabbath School. The committee advertised in ’The Times’ during February, 1843 for money and helpers to make permanent their school for instructing (free of expense) those who, from their poverty or ragged condition, are prevented going any other place of religious instruction [24. The Times. February 18, 1943].

 

Field Lane was in a notorious district near Holborn Hill, known as Jack Ketch’s Warren, from the numerous criminals bred there who were hanged at Newgate. One of the volunteers was Lord Ashley, later Lord Shaftesbury [25. E. Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K. G., 1886, Vol. 1,484].

 

The Ragged School Union of London, formed in 1844 and giving some unity to many private charitable ventures, sent a circular to its supporters showing its area of concern. Ragged schools for poor children, who have no means or opportunity to attend a Day School, and who are generally reckoned to be too ragged or dirty for admission into a Sabbath School, or even a place of worship, are surely deserving the countenance and support of every real Christian [26. The Second Circular of the Ragged School Union. 1844].

 

The Union urged upon its officers the advice of Lord Ashley to ’stick to the gutters’. Its rapid growth did not divert this ideal and it was established that: “Schools should be open for the lowest poor and the character and appearance of the candidate for admission should not prevent such a person becoming a scholar.” [27. The Ragged School Union (London) Minute, Book, 16 Oct., 1845].

 

Early annual reports of schools set up in the urban slum areas reiterated the same principle. Thus, at Halifax, the ’proper candidates’ for the schools were ’emaciated children’ characterised by their ’squalid wretched ness, thickly matted hair, starving countenances and ignorant despairing look’ [28. Halifax Ragged School Annual Report. 1857, p.4]. The York Ragged School Committee exercised ’the greatest caution to select the most destitute recipients’.29 Oxford Ragged School was:

 

“. . . for the children of the poorest classes, whose parents could but ill afford even the smallest payment, and who were less able to provide clothing sufficiently respectable to enable them to obtain admission into any of our Public Schools.” [30. Oxford Ragged School Annual Report. I860, p.3].

 

At Southampton only the ’most degraded children’ were accepted, those who were accustomed to frequent ‘the prison, the Court of Justice, the Penny Theatre and the Gambling Shop’ [31. Lower Canal Walk Ragged School, Southampton Annual Report. 1852, p.6].  While Bradford wanted:

 

“. . . those children who, through the neglect, the extreme poverty or the vice of their parents, or those who have the charge of them, are beggars or vagrants, or in imminent danger of becoming such.” [32. Proposed Rules of the Bradford Ragged School. 1854, Rule 1].

 

The first children in Barnsley Ragged School were members of a gang of young thieves ’who did not attend any school’ [33. J. H. Borland, Annals of Barnsley. Vol.4, p.408 (ms. vols. covering period 1859-1864)]. The initial intake at Brighton inspired verse:

 

“Here naked children round the alley run

And, rolled in dust, are bronzed beneath the sun.

To union forced by crime, by fear or need,

All are in morals and in modes agreed . . .

Need and Misery, Vice and Danger bend

In sad alliance each degraded mind.”

[34. St. John’s Ragged School, Brighton, Annual Report. 1870, p.86]

 

It was clear from 1845 onwards that the model set by the London Ragged School Union had been enthusiastically accepted. A positive attempt with some central co-ordination was made to meet the needs of the least promising children [35. In the period up to 1840 there were of course many individual efforts aimed at reaching the worst cases of neglect and abuse. These were local, isolated and sporadic, ending with the death or waning interest of the founders.

 

One of the most noteworthy was the attempt made by a working-class tailor, Thomas Cranfield. Appalled at the squalor and the filth of the children living in the area of the Mint, he succeeded with a group of friends in building up an organisation of nine-teen Sunday schools before his death in 1833. These catered for the children of thieves and vagrants, those turned out by their parents or who had run away, youngsters ‘of the foulest parts’. Cf. W. M. Eager, Making Men: A History of Boys’ Clubs and Related Movements in Great Britain. 1953. p.121].

 

The ragged Sunday schools developed from within the Sunday School Movement and maintained their close connection. Even the ragged day schools, which developed in many respects from the early movement for industrial schools, reflected the ethos and practices of the Sunday schools. The contemporary view was that the ragged school movement:

 

“. . . was a recommencement of the Sunday School system precisely where Raikes was moved to take it up in 1781, leading more rapidly than in the first instance through week-day evening meetings of the Sunday school to the establishment of day schools.” [36. Minutes of the Committee in Council on Education 1848-50, Vol.2, p.296].

 

Sunday school teachers were prominent in the founding and maintaining of the ragged Sunday and day schools. Sometimes they worked with their minister or priest, occasionally with a wealthy benefactor, often with a city missionary and, in a few instances, by themselves. Even the staff of the day schools had usually received a background in Sunday schools; e.g. James Short, master in charge of the Newcastle Ragged School, had previously worked for five years with the London City Mission in its Sunday schools [37. Newcastle-upon-Tyne Ragged School Annual Report. I848, p.6].

