‘The Plea’ fell much like a small spark among combustibles, calling forth a very general and lively interest in the welfare of the outcast children of society. For some time after its first publication, every day brought letters expressing sympathy and offering cooperation. The public were impatient for the organization of a scheme, and a public meeting at which it might be launched. Read more…
The first list of ragged schools in London in the records of the Ragged Schools Union is that put before a meeting on July 5th, 1844:
For the most part, history has been concerned with great economic, social, and political movements and the men who were involved in them. Only rarely has it portrayed the plight of ragged, hungry, even homeless and abandoned children. Indeed, until recently, and to some degree today, the welfare of children has been on the fringes of public policy. Read more…
From the Report of the Commission to the Education Act, the Union continued to expand its enterprises, though the rate of acceleration was not as great as in the previous decade. It retained its characteristic of gauche eagerness, and this period differed from the previous one only in its emphases and conclusions. Its finances reached their peak.
By 1850, the Ragged School Union had evolved the principles that were to guide it for the next forty years. It had established a successful central organization; it attracted into its service men of the caliber of William Locke, S.R. Stary, and Joseph Gent, who gave unstintingly to the work in hand; it had obtained the services of Lord Ashley, whose active interest promoted the cause of the Union among the wealthy; it had defined its role in relation to a national system of schools. Somewhat optimistically, it observed: Read more…
“This is the age of societies. There is scarcely one Englishman in ten viio has not belonged to some association for distributing books or for prosecuting them; for sending invalids to the hospital, or beggars to the treadmill; for giving plate to the rich, or blankets to the poor” – Thomas Babington Macaulay. Read more…
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] Read more…
