Page images
PDF
EPUB

of young persons in all the Schools, on the day of inspection, was 512; that when sufficient employment could not be given to the children in the factory, they were drafted to the School, and thus were kept from evil, and were always ready when wanted; that they are not paid except when at work; that children from the neighbourhood of the Factory are taken into these schools before old enough to work, and when fit, those who have earned for themselves the best characters are drafted to the work-rooms; that by these means the necessity of employing strangers is prevented; that the increased expense of these out scholars is under £50-with advantages more that equivalent to the cost; that the annual expense of the Schools was

[blocks in formation]

that Mr. Wilson had established a cricket ground, small garden allotments, and summer excursions; that in addition to the teachers provided for the factory work-people there is a permanent chaplain, who visits the sick, acquaints himself with the names of children employed, makes himself familiar with the characters of the men, reads prayers for the assembled work-people, and exercises a general superintendence over all matters connected with the education and moral welfare of the persons employed; that a chapel had been leased for the use of the work people; that the conduct of all attending it was most edifying; that the chaplain's salary was £200 per annum, which with the £510 for the schools, and £135 for the cricket ground and summer excursions, made the total annual expenditure £845; that the chapel itself involved an additional expense of £260, which raised the entire annual estimate to £1,105; that Mr. Wilson had, from the original formation of the schools to the 31st of December, 1851, expended no less than £3,289 of his own monies in annual payments in furnishing accominodation and books. The Committee, in con-) tinuation, called upon the Board of Directors to consider how, and to what extent, these schools should be supported; and how, and to what amount, Mr. Wilson should be reimbursed.

We have thus considered the report of the Committee, a Report which records the beginning of the end; but it is for us to show the commencement of the beginning, and the continuance of the work, as detailed in a letter from Mr. Wilson to the Committee, and upon which, supported by the evidences of usefulness, witnessed by themselves, they more than recommended the extension of a munificent support, now most wisely and advantageously conceded.

The Education Committee however, thought it advisable to obtain from Mr. Wilson an account of the Schools, believing that he, as the founder, could best describe their origin and progress. Mr. Wilson commenced his letter, bearing date 9th March, 1852, by stating that

"The schools began in a very humble way by half a dozen of our boys hiding themselves behind a bench two or three times a week, after they had done their day's work and had their tea, to practice writing on scraps of paper with worn-out pens begged from the counting-house. The foreman of their department encouraged them and, as they persevered, and were joined by others of the boys, he begged that some rough moveable desks might be made for them. When they had obtained these, they used to clear away the candle. boxes at night, and set up the desks, and thus work more comfortably than before, although still at great disadvantages as compared with working in any ordinary school-room. My brother encouraged them with some books as prizes, and many who had been very backward improved much in reading and writing. The fact of the whole thing being the work of the boys themselves seemed to form so large a part of its value that we carefully abstained from interfering in it further than by these presents of books for prizes, and of copy books, spelling books, and testaments, and by my being (but not until long after the commencement, and after being much pressed and being assured that it would cause no restraint) always present at the school meetings to give them the sanction of authority, but taking no more active part than hearing the most backward boys their spelling."

These half dozen lads soon increased to thirty, and considering that the numbers might increase still further, Mr. Wilson and his brother "gutted" the upper part of an old building belonging to the factory and formed a large schoolroom, capable of containing one hundred pupils, and erected an iron staircase by which it could be reached, at a total cost, for construction and furniture, of £172.

In the winter of 1848 the boys took possession of this school-roon, and so completely was the whole management entrusted to them, that the prayers with which the school

business closed, were read by one of themselves. Many of the elder boys now joined the school, and difficulties in controlling and directing the business having arisen, the necessity for some stronger ruling power than that of mere selfgovernment became so evident, that at the request of the elder boys Mr. Wilson undertook the management of its affairs, but occasionally his authority was guided by a general

vote.

This School, it will be observed, was an evening School, but in the trade of the Candle Company a branch of the manufacture known as "night lights," forms an important item, and as these are made in large numbers and at particular times, as near the times when required as possible, many poor children, engaged in the work, were cast out upon the streets between the periods of employment.

To remedy this evil a day school was opened in this new room, for those young persons, who were there taught the ordinary branches of education, and kept from the contamination of the streets; and thus, whilst saving these children from evil, Mr. Wilson was enabling the company to avail itself of their services at any moment. It is the custom also to send all strange boys entering the factory to this school for a week or two, that it may be discovered whether they are careless or otherwise, as "night light" work requires care and delicacy. The annual expense of the day school is £130, of which £96 are for regular salaries.