 

And it is a commonplace in those reports covering appointments of staff to find such short curricula vitae. From these it is evident that Sunday school experience was regarded with some importance by the Management Commit tees. Once schools were running, it was usual for them to participate in the Sunday school functions organised within their localities by the non ragged schools. Typical of these were the Whitsuntide parades held annually in Barnsley, when the children walked the streets of the town with their flags, attended a short service and then adjourned to nearby fields to play and have a picnic [38. J. H. Burland, op. cit.. p.470].

 

However, it would only be true to say that the ragged schools accepted more easily kinship with the Sunday School Movement than the latter accepted its association with those schools catering for ’the dirty infantry of the streets’. Established Sunday school opinion is well represented by the Rev. E. Jackson. In a New Year’s sermon in 1879 he contrasted the schools of the previous century with those currently existing. One of the most significant changes concerned the improved condition of the children.

 

How wonderfully respectable and well-dressed these scholars appear . . . they do not give the impression of being the children of working people … we have scarcely any in our Sunday schools, except the infants, who cannot read, and generally read well [39. The Rev. E. Jackson, The Past and Present: A New Year’s Address to Parents. 1879, pp.3-4].

 

He is referring to the children of the working poor, the artisan and lower middle class. By this time a network of other ragged Sunday schools was catering for the children excluded from this system. For a short time until 1877 the Salvation Army engaged in this work, largely in connection with children’s missionary schemes.

 

[40. It proposed to build in Poplar ’a new hall, ragged school, soup kitchen, Bible depot and reading room’. Cf. R. Sandall, The History of The Salvation Army. Vol 1, 1947, p.91. Curiously, General W. Booth ordered the abandonment of The Salvation Army’s Sunday Schools at the Conference of The Christian Mission in 1877. It was his view that ‘saving the man must be put first, for his salvation would change for the better everything in which he was concerned, whether in his home or elsewhere’ . Ibid., p.190. In fact, he realised that the children’s work would involve a whole new organisation with special leaders and held that it would take many years to effect this aspect of Christian work.]

 

In 1861 the view of the Newcastle Commission was that:

. . .the Sunday schools had ceased to be places of direct secular instruction except to a very limited extent. The primary aim seemed to be to teach religious truth and religious principles and not to be a substitute for the day schools. Writing was universally banished and reading was taught only to the infants and one or two of the lower classes during part of the school hours . . . the rest was used for religious instruction. The rest of the classes read the Bible verse by verse, either according to a known pattern or according to the desire of the teacher . . . Considering all of the difficulties of irregular attendance, the time spent on teaching being two hours on a Sunday and the teaching given being far from efficient, and that all secular instruction was beginning to be avoided as far as possible, the Sunday schools were in a direct sense a very feeble auxiliary to the day school. The utmost they could possibly effect in the way of secular instruction is to teach the child the rudiments of reading [41. Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the State of Popular Education in England. 1861, Vol.2, pp.234-5].

 

It was not a friendly judgment. The ragged schools were dismissed as of ‘only a slight influence over a very limited class’, a judgment based on the evidence to the Commission of Patrick Cumin. It was unfortunate for the schools that his evidence was partial, largely inaccurate and misleading. Less weight was given than might fairly have been to the evidence of Mary Carpenter. However, the influence of Sunday schools on the ragged schools, the similarities and parallelisms of method and organisation are attested in the general condemnation of the Newcastle Commission. They may be compared in several important respects.

 

Firstly, the ragged schools employed the same system of voluntary teachers as the Sunday schools for their Sunday and part of their weekly work. Raikes’ original plan involved paying teachers, but it was John Wesley’s plan which eventually found wide-spread acceptance. From 1785 Methodist Sunday schools were organised and taught by voluntary helpers. The pitfalls were as obvious as the advantages.

 

That there were continuing and vital problems over the standards of the teachers is evident from the stream of hints, advice, plans and proposals for the improvement of teachers. They recur ceaselessly in the Church Congress Reports and the minutes of individual Sunday School Unions throughout the country. Typical is the portrait of the good Sunday school teachers of Bradford. They were not:

“. . . highly educated, but they needed to have some ability and some capacity of bringing their ideas out clearly, so as to make them intelligible to the young. They should be thoroughly in structed in Scriptural truth, and to be good teachers they must have some knowledge of the world and the things which were going on around them, and to be acquainted with the circumstances of their pupils. They should have a hearty sympathy with those they teach.” [42. Bradford Observer, 1869, May 3rd.].

