‘The dawn of better days for the workhouse children began in 1859,’ observed Canon John Bennett in 1950.Footnote ¹ Nearly a century after the events in question, it was natural enough to simplify and conflate, and credit the August Order issued that year by the Poor Law Board with far more significance than it had at the time. What really happened was far more complicated and considerably more interesting. Despite the very thorough treatment of this topic by John Matthew Feheney in a thesis, which sadly remains unpublished,Footnote ² studies of the Poor Law and its institutions have rarely touched on it. D. G. Paz has expressed surprise that historians should have treated the religious conscience clause in the 1834 Poor Law as unimportant.Footnote ³ Lydia Murdoch, however, draws attention to the strong concerns felt by the Catholic community ‘that the state denied Catholic poor law children religious instruction in their faith,’Footnote ⁴ and a published article by Feheney provides a detailed account of the debacle surrounding the 1859 August Order.Footnote ⁵ M. A. Crowther, while noting that guardians after 1862 could ‘send certain inmates to charitable institutions, and pay for their maintenance,’ observes that the Catholics’ desire to transfer children to denominational schools was likely to be hindered by ‘the prejudices as well as the finances’ of the boards of guardians of the poor, the locally-elected bodies responsible for administering the institutions.Footnote ⁶ John P. Marmion points to the persistence with which ‘the systematic perversion of Catholic children in the workhouses’ was publicised by the Catholic Poor School Committee, and to the fact that the grievance was not fully resolved until almost the end of the nineteenth century,Footnote ⁷ while Murdoch shows that as the years passed it nevertheless became increasingly common for Catholic and Jewish children to be transferred to certified schools of their own faith.Footnote ⁸ Mary J. Hickman sketches an outline of the campaigns for religious rights of children in both poor law and reformatory institutions from 1859 onwards and concludes that the experience ‘reinforced the alliance of the Catholic hierarchy with central government.’Footnote ⁹ Eric G. Tenbus highlights how Cardinal Manning’s experience with the local boards of poor law guardians left him deeply distrustful of locally elected bodies.Footnote ¹⁰

It would nevertheless be easy to gain the impression that the problem was eventually resolved through negotiation between the Catholic hierarchy and central government, on behalf of a pauper class largely indifferent to the outcome. It will be argued here that the active involvement of the wider Catholic community was crucial to building up the leverage required to bring about change. Priests who persistently engaged with their local poor law institutions, thereby testing the practical working of the Poor Law and demonstrating its inadequacies, played a pivotal role, but determined if intermittent mass petitioning, and the active co-operation of the paupers themselves along with that of their friends and relatives, were also of vital importance. Clarification as to why the campaign was so protracted, why it was ultimately successful, and why the Catholics’ grievance was resolved in a way which could never had been envisaged in 1834, will be sought through an exploration into the complex interplay between central and local levels of government, the legal profession and the courts, in determining how the Poor Law was implemented, and a closer examination of the debates and decision-making of the boards of guardians to show the extraordinary lengths to which many of them were prepared to go to thwart central government intentions.

The religious conscience clause was hard fought for by the Hon. Charles Langdale in the Commons debates of 1834. Langdale, a scion of the recusant aristocracy, was one of the first English Catholics to be elected to Parliament following Emancipation.Footnote ¹¹ As Section 19 of the Act, it entitled non-Anglican paupers to request exemption from the official chaplain’s ministrations, and visits (unremunerated) from a clergyman of their own persuasion, both for themselves and for their children. What about children whose parents were not there to speak up for them? Lord Althorp, Whig leader in the Commons, shared a very widespread feeling within Parliament that orphans in state care should be brought up in the state church, but as a special concession to the Catholics he agreed they could be exempted if their godparents so requested. Langdale must have assumed this would provide ample protection, so other possible mechanisms such as the written instructions of deceased parents, requests by other family members, or alternative proofs of the children’s Catholic background, were not addressed. The failure to include more explicit safeguards in the legislation reflected a reluctance to micro-manage locally elected bodies, coupled with a conviction that those charged with operating the New Poor Law could be relied on to exercise common sense and goodwill. The issue of access for non-Anglican clergy was of keen interest also to dissenting Protestants and Althorp assured the Commons that he was confident no unreasonable restrictions would be applied in practice.Footnote ¹²

