The last years of the seventeenth century and the first decade of the eighteenth witnessed a burst of philanthropic energy on the part of Church of England laypeople to provide instruction in the Catechism and elementary education for children of the poor.Footnote ¹ Most towns, many villages, and especially London saw the establishment of ‘charity schools’, most of which survived to become ‘affiliated’ after 1811 with the National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church. In London between 1699 and 1711 at least 112 schools were established in parishes within the area covered by the ‘Bills of Mortality’.Footnote ² Joseph Addison described them in 1713 as ‘[t]he glory of the age we live in’.Footnote ³ In 1719 it was estimated that £10,000 was raised annually in their support.Footnote ⁴ This article provides a case study of one association of such schools. It draws on the minute books of St Giles-in-the-Fields Charity Schools’ trustees to explore the philanthropic attitudes of a school's trustees (men mostly of the better and middling sort) to educating children of poor parents in the faith, prayer and worship of the Church of England and to read, write and ‘reckon’, and, so far as can be discerned, the response of parents and children.

The context for the emergence of charity schools was the political and religious instability and moral anxiety following James II's removal, and the ambition to establish England as a godly nation and bulwark against the advancing Counter-Reformation in northern Europe. The English bishops developed a strategy, originating during the Restoration period, for further reformation of the church to establish a nation worthy of divine blessing in the wars against France and against sedition and rebellion at home.Footnote ⁵ The bishops sought to reinvigorate and pastorally reform the church, raising the standards, status and oversight of the clergy; their strategy included improving pastoral care and catechetical instruction and encouraging lay devotion, envisaging godly households as the basic unit of the church. There was also concern about London's dramatic population growth after the Restoration, caused by the migration of young, mostly poor, people into suburban districts. John Locke complained in a memorandum to the Board of Trade in 1698 about ‘the relaxation of discipline and corruption of manners’ which was leading to beggars swarming the streets. He recommended state-sponsored working schools teaching spinning and knitting for children aged three to thirteen, thus enabling them to earn their keep and to learn the discipline of work.Footnote ⁶ London's expanding economy required an articulate, literate, numerate, disciplined and moral workforce. In 1657 the lord mayor had wanted a ‘charity school’ in every ward, ‘so that Christ's kingdom in little ones may more and more be advanced’.Footnote ⁷ Some individuals established schools for poor children, for example William Shelton at St Giles-in-the Fields in 1672, and in the 1690s ‘corporations of the poor’ were established in numerous towns to repress ‘idleness and debauchery’ and to catechize, educate and employ pauper children.Footnote ⁸

Another philanthropic response to these concerns, largely the preserve of laypeople, was the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), established in March 1699. Its purpose was defined by its members:

They were anxious about the contagion of ‘Popery’ and about Quakerism, and so sought to inculcate in the children of the poor the teachings of the Church of England, their duties to God and their neighbours, and habits of industry. Later that month the SPCK approved a form for use by subscribers to charity schools, noting:

The financial revolution arising from the war against France assisted the development of the SPCK and charity schools with the newly developed funding model of joint stock companies, enabling the middling sort and professional people to fund philanthropic projects with a sense of participation in those projects. The lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695 resulted in an explosion of printing and publishing, increasing the quantity of ‘licentious literature’, but also enabling the SPCK to commission tracts, booklets and books for schools and for distribution to the poor. There was also a general enthusiasm for establishing societies of like-minded people, for example the Society of Antiquaries, societies for the reformation of manners, and religious societies. Charity schools were the most numerous and successful such associational bodies.Footnote ¹¹