 

The portrait of the ragged school teacher recommended by the London Ragged School Union appeared in a prize-winning essay by the Rev. George Hall, for which he received fifty pounds [43. G. J. Hall, Sought .and Saved, a Prize Essay on Ragged Schools and Kindred Institutions, 1855]:

 

“He should be one that is originally gifted with some aptitude for teaching . . . His education and general attainments should be about the same as are required for the best of our National and British Schools . . . His words will be with power … In him the loveliness of honesty, diligence, truthfulness and godliness will be seen . . . (He is) father, mother, teacher all joined in one.” [44. G. J. Hall, Sought .and Saved, a Prize Essay on Ragged Schools and Kindred Institutions, 1855, pp.49-51].

 

Figures in the Sunday School Unions and the Ragged School Annual Reports, giving the average attendance of teachers, coupled with frequent appeals for them to meet weekly ’to examine’ themselves, imply that few of these paragons were available. The supply of efficient male teachers was always acute throughout the nineteenth century. It was feared by some that the 1870 Education Act’s provisions would mean that the children ’would be well up in elementary education and too advanced to be taught by teachers of the present standard’ [45. Yorkshire Conference of Sunday School Unions, Report, 1871].

 

The actual achievements of the teachers are very difficult to determine. With regard to the Sunday schools, one method of obtaining a rough and ready estimate was embedded in the provisions of Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act. 1753, which stipulated that the couple must sign their names in the marriage register or make their mark. This makes possible the compilation of literacy tables. When the exact educational provision for an area is known, these tables can give a guide to the level of achievement of the schools.

 

Where such tables have been compiled they support the thesis that the level of illiteracy fell very little during the first half of the century and that it was not until after 1870 that any dramatic fall was observable. They show further that there was markedly more illiteracy among women than men [46. W. P. Baker, Pariah Registers and Illiteracy in East Yorkshire, 1961]. There are clear dangers in pressing this evidence. The Sunday schools were more concerned with reading than writing as a skill and many would be able to read who could not write.

 

Where more direct evidence was obtained, it was still depressing. An investigation concerning 2,000 children in Manchester Sunday schools, aged 13-14 years, revealed that 53 per cent could not read and 88 per cent could not write their own names [47. H. Mathew, Methodism and the Education of the People. 1949, p.53].

 

Regarding the ragged schools, the best evidence of the standards achieved lies in the tables of employments gained by leavers in the annual reports. There exists no digest of this evidence. Although one is occasionally surprised by an entry like:

 

“A boy in one of the London Ragged Schools, having shown a great taste for acquiring languages, has been sent out as an interpreter to Balaclava and frequently dines with Lord Raglan”

 

the majority of children clearly took labouring positions [48. Cambridge Ragged School, Minute Book, 1848. (Undated cutting attached to inner cover.)]. Clerical positions were obtained by only a small minority. The inference must be that the standards were poor in both Sunday and ragged schools [49. Individual differences among schools and among the children were wide. This accounts for evidence like that collected by B.Simon, Studies in the History of Education, 1730-1870. I960, p.183. In particular, he quotes S.Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical (Ed.H.Dunckley, 1893), p.12. ‘The Sunday schools of the preceding thirty years had produced many working man of sufficient talent to become readers, writers and speakers in the village meetings for Parliamentary reform.’].

 

Of course, academic distinction was not the prime aim of either movement. A foundation of moral and religious virtue does not permit quantitive assessment, except in crude measures like church attendance and criminal statistics, Yet this was more nearly their fundamental target. Even when their success here was denied, both movements clung to the view that, as a soldier lay dying or as a woman was in sickness hear her end, the belief of childhood in a Saviour, first learned at their schools, would reassert itself. However, at this point historical evidence fades into theological imagination.
Secondly, both movements organised their schools according to the same patterns.

 

There was some variability according to the degree of evangelical fervour of the churches represented. Non-evangelical Anglicans were much more accustomed to using the catechism or simplified versions of it as part of their teaching. The Ragged School Union of London supported the view that there should be no:

 

“. . . overtaxing of (the children’s) small powers of endurance and attention. This has been too much the fault of our Sunday school system hitherto. Little children have been shut up – we might almost say, imprisoned – have been kept in a most unchildlike quiet ness for three or four hours together, during the whole of school time and public service, in a way that not even adults could endure . . . How can a sermon intended for grown-up people and advanced Christians be otherwise than useless and wearisome to children?” . . . Custom and prejudice close their eyes against any improved methods, to the great loss and injury of the scholars, and of the Sunday school system [50. G. J. Hall, op.cit.. pp.87-39].

 

At the inception of the Sunday school movement the classes and worship took up most of the day, having morning and afternoon sessions. At Chester the children were taught from 9 a.m. until mid-day and from 1.15 p.m. to 4 p.m. [51. H. F. Mathews, op. cit.. p.55] and, at Baildon, in 1788, there were two periods of two and a half hours each at a variable time [52. N. B. Roper, ’The Contribution of the Non-Conformists to the Development of Education in Bradford in the Nineteenth Century’, University of Leeds, M.Ed., 1967].

