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On Sunday 16 October 1853 Martin Ware III, the superintendent of Compton Place Ragged School's Sunday evening boys’ class, sought God's blessing to ‘accompany my labours’ in his journal.Footnote 1 The ensuing entry, occupying just one side of a page, communicates the rewards and challenges ragged school teachers faced. After invoking divine favour on the school, Ware detailed a recent visit from Alexander Patterson, a former scholar now in the navy. Ware noted that Patterson ‘brought me an American Aloe’, which he had purchased in the West Indies. Beneath this Ware recorded the recent sentencing of ‘H. Evans’ and ‘J. Armstrong’ to ‘2 yrs imprisonment for stealing a Horse Donkey & cart!’, pointedly adding: ‘They are each 9 yrs old’. At the foot of the page the entry closed with the news that young Ward, whose hardship Ware had cited before, had been discovered stealing. Ware's intense disappointment is evident in his bracketed ‘(alas, alas!)’ and his closing, lament-laden sentence: ‘he is a boy in whom I had the fullest reliance’.Footnote 2
Hosted in haphazard classrooms, in barns and abandoned factories, or beneath railway arches, ragged children learned to read and write in spite of their poverty. Of most importance, however, was the communication of the gospel. God's love and saving work through Jesus Christ was at the core of a ragged school education. After the existing London ragged schools united under the London Ragged School Union (LRSU) banner in April 1844, they multiplied exponentially in the metropolis. By 1865 there were 613 schools in the capital alone. Moreover, although the LRSU played a crucial role in disseminating knowledge through its literature and public presence, ragged schools were not confined to London. Cities and large towns across England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales adopted the ragged school model, and unions similar to the LRSU were established in Liverpool and Manchester. The movement benefited from Lord Shaftesbury's ‘child-championing prestige’ and charismatic leadership following his appointment as LRSU president in November 1844, a title he held until his death over forty years later.Footnote 3
Ragged schools were a crucial component of Britain's educational scene in the mid-nineteenth century, serving society's poorest children, who were precluded from learning elsewhere. Dame schools, or, as Gardner categorizes them, ‘working-class private schools’, provided an often progressive education in exchange for a small fee.Footnote 4 Such institutions, however, exceeded the modest means of the impoverished households for whose children ragged schools intended to cater. Although Sunday schools were free, they encouraged children to dress in their ‘Sunday best’ and often had little toleration for disruptive behaviour. In his study of working-class autobiographies, Burnett writes that destitute children were effectively excluded by their ‘lack of suitable clothes, shoes or the “collection” penny’.Footnote 5 Even where Sunday schools did accommodate the most unkempt children, the discrepancy between their appearance and that of their classmates may well have dissuaded them from returning. The LRSU was keen to differentiate itself from the Sunday School Union (SSU) from the outset, making it clear that ragged schools were wholly separate from those institutions inspired by Robert Raikes and Hannah Ball. Accordingly, those present at a meeting of the LRSU in 1846 heard that ragged schools were for those ‘whose abject wretchedness, or whose depraved character, precludes them from participating in the advantages of the Sunday schools’.Footnote 6
The ragged school remit was a broad one. Most taught both boys and girls, separating the sexes during instruction. A wide range of ages were welcomed; in June 1846 one London school, ‘a sample for all of the rest’, taught those aged between five and seventeen.Footnote 7 As classes were arranged to fit the schedules of labouring children and volunteer teachers, evening and weekend classes were common. With growing numbers of scholars and teachers, the services offered by the schools increased also. Ragged churches, mothers’ meetings, nurseries, penny banks, lending libraries and soup kitchens are a modest sample of the ventures that could stem from a single institution.Footnote 8 However, the LRSU was dealt a series of irreparable blows by the Education Acts of 1870, 1880 and 1891. These successively established board schools in regions deemed inadequately served, enforced attendance for children aged between five and ten years and instigated state provision for school fees up to ten shillings. Together these changes effectively eliminated the need for institutions specifically for poor children, and in consequence the number of ragged schools declined sharply. While the schools had counted 50,312 scholars in 1865, just a decade later this number had been reduced to ‘only about 7,000’.Footnote 9 Most ragged schools had made one of two choices by the close of the nineteenth century, either converting into board schools or disbanding altogether.