Richard Willis, dean of Lincoln, preaching at the first London Charity Schools Trustees’ festival in 1704, reminded the estimated two thousand trustees, masters, mistresses, children and parents present: ‘It is the Duty of every Master of a Family to keep up the Worship of God in it and to that end to have his Family frequently together, if it be possible every morning and evening.’ For, he noted, ‘[e]very Family is a little Society and Congregation’. He added: ‘Another duty is to instruct their Families in the principles of Religion from the cradle onwards, and to set them a good example, and to pray for their children’. Willis envisaged charity schools assisting poor parents ‘to instruct [children] in Christian Religion and instruct them in things that will qualify them for work and to place them in some Trade or other way of getting a living’.Footnote ¹² Parents and apprentice masters and mistresses were expected to hear their children and apprentices repeat the Catechism at home, thereby refreshing their own memories, and also to hear them read (probably from the Bible or the Prayer Book), especially on Sundays. Children would thus evangelize their parents, and, in their turn, as parents (especially girls, as mothers), establish Christian households.Footnote ¹³ The SPCK commissioned Prayers for the Use of the Charity Schools, which included Prayer Book Morning and Evening Prayer, a ‘short’ (two-page) prayer and an evening prayer for children to use at home, prayers to be used when taking and leaving their seat in church, and graces before and after meals, as well as provisions for itemizing both sins and thanksgivings.Footnote ¹⁴ Prayers for the Use of those who go from Charity Schools to an Apprenticeship or other Service included similar sets of prayers, adding prayers to lead a virtuous life, thanksgivings for their parents and master and mistress, and prayers that they might be content with their lot.Footnote ¹⁵ The SPCK also sponsored booklets of prayers for use in people's subsequent working lives.Footnote ¹⁶

Most studies of charity schools have focused on the early years of the eighteenth century. This article considers St Giles's schools throughout the century, in the context, especially for the earlier period, of other London charity schools, and also explores the apprenticeship of children beyond their schooling.Footnote ¹⁷

It is clear that there was considerable variety, perhaps depending on local circumstances, among the London charity schools in their governance, funding, entry requirements, provision of clothing for children, quality and levels of pay of teachers, and response to external pressures most notably in providing for children to work.Footnote ¹⁸ St Giles, situated between the cities of London and Westminster, was one of the largest and most multiply deprived newly populous London suburban parishes. Deserted by the rich for new developments in Mayfair and Bloomsbury, in 1711 it was identified by the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches as one of the populous and godless suburban parishes eligible for subdivision and a new church.Footnote ¹⁹ A workhouse had been opened in the parish in 1695, also providing a school for children of people receiving poor relief. The St Giles trustees, unlike many others, therefore did not need to provide for the poorest children.

The rector, William Haley (also dean of Chichester) became a member of the SPCK in December 1699, and in April 1700 reported establishing a school for fifty girls.Footnote ²⁰ In April 1705 Haley and twelve laypeople resolved to raise a subscription for a charity school

The first treasurer, Narcissus Luttrell, was a bencher of nearby Gray's Inn.Footnote ²² Thirty-five subscribers elected ten trustees to manage the schools. Haley and subsequent rectors seldom attended meetings, so management was largely in the hands of laypeople. By 1710 there were 240 subscribers supporting four schools with 100 boys clothed and thirty-five not provided with clothes, and 100 girls clothed, the second largest provision in London after St Andrew's, Holborn.Footnote ²³

The minute books suggest businesslike governance, with subscribers annually electing trustees, standing orders for weekly (later fortnightly) trustees’ meetings, quarterly financial reports and regular reports from the master. Children's eligibility and suitability was ascertained; a subgroup regularly visited and inspected the schools, examining the children's work and their understanding of the Catechism.Footnote ²⁴ They were represented on the Society of London Charity Schools Trustees, which organized the great annual festival service on Holy Thursday (then the conventional designation for Ascension Day) at St Sepulchre's, Newgate, and consulted other school trustees about good practice.Footnote ²⁵ They advertised for, interviewed and elected masters and mistresses who were required to be ‘such as frequent the Holy Communion, … are of sober lives and conversations and … well grounded in the Principles of Christianity’. In 1763 masters were also forbidden to follow any other business or occupation or teach other children or accept money or presents from parents; they must be under fifty and already a master or assistant, having taught reading and writing and arithmetic for at least twelve months, and ‘of a good Temper’. The salary was £50 a year plus apartment, coal and candles, which was above the going rate in other schools.Footnote ²⁶