 

Idle Sunday School, in Yorkshire, met during the morning, afternoon and evening for a period of up to eight hours [53. J. H. Turner, Idle Upper Chapel Independent Sunday School, 1907, p.76]. There are small signs that the act of worship with the adults which concluded most sessions was a trial for some children at least. The Committee of the Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School at Grimsby decided that:

 

“. . . the Preachers be respectfully requested to conclude the service by the end of the hour, or within one hour and five minutes” and the children were warned “. . . not to go out of the Chapel during the service; and if, either by word or action, they disturb those who are near them, their names will be taken down, that they may be reported when they return to the school.” [54. Rules and Regulations of the Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School Grimsby 1820].

 

The pattern of the lengthy Sunday school, with only slight modifications, according to locality or sect, admitted of only one major exception in the first forty years of the nineteenth century. Conservative Anglican priests were reluctant to countenance Sunday schools – they were nowhere authorised in the Book of Common Prayer. Their own concession would be to attach a catechetical exercise for the children to afternoon service. This was seldom more than an hour and a half. However, this remained a largely rural problem, worsened to some extent by the practices of plurality of livings and non residence on the part of the clergy.

 

Towards the middle of the century, as the Sunday schools became less concerned with secular instruction and increasingly concerned with religious teaching and children’s services, the schools met for shorter periods, though usually in the mornings and afternoons. The regulations available point to morning periods of an hour and afternoon ones of up to two hours [55. E.g. Rules and Regulations for the Management of the Wesleyan Methodist Sunday Schools in the Bradford West Circuit 1863].

 

The ragged Sunday school assembled at 9 a.m. ’The elder children then go to their classes and the younger to the infant school room’. At a quarter past ten ’all meet again in the large room, and after singing a verse of a hymn, a short interval is allowed for a change of engagements’. At half-past ten ’order is restored for teaching is now to be followed by devotion, work by worship’. After the worship, at twelve o’clock, they are sent home: “In the afternoon, like that in the morning, teaching lasts about an hour; after which an address is delivered to the whole school.” [56. G. J. Hall, on. cit. pp.91-93].

 

The only significant variation in this pattern was a tendency to re place the morning with an evening session [57. Woolwich Ragged Schools, Annual Report.1870. p.7.]. Competition for staff to serve in the schools was largely responsible for this. Bent Street Ragged School in Blackburn held that:

 

“Teachers do not necessarily need to sever the connection with their own Sunday-school when coming down to work in the Ragged School, but rather to keep up the connection so that the link from the Ragged School to the Sunday School and Church or Chapel may afford opportunity for Ragged School scholars getting into fellowship with Christ’s church on earth.” [58. Bent Street Ragged School, Blackburn, Annual Report. 1884].

 

Neither the Sunday nor ragged schools could begin their work of reclamation until they had taught the children to read. The organisation of the Sunday schools was adapted to this necessity and early reports, newspapers and periodicals connected with the movement suggest a variety of schemes. These were all very similar and the basic pattern was that recommended by The Sunday School Repository of 1819 in its article, ‘On the Establishment and Management of Sunday schools’.

 

1st Class:  The alphabet and words of two letters. (The alphabet and boards containing all the words of two letters in the English language.)

2nd Class:  All words of one syllable. (The first pages in the First Part Spelling Book, containing words of one syllable.)

3rd Class: Words of two syllables. (The whole of the First Part Spelling Book, and the words of two syllables in the Second.)

4th Class: The whole of the Second Part Spelling

5th Class: The New Testament and the Third Part Spelling

6th Class: The Old Testament and the New Testament and the Third Part Spelling.

 

Other schools included the catechism, though this fell into disuse and attempts to revive the practice were mercifully unsuccessful [59. Various, The Centenary Memorial of the Establishment of Sunday Schools, 1881, p.36]. The ragged schools inherited the same problem and that they viewed it seriously is obvious from the remarks and figures given in annual reports. At Halifax, where it was held that reading would help the poor children ’to shine as stars in the Redeemer’s crown’, the following typical figures are given:

 

“Could read a little … 12

Knew the alphabet … 4

Knew not the alphabet … 59″

[60. Annual Report of the Halifax Ragged School. 1853, p.7. Cf. Annual Reports of the Salford Industrial and Ragged School. 1855-70]

 

A flurry which, for a time, assumed the proportions of a controversy, occurred over the teaching of writing in Sunday schools. It was the solution to this problem which anticipated ragged school organisation, pro vided a strong link between the two movements and further uncovered that reservoir of voluntary helpers without which neither movement could function. It was observed of Methodist Sunday schools that:

 

“the art of writing was generally taught, and in some instances arithmetic, if not geography also!” [61. V. Ward, Observations on Sunday Schools. 1827, p.14].

