Educating the Poor in the 18th and 19th centuries.

'Reading, Writing and Arithmetic are...very pernicious to the Poor, who are forc'd to get their Daily Bread by their Daily Labour...Those who spent a great part of their youth in learning to Read, Write, and  Cypher, expect and not unjustly to be employ'd where those Qualifications may be of use to the; the generality of them will look upon downright labour with the utmost Contempt...'
(Bernard de Mandeville, Essay on Charity and Charity Schools, 4th ed. 1725
See also on internet, The Fable of the Bees)

William Underhill, The Village School,
(Wolverhampton Art Gallery)

In  the 18th and 19th centuries there was fierce debate over whether or not education should be universal, compulsory, run by Church or State, teaching methods and the curriculum.  Especially in America there was a lot of disagreement about the relative merits of the study of classical languages, science, modern languages and other subjects with direct practical uses.

In the 18th and most of the 19th centuries a British, or a New England, child, especially in the middle classes, might begin his, or her, schooling at a dame school such as that described by the poet William Shenstone:

'Lo now with state she utters the command!
Eftsoons the urchins to their tasks repair;
Their books of stature small they take in hand
Which with pellucid horn secured are,
To save from finger wet the letters fair;
The work so gay than on their backs is seen;
St. George's high achievements do declare;
On which thilk wight that has y-gazing ben,
Kens  the forth-coming rod, unpleasing sight,
  I ween....'  (The Schoolmistress, 1737)

It was just this kind of school which William Gray attended with the poet Tennyson in the 1760s:
'Betsy Dales...held her school in her own sitting room and lodging room.  Her sceptre was a long hazel rod, polished by long use, which Tennyson and I well remembered.  Not I think that he ever felt its stroke.  Being a gentleman's son, when he rebelled, which he often did, he was tied to the bed post.'
(Mrs. Edwin Gray,  Pages and diaries of a York family 1764-1839.  Macmillan,1927)

A dame school (BBC Archive, Victorian schooling)

Children were sent to dame school at about the age they now go to playgroups or, in the late 19th century after Pestalozzi's educational methods became popular, to kindergarten.  Boys intended for a conventional classical education would often then be sent to begin Latin and Greek with a clergyman, as they often took a few pupils to supplement their incomes.  Alternatively boys or girls might be sent for a few years to some free charity school.

Working class children generally received only basic education, and sometimes not even that. Many were sent to a dame school for a few years before starting work at about age seven.  They might learn to read, possibly to write.  From the late 18th century increasing numbers learned to read in Sunday schools set up by charities or by their employers.  Girls sometimes attended work-schools where they learned a useful trade; sewing or lace-making, for example, getting a basic education and also earning their keep.

Horn books, used to teach the ABC and Lord's Prayer
The text was covered in a very thin sheet of horn, to protect it from little fingers
(Pinterest)

The 1697 Report for the Reform of the Poor Law gave great encouragement to the development of charity schools.  It had an appendix by John Locke, then Commissioner of the Board of Trade, which set out a plan for setting up working schools in every parish.  His plan was to see that relief intended for children was not spent by their parents in the ale house, and giving children industrious work habits early in life.  He also hoped the products of their labour would help pay for their maintenance:
'The children of the labouring poor are an ordinary burden to the parish, and are usually maintained in idleness, so that their labour is also generally lost to the public till they are twelve or fourteen years old...The most effectual remedy for this, that we are able to conceive, and which we humbly propose, is, that working schools be set up in each parish, to which the children of all such as demand relief of the parish, above three and under fourteen years of age, whilst they are at home with their parents, and not otherwise employed for their livelihood, by the allowance of the overseers of the poor, shall be obliged to come.  By this means the mother will be eased of a great part of her trouble in looking after and providing for them at home, and so be more likely to work; the children will be kept in much better order, and be better provided for, and from their infancy be inured to work which is of no small consequence to making them sober and industrious all their lives after.'
(John Locke, Report for the reform of the Poor Law, 1697  Quoted in Ivy Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewitt, Children in English Society, 500-1948, Univ. of Toronto Press, 1969)