Complaints against teachers, especially of unduly severe punishments, were investigated, and if found wanting teachers might be admonished, suspended or dismissed, for they were expected to set an example of Christian neighbourliness, and parents and children might be alienated if they did not. Complaints in 1718 of ‘several neglects and misdoings’ committed by Thomas Adge, a master, were investigated and he was ‘expelled’.Footnote ²⁷ In 1740 Mrs Griffiths was suspended because she ‘cruely abused Sarah Dollson by giving her unwarranted Correction with an Unlawful weapon’. The trustees noted ‘she did not behave with that respect to the Board as is due from a Mistress to the Trustees on her giving account of the above affair, Justifying herself rather than acknowledging her fault’.Footnote ²⁸ In 1782–3 it was noted that discipline and cleanliness in the schools had become lax, and the trustees investigated the shortcomings, ensuring matters were put in good order.Footnote ²⁹ They could be generous, granting £25 a year for life ‘in consideration of his faithfulness’ to a master resigning due to ill health in 1806, while a mistress who resigned for health reasons in 1807 received a gratuity of 15 guineas for ‘her great attention and care of the children’.Footnote ³⁰

Fundraising for premises, teachers’ salaries, books, children's clothing and apprenticeship premiums was a major concern in the context of the century's economic vagaries. From time to time, as in October 1739, when they reduced the master's salary, the trustees noted that expenditure had exceeded income. By 1806 expenditure was the significant amount of £1,309 6s 9¾d. It is unclear what the income was, but subscribers needed to be attracted. Distinguished preachers, including in 1786 John Wesley, were regularly invited to address special services at which collections were taken.Footnote ³¹ Both services and preachers made the case for the schools and for the importance of the Christian duty of generous philanthropy in educating the next godly generation. Children, illustrating the fruits of charity and accompanied by the masters and mistresses, processed in their school clothes from school to church, and sang the psalms and anthem at the service.Footnote ³² Subscribers of 40s a year might nominate a child, aged eight and qualified by residence in the parish, for consideration for admission as a pupil. Later in the century the trustees, to encourage more subscribers, circulated printed subscription lists.Footnote ³³ Donations and bequests, which were fairly frequent, were invested in property or stock, and a gold-lettered donors’ board was provided for the schoolroom.Footnote ³⁴

As ‘nurseries of piety’, there were morning and afternoon prayers in the schools, probably based on Matins and Evensong in the Book of Common Prayer. For Sunday morning and afternoon services the pupils processed with the teachers to church, sitting in their own gallery, and in the afternoon boys and girls alternately were examined in church on their understanding of the Book of Common Prayer catechism as mediated through John Lewis's The Church Catechism Explain'd and Confirm'd.Footnote ³⁵ Additionally, in 1727 trustees resolved that children must assemble in their schools every Sunday at 6 a.m. in winter and 5 a.m. in summer to hear a chapter of the Whole Duty of Man.

The curriculum comprised the Catechism, reading, and writing and arithmetic (for girls, only ‘the first Rules … to enable them to keep Family Accounts’), and, for girls, also sewing and needlework. The Christian Schoolmaster outlined a four-year course with reading and the New Testament in the first year, reading and the Bible in the second year, beginning writing in the third year and arithmetic in the fourth year.Footnote ³⁶ This strongly Anglican milieu was clearly acceptable to parents, for the schools were generally fully subscribed, although from time to time there were vacancies in the girls’ schools. Perhaps girls’ help was more needed at home. The content and methods must have engaged children, as little disruptive behaviour and relatively little truancy were noted.Footnote ³⁷ Nor does it seem that poor parents were deterred from sending children to school by loss of their earnings, for this was to some extent compensated for by children being clothed and shod.Footnote ³⁸

Trustees monitored attendance and discipline, requiring the master to report at every meeting ‘the defaulters of ye Boys not coming to School and any crimes he shall find them guilty of’.Footnote ³⁹ Children with ‘the itch’ or ‘lousy’ were required not to attend again until cured.Footnote ⁴⁰ Children who truanted were summoned with a parent to give explanations to the trustees, and were expelled after a second or third incident. Truanting was taken seriously for it deprived another child of education. In 1785 boys accused of taking currants from a basket in Covent Garden were forbidden to be seen there without their parents, and in 1800 a boy was expelled for stealing a loaf.Footnote ⁴¹