 

It was held that the practice was not conducive to a holy frame of mind:

 

“The mending of pens, the examination of copies, the correction of mistakes, seem to me to exert a most unfavourable influence.” [62. V. Ward, Observations on Sunday Schools. 1827, p.21]

 

In any case, the Methodist Conference had asked their schools to discontinue the plan in 1808. It was regarded as an infringement of the Sabbath. The schools of the established church were not as deeply implicated as those of the dissenters, though there was a local cause celebre at Leeds when it was discovered that a teacher who was also ’a collector of public money’ made use of the services of his children to do his accounts [63. T. Furbank, Friendly Advice on the Impropriety of Teaching Writing in Sunday Schools on the Lord’s Day. 1832, p.14].

 

The most generally acceptable solution to this problem was to teach writing at an evening school once or twice a week. A bald statement that ’writing and accounts are taught on two evenings during the week’ [64. Leeds Sunday School Union Annual Report. 1841, p.19] became common in Sunday school reports during the first forty years of the century. The actual numbers reached were pitiably small [65. A. V. Parsons, on. cit. Ch.2].

 

In the second half of the century the evening work connected with the Sunday schools and the ragged schools increased. A wide variety of practical subjects was offered and an attempt made to appeal to the adults. In general the ragged schools were able to offer fewer secular subjects, though singing and sewing were common. They preferred to concentrate on Bible study and moral instruction. Out of this activity both movements organised small libraries for their members and a number of improvement societies. Their educational functions diminished as their social ones grew.

 

Thirdly, both movements expounded with selfless enthusiasm and saintly sincerity a conservative theology which disintegrated in the course of the century into an absurd fiction. The dogmatic tradition, both in its Catholic and Protestant forms, met intellectual forces at the end of the eighteenth century which tended to isolate it from the prevailing outlook. In the nineteenth century Catholicism turned to a stronghold of absolute authority. Protestantism, after dissention and much misgiving, attempted some compromise.

 

Historical study of the Bible had undermined traditional ideas concerning revelation and inspiration as well as the customary style of literalist exegesis. However, the evangelical parties within the Protestant groups were the last to capitulate to the new thinking. It was the evangelicals who were in large measure responsible for the establishment and successful continuance of the Sunday and ragged schools. Both had sprung from a corybantic version of Christianity.

 

This had various effects. It meant that there would be throughout a strong individualistic outlook. This was evident in the theology of the evangelicals which stressed individual salvation by faith and was based on the truth of the Bible – seasoned with more than a dash of Calvinism. It was seen in the importance of personalities and families to whom philanthropy was an essential aspect of their way of life – the Wesleys, Whitefield, Fletcher, Newton, Berridge and the ’Clapham Sect’, the Corys, the Crossley brothers, Lord Shaftesbury, Quintin Hogg, the great Quaker families.

 

It can also be traced in the attempts of many little-known or anonymous individuals who realised that the concomitant of faith was brotherly love, and who chose to express this in their concern for poor children. A handful of Raikes’ predecessors are known, though there must have been others whose praises were not sung and whose work died with them: Joseph Allein, the Independent Minister of Taunton, held popular children’s services [66. J. H. Turner, The Idle Upper Chanel Independent Sunday School Centenary Memorial. 1907, p.34]; Catherine Bowey of Flaxley, in Gloucestershire, taught children in her own home each Sunday [67. J. H. Turner, The Idle Upper Chanel Independent Sunday School Centenary Memorial. 1907, p.34]; The Vicar of Catterick, the Rev. T. Lindsey, set up his Sunday school in 1763 and his friend and former assistant, Mrs. Cappe of Bedale, started one in her kitchen a year later [68. J. Howard, Historical Sketch of the Origin and Work of the York Incorporated Sunday School Committee. 1876, p.2].

 

Those who knew Raikes said that he ‘drove over in a chaise and pair’, visiting men already attempting Sunday school education [69. R. Harris, Robert Raikes, The Man and His Work, 1899, p.59]. He talked with Samuel Webb, a cloth manufacturer of Painswick; William Twining of Sheepscombe; and William King of Dursley, a woollen card-maker [70. R. Harris, Robert Raikes, The Man and His Work, 1899, p.59].

 

The London Ragged School Union Minutes indicate some of the ‘saints’ of the rookeries: “Mr. Sants and Mr. Cartwright from Smiths Building. Mr. Romanis, Mr. Dart, Mr. Kennedy from Wells Street. Mr. Philips from Turnville. Mr. Starey, Mr. Locke from Field Lane” [71. Ragged School Union (London) Minute Book, July 5, 1844].

 

These were men working in four of the ragged schools before the work of the Ragged School Union began. There were at least twenty other similar schools [72. Ragged School Union (London) Minute Book, July 5, 1844] and the initial meeting of the Ragged School Union gathered together ’40 friends of the cause’ [73. Ragged School Union (London) Minute Book, 26 April, 1844]. To the nineteenth century evangelical, conversion to Christ implied as its corollary devotion to man.

