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…
“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…
One of the important successes claimed by the ragged schools was that they helped to reduce juvenile crime. Schools often quoted figures to show how the number of child criminals had declined since their establishment. The Edinburgh Ragged School claimed that, in the first five years of its existence, the percentage of children under fourteen in prison had dropped from 5.6% to 0.9%. Read more…
The ragged schools aimed at providing schooling for the very poorest children and succeeded in attracting them into the schools in large numbers. Those who went out into the streets to recruit children for the schools and those who taught them were often horrified by what they saw.
In our last communication, we gave some accounts of the rise, progress, and results of the Ragged School in the Old Stable. These would show the necessity for such institutions, and their adaptation to the wants of these long neglected children of the streets. The reader would at once see, that, in cases not a few, ignorance is the parent of crime, and that the best and most simple means for the moral and physical elevation of such a class is to give them a useful and religious education. Read more…
The New Year 1839, opened with a glorious sun-rise; bright and clear. The frost was intense; but there was a dryness in the air which made it pleasant and refreshing. John Pounds was up long before the sun; cooking hot breakfasts; and taking them round to poor sufferers in back courts and alleys. Read more…
The following Sunday evening, I saw John Pounds turning round the corner of White Horse Street into High Street; with a group of his scholars about him. It gave me a view of the old man’s deformity to an extent I had no idea of before; though several friends had spoken to me strongly of it. Read more…