N.Sheldon University of Oxford 1

Children of the State: Care and Control 1880-1939: a study of policy and practice in the institutional care of children deemed at risk

This presentation is part of a year-long ESRC-funded fellowship 2008

N.Sheldon University of Oxford 2

Civilising the Delinquent and Neglected: The

Role of the Industrial School

History of Childhood Colloquium

Saturday 21st June 2008

© National Archives PRO COPY 1/436, Part 2 (13 June 1898)

N.Sheldon University of Oxford 3

Outline of the presentation

1. Who were the delinquent and the neglected and why did they attract attention in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century?

2. How was the industrial school meant to address the problem?

3. How successful were they at ‘civilising’ the young people in their charge?

4. How and why did attitudes to the ‘civilising the delinquent and neglected’ change over time?

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Street children – criminal or vulnerable?

© Google images

N.Sheldon University of Oxford 5© Peter Higginbotham

Oxford Industrial School

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‘An industrial school is intended for children whose home surroundings are bad and who are neglected, that if not at once looked after and cared for, are in danger of becoming criminals. …Nearly all these children have been removed from evil surroundings and when we remember that 80 per cent become useful members of society it must be felt that the Industrial Schools are doing good service.’

‘Education is cheaper than conviction.’

York School Attendance Committee 1881-1883

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Industrial Schools

Portslade Industrial School, Brighton

Standon Farm School, Staffordshire

Source: www.hiddenlives.org.uk

© The Children’s Society

Source: http://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk © My Brighton and Hove

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The Indefatigable

The Wellesley

© Peter Higginbotham

The Empress

Industrial School Training Ships

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The ‘programme’ of reform in an industrial school

• Detention and containment created the ‘enclosed world’ of the school.

• Separation from family, neighbourhood and outside influences.

• Moral reform consisted of religion, basic education, physical labour designed to inculcate obedience, order and regularity.

• Preparation for ‘useful toil’ according to middle-class ideas – the artisan, agricultural labourer, sailor/soldier and domestic servant were non-contentious working-class occupations.

N.Sheldon University of Oxford 15© The Children's Society

Dinner in Standon Farm Industrial School, 1910

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Source: www.hiddenlives.org.uk© The Children’s Society

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The Industrial School Brass Band

Shawbury Industrial School Band, 1911

© www.satiche.org.uk

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The developing critique of the industrial school regime

The superintendent …has to create the tone of the school, and maintain it;… to supply something in the place of home, whether the loss of home is felt or unfelt; to brighten for the children their lot of seclusion; to make them forget the humiliation of compulsory detention; to win the neglected…by kindness and individual attention and to train into decent members of society those who … were adrift … and who during the years of their detention will be isolated from family life and from almost all society

except what they find in the school. Source: Departmental Committee on Reformatory and Industrial Schools, 1896

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1900-1930 – a cultural shift in attitudes?

• Repressive discipline• Exclusion• ‘Criminals’

• Progressive trust• Inclusion• ‘Children’

From To

Evidenced by more stress on:- Physical fitness and exercise – resulting in better facilities,

especially for boys.Individuality and play – resulting in more time for

recreation, games and entertainments, even holidays.Higher standards of care, diet, health and education with

better-qualified teachers and more time in the school-room rather than on repetitive manual tasks such as wood-cutting for boys or laundry work for girls.

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Physical fitness and exercise

Swimming pool, Leicester Boys

Home 1901

Heywood Home football team,

Lancashire, 1914© The Children's Society

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C.E.B. Russell, 1916• I am merely pleading for the treatment

of every child as an individual without reference to his or her fellows in the School….I believe practically every boy to be at heart good … I am confident that long periods of detention in any institution, no matter how excellent … do not quicken, but rather deaden, the intelligence.

Source: Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Reformatories and Industrial Schools, 1916

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Why did the use of industrial schools decline?

• Periodic scandals and media criticism. • Decline in prosecutions for truancy after 1900.• More inmates with minor convictions. • Departmental Reports 1896, 1913, 1927 very

critical.• Decline in numbers in relevant age group.• Probation and use of family-based solutions

increased• Rising expectations of schools and costs for them –

especially after WW1.• 1933 Children and Young Persons Act subsumed all

industrial schools and reformatories into approved school system