SCHOOLS OF INDUSTRY.

N every large seat of population there may be observed to exist a class of children, less or more in point of numbers, who, notwithstanding all ordinary means for education, habitually loiter in the streets in a state of rags and wretchedness, attend no school, and glean a miserable livelihood from the practice of mendicancy. In cities and towns, where the Poor-Law is administered on a comprehensive and humane scale, the number of such incumberers of the public thoroughfares is of comparatively small amount; nevertheless there, as well as elsewhere, juvenile mendicancy and vagrancy are painfully visible, and demand investigation and correction. What may be the special reasons for this social disorder, it would be beyond our present purpose to inquire; in intemperance, and other depravities in parents, we should perhaps find a sufficient explanation of the phenomenon. Be the causes what they may, it must be obvious that the evil requires to be remedied. Thrown ruthlessly on public commiseration, the juvenile vagrants almost invariably fall into the commission of crime. From begging, the transition to petty pilfering seems easy and imperceptible, and from smaller to greater delinquencies the path is not by any means more difficult. Thus, from less to more, little by little, the infant beggar becomes the infant thief; and the infant thief becomes the youthful burglar. It is a curriculum of misery and crime, commencing with neglect, and ending in ruin.

The number of children brought before the various criminal tribunals of England is, I understand, about three thousand annually; and before the courts of Scotland a proportionally large number make their appearance. This host of juvenile criminals may be said to form the corps out of which the higher order of depredators spring. At eight or nine years of age, the unfortunate creature is brought before one of the lower police tribunals; at ten, he advances to the assizes; and from twelve to fourteen, having regularly matriculated, he is prepared for the Central Criminal Court, or the High Court of Justiciary. Before he is fifteen, he has most likely been convicted from six to eight times, and cost society some hundreds of pounds for trials and imprisonments.

The spectacle of a child arraigned for the commission of some technically grave offence is one of the most distressing which can be witnessed; yet its occurrence appears to have become so common, that it scarcely excites more than a transient remark. A few years ago, I was summoned to appear as a juror in the sheriff's criminal court at Edinburgh. On attending at an early hour in the morning, I found that I was one of forty-five persons

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brought together on the same errand; many from distant parts of the county, and the whole, from the care on their countenances, appeared to feel that the sacrifice they were making to the injunctions of the law was by no means a light one. At length the court met, and was constituted by the chair being taken by the sheriff. The culprit was brought in, and arraigned. He was a little boy of twelve or thirteen years of age, dressed in a pair of tattered corduroy trousers; and his tangled hair, dirty face, and bare feet, told plainly to what class of the population he belonged-one of those poor wretched vagrant urchins whom I have mentioned as living on charity, and whose whinings for halfpence are the annoyance of well-dressed passengers. If he had a father or mother, neither appeared on the present occasion. He was alone, and friendless. When addressed by the judge, he seemed puzzled in making a reply before so large an assembly. It was at length gathered from him that he pled not guilty," and so the case went to a jury, of which I was There was something exceedingly affecting, yet droll, in the whole affair. The apparatus evoked to try the little vagrant seemed like erecting a steam-engine of five hundred horse-power to kill a mouse. On the one side were the judge, prosecutor, solicitors, pro. and con., sundry subordinate officials, and the jury-a selection of fifteen from five-and-forty men, dragged from their daily avocations over a compass of at least thirty miles; on the other was a poor little dirty urchin, so short in stature, that his face barely reached the top of the table behind which he was placed; and to have a proper look of him, he was caused to stand upon a chair in front of the court. Crime charged -stealing an old brass candlestick worth sixpence. The theft was proved, as a matter of course; and in a very cool commonplace sort of way the culprit was condemned to six months' imprisonment—the hint being added, that as this was his third offence of the kind, he should, on the next occasion, be brought before a higher tribunal. The warning was well meant; but as the poor creature could neither read nor write, and had been a neglected child since infancy, it may be doubted if he understood a single word that was addressed to him. After another case of a similar kind, the entire members of the jury were informed they might depart, and the court broke up. The expense to the country, and to the individuals employed in these miserable trials, could not, I am told, be estimated at less than one hundred pounds.

Nine months later, I was summoned as a juror in the supreme criminal court; and there, amidst a much more imposing appa ratus of law and lawyers-for one thing, three learned judges on the bench-appeared to undergo his trial the same unfor tunate little boy whom I had formerly seen before the sheriff. Working his way up, as it is called, he had passed through all the inferior

mitted a crime which inferred one of the highest statutory penalties. The hint of the sheriff had been made good. He was now before a higher court-the highest he could reach. Again there were all the minutiae of evidence, with harangues from lawyers; and again was the culprit found guilty, and condemned. Again was there an admonition from the presiding judge; again did the court break up; and again did every member of the jury wend his way home, in a state of moody discontent at having been put to so much trouble on so pitiful a business. As the assigned punishment was transportation, the country on this occasion incurred probably an obligation of three or four hundred pounds. Hundreds of pounds to punish a crime! Five pounds rightly laid out at first would most likely have prevented its commission. The possible ruin of a boy, body and soul, is a different and more impressive question.