Bitter experience was to show that no reliance could be placed on common sense and goodwill, at least where Catholics were affected. So the newly-ordained William KellyFootnote ¹³ discovered when, a few days after being placed in charge of the Hammersmith mission in 1839, he went to the local workhouse to instruct the Catholic children, and was refused admittance. On writing to the Poor Law Commission (the central body required to oversee proper implementation of the new system) he immediately obtained an order directing the workhouse master and the guardians to allow the children to be given catechism classes, and also attend Mass. His satisfaction was however short-lived because, although the guardians complied with the order, they quickly moved all the Catholic children to another institution out of his reach.Footnote ¹⁴ Such experiences were by no means atypical, and the pervasive denial of religious rights to Catholic paupers under the New Poor Law was among the issues taken up by the Catholic Institute, a campaigning body mainly active in the London area.Footnote ¹⁵ Kelly started a branch at Hammersmith.Footnote ¹⁶

Many boards of guardians chose to place a strictly literal construction on Section 19, requiring in each and every case a formal request from an inmate or from a parent or godparent on behalf of a child. Yet the paupers were mostly illiterate, no machinery existed to ensure they were informed of their rights or how to claim them, and they were very much at the mercy of both guardians and workhouse officers who could easily find ways of punishing any pauper who dared to ‘cause trouble’. Instances are known of inmates who, having made formal requests but been refused, actively sought intervention by their co-religionists.Footnote ¹⁷ Their complaints could be referred to the Poor Law Commissioners, who were always ready to make enquiries with the board of guardians responsible, but the complainants then had to face the ire of the guardians, and even if they stood their ground their requests could still be refused.Footnote ¹⁸ Some paupers, understandably, made their complaints anonymously, but anonymous assertions would be even more difficult to verify, if they were followed up at all.Footnote ¹⁹ In 1843 a deputation of ‘Catholic Noblemen and Gentlemen’ presented a memorial from the clergy to Sir Robert Peel pleading for a change in the law. The prime minister received them politely but would only promise ‘to consult his colleagues on the subject.’Footnote ²⁰

Where the religious instruction of children was made dependent on a formal request, access became almost impossibleFootnote ²¹ and even if parents or godparents had made requests they were not necessarily honoured.Footnote ²² The widespread failure by Catholic parents to protest at the refusal of religious rights to their children need not imply indifference to the children’s religious upbringing. The practice of separating families within the workhouse meant that many Catholic parents were unaware that their children were being systematically proselytised. Others must have been fully aware, but felt helpless to complain, since upsetting the guardians might result in the whole family being summarily discharged and left to starve. Research has shown that a significant proportion of children in poor law institutions in England and Ireland, including many of those classed as orphans or deserted, had at least one living parent who cared about them, and was actively making decisions to ensure their welfare, albeit often as part of a long-term strategy aiming to ensure the survival of both the individual child and the family as a whole.Footnote ²³ Parents chose to go along with what could not be avoided, biding their time until either they were able to support their children out of the workhouse, or the children were old enough to earn their own living: at that point they hoped to reclaim their children and start trying to undo the damage they had suffered while in poor law care.Footnote ²⁴ Where it came to religious instruction, however, unless they could reclaim the children within a relatively short period, it was unlikely they would be able to undo the damage. As William Kelly discovered, the forcible proselytisation of Catholic children did not make them into good Anglicans, but it effectively destroyed any chance of making them into good Catholics: they grew up with what he called the ‘Workhouse Religion’—that is, with no religion at all.Footnote ²⁵

The Poor Law Commissioners remained broadly sympathetic to the Catholics’ grievance, but to have gone beyond the existing legislation would have laid them open to challenge. Nicknamed ‘the Bashaws of Somerset House’, the commissioners were constantly excoriated as dictatorial and overbearing and a threat to local democracy, yet in practice they, and their successor body the Poor Law Board, had little power to enforce anything in the face of concerted opposition. Both bodies were set up on a quasi-experimental basis, their very existence precarious and dependent on the periodic passing of continuance bills that were often hotly contested. Their principal means of leverage was the authority to disallow expenditure they considered illegal or contrary to regulations, and since the denial of religious rights to Catholics entailed no expenditure, there was nothing to disallow. On most controverted issues the Poor Law Board relied on cajolery and persistent persuasion, and greatly welcomed opportunities to work in alliance with local pressure groups the goals of which converged with its own.Footnote ²⁶ But the dissolution of the Catholic Institute in 1847 removed the most obvious pressure group with which the board could deal.Footnote ²⁷

