Religion and Relationships in Ragged Schools

An Intimate History of Educating the Poor, 1844-1870

Laura M. Mair

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351185530
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Focusing on the interaction between teachers and scholars, this book provides an intimate account of "ragged schools" that challenges existing scholarship on evangelical child-saving movements and Victorian philanthropy. With Lord Shaftesbury as their figurehead, these institutions provided a free education to impoverished children. The primary purpose of the schools, however, was the salvation of children's souls.

Using promotional literature and local school documents, this book contrasts the public portrayal of children and teachers with that found in practice. It draws upon evidence from schools in Scotland and England, giving insight into the achievements and challenges of individual institutions. An intimate account is constructed using the journals maintained by Martin Ware, the superintendent of a North London school, alongside a cache of letters that children sent him. This combination of personal and national perspectives adds nuance to the narratives often imposed upon historic philanthropic movements.

Investigating how children responded to the evangelistic messages and educational opportunities ragged schools offered, this book will be of keen interest to historians of education, emigration, religion, as well as of the nineteenth century more broadly.

1
‘The glory of god for its end’

The ragged school movement

Reflecting on the 1840s with the benefit of fifty years of hindsight, Ware instructed the reader of his memoirs, ‘It must be remembered that at this time the destitute poor were very much neglected’.¹ This concise statement encapsulates the drastic changes that had occurred in the intervening years. Attitudes towards the poor and beliefs about poverty, ideas about children and childhood, and views regarding the duties of society and the value of philanthropy had all altered over the century. If it were necessary to reflect on these changes in the 1890s, it is still more necessary today. This chapter begins with an overview of the societal context of the mid-nineteenth century. The impact of industrialisation, increased migration, and overcrowding upon urban centres is touched on, followed by an assessment of the destitute poor’s depiction during this period. Changing educational ideas about children and their development are then discussed, looking particularly at the increasing influence of environmentalist thought.

Following this, the chapter moves to examine the educational system in the early and mid-nineteenth century, focusing especially on the education available for poor children. The emergence and growth of ragged schools across England and Scotland is then traced, and particular attention is given to the coherence and shared discourse of the schools. The final two sections of this chapter examine the teachers involved in the schools. At this point the ‘silent testimony’ (to borrow Clark’s phrase) of working-class and female teachers is the prime focus of the investigation, as their significant contribution to the schools is analysed using both ragged school literature and local school documents.²

‘The solemn and stern realities’: setting the scene

Eric J. Evans writes that the rapid economic growth at the end of the eighteenth century was ‘the most profound and thoroughgoing change yet experienced by mankind in society’.³ Similarly, Burnett observes the marked social change during this period, writing that in 1801 ‘around 80 per cent of the population of England and Wales was still “rural”’. By the 1851 census, Burnett writes, ‘the decisive tilt had taken place’, and the majority of England’s population now resided in urban areas.⁴ Industrial towns experienced particularly steep and transformative growth; between 1821 and 1831, the population of Bradford, a centre of textile mills, increased by 78 per cent. Few cities were sufficiently prepared to accommodate such an influx of migrants, and consequently ‘overcrowding and a deterioration in housing standards were almost inevitable’.⁵

In 1832 James Phillips Kay, later Kay-Shuttleworth, observed the harm squalid dwellings inflicted on inhabitants, noting that ‘Sporadic cases of typhus chiefly appear in those [streets] which are narrow, ill ventilated, unpaved, or which contain heaps of refuse, or stagnant pools’.⁶ The very poorest resided in cellars where they were available; only those in direst need resorted to such cramped and damp dwellings. After citing the extensive habitation of cellars in Liverpool, London, and Manchester, Burnett notes that ‘large proportions of the population regularly lived in semi-subterranean “homes”’, which at best were unsatisfactory from a sanitary point of view and, at worst, were disgusting and offensive insults to humanity’.⁷

During the same period, discussions regarding the poor laws intensified as existing legislation was accused of aggravating ‘the very problems it was designed to alleviate’.⁸ Those seeking reform pointed to the abuse of the Speenhamland system by ‘the sluggish slothful man impelled to work only by the direst necessity’.⁹ Gertrude Himmelfarb concisely summarises that the core complaint ‘repeated in countless pamphlets, tracts, sermons, articles, speeches, and reports, was that the poor laws were “pauperizing the poor”’.¹⁰ Although historians have questioned the methods employed by the commissioners who compiled the 1834 Poor Law Report, its significance both in drawing attention to the poor’s condition and in questioning how poverty should be responded to cannot be denied.¹¹