This was no solitary case. Instances of the same kind are daily and universally occurring. It is not unusual to impute blame to magistrates and judges for not making an effort to remedy so gross an abuse; but the special duty of the tribunals over which they preside is to punish, not to prevent crime, and on society at large lies the responsibility of eradicating the great evil to which I have here drawn attention. What, then, asks the philanthropist, are the means to be adopted for accomplishing this desirable object? After every consideration which I have been able to give the subject, and after having visited various countries in which the reclamation of juvenile offenders has engaged the efforts of the state, I should say, as a general principle, that juvenile mendicancy and vagrancy cannot be eradicated without resorting to legal compulsion. In Prussia, all children are compelled by law to attend regularly at school-a school either chosen by the parent or by the state. In Holland, the law for enjoining school attendance is less stringent; but practically, through the efficacy of the administration of relief to the poor, and also by means of the police, juvenile vagrancy is repressed. In France, the riddance of young vagrants is effected in a different manner: all children falling into crime are humanely supposed to have acted without discernment, and are thereupon detained in prison, and educated till a certain age. Without entering into the controversial question as to the institution of a general plan of compulsory education in England and Scotland, it seems to me reasonable to infer, from the visible pressure of circumstances, that compulsion is absolutely necessary as far as the suppression of vagrancy is concerned. It might, I think, be safely adopted as a theory, that every act of mendicancy, along with apparently neglected destitution, should constitute a title to enforce attendance at school; such alternative being obviously preferable to compulsory detention in prison.

Supposing so much granted, it must be interesting to inquire what species of instruction and other attentions should be be

stowed on the captured vagrant. Neglected children may be divided into three classes: first, orphans, who are of course entitled to come within the provisions of the Poor-Law; second, the children of parents who habitually neglect them, or perhaps encourage them in a course of vice; and third, children who perversely disobey the parental injunctions, and voluntarily become vagrants and thieves. The whole of these should receive a similar education, with only this difference, that the first or -orphan class require to be clothed and boarded as well as instructed. What the second and third class require is, daily instruction and training; and as far as it can be enforced, or is eligible, the expense should be borne by the parents. Those who, from intemperance or other disreputable causes, abandon their children to public sympathy, are clearly guilty of a misdemeanour, and the least punishment to which they can be subjected is to cause them, by all available means, to contribute towards the general support and instruction of their offspring. With respect to the third class, the small expenses attendant on their education and training would be gratefully paid by parents to any institution which would undertake the office of tutor. Under the strong impulse of compassion, benevolent individuals and societies have established and supported schools in different places for the purpose of instructing and reclaiming the neglected children of towns; but while giving the highest praise for such disinterested efforts, I would humbly submit that the task they undertake is a public duty, and should, in every instance, fall within the scope of the public authorities, and be, as far as is necessary, at the public cost. Parochial boards, or guardians of the poor, are therefore the parties on whom is chargeable the function and responsibility of clearing the streets and highways of pauper and dissolute children, aided in their executive by the police and district magistracy, and with their ordinary funds, assisted by those forced or voluntary contributions from parents to which I have already made reference. Less than this would be to leave the work incompletely done, and at the same time unduly tax the benevolent to supplement, by their efforts, what should be, once for all, done as a matter of public duty.

So much for the organisation of any scheme for suppressing juvenile mendicancy. The next point for our consideration is the kind of instruction which the children should receive. The education of the poor should, I think, in all cases include not only moral and religious, but also industrial training. If any good practical end is expected, it will not be enough to impart the routine elements of letters, or to exercise the memory in repeating answers to questions. Moral and religious duties will require to be reduced to habit, and so likewise will many useful branches of knowledge need to be enforced by training. In a word, without the active exercise of both mind and body, directed

teachers, is only a kind of living automaton. Unaccustomed to think or act, he enters the world helpless, and prepared for yielding to the many petty temptations to a course of vice which beset him. Trained partly at home, the children of the virtuous and industrious orders stand in much less need of this species of culture; but to the abandoned poor it is essential. Exercised in no useful pursuit, they must be taught to use their hands in a number of humble but necessary duties; and as labour is in itself virtue, I should anticipate that the more they are so trained within reasonable bounds, the better will they be prepared, under the Divine blessing, for giving efficacy to religious instruction. With views of this nature, the efforts of various authorised, as well as philanthropic bodies, have been very properly directed to the industrial training of the children under their care. The largest School of Industry which it has been my fortune to see is that at Norwood, within a few miles of London. Of my visit to this establishment in July 1839, I beg to offer the following

account:

VISIT TO THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL AT NORWOOD.

Norwood, in Surrey, from its suitable distance from town, and the salubrity of its situation, was, a number of years ago, selected by the guardians of the metropolitan poor as well calculated for the rearing of orphan, or otherwise destitute infants, having claims on the parochial establishments. These unfortunates were placed here at nurse in the cottages of the peasantry, where, as is well known, they were not in general treated in such a manner as to aid the effects of the healthful climate. Afterwards they were collected into a large establishment at Norwood, under the charge of one trustworthy individual, who contracted for their nurture en masse it was this establishment, latterly under the care of the new Poor-Law Commissioners, which I had come to see.

I found the Norwood School of Industry, as it is now called, to be composed of a series of large brick buildings, in the midst of enclosed areas-the whole occupying the top of one of some swelling eminences, and thus presenting an aspect of cheerfulness rather uncommon in pauper institutions. The children, at present eleven hundred in number, and of various ages, from two or three to twelve or thirteen, are classed in two separate wards or divisions, according to their sex, and still further classified in their respective divisions, according to age and capacity. The present contractor and superintendent is Mr Aubin, a middle-aged man, of that aspect which I am accustomed (being a stranger in the south) to regard as characteristic of the frank and upright Englishman. He undertakes to pay all expenses, in consideration of his receiving four shillings and sixpence a-week for the support of each inmate-a rate which must be considered sufficient, though not by any means extravagant, considering the excellence and copiousness of the diet, the com