In the spring of 1849, the best boys, and those most anxious to learn, were attending the evening school, but they formed a minority of the whole boys of the factory. Mr. Wilson was very anxious to induce all to attend, but compulsion was of course impossible. Indeed he saw the difficulty of inducing them to come, for he says, "when you remember that the hour and a-half of schooling was always after a hard day's work, you will not wonder that the boys did not all offer themselves." He resolved, however, to induce all to come, not, as he says, by putting disgrace upon those who remained away, but by putting honor upon those who attended. Mr. Wilson writes:

"With this view, we repeatedly, in the spring and summer of 1849, asked all the school to a tea party in the new room. The first tea was an interesting one, from the fact that very many of the boys had not been at anything of the sort before, and that many of them not being then in the habit of going to church, had never

perhaps put themselves into decent clothes at all, Those who came untidily or dirtily dressed to our first tea, feeling themselves out of keeping with the whole thing, tried hard to avoid this at the next party. I hope that to several our first tea was the occasion of their taking to neat dressing for life. I will just mention here, that so far as our experience goes, there is not with boys as there is with girls, any danger whatever in leading them to think much of their dress, for the more they attend to it the nearer they get to plain black. Almost all our best boys now come to the chapel in plain black, though not a word has ever been said to them, or required to be said about their dress. One evening last summer a friend who had met a troop of them on the way to one of our cricket matches, asked me afterwards whether the boys he had met could be our factory boys, as they were he said more neatly dressed than his public school-fellows used to be. By the help of these tea parties, we made the boys who did not belong to the school feel awkward and uncomfortable about not doing so and very many joined, several however stipulating that they were not to be asked to the next tea, lest that should be supposed to be their motive for joining. The total expense of the tea parties from the first to the present time (including a Christmas one given each year to the boys of the day school, and last year one to the girls also) is £53, a very large sum, but I think most profitably expended. We have however, given over anything of the sort for the elder boys, having now much better attractions in the prize books, cricket matches, and summer excursions.

It was on Easter Monday that our first tea party was held, partly in order to try our powers of attraction against those of Camberwell and Greenwich fairs, both of which are within the reach of the factory. Ours were the stronger, both then and on the Whit-Monday following."

In the year 1849, during the awful visitation of the Cholera, Mr. Wilson being anxious to secure the health of those employed in the factory, obtained medical advice as to the best method of accomplishing his humane purpose; and he learned that open air exercise combined with healthy amusements, were the best preventatives. Accordingly, through the kindness of two gentlemen, Mr. Symes and Mr. Graham, a large piece of ground in Battersca Fields was lent to Mr. Wilson, and upon it the boys, after business hours, began to learn cricket. Mr. Wilson writes:

"The cholera seems an odd reason for taking to cricket, but I dare say the cricket had a very happy effect on the general health of our boys, and so may have strengthened them against catching it. We lost only one (an amiable and well conducted boy of seventeen), although many of our boys lost relations living in the same houses with them. Always when the game was finished they collected in a corner of the field, and took off their caps for a very short prayer for the safety from cholera of themselves and their friends; and the

tone in which they said their amen to this, has always made me think, that although the school was nominally given up for the time, they were really getting from their game so concluded, more moral benefit than any quantity of ordinary schooling could have given them. They also met every morning in the school-room at six o'clock before beginning work,just for a few minutes to give thanks for having been safely brought to the beginning of the day, and to pray to be defended in it."

This cricket ground was given up to a builder who required it, and a rough unenclosed field of six and a-half acres, in the neighbourhood of the factory, was taken at a rent of £40 per annum. This being levelled and fenced, and grass having been sown in it, gardens were allotted in addition to the cricket ground: these however, have now been given up, and the whole space is devoted to cricket. In summer the cricket ground is used three evenings in the week by the men, the other three evenings by the boys; and at length the merit of each class was put to the test by twenty-two of the boys playing eleven of the men, and beating thein. This occurred in May, 1851, and later in the year, they beat them again in a return of match of sixteen to eleven. Mr. Wilson observes, and his observations are worthy of the very closest atten

tion

I look upon the cricket as one of the very happiest parts of all that we have been doing, and have never had any misgivings about inducing our boys to take to it (which at first sometimes needs a little persuading), and to give up a good deal of their spare time and attention to it. With boys of a higher class than ours there night be a question about this; but all ours must expect to be working all their lives much more with their bodies than with their minds; and of two boys in other respects alike, of whom one should spend many of his summer evenings in cricket, and become a fair cricketer, and the other in dawdling about as most London boys do, the first would, when grown up, have strength and activity of body, and quickness of hand and eye far beyond the other, and would so possess in his labour a much more valuable commodity to take to market. We have, therefore, always told the boys not to look at cricket as merely an amusement, but as bringing with it that which will be of great value to them hereafter. The expense of the cricket for three years, and of the gardens, has been very heavy-£249, of which I consider 492 remains as still valuable in the cost of levelling, fencing, and preparing the ground, stocks of garden implements, &c. The rest is altogether gone. The rough estimate of the present annual expense is £80, of which £40 is the rent of the present field. In speaking of the bodily benefits derived by the boys from it, I do not at all mean that these are the only ones; on the contrary, any one observing our first-class boys in one of their matches, their entire

« PreviousContinue »