This article explores the guidance given to ragged school teachers by the LRSU in the light of the myriad challenges mentioned in newspaper reports, promotional literature and unpublished material relating to local schools. Of particular value is the LRSU's magazine, the Ragged School Union Magazine (hereafter: RSUM), which featured a regular ‘Teachers’ Column’ offering advice and pedagogical guidance. ‘On the ground’ material offers access to the frustrations teachers experienced.Footnote 10 In detailing his encounters at Compton Place, Ware's journal provides a unique account of both the ragged school teacher's role and his reception by the scholars. Although access to the experiences of girls is limited by Ware's exclusive involvement with the boys’ class, his journals nevertheless open up a new understanding of the ways in which faith shaped and inspired Victorian philanthropy. Because of the voluntary nature of these institutions, it was critical to their success that scholars not only attended but returned. To this end, lessons sought to engage and excite scholars while long addresses were condemned. By using ragged school teaching advice in conjunction with sources from local schools, this article explores the complex territory of the ragged school classroom. This approach enables our understanding to move beyond assumptions about the teacher's control and the scholar's obedience, shifting the focus towards the child's perception of, and participation in, the movement. More broadly, the interdenominational appeal of the schools offers important insights into the effectiveness of pan-evangelical initiatives in the mid-nineteenth century. Through focusing on the ragged schools, this article enhances our understanding of how the urban poor received and responded to evangelical teaching and middle-class philanthropic efforts. It enables us to rethink and reframe the relationships forged between evangelically motivated philanthropists and the children and families with whom they worked.
The ragged schools have received little concentrated attention from historians; however, the movement is regularly touched on by scholarship from an array of disciplines. Historians interested in nineteenth-century child poverty, such as Hugh Cunningham and Anna Davin, reference the schools in their studies of the portrayal and experiences of destitute children.Footnote 11 Although the movement is often cited in histories of education or evangelicalism, it rarely receives more than a cursory mention. Stephens's Education in Britain mentions the schools in its opening chapter, noting that the ‘1830s saw the beginnings of “ragged” or “industrial” schools, philanthropic endeavours aimed at saving vagrant and homeless children’.Footnote 12 Likewise, Sanderson states simply that ragged schools ‘took the poorest, vagabond children for a basic education’.Footnote 13 Brown discusses the schools in relation to Shaftesbury's social action, as do Shaftesbury's biographers.Footnote 14 Heasman's Evangelicals in Action provides the most thorough account of the schools from an ecclesiastical perspective, dedicating a chapter to the movement and its achievements.Footnote 15 Given the large number of children who passed through the schools in London alone – the LRSU estimated upwards of 300,000 by May 1870 – the dearth of scholarship on the movement requires correction.Footnote 16
The way in which poor children responded to religious teaching also remains under-researched. In her chapter on the moral instruction provided in late nineteenth-century English elementary schools, Wright examines the role that beliefs about poverty played in shaping moralistic teaching, concluding that existing evidence ‘gives little agency or voice to the pupils themselves’ and cannot ‘tell us what children thought’.Footnote 17 In relation to Sunday Schools, Laqueur argues that the religious teaching equipped children to face the very real challenges of bereavement and illness. Although Laqueur discusses conversions and revivals, his findings are limited by his focus on promotional material, which does not provide access to children's ‘in the moment’ responses to the Christian message.Footnote 18 In terms of how such teaching was imparted, Burnett observes that it ‘was not, of course, supposed or intended that children should enjoy their schooling’.Footnote 19 This assertion may be applicable to many Victorian institutions; however, it cannot reflect the ragged schools.
Recent studies of nineteenth-century child-saving movements, of which the ragged schools formed a part, are dominated by narratives that cast the institutions as instruments of social control. According to such interpretations, predominantly middle-class teachers imposed their beliefs upon the children of the poor. According to Mahood and Littlewood, working-class children were subjected to the zealous and misguided fervour of evangelicals intent upon ‘saving’ their bodies and souls.Footnote 20 In their expansive study of evangelical child migration discourse, Swain and Hillel stress the invasive nature of such movements.Footnote 21 While providing valuable insights into the construction of child-saving discourse, Swain and Hillel do not assess how children reacted to, or interacted with, these organizations. Such scholarship focuses on the actions or attitudes of adults whose effects on children tend to be presumed, thus composing a picture of adult as agent and child as subject. The recent collection on child labour edited by Goose and Honeyman is of particular relevance here. Of especial value is their claim that ‘[a]lthough children have hitherto been silent, and historians frequently refer to the need to “strain” to hear their voices, in fact they can be clearly heard – both literally in protest, strikes, demonstrations and placards, and more figuratively in terms of direct action, including absconding, and breaking windows and machinery.’Footnote 22 Absence, interruptions, mockery, vandalism and actual or threatened violence may equally be interpreted as a means of protest in the ragged school classroom. It is less easy, however, to discern the motives or intentions underlying such behaviour.
When promotional literature is analysed in isolation, the conversation between teachers and children is silenced. This approach fosters a vacuum in which words and emotions are attributed to ragged school scholars, either as a positive and thankful chorus or a terrorized and tearful one. At the same time, such narratives often denigrate or belittle volunteer teachers, transforming them into (at best) misguided do-gooders or (at worst) domineering bullies. By bringing together promotional material with local documents, this article situates ragged school teaching advice within the context of the challenges teachers faced in practice.