 

A further effect of the evangelical basis of both Sunday and ragged schools was to make their aim primarily religious. To a large extent one movement anticipated many of the problems of the other, there being difficulties of interpretation and application. In 1784 Raikes’ firm printed the regulations of Stroud Sunday school. One of them stated that the children should be:

 

“. . . instructed in the duties of the Christian Religion with a particular view to their good and industrious behaviour and their character as labourers and servants.” [74. B. Rodgers, The Cloak of Charity. 1949, p.103].

 

A couple of years later in the schools of Peterborough the children were taught ‘the true principles of Christianity . . . and promise fair to make sober, diligent and faithful servants’ [75. R. C. Russell, Sunday Schools in Lindsey, p,11]. Individual schools’ practice confirms this aim and typical of the majority was the Sunday school at Dewsbury where the pupils were ’instructed in the Holy Scriptures’ [76. Anonymous, History of the Dewsbury Church Sunday School. 1862, p.14. Cf. also J. Stringer, A Sermon Preached at the Chapel, Wetherby, on the Formatlon of a Sunday School in that Town. 1814, p.13. ‘Therefore as Sunday Schools are professedly instituted to promote reading of the Bible among the children … who can tell but a Baxter, a Fletcher or a Locke, may hereafter date the unfolding of his genius from the time he commenced as a scholar in the Wetherby Sunday School?’].

 

This does not confirm P. Sangster’s unsubstantiated opinion that the Sunday schools were clearly ’secular’ [77. P. Songster, Pity My Simplicity. 1963, p.110]. The ragged schools were equally explicit with regard to their aim. The Ragged School Union of London held that the object of their institutions was ’the moral and spiritual elevation of the scholars’ [78. Ragged School Union (London) Minute Book. 16 October, 1845].

 

Annual reports of schools usually open with the pious motives of the managing committees – often expressed in the dramatic clichés of a fervent revivalism. They at tempted to ‘snatch as brands from the burning a few of the poor, perishing souls’ at Halifax [79. Annual Report of the Lower Canal Walk Ragged School, Southampton. 1852]. To the supporters of the Lower Canal Walk School at Southampton Lord Cholmondeley affirmed that the object:

 

“. . . was to rescue the poor, degraded children and bring them to the knowledge of that Saviour of whose name they had probably never before heard except in scorn or jest.” [80. Annual Report of the Halifax Ragged School. 1858].

 

Lord Palmerston summed it up clearly and drily, stating at Leeds that the job of the schools was to inculcate ‘maxims of religion and moral principles [81. Annual Report of the Leeds Ragged School. 1860]. While the evangelical revival resuscitated English religious life and sustained philanthropy, no such comparable impetus was given to theology [82. K. J. Heasman, ‘The Influence of the Evangelicals upon the Origin and Development of Charitable Institutions in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century’, University of London, Ph.D., I960. Also K. J. Heasman, Evangelicals in Action. 1962], which was unable to free itself from the dead hand of the past.

 

The effect of this was a narrowness of viewpoint and a dogmatic position which was un able to come to terms with a temperate rationalism. Both the Sunday schools and the ragged schools long pursued practices based on outworn principles which had little but the inveteracy of custom or habit to support them. The early Sunday schools clung to ideas popularised by the S.P.C.K. at the height of the success of the charity schools. Their first text book by Jones Han way [83. J. Hanway,  A Comprehensive View of Sunday Schools. 1786] had all the atmosphere of manners and morals carried over from the old regime [84. C. Northcott, For Britain’s Children. 1953, p.22].

 

Succeeding ones were even worse [85. E.g. J. Fawcett, Advice to Youth, 1778. (Popular until 1840). J. Hodson, The Young .Christian ’s Introduction to the Knowledge of His God and Saviour, 1788. (Suitable for twelve-year-olds.) R. Taprell, A Plain Discourse for Children. 1789]. The ragged schools looked to the Bible as the source of much of their work in the classroom. Texts were learned regularly and expounded.

 

The extreme conservatism of the method and content of the teaching in the ragged schools ignored more liberal and sympathetic ideas which had begun to be expounded in text books of the previous century [86. E.g. T. Smetham, The Practical Grammar. 1774. D-Fanning. The Universal Spelling Book. 1755]. The organisation of classes in the Sunday and ragged schools was characterised by that cold and rather fearsome logic which had been popularised by James Talbott [87. J. Talbott, The Christian Schoolmaster. 1707].

 

The ragged schools are rightly regarded as a branch of the Sunday School Movement. The impulse which promoted them, as well as the methods establishing them, were largely identical. Always owing more to nonconformity than the established church, both movements attempted to provide an education for the poor which was characterised by adherence to unequivocal and evangelical religious principles. Neither succeeded. Yet it was the failure of the Sunday schools which ensured the birth of the ragged schools.