The trustees survived a number of crises precipitated by external circumstances. In the political and religious turmoil later in Queen Anne's reign school trustees were suspected of infiltration by extreme high church Jacobite sympathizers. Charity school children, including some from St Giles, were identified in 1710 amongst rioters following Dr Sacheverell's trial,Footnote ⁴² and in 1716 in pro-Jacobite riots.Footnote ⁴³ The trustees forbade boys to become involved with ‘Mobbs’ on pain of expulsions, and required their ‘Orders to be fairly Written in Large Hand and hung up in ye School Room’.Footnote ⁴⁴ Bishop Edmund Gibson intervened in 1724, in a charge to London charity school masters and mistresses at St Paul's, to rehabilitate schools from allegations that ‘Children are trained up to Disaffection to the Government’ and ‘Set above the lower and more laborious Stations and Offices of Life’. However, teachers, he observed, should ‘do no more than to prepare Children to be good Christians and Servants’, not teaching elaborate psalm settings or ‘fine needlework’.Footnote ⁴⁵ Social advancement was not encouraged.

It was also regularly claimed that charity school boys were numerous among convicted criminals. William Hogarth, a near neighbour in St Martin's Lane, in 1741 depicted his cruel apprentice wearing a St Giles cap. Subscribers were often criticized as self-interested and motivated by pride and profit, and schools for unfitting children for work as servants. Strong views were regularly expressed in the press, following Locke, that charity schools should train children for manual work and thus for their future position in life. Greycoat Hospital had introduced work into the curriculum in 1700, but abandoned it in 1734, and the response among London schools was very mixed, although the SPCK encouraged it.Footnote ⁴⁶ Although St Giles girls made their own clothes in school, the trustees did not appoint a committee to consider work for boys until 1740, introducing knitting and silk-winding in 1744.Footnote ⁴⁷ In 1750 another committee reviewed boys’ work, visiting the Foundling Hospital and St George's, Hanover Square workhouse school to discover how they managed additional costs and poor returns on children's work. Another review in 1751 recommended introducing ‘making Purses, Nett and Winding Silk for six Months’ for four hours daily. The 1752 annual meeting ordered a detailed financial report, and subsequently a subscribers’ meeting resolved that ‘a proper Number of Boys be employed in the said manufactory’, requiring a ‘light building’ costing £74 10s. Objections ensued to making ‘Boys mere Slaves and Drudges’ and to the capital expenditure, pointing out losses on the earlier ‘Spinning Scheme’. Five people threatened to withdraw their subscriptions. Another committee undertook a further review, and, despite noting losses of £10 10s in 1744, and £12 2s 6½d in 1751–2, recommended ‘employing a part of the Boys’ Time in useful Labour [which] will remove the great Objection of Idleness from this Institution’. The committee hoped also that the trustees ‘will exert themselves in setting so Noble and useful precedent to the rest of the Charity Schools as the uniting of useful Labour and useful Learning as it bids fair to render these Boys better Members of the Community than if their whole Time was Employ'd in Learning only’.Footnote ⁴⁸ By 1809, however, ‘work’ had ceased to be part of the curriculum.Footnote ⁴⁹ Work was always a financial failure in schools: raw materials were expensive, and the children, being unskilled, produced poor-quality, unsaleable work.Footnote ⁵⁰

The final phase of a charity scholar's education was placement at the age of fourteen in a godly household as an apprentice or servant for seven years, to be fed and clothed and learn an occupation.Footnote ⁵¹ The SPCK recommended:

St Giles’ trustees took great care over apprenticeships.Footnote ⁵³ Two trustees inquired into the characters of masters before children were put out as apprentices.Footnote ⁵⁴ Children were not apprenticed to ‘any Person dissenting from the Church of England’. From 1784 only people renting property worth at least £10 a year were considered.Footnote ⁵⁵ Parents might not take their own child as an apprentice, nor object to a trade or a master or mistress.Footnote ⁵⁶ A child refusing an apprenticeship had to explain their reasons to the trustees and might be dismissed from the school. Sometimes children were apprenticed for a month ‘upon tryall’, and then ‘upon their approbation and liking of each other’ the apprenticeship was confirmed. In January 1780 Catherine Frazer ‘absolutely refused to be bound at this time, to Richard West of Oxford Street, Breeches maker’, but she agreed to go back for a further fortnight and ‘upon further liking’ was bound as apprentice to him.Footnote ⁵⁷