Christianity and the Classroom
Determined to avoid the sectarian divisions that had plagued Sunday schools, ragged schools were emphatically interdenominational.Footnote 23 For the LRSU, ‘oneness in Christ’ was of greater value than ‘oneness in church discipline’.Footnote 24 Although, to use Thomas Guthrie's words, the movement was founded ‘upon a broad basis’, it was nevertheless distinctly evangelical.Footnote 25 The schools were ‘earnest, devoted, Evangelical, but not sectarian’.Footnote 26 According to the LRSU, those involved with the movement were ‘members of a great evangelical alliance’, who were ‘working together in the schoolroom’.Footnote 27 Reflecting this principle, the schools were named after localities or streets rather than churches or individuals. In the hope of avoiding controversy, creeds were banished and the Bible was the central religious text permitted in the classroom. As such, the ‘Rules for the government’ of Field Lane included ‘VII. No Teacher shall be allowed to introduce any Catechism’ and ‘VIII. That the Bible shall be the principle Class Book’.Footnote 28 As far as possible, Christian teaching was to consist of simple biblical truths.
The ragged school mission and method therefore aligned with the four tenets of evangelicalism that Bebbington has identified: activism, biblicism, conversionism and crucicentrism.Footnote 29 The biblical message of Christ's salvation and the importance of conversion and the Christian's duty to ‘go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in’ (Luke 14: 23) were at the heart of ragged school philosophy.Footnote 30 These identifying characteristics of evangelicalism can be seen in the LRSU's 1850 proclamation that:
it was not merely with pens and primers they went down into the dark purlieus of misery and guilt, as if these could strike light into benighted minds … but they carried with them the Gospel – that only charter of human freedom – that only lever capable of elevating the morally depraved.Footnote 31
Eight years later the RSUM encouraged those pioneering the recently established Liverpool schools to enter the city's ‘dark recesses with the light of Evangelical Truth in their hand’.Footnote 32 It was only through the power of the gospel – and there ‘was no instrument possessing so much power’ – that impoverished and neglected children could be saved.Footnote 33
The movement's supporters deemed it part of a broader spiritual awakening, wherein God's people were no longer ‘delegating their duties to priests, ministers, or missionaries, but themselves going’.Footnote 34 The role of the ragged school teacher was regarded as a calling, as encapsulated in the 1849 poem ‘Unto this Work we are Called’.Footnote 35 Local prayer meetings invited God's Spirit into the classroom; the Field Lane Ragged School committee prayed for a ‘pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon both Teachers & Taught’.Footnote 36 The RSUM featured reports of a ‘spiritual awakening’ among scholars and encouraged teachers to seek ‘more abundant manifestation of Divine influence’.Footnote 37 Those teachers present at a meeting in St Giles's Refuge in November 1859 were roused by a spiritual call to arms: ‘Let us then not rest till this Revival is experienced by ourselves; we shall then teach with a power that can be felt’.Footnote 38 With contemporaneous reports of revival breaking out across Britain, the ragged schools sought to share in this outpouring. Reflecting this evangelical fervour, not to mention the movement's financial constraints, the RSUM boasted an army of volunteers. By 1856, the LRSU's twelfth year, voluntary teachers numbered 2,118, compared with just 332 who were paid.Footnote 39 Two years later volunteers were commended because they had been, ‘and are, and ever must be, the strength of the movement’.Footnote 40 It was not training that qualified individuals to teach; rather, teachers were to possess ‘zeal, patience, and persevering energy’.Footnote 41 According to Shaftesbury, ‘it was not necessary that [teachers] should pass an ordeal of examination … it was a knowledge of the Bible they ought to possess, and also an acquaintance with the human heart’.Footnote 42 Because of this reliance upon largely untrained volunteers, however, many adults working in the schools had little or no experience of teaching children.