The school diet was to be plentiful but plain; bread, with warm water gruel in winter.  On the cost of the scheme Locke calculated hopefully:
'Whereas it may reasonably be concluded that computing all the earnings of a child from three to fourteen years of age, the nourishment and taching of such a child during the whole time would cost the parish nothing, whereas there is no child now which is maintained by the parish but before the age of fourten costs the parish fifty or sixty pounds.'
(John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning  Education, 1693, Appendix A)

John Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education

The most successful work schools were run by charitable organisations such as the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, founded in 1699, and the Society for the Reform of Manners, founded 1691.  These were religious organisations founded to bring the poor to God.  Many were set up by Nonconformists such as the Quakers and Baptists.

The SPCK, the most important of these reliugous organisations, did not set up schools but linked together the efforts of various groups scattered all over Britain.  Originally the  SPCK was interested in providing basic education in reading, writing and religion, but it soon became attract to the idea of work-schools and in 1719 decided to employ children doing piece work for industry:
 'spinning, sewing, knitting or any Employment to which the particular Manufacturers of their resprective Countries (sic; counties) may lead them....this will bring them to an Habit of Industry as well as prepare them for the Business by which they are afterwards to subsist in the World, and effectively obviate an Objection against the Charity Schools, that they tend to take poor children off from those servile Offices which are necessary in all communities and for which the wise Governour of the World has by Providence Resigned them.'
(Dorothy Gardiner, English Girlhood at School, 1929, p. 27,quoting from the SPCK REports, 1737)

The idea of work schools was very popular in America, where John Locke was very much admired.  In Pennsylvania many similar schools were established by different religious sects, particularly the Moravians.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Pennsylvania USA
(Britannica)

There is a description in Harper's Magazine 1882 of the Wilson Industrial School and Mission, New York, which Miss Fryatt describes as 'the pioneer of the many industrial schools since organised in New York City'.  It only took girls and was a day school.  The pupils had three hours tuition in English in the morning, a warm dinner and two hours plain sewing in the afternoon.  They also learned how to carry out simple household duties of the kind that would help them to enter service as maids.  There were classes in religious instruction for both the girls and their mothers.  The pupils were mostly German immigrants from what Mis Fryatt describes as one of the worst slums in the city.
(Harper's New Monthly Magazine Vol. 64, 1882, p.374-381)

The New England Primer, 1777,
(Internet Archive, internet edition available)

The New England Primer .  It was compiled by the Rev. John Rogers, martyred for his faith at Smithfield, London, in the reign of Queen Mary, 1554.  His Primer, with its woodcut of Rodgers, burned at the stake, watched by his wife and ten children, became the standard for all young American Puritans in New England  to study their first alphabet, vocabulary and grammar

The work of charity schools was supplemented from the 1780s by Sunday schools.   Nonconformists set many of these up and ran them as part of their efforts to make Christianity meaningful to the working classes and the poor.
Although Robert Raikes is credited with being the first founder of Sunday schools, in fact the idea seems to have been but into practise independently in several parts of the countr.  By 1786 Raikes' friend Samuel Glasse thought 200,000 children were being taught and the movement continued to spread throughout the 19th century.  (from entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, Raikes, Robert)

Sunday schools provided basic education for children such as apprentices who were not able to take advantage of other schooling opportunities.  Th schooling provided varied considerably according to the school.  Basic religious knowledge centred on the Bible would be the main subject, and most Sunday schools also attempted to teach children good personal habits.  In the Sadler Report on child labour, 1832, the Rev. G.S. Bell is quoted pointing out that children working a fifteen hour day had no time to learn basic household skills; speaking of girls he said:
'The generality of them are as unfit as they possibly can be to fill the important station of a cottager's wife.  How should they, considering the length of labour to which they are now subjected...I am acquainted with many that can scarce mend a hole in their garments.' (Michael Sadler, Report of the Select Committee on Factory Children's Labour, Parliamentary Papers 1831-2, vol. 2, p. 423  Sections available on the internet)