The Catholic Poor School Committee, under Langdale’s chairmanship, did its best to take up the cudgels on behalf of the workhouse children, sending a letter to the secretary of the Poor Law Board in November 1849 in an attempt to clarify the meaning of Section 19. Unfortunately by then the law had taken on a life of its own. The board no doubt sought legal advice and, whether intentionally or not, the resultant response was disastrously unhelpful. While confirming that no special formalities had to be followed by a parent or godparent wishing to object to a child’s being given religious instruction in a faith contrary to their own, it took the view that a parent who was not an inmate of the workhouse had no right to object, and—crucially—that a child could not be compelled to attend a religious service contrary to the child’s own principles.Footnote ²⁸ It was quite common for children in a poor law school to have a parent not in the workhouse but, according to the Poor Law Board’s current interpretation of the law, such parents now had no right to ask that their children be brought up in their own faith, while such was the power of workhouse staff over children that it was the easiest thing in the world to induce them to declare that they did not want to follow their parents’ religion.

The ideal solution would have been for Catholic children never to have to enter the poor law institutions in the first place, but instead be placed in Catholic-run homes. To supplement the various small orphanages beginning to be developed in the London area, two larger ones were started in the late 1840s at North HydeFootnote ²⁹ and Norwood.Footnote ³⁰ But free places were scarce, and to place a child usually required around £12 per child per year, this being just enough to cover food and other basic expenses.Footnote ³¹ Children might be sponsored by relatives or by unrelated benefactors, but there were never enough sponsors for all the children in need.

Up to 1846 many of London’s poor law unions and parishes had contracted out the care of their children to Frederick Aubin, who ran a large residential school for ‘pauper infants’ as a business proposition. The Catholic clergy were familiar with the institution, as they were allowed access to instruct the Catholic children there.Footnote ³² Accordingly the Poor School Committee sought to establish an equivalent arrangement, by requesting the St. Marylebone guardians to transfer their Catholic children (they admitted to having forty six) to North Hyde or Norwood on a contractual basis, but the guardians replied that the law did not allow it.Footnote ³³ Though they declined to be more precise, they were probably correct that in the absence of any law specifically empowering them to do it, it was likely to get them into trouble.Footnote ³⁴ The anomalous position of Aubin’s school had, by then, been resolved by bringing it under public control, and turning the proprietor into a handsomely remunerated employee.Footnote ³⁵ The difficulties faced by the Catholic clergy in obtaining access to child inmates meanwhile hardened to near-impossibility, as it became standard practice for metropolitan unions to transfer children to separate schools at a distance from the main workhouse. Even if a child’s religion, and a request for non-Anglican religious instruction, had been recorded on reception into the workhouse, the information was not passed on to the separate schools, and there was no explicit legal requirement that it should be. A survey in 1854 found that very few of London’s workhouse schools provided facilities for Catholic instruction, and none of the separate schools.Footnote ³⁶

The past two decades had nevertheless seen huge changes in the circumstances of the London Catholics. Earlier in the nineteenth century the meagre pastoral resources of the Catholic Church had been overwhelmed by the rapid growth of Irish immigration. Most of the Irish were engaged in a desperate struggle for survival, constantly shifting from place to place, rarely able to attend Mass or send their children to school, while the number of chapels and schools was in any case woefully insufficient, and the number of priests correspondingly small.Footnote ³⁷ But a sustained drive was now under way to open more chapels and Mass centres, and to reach out to the poor with popular missions and the formation of sodalities, while the number of priests increased dramatically, enabling them to establish closer contact with, and knowledge of, the people they served.Footnote ³⁸ Government funding had allowed for an expansion of the Catholic school system, so it was becoming more likely for children to have attended a Catholic school or instruction class.Footnote ³⁹ This is borne out by a series of vignettes penned by John Kyne,Footnote ⁴⁰ a priest in the slum area of Saffron Hill, depicting the quiet heroism of the local street children, and the deep piety with which they faced up to the hard realities of their lives. Kyne published them partly for fundraising purposes, but also as part of a campaign to safeguard the children’s religious rights under the proposed Industrial Schools Act.Footnote ⁴¹ Richard Swift, an Irish Catholic City businessman who was an ex-officio guardian for Holborn Union,Footnote ⁴² did his best to safeguard the rights of Catholics in the local workhouse and support the parents’ demands for religious instruction for their children. Thanks to his efforts, Kyne had access to between twenty and thirty children for catechism sessions, but he found them very difficult to handle: attendance fluctuated wildly, and the heavily Protestant ethos of the institution made it impossible for him to engage with them as he could with the street children.Footnote ⁴³