The ragged school movement was one aspect of a larger evangelical picture. In her study of Anglican evangelicals, Heasman highlights their prominence within the LRSU, arguing that it ‘was essentially an Evangelical organisation, its chairman being Lord Shaftesbury and its treasurer R. C. L. Bevan’.Footnote 43 Yet ragged school teachers were drawn from a variety of denominational backgrounds. The London City Mission, which Lewis calls ‘the largest and possibly most enduring interdenominational mission in Britain’, worked closely with the LRSU.Footnote 44 Drawn from across the evangelical spectrum, London City Missionaries frequently offered their services to ragged schools, participating in prayer meetings, speaking at assemblies and volunteering as teachers.Footnote 45 The scale of city missionaries involved with the movement is hinted at within a list of 1,704 London teachers that Alexander Anderson, a leading member of the LRSU, presented to Shaftesbury in 1867. Amongst the names are twenty-three London City missionaries. Although this figure may seem insignificant, it should be noted that 35 per cent – or 605 – of those named did not detail any occupation. Alongside a diverse amalgamation of trades, including ‘cheesemonger’, ‘cow-keeper’, ‘fancy box-maker’, ‘pickle-filler’ and ‘surgeon’, the title ‘London City Missionary’ recurs in various forms, including ‘Frederick Cox, City missionary’, ‘Thos. Hazeldine, city missionary’, and ‘Thomas Salter, L. C. Missionary’.Footnote 46 The presence of city missionaries within this list demonstrates the movement's scope and reaffirms Anderson's claim that ‘[w]e belong to different evangelical denominations of Christians’, which Shaftesbury labelled ‘the safety and the purity of the system’.Footnote 47
In undertaking his voluntary role at Compton Place alongside his primary occupation as a barrister, Ware was representative of those ragged school teachers who spent their evenings and weekends labouring in ‘Christ's vineyard’.Footnote 48 Like Shaftesbury, Ware identified as an evangelical. Having been educated in a Baptist school, he became an Anglican as a young man.Footnote 49 His detailed school journals witness to the time their author invested in the institution and its scholars. In his later years he reflected in his memoirs that his active role at Compton Place had limited his professional achievements. It had, he wrote, ‘interfered in some degree with my getting business’.Footnote 50 Ware volunteered at the school for approximately twenty-two years, seventeen of which are covered by his journals (1850–67).Footnote 51 Alongside the Sunday evening boys’ class, of which he was superintendent from 1848 until approximately 1854, his weekly schedule featured home visits, committee meetings and prayer gatherings. Ware was also a part of the broader ragged school network, attending meetings or worship services for teachers in the Camden area. In addition to his involvement with the LRSU, he was actively involved with a number of other missionary societies, including the British and Foreign Bible Society, the China Inland Mission and the Church Missionary Society. The numerous obituaries that followed Ware's death, in publications such as The Globe, The Guardian, the Pall Mall Gazette, The Record and The Times, testify equally to his faith and to his prominence within philanthropic circles. He was, according to the Church of England's Record, an ‘old and tried Evangelical’ whose ‘kindly presence will be missed at many council tables’.Footnote 52 Similarly, The Globe noted that Ware had been ‘amongst the most active of London laymen’.Footnote 53 The Yorkshire Evening Post and the Leeds Mercury affirmed simply: ‘the Evangelical party has lost a prominent layman in the person of Mr. Martin Ware’.Footnote 54
They ‘Come for a Lark’
Ragged school reports frequently described the crowds of excited children awaiting entry to their classroom. Henry Mayhew, the Morning Chronicle journalist, expanded on this, telling how the children made much ‘noise and ribaldry’, causing grief to neighbours of the institutions.Footnote 55 As a site where children congregated with peers it is unsurprising that ragged schools were associated with play, or ‘having a lark’. The difficult behaviour of ragged school children was, in Cunningham's words, ‘a matter of notoriety’.Footnote 56 The notion of a ragged school was reportedly regarded with derision by many of the children. One commentator told how one group of ragged scholars were ‘all in a state of frantic fun at the idea of any one schooling them’.Footnote 57 In 1850 the Daily News reported of Field Lane's earliest students that those ‘who did attend came only for fun’.Footnote 58 Similarly, Ware often remarked on the insubordinate behaviour of his boys’ class, describing it as ‘difficult’, ‘noisy’ and ‘unruly’. On 8 and 15 December 1850 he labelled the boys’ behaviour as ‘turbulent’.Footnote 59 Within his journal, Ware noted his belief that some came ‘only come for a lark’ and expressed his frustration that one boy ‘looks upon every thing as a lark – He seems to think it a lark to disturb the school’.Footnote 60
As Ware's journal entries suggest, teachers were frequently interrupted by their scholars. In Ward's Place Ragged School one boy shouted ‘clean your boots’ whenever he felt the class was too quiet, while a companion ‘perhaps thinking a variation in the performance desirable, would chime in with “ten a penny walnuts”’.Footnote 61 On other occasions, scholars mocked their teachers. When a Field Lane teacher told his class that ‘the Lord is looking upon you; he is there above you’, one boy ‘put on a most ludicrous expression of incredulity, and standing up, proceeded to scrutinise the ceiling with a mock-critical air’, after which he announced ‘Blest if I see him’. According to the teacher, the boy's remark gave ‘inexpressible delight’ to his peers.Footnote 62 The singing of street-songs was an especially effective means of disrupting classes, allowing scholars to join in unison, singing lyrics unknown, and possibly offensive, to their teacher. By substituting the words of hymns with those of their own invention, the scholars of Lambeth Ragged School cast their teacher as an outsider within their classroom while simultaneously poking fun at the school's Christian message. These anecdotes demonstrate the scholars’ quick wit, as well as the freedom with which they spoke (or sang) in the classroom.