Brook St. Ragged and Industrial school, London, 1853
(BBC Archive, Victorian schooling)

Although the children were taught to read they were not necessarily taught to write, since many of the school founders clearly felt this would make them unfit for their pre-ordained station in life.  The redoubtable Hannah More, founder of Sunday schools in Cheddar among numerous other good works, made her position clear in a letter to William Wilberforce, the anti-slavery campaigner:
The children at her schools learned the Bible, the catechism, and 'such coarse works as may fit them for servants.  I allow of no writing for the poor' (Dictionary of National Biography, More, Hannah)

However, Sunday schools did a great deal of important work, and did partly fill a much felt need for education.  This is shown by the attendance figures and individual testamonies.  For instance, Mrs. Trimmer, the writer, opened a Sunday school in Brentford in May 1786.  By July 159 children were attending, by June 1788 over 300. (Dictionary of National Biography, Trimmer, Sarah)  These were children who were most probably working all the week, maybe 14 hours a day.    By 1803 enough schools had been opened throughout the country for the Sunday School Union to be formed.

Witnessed brought before the Parliamentary Commissioners investigating working conditions were frequently asked whether they had attended Sunday schools, and many did so, although they often said they tended to fall asleep.  Those who did not often excused themselves on the grounds of exhaustion, and many clearly would have liked to attend.  One of the clergymen interviewed testified that, 'since this Factory Bill has been agitated, when I have been at the Mills the children have gathered round me for a minute or two as I passed along, and have said, "When shall we have to work 10 hours a day?  Will you get the Ten Hours Bill?  We shall have a rare time then; surely somebody will set up a necy (sic, night) school; I will learn to write, that I will."'
(Michael Sadler, Report of the Select Committee on Factory Children's Labour, Parliamentary Papers 1831-2, vol. 2, p. 470  Sections available on the internet)

Parents were often equally concerned to get some education for their children, particularly in mining districts, where night schools and Sunday schools were especially popular.  The 1842 Report of the Commissioner for Mines showed that many children attended,  though it was not easy for them.  One witness testified:
'When his son (aged six) gets a little more hardened to the pit, his father means to send him to night school and stop an hour off his sleep.'  The child had been at school from the age of three until he was sent down the mine.
(Report of the Comissioner for Mines, British Parliamentary Papers, 1842, Industrial Revolution, Children's Employment, Vol. 6, p. 90.  Surprisingly, this does not appear to be available on the internet, though some references are available. It makes shocking reading)

Charles Shaw was a child worker in the North Staffordshire potteries in the 1840s.  He attended dame school but had to leave and go to work at age seven.  He remebered, as he was working, seeing a boy about his own age reading a book, and the bitterness he felt at being deprived of education:
'the sight of this youth reading at his own free will forced upon my mind a sense of painful contrast between his position and mine.' (Charles Shaw, When I was a child, 1903, p.21)

In 1811 Andrew Bell, Superintendent of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church began to set up a national system of Church day and Sunday schools, largely run by volunteers.   Fashionable ladies often  became involved with this charity work, providing annual teas for the children and taking an interest in finding them work when they left.  The schools often provided a good education of its kind. In Two Generations, there is a description of one:
'The children were given a uniform dress consisting of poke bonnets, dark prints and white tippets, and were taught reading, writing, arithmetic and excellent sewing (they were all girls) They executed all the needlework for the underclothing of my sister Alice's trousseau'  This was in the days before sewing machines, when sewing, and knitting were really valuable skills.