William Kelly, having accepted responsibility for completing the huge new St. Mary and St. Michael’s Church on Commercial Road, East London, undertook in 1854 a groundbreaking census of all the Catholics resident in its extensive district. The final headcount, though substantial, was lower than expected, and he identified as a major cause of leakage the proselytisation of children in poor law schools.Footnote ⁴⁴ As ratepayers of St. George’s in the East, he and his assistant James Foley (1821–81) were invited each year by the guardians to the annual examination (a sort of open day) at their school in Plashet, where the two priests would sit helplessly watching children they knew, and who had made their First Communion at St. Mary and St. Michael’s, being made to recite the Church of England Catechism. He wrote angry reports about the situation to Cardinal Wiseman,Footnote ⁴⁵ yet recognised there was nothing the Cardinal could effectively do, and he felt helpless to do anything himself.Footnote ⁴⁶

The St. George’s guardians were one of three boards responsible for different parts of the district. Kelly knew there must also be large numbers of Catholic children in the Whitechapel Union’s school at Forest Gate, and the old Limehouse workhouse which Stepney Union had converted into a dedicated children’s facility, but access to either of those schools was a total impossibility. One night a frightened teenage girl came to see him and told him her sad story: she had attended one of the St. Mary and St. Michael’s schools up to the age of ten, but then lost her parents and had been sent to Limehouse where she and all the other Catholic children were forced to attend Anglican services at St. Anne’s parish church, and be confirmed by the Anglican bishop. Understandably, given her experiences, she said she ‘hated the Protestant religion.’ Yet she was still trapped in it, because the Stepney guardians had placed her in service in a strictly Protestant family—she could not practise her own faith, and it was important her employers did not discover she had been to see a priest.Footnote ⁴⁷

Every poor law institution was assigned to a specific Catholic mission, placing the priests at that mission under a clear responsibility for providing pastoral care to any Catholic inmates, and they attempted as best they could to fulfil that responsibility.Footnote ⁴⁸ The Forest Gate and Plashet schools were the responsibility of James McQuoin,Footnote ⁴⁹ priest in charge of Stratford Chapel, but he could find no way of accessing either until the late-autumn of 1857, when a widow named Ellen Barrett applied for her two children to receive Catholic instruction. The Barrett family were the responsibility of Poplar Union, which did not have a school of its own, so placed children at Forest Gate. McQuoin wrote to the school visiting committee, which passed the correspondence over to the Whitechapel guardians, who forwarded it to the Poplar guardians, who resolved to accede to the application, ‘in conformity with the instructions of the Poor Law Commissioners’. Their clerk then wrote back to the Whitechapel board, requesting that the necessary arrangements be made.Footnote ⁵⁰

Henry Burrard Farnall (1802–83), Metropolitan Poor Law Inspector, attended the next meeting of the Whitechapel board and confirmed to the guardians that they were bound by law to comply.Footnote ⁵¹ In consultation with the master and McQuoin, therefore, it was agreed that he could visit the school each Friday for an hour’s catechism lesson with the Barrett children, and they were also allowed a ‘homework’ period during the week, to learn by heart the portions assigned. Over the next few months McQuoin’s little catechism class gradually grew larger, as other mothers applied on behalf of their children, and the children in the school talked among themselves, and passed on addresses so he could contact their next-of-kin. On Sundays the Catholic children were no longer made to attend the Anglican service, but as there was no alternative provision they were simply shut up in the kitchen or the workroom while it was on.Footnote ⁵² McQuoin recognised that they had been placed in an invidious position, with ‘No going to Mass… no going to Confession or Communion, and a very marked public opinion in the school against them for belonging to that dreadful and very Irish religion called Roman Catholic.’Footnote ⁵³ The teenage girls seem, however, to have found the situation rather exciting: they showed off their Catholic books to their Protestant friends, getting McQuoin into serious trouble with the master for smuggling in contraband literature. No printed matter was supposed to enter any part of the workhouse system without being first vetted by the Anglican chaplain, who would certainly not have permitted anything so subversive as The Garden of the Soul.Footnote ⁵⁴