 

Their inability to continue to meet the needs of the poorest and most neglected groups of children pointed the way for others who felt that a solution lay in education and the development of social services. Their increasing dependence on the day school to teach the rudiments of reading meant that their role changed and they became more concerned with religious teaching and less with secular instruction. This further excluded the very poor. However, they were directly linked to the ragged schools by their attempts to set up evening schools during the week, by their utilisation of the voluntary principle, by their emphasis on the primacy of evangelical aims in education and in much of their method and organisation.

 

Both movements resisted new currents of thought which exposed the theological absurdity of their foundations. Yet this theoretical rigidity yielded to a broad humanity and practical good sense in meeting the needs of the groups which they served.

 

Listed Bibliography:

1. B. Rodgers, The Cloak of Charity. 1949, p.101.

2. Ibid.

3. Letter to Col. Townley of Sheffield, Nov.25, 1783. Quoted in R.Harris, Robert Raikes: The Man and His Work. 1898, p.215.

4. G. Roberts and W. Hartley, Souvenir Service of the Old Red Chapel and Providence Place Sunday Schools’ Centenary, Cleckheaton, 1905, p.3.

5. W. E. A. Axon, Annals of Manchester, 1871, p. 178

6. C. D. Little, Our Sunday Schools, 1933, p.17

7. A. V. Parsons, ‘Education in the Salford District, 1730-1870’, University of Manchester M.Ed., 1963, Ch.2.

8. W. H. Groser, A Hundred Years’ Work for Children. 1903, pp.13-14.

9. 0.Chadwick, The Victorian Church. 1970, Vol.2, p.257.

10. Rules of the Methodist Sunday School, Cleethorpes, 1827, Rule 4.

11. Rules of the Methodist Sunday School, Stallingborough, 1824, Rule 8.

12. Rules to be Observed in the Sunday School, Great Coates. 1837, Rule 2.

13. W . Myers, The Benefits and Advantages of Sunday Schools Considered. 1789.

14. Rules and Regulations of the Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School .-.Grimsby. 1820, Rule 7.

15. H. W. Gwilliam, ‘The Provision of Education for the Poor in the City of Worcester During the 18th and 19th Centuries’, University of Birmingham Diploma in Education, 1966, p.30

16. E.g. Ed. B. J. R. Parker, Education in Bradford. 1970, Ch.2. R. C. Russell, A History of Schools and Education in Lindsey, Lincolnshire, 1800-1902. 1965, Vol.2. This is contrary to the opinion of M. G. Jones who describes the Sunday School Movement as primarily urban in character. Of. M. G. Jones, The Charity School Movement. 1938, p.144.

17. E. Paley, A Letter to the Inhabitants of Easingwold. 1821.

18. Central Society for Education, Returns. 1837, p.29

19. Report of the Select Committee on the State of Education. 1834, p.177.

20. Ibid. p.103.

21. London City Mission Annual Report. 1836, p.12.

22. City Mission Magazine. 1841, p.192

23. Ibid., p.193

24. The Times. February 18, 1943.

25. E. Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K. G., 1886, Vol. 1,484

26. The Second Circular of the Ragged School Union. 1844.

27. The Ragged School Union (London) Minute, Book, 16 Oct., 1845.

28. Halifax Ragged School Annual Report. 1857, p.4.

29. York Ragged School Annual Report. 1849, p.5.

30. Oxford Ragged School Annual Report. I860, p.3.

31. Lower Canal Walk Ragged School, Southampton Annual Report. 1852, p.6.

32. Proposed Rules of the Bradford Ragged School. 1854, Rule 1.

33. J. H. Borland, Annals of Barnsley. Vol.4, p.408 (ms. vols. covering period 1859-1864).

34. St. John’s Ragged School, Brighton, Annual Report. 1870, p.86

35. In the period up to 1840 there were of course many individual efforts aimed at reaching the worst cases of neglect and abuse. These were local, isolated and sporadic, ending with the death or waning interest of the founders. One of the most noteworthy was the attempt made by a working-class tailor, Thomas Cranfield. Appalled at the squalor and the filth of the children living in the area of the Mint, he succeeded with a group of friends in building up an organisation of nine-teen Sunday schools before his death in 1833. These catered for the children of thieves and vagrants, those turned out by their parents or who had run away, youngsters ‘of the foulest parts’. Cf. W. M. Eager, Making Men: A History of Boys’ Clubs and Related Movements in Great Britain. 1953. p.121.

36. Minutes of the Committee in Council on Education 1848-50, Vol.2, p.296.

37. Newcastle-upon-Tyne Ragged School Annual Report. I848, p.6.

38. J. H. Burland, op. cit.. p.470.

39. The Rev. E. Jackson, The Past and Present: A New Year’s Address to Parents. 1879, pp.3-4.

40. It proposed to build in Poplar ’a new hall, ragged school, soup kitchen, Bible depot and reading room’. Cf. R. Sandall, The History of The Salvation Army. Vol 1, 1947, p.91. Curiously, General W. Booth ordered the abandonment of The Salvation Army’s Sunday Schools at the Conference of The Christian Mission in 1877. It was his view that ‘saving the man must be put first, for his salvation would change for the better everything in which he was concerned, whether in hi3 home or elsewhere’ . Ibid., p.190. In fact, he realised that the children’s work would involve a whole new organisation with special leaders and held that it would take many years to effect this aspect of Christian work.

41. Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the State of Popular Education in England. 1861, Vol.2, pp.234-5.

42. Bradford Observer, 1869, May 3rd.

43. G. J. Hall, Sought .and Saved, a Prize Essay on Ragged Schools and Kindred Institutions, 1855.

44. Ibid., pp.49-51.

45. Yorkshire Conference of Sunday School Unions, Report, 1871.

49. Individual differences among schools and among the children were wide. This accounts for evidence like that collected by B.Simon, Studies in the History of Education, 1730-1870. I960, p.183. In particular, he quotes S.Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical (Ed.H.Dunckley, 1893), p.12. ‘The Sunday schools of the preceding thirty years had produced many working man of sufficient talent to become readers, writers and speakers in the village meetings for Parliamentary reform.’

50. G. J. Hall, op.cit.. pp.87-39.

51. H. F. Mathews, op.cit.. p.55.

52. N. B. Roper, ’The Contribution of the Non-Conformists to the Development of Education in Bradford in the Nineteenth Century’, University of Leeds, M.Ed., 1967.

53. J. H. Turner, Idle Upper Chapel Independent Sunday School, 1907, p.76

54. Rules and Regulations of the Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School Grimesby 1820.

55. E.g. Rules and Regulations for the Management of the Wesleyan Methodist Sunday Schools in the Bradford West Circuit I863

56. G. J. Hall, on. cit. pp.91-93

57. Woolwich Ragged Schools, Annual Report.1870. p.7.

58. Bent Street Ragged School, Blackburn, Annual Report. 1884

59. Various, The Centenary Memorial of the Establishment of Sunday Schools, 1881, p.36.

60. Annual Report of the Halifax Ragged School. 1853, p.7. Cf. Annual Reports of the Salford Industrial and Ragged School. 1855-70.

61. V. Ward, Observations on Sunday Schools. 1827, p.14.

62. Ibid., p.21.

63. T. Furbank, Friendly Advice on the Impropriety of Teaching Writing in Sunday Schools on the Lord’s Day. 1832, p.14.

64. Leeds Sunday School Union Annual Report. 1841, p.19.

65. A. V. Parsons, on. cit. Ch.2.

71. Ragged School Union (London) Minute Book, July 5, 1844.

72. Ibid.

73. Ibid.. 26 April 1844.

74. B. Rodgers, The Cloak of Charity. 1949, p.103.

75. R. C. Russell, Sunday Schools in Lindsey, p,11,

76. Anonymous, History of the Dewsbury Church Sunday School. 1862, p.14. Cf. also J. Stringer, A Sermon Preached at the Chapel, Wetherby, on the Formatlon of a Sunday School in that Town. 1814, p.13. ‘Therefore as Sunday Schools are professedly instituted to promote reading of the Bible among the children … who can tell but a Baxter, a Fletcher or a Locke, may hereafter date the unfolding of his genius from the time he commenced as a scholar in the Wetherby Sunday School?’

77. P. Songster, Pity My Simplicity. 1963, p.110.

78. Ragged School Union (London) Minute Book. 16 October, 1845

79. Annual Report of the Lower Canal Walk Ragged School, Southampton. 1852.

80. Annual Report of the Halifax Ragged School. 1858.

81. Annual Report of the Leeds Ragged School. 1860.

82. K. J. Heasman, ‘The Influence of the Evangelicals upon the Origin and Development of Charitable Institutions in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century’, University of London, Ph.D., I960. Also K. J. Heasman, Evangelicals in Action. 1962.

83. J. Hanway, A. Comprehensive View of Sunday Schools. 1786.

84. C. Northcott, For Britain’s Children. 1953, p.22.

85. E.g. J. Fawcett, Advice to Youth, 1778. (Popular until 1840). J. Hodson, The Young .Christian ’s Introduction to the Knowledge of His God and Saviour, 1788. (Suitable for twelve-year-olds.) R. Taprell, A Plain Discourse for Children. 1789.

86. E.g. T. Smetham, The Practical Grammar. 1774. D-Fanning. The Universal Spelling Book. 1755.

87. J. Talbott, The Christian Schoolmaster. 1707.

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This is the work of D.H. Webster who wrote a thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Leicester, 1973. It remains an important historical document and analysis of the Ragged School and free education movement in Britain. It will be reproduced and published verbatim in installments for educational purposes to facilitate review and discussion about education. This post is the first part of section one of the thesis where the references have been reproduced inline within the text.

You can see the thesis overview and contents here:

The Ragged School Movement and the Education of the Poor in the Nineteenth Century