It was not only the children's voices that interrupted teaching, however; some sought more physical means of disruption. Stones, mud and vegetables were smuggled into classrooms to be thrown at teachers or peers, while those denied entry launched makeshift missiles through the classroom windows. A letter signed ‘S. R. S.’, published in the RSUM in 1849, claimed that Field Lane teachers wore hats ‘for protection’ from the ‘rotten vegetables and animal refuse’ often thrown at them.Footnote 63 In January 1847 the Daily News told how ‘books, slates, mud, and stones [were] flung at the teacher's head’.Footnote 64 In the same month The Observer quoted a Bristol teacher who had been ‘pelted’ with mud in the streets by the school's ‘most unmanageable’ boy.Footnote 65 Other supposed scholars went further still. One set a book on fire to show his feelings towards learning, while another utilized a heavy volume as a club-like weapon.Footnote 66 The British Mothers’ Magazine recounted that children brought gunpowder into schools, lighting it and filling classrooms with smoke.Footnote 67 Fireworks appear to have been a popular means of wreaking havoc. Field Lane teachers described the ‘delight of the pupils’ when the superintendent attempted to ‘quell an insurrection amidst the banging of crackers’.Footnote 68 Ware reported similar events, noting in November 1853 that the boys nearly ‘set the place on fire with a Catherine wheel’ and ‘scared Mrs Ward out [of] her wits’.Footnote 69 Three years later Ware related how lessons were dramatically interrupted upon the discovery of a fire in the wash house. When the charred remnants of a firecracker were found, it was concluded to have been the cause. Such behaviour was undoubtedly entertaining to those involved. More than this, it was an assertion of the scholar's ability to direct the dynamics within the classroom. The throwing of objects, singing and impromptu interruptions all undermined the teacher's authority.
In literature intended for volunteers, as well as in that for the general public, ragged school teachers were regularly depicted as being at the children's mercy. Such accounts suggested that it was the children, not the teachers, who controlled the classroom. Upon first consideration such a portrayal may seem counterproductive for an institution seeking the public's financial support. Yet this narrative powerfully conveyed the teacher's heroism and the crucial role played by the movement in taming semi-delinquent children. Aspiring teachers were instructed that because of their wild nature, street-children ‘could not be coerced, but must be persuaded’.Footnote 70 Teachers were reliant upon the children's cooperation, and reports of scholars refusing to follow instructions were numerous. Shaftesbury himself related an especially comic instance of mutinous children. He told how his good friend, the LRSU's secretary, Joseph Payne, that he entered a classroom to discover six scholars sitting on their long-suffering superintendent's back while singing ‘Pop goes the Weasel’.Footnote 71 Thomas Guthrie recalled what happened when an inexperienced teacher in Edinburgh ‘unfortunately closed his eyes’ in prayer:
For a moment his reverent attitude, and the voice of prayer, seemed, like the voice of Jesus on the stormy waters, to produce a great calm. But by-and-by I heard a curious noise, and I shall not forget the sight which met my eyes on suddenly opening them; there – and behind them a crowd of grinning faces, red with efforts to suppress their laughter – stood two ragged urchins, each holding a flaming candle under my friend's nose, and I could not help thinking that there was a wicked cleverness in this.Footnote 72
It is more than possible that similar incidents occurred elsewhere, as in later years the RSUM instructed teachers to keep ‘their eyes fixed on the scholars’ during prayer.Footnote 73
In 1848 Shaftesbury affirmed the teacher's vulnerability in the classroom, asserting that the role was ‘absolutely a service of danger’.Footnote 74 The British Mother's Magazine applied comparable terminology the following year, when it suggested that the opening of a school ‘was often a curious scene’ that was ‘not free from danger’.Footnote 75 This language sensationalized and elevated the teacher's role, likening teachers to overseas missionaries. Although sparsely reported, there were numerous incidents of violence against teachers. The Bristol teacher who described the school's ‘most unmanageable’ scholar also told how the same child ‘has kicked my legs’, though adding ‘(happily he has no shoes)’.Footnote 76 When an array of ‘juvenile “roughs”’ congregated outside Harrow Street Ragged School and ‘threatened to stone the master’, they were unsurprisingly refused admission.Footnote 77 Two especially serious cases occurred at Field Lane and were detailed in the Daily News. In the first, a boy ‘got a knife and attempted to stab the superintendent’, while in the second a boy ‘brought a large knife’ with the intention, ‘as he said, of sticking his teacher with it’.Footnote 78 The RSUM also reported an incident from Field Lane in which a group of boys planned to attend the school for ‘a lark’; however, if any teacher intervened they would ‘rip him up’. In this instance, the boys’ desire to have ‘a lark’ appears decidedly darker than those cases cited above. Since it was one of these boys who had previously attempted to ‘stab the superintendent’, the threat was deemed serious.Footnote 79 In January 1863 the RSUM published a letter signed ‘A Worker’ entitled ‘How to Treat the Roughs’, which informed readers that ‘within the last few days our Master has been assaulted’ and the anonymous school in question had decided to press charges. The letter urged other institutions to prosecute violent children, suggesting that although ‘this may appear very harsh … Some protection is required’.Footnote 80 However, such incidents were uncommon; one teacher was sufficiently confident in his scholars to suggest that they provide a knife-cleaning service to their communities.Footnote 81