Poplar’s example of compliance was not followed by the Whitechapel guardians as far as their own paupers were concerned: when the widowed Mrs. Johns, in Whitechapel Workhouse, dared present a request for Catholic instruction for her children, she and they were all thrown out on the streets.Footnote ⁵⁵ But the guardians of St. George’s in the East proved more amenable. From October 1858 McQuoin began sending in applications for children at their school in Plashet, and he was allowed to begin holding catechism classes there. As had happened in Forest Gate, the first few children helped him build up a list of names of other Catholics in the school, and some of the teenage girls became active in trying to recruit their friends to the class. This led to a few orphans deciding for themselves to request Catholic instruction, and persuading younger siblings to do the same—and the guardians proved willing to honour their requests.Footnote ⁵⁶

Meanwhile Edward Bagshawe of the Brompton Oratory—not yet thirty, but a very determined character and destined to end up as a bishopFootnote ⁵⁷ —was striving to establish an acceptable working relationship with the guardians of St Luke’s, Chelsea. The Poor Law Board had persuaded them to pass a resolution allowing him access to the workhouse between 6.30 and 8.00 every Thursday evening, with the use of the boardroom to provide ‘instruction’ for whoever wished to attend. Bagshawe was initially very grateful for an arrangement that assured him effective, if somewhat rushed, access to all the Catholic adults, and even some of the children, though he soon became disillusioned as he realised that the time allowed him was woefully inadequate, and his requests to be allowed to stay longer, or to come in on Friday afternoons as well, were turned down.Footnote ⁵⁸

Bagshawe’s relative freedom of access drew him into becoming deeply concerned about the case of the Callinan children, who had attended the Oratory school for three years before entering the workhouse with their father. The family was waiting to be ‘passed’ to Ireland when Mr. Callinan died, after receiving the last rites from Bagshawe. The four orphaned children came to his Thursday evening sessions for about two months, but then were sent to the North Surrey District School in Anerley. The organisational culture of that school was fiercely anti-Catholic. After considerable difficulty Peter Rouelle,Footnote ⁵⁹ a priest based in Norwood, had secured permission to visit, but strictly on Saturday afternoons only: besides being difficult for him, it was the only time in the week when the children were taken out for walks or were free to play, so children who attended his catechism classes got no walks or playtime at all. In any case only a handful of children were allowed to attend, and they were still made to attend the Anglican services and religious lessons as well. Where the Callinans were concerned, the guardians would not even concede that much.Footnote ⁶⁰

John Kyne was now in charge of the Brentwood mission in Essex. Shortly before his arrival, his predecessor had sent in an application on behalf of Margaret Moore for her three children, who had been placed in the nearby poor law school by the Shoreditch guardians. Kyne followed up the application, and when he met with obstructionist tactics appealed to the Poor Law Board, whereupon arrangements were put in place for him to hold two catechism classes a week. At first the children were hostile: some of the older ones refused to attend, and those who were made to be there behaved disruptively. But a small core group of nine children from the Moore, Hayes and Rice families responded more positively.Footnote ⁶¹

Stepney Union’s policy on admission of priests to visit adult inmates was relatively accommodating, and Bernard Fallon (1830–1910), junior curate at St. Mary and St. Michael’s, was able to make several visits to the dying Ann Cole in Wapping Workhouse. Both she and her late husband had been staunch Catholics, and when Fallon asked if there were any children, she burst into tears because they were in the Limehouse school. Fallon wrote an application for her on a scrap of paper, which she signed with her mark, and on a subsequent visit he requested two of her friends to witness that it was indeed her wish to apply for her children to receive Catholic instruction. Following Ann’s death he sent an application to the Stepney board of guardians in respect of James and Catherine Cole, who were then aged nine and six. However since the law did not specifically require that a deceased parent’s wishes be respected, it was technically possible to insist that a further application be made by a godparent. After considerable delay, therefore, the guardians requested the names and addresses of the children’s godparents. They must have known that, given the precariousness of poor families’ lives, this requirement would present a formidable obstacle. Having spent considerable time and trouble investigating, Fallon replied that James’ godfather had been transported and his godmother was in America. Catherine’s godfather was presently at sea, but he was able to provide an address in Limehouse for the two witnesses, who, he explained, were also in a position to contact Catherine’s godmother. Meanwhile Mary Ann Butler, another widow in Wapping Workhouse, but alive and well, submitted an application for her four children, and in this instance the guardians had no choice but to agree that one of the priests from Poplar should be allowed into the Limehouse school to see the Butler children.Footnote ⁶²