According to Evans, by ‘the mid-1840s it was not open to anti-reformers to deny that the most important factors affecting longevity were an individual’s social class and place of residence’.¹² The close neighbouring of poverty and wealth in London particularly fostered an uncomfortable atmosphere. In Himmelfarb’s estimation, the existence of poverty was not only disturbing because of the suffering it entailed but because it was regarded as regressive.¹³ The perceived status of the metropolis as ‘the first city in the world’ made the continuing existence of ‘misery, ignorance and vice, amidst all the immense wealth and great knowledge’ a ‘national disgrace’.¹⁴

Both in appearance and in experience, the extreme poor were perceived as wholly other. In the 1842 Report by the Poor Law Commissioners, one ‘witness’ drew on imagery from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels to describe Spitalfields weavers, stating that they were ‘decayed in their bodies; the whole race of them is rapidly descending to the size of Liliputians’.¹⁵ Like the residents of Liliput, they were part of a different colony, a tribe distinguished by its difference from ‘the norm’. Henry Mayhew, the Morning Chronicle’s ‘Special Correspondent’, dubbed the ‘discoverer of the “poor”’ by Himmelfarb, used such othering language extensively in his reports.¹⁶ He framed his accounts with terminology that stressed the curiosity and distinctiveness of those he spoke with. Mayhew’s investigation into ‘Street-folk’ includes among its sub-headings ‘Of wandering tribes in general’ and ‘Wandering tribes in this country’, exemplifying his argument that those mentioned were ‘part of the nomads of England, neither knowing nor caring for the enjoyments of home’.¹⁷

The image of a barbarous tribe dwelling in the midst of civilised Britain proved a powerful one. Himmelfarb writes that the ‘“strange” country unearthed by Mayhew’ acted as a ‘blank check on credibility, an invitation to the suspension of disbelief. Since it was an unknown country that was being explored for the first time, anything might be true, nothing was inconceivable’.¹⁸ Mayhew himself contrasted his findings with those of missionaries overseas, writing in the introduction to the 1861 edition of his collected reports, ‘It is curious, moreover, as supplying information concerning a large body of persons, of whom the public had less knowledge than of the most distant tribes of the earth’.¹⁹

The early and mid-nineteenth century was a period of expansion and excitement for (to use Catherine Hall’s phrase) ‘the missionary public’.²⁰ Brown describes how the nation was ‘thrilled to the heroic exploits of missionaries, who traversed the globe and preached to heathen peoples in exotic settings’. Britain was deemed an ‘elect nation’, divinely chosen to spread the Christian message.²¹ The ‘flurry of excitement’ surrounding overseas missions overflowed into the domestic arena, with the early and mid-nineteenth century witnessing a marked increase in philanthropic activity at home.²² Twells writes that during the 1820s, ‘missionary philanthropy infused English culture’, involving ‘women and children as well as men, it was public and familial, domestic and global, simultaneously involving intimate and very distant concerns’.²³ According to Twells, whether ‘located in Britain, Tahiti or the rural areas surrounding Calcutta, early missions adopted a very similar structure, combining methods of Christian education with a programme for “civilisation”, or cultural reform’.²⁴ Overseas missions and domestic philanthropy were two sides of the same evangelical coin.

The nineteenth century was, according to Bebbington, ‘the Evangelical century’.²⁵ Missions, whether to city slums or to South India, were driven by a fervent desire to save souls and alleviate bodily suffering. The title of Heasman’s book, Evangelicals in Action, encapsulates her argument that Victorian evangelicals ‘are remembered for what they did rather than for their theology’.²⁶ The critical contribution that evangelicals, both from within the Established Church and dissenting denominations, made to domestic philanthropy is noted by Heasman, who estimates that ‘three-quarters of the total number of voluntary charitable organisations in the second half of the nineteenth century can be regarded as Evangelical in character and control’.²⁷

Although hailing from diverse church backgrounds, evangelicals were united by shared principles. Bebbington identifies four core tenets of evangelicalism: activism, biblicism, conversionism, and crucicentrism.²⁸ They were, in Chadwick’s words, ‘men of the Reformation, who preached the cross, the depravity of man, and justification by faith alone’.²⁹ Dancing, playing cards, and visiting theatres were disapproved of, while the sanctity of Sunday and the value of regular Bible study were asserted.³⁰ Evangelicals were likewise united by an entrenched suspicion of Catholicism; as Chadwick observes, ‘Rome the...