The patrons of such schools could be very high-handed:
'On one occasion my mother, who took a great interest in the dame school, finding that the children's hair was often untidy, sent an imperative order that the locks of all the scholars should be shortened to the backs of their necks - and, with the message, the barber to execute it.'
(Osbert Sitwell, Two Generations, 1940, Memoirs of Mrs. Campbell Swinton, p.68)

A Ragged School for girls
(BBC Archive, Victorian schooling)

These schools were usually run on the monitorial system, largely developed by Joseph Lancaster.  This system, which was also very popular in America in the early 19th century, depended on the use of the brightest children as pupil-teachers.

The 1870 Education Act which provided for the setting up of school boards in all districts of the U.K. marked the transfer of control of the education system from the Church, but compulsory education did not finally become law in Britain until the 1880s.  Parents and employers continued to flout the ever-increasing restrictions in the employment of children until well into the 20th century.  Ages were frequently falsified until registration of births was made compulsory, and still more frequently school attendance, particularly in country districts, was simply irregular, according to demand for the children's labour.  Farmers often expected to have the labour of their workmen's whole families made available to them at particularly busy times, and children tended to be taken away from school to help get in the crops, working in family units, with even toddlers helping by twisting corn stalks to bind the sheaves.  Parents would also keep their children back to help with gleaning, for this was generally a field-hand's perquisit and an important addition to wages.  The depressed entries in the Akenfield school log show the difficulties rural teachers faced:

'June 1889: attendance bad.  Picking stones has ended and weeding in the fields still continues...Twenty boys hardly ever attend and are seen working.  The law is broken here with impunity...work how you will, it is uphill work in rural schools.'  'April 3rd 1890.  Field-work, gathering stones, cow keeping and farm work has reduced the average.  35 out of 61 attended.  It is impossible in my opinion to teach either Geography or Grammar owing to the bad attendance caused by the farmers sending the children out on the fields....'
(Ronald Blythe, Akenfield.  1969.  p.165. 'Akenfield', a made up name, was based on a real village in East Anglia)

In Lark Rise to Candleford Flora Thompson described her village school around 1900:
'The girls in their ankle-length frocks and long, straight pinafores, with their hair strained back from their brows and secured on their crowns by a ribbon or black tape or a bootlace, the bigger boys in corduroys and hobnailed boots, and the smaller ones in homemade sailor suits or, until they were six or seven, in petticoats.
(Flora Thomoson, Lark Rise to Candleford, 1945, p.171)

'Governess' taught all the classes herself in one room, with the assistance of two monitors aged about twelve.  Flora Thompson does not mention the absenteeism which plagued the teacher at 'Akenfield' but at about thirteen schooling finished, the boys going onto the local farms and the girls into service in local farmhouses and later, if they were lucky, in some grand country house, following a pattern which had been traditional for centuries.

However, Flora Thompson recorded the wind of change which was blowing even through remote Oxfordshire villages by her time; instead of teaching children to know their place, Miss Shepherd 'taught them that poor people's souls are as valuable and that their hearts may be as good and their minds as capable of cultivation as those of the rich, and read them stories of boys of poor parents who became great men (there were no women, Laura noticed)'
Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford, 1945 p.182)

Alison Uttley, the children's writer, and daughter of a respectable but not rich farmer also gives a description of a typical state school in Britain in the late 19th century:
'fifty children had lessons in the long open room.  On the walls were glass cases full of geological specimens, grey, brown and black stones, sparkling stones, bright green malachite, fossils and shells...Little classes of childdren, each with a pupil teacher, sat along the room, and in the centre sat the headmaster at his desk...By his side was the cane with which he swished the hands of unfortunate childdren...The lessons, the games, the singing and music, the open-air drill when little girls used wands and boys iron dumb-bells, all made a wonderful life for me.'
(Alison Uttley, Ambush of Young Days, 1937, p.155-9)

These schools were tough, but gave many children their start in life.  Schools for the 'gentry' could be just as rough.