The forming of a Conservative government in February 1858 was seen by Catholic leaders as an opportunity to push for change, and a deputation of M.P.s sought to alert the Home Secretary to the grievances of Catholic paupers and prisoners.Footnote ⁶³ Early in 1859 Edward RyleyFootnote ⁶⁴ —staunch Tory in politics, and indefatigable Catholic activist campaigning on a wide range of good causes—began an exchange of correspondence with the Poor Law Board,Footnote ⁶⁵ and in February The Tablet, under Ryley’s friend and collaborator John Wallis, started running editorials on the treatment of Catholics in the workhouse, which stimulated a flood of correspondence from readers. Opting for a public mass campaign rather than the discreet high-level negotiations favoured by some of the bishops, The Tablet specifically suggested mobilising working-class Catholics in certain key urban areas—mainly in the north-west, but also in East London—which had particularly high concentrations of Catholics.Footnote ⁶⁶

Ryley had a tendency to overrate his own influence and that of his contacts,Footnote ⁶⁷ and the Conservative administration on which his hopes were currently pinned was destined to be short-lived. Nevertheless he achieved something crucial: he persuaded William Kelly to re-enter the fray. He assured the priest that the time was ripe and they would be pushing at an open door: ‘All that was required was that the Catholics should kick up a jolly row, and if they showed themselves in earnest, the Catholic children in the workhouses should be brought up in their own religion.’Footnote ⁶⁸ Kelly was too experienced to be won over by enthusiastic talk, but he could see for himself that things seemed to be moving at last.

A meeting of Catholic ratepayers at St. Mary and St. Michael’s was treated to a feast of rhetoric from Kelly and each of his assistant priests, and from Ryley, before proceeding to elect twelve of the leading members of the congregation to form a committee and organise deputations to the boards of guardians.Footnote ⁶⁹ A second line of attack was to orchestrate an avalanche of applications for named children. Kelly put out the word at Sunday Masses, and appealed through the Catholic papers, for anyone who knew of Catholic children in the poor law schools to send in details.Footnote ⁷⁰ Eighty names were speedily handed in. The assistant priests James Foley, Bernard Fallon and Edmund Pennington (1830–1907) then set about pulling together the necessary documentation: verifying the children’s Catholic baptisms, tracing relatives or godparents, and persuading them to apply formally for the children to receive Catholic instruction. Soon the applications were coming in thick and fast, and Kelly compiled a long list, headed by the names of James and Catherine Cole.Footnote ⁷¹ The Catholic Question appeared frequently on the agendas of the local boards of guardians.Footnote ⁷² Other London missions held ratepayers’ meetings,Footnote ⁷³ and Bagshawe mobilised Chelsea ratepayers who attended Mass at the Oratory to take up the Callinan case. No living parents could be found to submit applications to the Chelsea guardians, but he managed to identify some relatives of orphans who gave their full co-operation.Footnote ⁷⁴

As the campaign got under way Inspector Farnall was drawn in, and he evolved into a key ally. During his routine visits to the various local boards and school committees, he brought the authority of the Poor Law Board to bear in support of the Catholic demands, urging that creed registers be maintained and be open to inspection by the local clergy, that all children be brought up in their parents’ faith if known, and that the Catholic children be permitted to attend Mass. Starting in March the Catholic children in the Brentwood school were allowed to attend Kyne’s chapel on Sunday mornings, and a few months later both Whitechapel and St. George’s in the East resolved to allow children capable of walking the distance to attend Mass at Stratford Chapel, provided a suitable volunteer could be found to escort them and bring them back.Footnote ⁷⁵

