The Number of Ragged Schools In London during the Early Years of the Ragged Schools Union
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:
A Plea For Ragged Schools; Or Prevention Better Than Cure. By The Rev. Thomas Guthrie.
The Waifs of England and Their Contribution to Nineteenth Century Social Reform by Katharine F. Lenroot
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…
The Union and the Collapse of Ragged Day Schools, 1861 – 1874
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.
Ragged Schools: Growth and Expansion, 1850-1860 by D. H. webster
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…
The London Ragged School Union by D. H. Webster
“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…
The Influence of the Sunday Schools on the Ragged School Movement by D. H. Webster
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…
Dr. John Henrik Clarke: Black History as the Lost Pages of Human History
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.]