Ragged Schools

I like a bit of social history particularly as it has great resonance and significance to our current era.

It is always interesting to see if we, in our supposed enlightened and affluent existence , have taken on board and learned from the often harsh and tragic events of the past.

Take the year 1866.

There had been a number of accelerating factors across the globe at that time with a series of poor harvests,  an international banking crash, a depression in trade and various pandemics including cholera.

That list has ominous familiarity for our 21st Century world with, in the last decade or so and to the present day a cyclical procession of financial and commercial crises.

Of course the are those who always tend to profit from the misfortunes and hardships of others. On the flip side there are certainly more who lose out.

The published Attendance Registers of Copperfield Road Free School in the East End of London starting from 1866 make for interesting and sobering reading about the pressures at play in the social structure of that time.

This particular educational establishment, not in any way different to others in main towns and cities in Britain in the late Victorian Era, was one of the Ragged Schools founded by the great philanthropist, Doctor Thomas Barnardo.

It took in the children, some still swaddled infants, of the poorest in the working classes not as an escape from poverty and destitution but as a stop-gap measure in the interests of their health, welfare and mental development.

Below is one of the many analysed extracts from an academic study of the School Registers.

It refers to the circumstances of the students behind their arrival at the doors of the Ragged Schools.

Father in hospital or Infirmary- 9 children

Father ill- 60 children

Father out of work- 34 children

Father absent/deserted/abroad/at sea - 9 children

Father in prison- 3 children

Father in irregular/casual work- 2 children

Father Dock Labourer- 68 children

Father labourer- 117 persons

Father in receipt of casual/intermittent work- 13 children

Father labourer out of work - 46 children

Father out of work - 101 children

Fatherless- 73 children

Motherless- 14 children

Boarded out- 7 children

Transferred specifically by LCC- 70 children

Gone in to Workhouse- 6 children

Came from Workhouse- 1 child

Dead - 8 children

Under Age- 4 children

Enrolment postponed until older - 3 children

Mother says too ill- 1 child

Mother says not coming/won't send - 11 children

Left area or removed to......- 6 children

Attendance problems /long continued absence/attended only half a day- 3 children

Disabled- 7 children

Left- 328 children

Of age- 13 children.

The Ragged Schools saved the families the sum of one penny per week which was a princely amount in their circumstances but more importantly provided an essential lifeline of nutritious food, professional training and clothes.