The Children’s Sheriff and the First Industrial Ragged Schools by D. H. Webster

“On the last night of 1839 William Watson wrote in his diary, ‘What have I done for my fellow men? Nothing! Nothing!’, Nothing! What can I do? What does He will that I do? That I love Him with all my strength and might – and my neighbour as myself. How can I love the Father and not the child? I must no longer live for myself but for His little ones. Faith without works is dead.” [1. M.Angus, Sheriff Watson of Aberdeen. 1913, p.58.]

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Origins Of The Ragged Schools: John Pounds, The Kind Old Cobbler by D. H. Webster

The precise role of John Pounds in the history of the Ragged School Movement is obscure. His biographer presents him as the founder of the ragged schools (1. H. Hawkes, The Recollections of John Pounds. 1884, p.295). It was certainly an opinion held by some within a few years of his death (2. E.G. York Herald, 4 May, 1850. ’The origin of this movement commenced with one very humble in life (John Pounds).’ Report of a speech made by the Rev. Canon Trevor). Read more…

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

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 It remains an important historical document and analysis of the Ragged School and free education movement in Britain.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 the thesis where the references have been reproduced inline within the text.

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1850: The Ragged School Union Magazine Address

“Man is surely, of all things in the creation, most interesting to man. It is his intellect and his moral sense—his conscious capacity of an excellence he has never reached— his inward vision of the true, the beautiful, and the good—that invest him with a dignity which belongs to him alone of all earthly beings, and, more than any mere external superiority, mark him as a creature of a higher order, and adapted to nobler ends than the rest, between which and himself there is a wide and inaccessible distance.” Read more…

Ragged Schools and Ragged Scholars: Sunday Schools – Thomas Cranfield – John Pounds – the City Mission – Ragged Schools

I have some true stories to tell of children who went to a ragged school: but I wish to tell these stories in my own way; and I must first write about other persons and things. It was a good day when Sunday schools were first thought of Since then, large numbers of children, who else would have grown up ignorant of God, have been taught to read his holy word; and many have believed and obeyed the gospel, and been saved from the wrath to come.

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