From Ware's journals it appears that one teacher, Mr Berrington, was regularly ridiculed by his class. Berrington complained to Ware of the tardiness and bad behaviour of his scholars; although Ware did not elaborate, such problems seem to have been more common under Berrington's supervision than his own. Ware recorded that one boy's father ‘seemed to think Berrington a goose and complained of his bad management’, again suggesting that Berrington had little control over the class.Footnote 82 On 6 January 1861 Ware recorded Berrington's ‘trouble with Tom Ramsay’, adding that he and another boy had ‘knocked Mr Berrington's hat about’. The two boys had initially refused to apologize, only doing so immediately prior to the class treat. Two years later Berrington summoned another boy to court, charged with assaulting him.Footnote 83 By contrast, during his seventeen years at the school Ware never recorded any incidents of violence towards himself. The challenge Berrington faced when controlling the boys was further exemplified in May 1863 when Ware learned that he ‘had beaten two of the boys very severely’. Violence, then, was not only meted out by the children to their teachers. After learning of Berrington's actions, Ware visited the mother of one of the boys and ‘pacified her’.Footnote 84
Historians including Gardner and Laqueur have recently contradicted traditional assumptions regarding the use of corporal punishment in nineteenth-century schools, arguing that it was often discouraged and deemed ineffective in the context of charity or voluntary schools.Footnote 85 It is not surprising, therefore, that corporal punishment was condemned by advocates of the ragged schools. Just as aggression in children was indicative of immoral influences, such behaviour in teachers was troubling. The RSUM made it clear that teachers should refrain from violence, advising that ‘the teacher be deemed incompetent who cannot govern his school without the frequent use of the rod’.Footnote 86 As early as 1847 Shaftesbury stressed that ragged schools ‘cannot operate by intimidation’.Footnote 87 George Hall, whose 1855 book on the schools was commended ‘unanimously’ by an LRSU committee including Ware, warned: ‘Those who only know how to scold and drive … had better not enter our Ragged Schools’.Footnote 88 The RSUM’s ‘Teachers’ Column’ told readers that ‘“Love begets love” and “Anger and hate beget anger and hate”’.Footnote 89 Such arguments attributed behaviour, for better or worse, to teachers. Drawing upon the educational concept of tabula rasa, or ‘blank slate’, championed by the influential eighteenth-century philosophers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it was argued that children reflected the environment to which they were exposed; born without preconceived knowledge, children were shaped by their surroundings. For this reason, teachers were to foster a sense of love in the classroom, rather than fear.
‘The Happiest Portions of the Day’
The notion that children came to school freely, rather than in response to compulsion, was at the centre of the ragged school model.Footnote 90 Probably because of this, infrequent and sporadic attendance was a common problem. When discussing the challenges faced by teachers, Hall referred to those children ‘whose attendance is so irregular as to do them but little good’.Footnote 91 He lamented the impact of infrequent attendance upon the schools’ effectiveness: ‘Whether it be reading, writing, sewing, tailoring, or shoemaking, the lesson is only half learnt’.Footnote 92 As Gardner has found regarding working-class private schools, many ragged schools experienced seasonal attendance: classrooms were filled in the cold winter months and left barren on long summer evenings.Footnote 93 This issue was addressed at a meeting of teachers in 1856. According to the report, it ‘was admitted by all’ that attendance over the summer ‘was very fluctuating’. Because of poor attendance, ‘teachers felt discouraged’, which was a contributory factor to many growing disillusioned with the ragged school movement and leaving.Footnote 94
Ware's journals provide tangible evidence of the discouragement an empty classroom could cause. He reflected upon possible reasons for mass absences, regularly speculating on the impact of the weather on the turnout of scholars. On 11 July 1852 he noted: ‘School rather empty probably from the heat of the weather’. At the close of the month the school was ‘rather empty’ again, this time ‘in consequence of heavy storms – The rain comes through the roof terribly’.Footnote 95 The journals demonstrate that absent scholars were not only a problem during the summer. Four months after noting the ‘heat of the weather’, Ware recorded: ‘Thin school for what reason I know not unless it was the rain’. The weather was not to blame on 26 December, however, when Ware concluded that the poor attendance was ‘probably because of Xtmas festivities’.Footnote 96 The significance he attached to the number of children present is evident in his entry for 10 April 1853: ‘Very thin school – the thinnest since Sept 1849. Alas! I fear without more exertion the school will go down more & more’.Footnote 97 It was in this context that Hall wrote that each school succeeded or failed according to its ability to attract scholars.Footnote 98