A £5 premium was provided for boys, reduced to £3 in 1728, and 40s [£2] for girls.Footnote ⁵⁸ They received a Bible, Prayer Book, Psalm Book and The Whole Duty of Man;Footnote ⁵⁹ and were required to come to the school ‘once in halfe a year’ for examination in the CatechismFootnote ⁶⁰ and to take part in the Charity Schools Festival procession.Footnote ⁶¹ Although they had to return their school clothes, from 1740 masters or mistresses were provided with 40s to clothe girls, and girls received 10s after remaining in service for a year. Clothes must be returned if they stayed less than a year, but thereafter they might keep them.Footnote ⁶²

Apprenticeships were carefully monitored. In 1712 a boy complained that his master ‘had used him hardly, and not allowed him Victuals’. The master was ordered to attend the next trustees’ meeting.Footnote ⁶³ When a mother complained that her son, apprenticed to Mr Watkins, a bricklayer, had been ‘put away illegally to her great detriment’ two trustees were appointed to make inquiries, who reported ‘his Crimes were fully prov'd upon him’ and referred the matter to a justice of the peace.Footnote ⁶⁴ In 1733 when the trustees heard that a poor boy put out as apprentice was in the Bridewell, they agreed that the treasurer should pay the charge of 6s 4d for his release.Footnote ⁶⁵ Apprentices from charity schools whose apprenticeship proved unsatisfactory may therefore have been in a better position than other apprentices, for their schools’ trustees might take action on their behalf.

In 1809 an appeal for more subscriptions reported that 101 boys and seventy girls were being educated, including thirty-five girls boarded; that since 1700, 2,488 pupils had been apprenticed or ‘taken out for service’; and that nearly as many had been ‘taken out by their Relations or Friends’. The regime of teaching the Catechism and daily prayers and encouragement to household prayers continued. There had been 128 legacies and donations over 104 years (including 49 from women), and there were currently 425 subscribers.Footnote ⁶⁶ This evidence, from one of the most populous and notoriously poor and criminal London parishes, demonstrates that for more than a century a succession of competent and generous laypeople efficiently and attentively provided and monitored education and apprenticeships, training selected poor children in the principles of the Church of England and in basic skills to enable them to earn a living. Artisans, as masters or mistresses of apprentices, also engaged with the project. As the schools, especially boys’ schools, were usually full, it is apparent that parents of the poorer sort were keen to take up this provision, and that some former pupils, at least, prospered and were grateful. On 24 April 1775, the trustees must have felt gratified when ‘three members of the Society of Persons educated in these Schools waited on the Board with a donation of £5 5s … as a token of their Gratitude for the Benefits received to them from the Charity’.Footnote ⁶⁷

While it is clear that the St Giles trustees, and the trustees of the fifty-eight other schools whose minute books survive in the London Metropolitan Archives, sustained their schools and protected the interests of children in them, it is noteworthy that they gave no consideration to increasing the provision for education in the face of the vastly increased population of the parish during the period. There is no evidence that in London Sunday schools provided from the 1780s an alternative and cheaper means of teaching children. From then on, there was national concern about lack of provision of elementary schools for poor children. Statistics were gathered about the number and efficiency of charity schools. Joseph Lancaster, a Quaker, and Andrew Bell, an Anglican, developed more economical monitorial systems for teaching children. Bell introduced his system at St Botolph's, Aldgate charity school in 1798. A number of new schools were also opened in and around London, for example at Limehouse in 1779 and Brentford in 1786, and a large parochial ‘day school’ in West Street, St Giles, by one of St Giles's clergy in 1802. Major initiatives included Lancaster's establishment of the British and Foreign Schools Society in 1808 to promote his system, largely supported by Dissenters, and in 1811, as part of a renewal of the SPCK, the establishment by some of its governors of the National Society, which aimed, using Bell's monitorial system, to support the provision of an elementary school in every parish.Footnote ⁶⁸ Amongst these changes, St Giles's trustees continued charitable and compassionate, but cautious and conservative in their management of their charity to promote the education of poor children.