The fact that many children came to school ‘to have a lark’ suggests that peer relationships had an important influence on school attendance.Footnote 99 Although Mayhew's Morning Chronicle articles, written in opposition to the movement, stressed the dangers of children being morally contaminated by delinquent or criminal classmates, the LRSU downplayed this risk. Instead, ragged school documents focused on the benefits to be reaped from establishing friendships and communities. Rather than preventing the children from interacting with one another, they aimed to create schools where positive and lasting relationships would be formed. The LRSU acknowledged that friendships were a vital component of the appeal; Christmas meals, entertainment evenings, days out and school reunions sought to knit school communities together and establish bonds both amongst scholars and between scholars and teachers. Although attendance for the sole purpose of socializing was discouraged, the LRSU nevertheless sought to utilize the children's love of play and create attractive environments. Organized trips to fairs and parks provided spaces in which the children could play together; thus on Good Friday 1857 Ware rewarded five scholars with a visit to the Crystal Palace. Tellingly, he noted afterwards that they ‘seemed to enjoy playing about in the Park more than the interior of the Palace’.Footnote 100 Such accounts demonstrate that teachers recognized the significant role played by peer relationships in forming welcoming communities. Moreover, ragged school literature informed teachers that children learned more readily when lessons involved ‘seeing, hearing, handling, or experimenting’.Footnote 101 Thus school trips were likewise valued as an opportunity to engage the children's senses. Both ‘the countryside’ and Regent Park's Zoological Gardens were common destinations for London's ragged school children. On 15 July 1851 Ware took forty boys to the Zoological Gardens. He later expressed his frustration in his journal, writing: ‘We had some trouble in managing them. I do not much like it, as they get in other people's way’.Footnote 102 Despite Ware's embarrassment at the children's behaviour, such visits remained a regular feature of the school itinerary.
With regard to educational practice, teachers were advised against subjecting children to long addresses and sermons. Although moralistic and religious addresses were a key part of a ragged school education, it was seen as critical that they were given in a way that would have a positive impact. When detailing the most important principles to adhere to within the classroom, Hall recommended that teachers ‘scrupulously avoid anything like an overtaxing of their small powers of endurance and attention’. Recognizing children's distinct intellectual needs, he critiqued systems according to which scholars were ‘shut up – we might almost say, imprisoned’ or ‘kept in a most unchildlike quietness for three or four hours together’.Footnote 103 Similarly, in an 1849 article entitled ‘Practical Suggestions’, the RSUM stressed the importance of sermons being delivered ‘by some one capable of addressing and interesting children’. The same article specified with particular emphasis that addresses ‘should not last above ten or fifteen minutes’.Footnote 104 Perhaps after reading the RSUM’s ‘Practical Suggestions’, Ware identified long addresses as a problem in his own school. He early learned the importance of speaking concisely as superintendent; in February 1850 he noted that the day had been challenging not only because of ‘a lack of teachers’, but also because he ‘had kept them rather too long’ during the address.Footnote 105 This extract demonstrates Ware's critical reflection on his own teaching practice and shows that he sought to tailor his lessons to the children's capacities. In later entries he critiqued the over-long addresses of his colleagues. In May 1858, after taking his class to an assembly at a neighbouring school, Ware recorded that it had ‘lasted 1¾ [hours]’, which he judged ‘too long’.Footnote 106 When the teachers gathered to ‘discuss the management of the school’ in October 1864, it was decided that the address should not exceed fifteen minutes.Footnote 107
The manner in which children were addressed was considered equally important. Teachers were to utilize topics that interested their scholars to engage them in the subject in hand. Hall advised that ‘experience and study’ would help the teacher ‘to find that aspect of every subject which is most to the taste, and most within the comprehension of their infant minds’.Footnote 108 The ability to engage children in topics they might otherwise find uninteresting was an enviable gift among teachers. Ragged school publications made it clear that the most successful speakers were those who used terminology that their audience understood. In 1868 the Teachers’ Column advised its readers to suit their words to the ‘mental capacities’ of children.Footnote 109 Given the centrality of the gospel to the ragged school mission, it was critical that children understood the phrases used when praying or singing. Shaftesbury evidently applied such ideals to himself, as Punch detailed how, during an assembly for ragged school children, ‘Lord Shaftesbury, as is his wont, addressed the boys in words of kindness and affection’, exhorting them with ‘plain, impressive speech’.Footnote 110
The way in which children received or responded to addresses was the primary factor under consideration when determining effectiveness. Accordingly, Ware was keenly perceptive regarding responses to his own talks. On 7 July 1850 he wrote that the scholars were ‘not very attentive’; while three weeks later they were ‘very attentive to [the] address’, the subject of which he added in brackets: ‘(Jonah)’.Footnote 111 He reflected on the success of lessons in his journal, noting on 30 June 1850 that he had read the class a story ‘as an experiment’. He deemed the venture a success, concluding that ‘they seemed attentive & interested’.Footnote 112 Twelve years later, in November 1862, Ware's journal again conveys his perceptiveness regarding the mood in the classroom: he had decided ‘not [to] give any address fearing a disturbance’.Footnote 113 This entry highlights how he responded to the children's behaviour and the classroom atmosphere; scholars influenced his plans, sometimes causing them to be postponed or cancelled altogether.
Conclusion
Prior to the increasing state intervention that followed the 1870 Education Act, ragged schools played an integral role in Victorian Britain. In London and across the nation, ragged schools went a considerable way to bridge gaps in the existing education systems, providing a place for those children whose appearance or want excluded them from other institutions. The interdenominational appeal of the schools brought together evangelicals from across Protestant denominations, generating a formidable response to child poverty. Middle-class individuals such as Ware lived out their social calling within ragged school classrooms in the evenings and over weekends, encountering children whose experiences were starkly different from their own. Ware's journals testify to the challenges he faced, highlighting the demanding nature of the role and the emotional and financial commitment that he made to the school. His detailed and reflective entries provide a hitherto unseen insight into the anxieties experienced by ragged school teachers. The tension between Ware's religious motivation – his desire to share the gospel with impoverished children – and the reality he faced in the classroom is never far beneath the surface of his entries. Further, LRSU literature intended for teachers suggests that when Ware worried about his scholars’ poor attendance, their unmanageable behaviour or their eternal souls he was not alone.
By contrast with the well-known Victorian idiom, children were both seen and heard in the ragged school classroom. Street culture, whether manifested in songs, theatrics or disruptive shouts, entered the schools with the children. In many cases children appear to have spoken freely and confidently in their classrooms, and anecdotal reports testify to their quick wit. Such disturbances were not only employed to entertain peers but to undermine teachers. In belting out street songs instead of hymns, children acted in unison, playfully excluding their teacher from the fun. Furthermore, children did not uniformly accept the religious teaching imparted. They asked questions, challenged their teachers and made light of the evangelical message on offer. By focusing on classroom dynamics and ragged school teaching advice, the complexity of the scholar-teacher relationship is demonstrated. This article calls into question the notions that the classroom was the teacher's dominion and that the children were victims of evangelical fervour. Ragged school children were by no means passive; they sought out the food, fun and friends these institutions offered.
Ragged school literature did not conceal the belittlement that teachers endured, which is also documented by local schools. On the contrary, the RSUM drew on such reports to convey the passion of their teachers and obtain the sympathy and support of its readers. Moreover, both ragged school literature and local accounts suggest that teachers could be vulnerable within their classrooms. Their intention may have been to share the gospel but, from flying objects to physical aggression, teachers had to be prepared for conflict. Ragged school accounts demonstrate that the respect of children was hard won and highly valued; the scholars’ trust was earned through the teacher's kindness and patience. This aspect of the schools jars with the social control narratives that have dominated historical accounts of the movement. The interaction between ragged school children and their teachers, both as advised and in practice, facilitates a more nuanced interpretation of the nature and significance of the movement as a whole. The voluntary nature of attendance shaped the advice given to teachers. It was because of the children's freedom that a premium was placed upon the scholars’ enjoyment. Teachers were advised to take advantage of the fact that children came ‘for a lark’, and peer relationships were interpreted as an asset rather than a danger. Day trips and events were used to promote friendships and enrich communities. Furthermore, lessons and addresses were evaluated on the basis of the children's responses. Dreary teaching, long sermons and incomprehensible terminology were the nemesis of the ragged school teacher. The happiness of scholars was the ultimate gauge of success in the classroom, effectively positioning the children as consumers the schools sought to please.
Despite the ragged school movement's pertinence to church historians, ragged schools have received limited attention. Although this article has gone some way to redress this oversight, the movement remains a fertile area of research. Scholars’ understanding of the role played by Victorian evangelicals and their emphasis on familiarity with the Bible in championing education for the impoverished and improving literacy remains partial. With their pan-evangelical appeal, the ragged schools have the potential to generate important insights into interdenominational philanthropy and its impact on cross-class relationships.