Satisfaction at the progress with some of the East End boards was tempered by frustration with the intransigence of the Stepney guardians, who were in process of backtracking even on the small concessions so far made. James Foley, during a visit to the workhouse, was upbraided by the matron about some ‘underhand work’ going on that had resulted in the Catholic inmates becoming ‘very troublesome’, which turned out to be ‘their signing applications drawn up by me, that their children should be educated in their own faith.’Footnote ⁷⁶ Not only did both guardians and officers consider it out of order for paupers to claim their legal rights, they had worked out fresh ploys to avoid compliance, and at the same time get their revenge on the troublemakers: every time an application was presented, they demanded that the children’s relatives appear in person before the board, to be browbeaten by the guardians. Inevitably some of the relatives backed down and withdrew their applications, but others stood their ground. The priests had expected there to be a backlash, and as the repeated instances of bullying, both of adult applicants and children applied for, were reported to them, they began compiling a dossier, and sending in detailed complaints.Footnote ⁷⁷ The Poor Law Board became increasingly involved, taking up the case of the Cole children who had still not been allowed to see a priest, and also that of Mrs. Newman who had applied for her daughter Mary Ann. The Stepney chairman admitted to Farnall that he had told Mrs. Newman that if she persisted in her application, Mary Ann would be taken out of the Limehouse school and returned to Wapping Workhouse,Footnote ⁷⁸ which was hardly a fit environment for adult women let alone children.Footnote ⁷⁹ His admission vindicated the priests’ complaints, but nothing could induce the Stepney board to reconsider its behaviour.Footnote ⁸⁰

The priests’ painstaking groundwork had made a vital contribution to the building up of a campaigning network involving all levels of the Catholic community in London, from peers to paupers. The young Irish barrister Charles RussellFootnote ⁸¹ drew up a pamphlet setting out the Catholics’ grievances and suggesting remedies,Footnote ⁸² and a big meeting on the Workhouse Question held in early June at St. James’s Hall, Piccadilly, was excellently well attended by aristocrats and landed gentry, M.P.s, City businessmen and others with money and status. Most of the London clergy were on the platform, the English bishops had sent supportive letters, and several front rows were reserved for titled ladies. Charles Langdale took the chair, and gave the keynote speech; Kelly and Ryley also spoke; and Henry Edward Manning,Footnote ⁸³ currently provost of Westminster, seconded a resolution to send a deputation to the prime minister.Footnote ⁸⁴ The meeting roughly coincided with the fall of the Conservative administration, and it was the new Liberal prime minister, Palmerston, who received the deputation. Though his immediate response was naturally cautious, the processes already set in motion were not derailed by the change of government. Manning quickly established a good relationship with the new president of the Poor Law Board, Charles Villiers (1802–98),Footnote ⁸⁵ and an order already drafted with a view to settling matters in the Catholics’ favour was duly issued on 23 August.Footnote ⁸⁶

Initially it looked as if the August Order would be complied with. The notoriously difficult Whitechapel Union resolved on compliance,Footnote ⁸⁷ while in Chelsea, Bagshawe was at last permitted to provide religious instruction to the Callinan children—albeit with the exception of the eldest girl, who was over twelve and, after a year’s intensive indoctrination, had declared that she wished to be a Protestant.Footnote ⁸⁸ Contemporaries occasionally poked fun at the presumption that poor law children were old enough at twelve to choose their own religion: it suggested extraordinary precocity, since no twelve-year-old growing up in normal circumstances would have been considered mature enough to make that kind of decision. Ironically it probably originated with Langdale, who suggested twelve because it was the normal age of confirmation and first communion, and he found it particularly horrifying that children who had received full sacramental initiation should be forced into apostasy.Footnote ⁸⁹ But instead of protecting them in their faith, twelve had become the age at which they could legally be induced to apostatise.

John Kyne naturally expected the August Order to result in more of the under-twelves in the Brentwood school being sent to Mass, including those who had decided they ‘no longer wanted to be Catholics’. Instead four stopped coming. When he queried their absence, the guardians ruled that he would first have to prove all over again that those children were Catholics, and the following Sunday no children were allowed to attend the chapel. Kyne fulminated that this was illegal, the East London Observer commented with obvious disapproval on the ‘display of the ‘No Popery’ spirit’, and the guardians’ own clerk made it clear he thought they were being completely unreasonable, but they were adamant. Poor Mrs. Rice sent in a note confirming that she wanted her children brought up Catholic, and waited outside ready to be called in, but was refused a hearing.Footnote ⁹⁰ The guardians’ crackdown was accompanied by an upsurge in anti-Catholic bullying within the school, orchestrated by the staff: the Hayes children told Kyne that the schoolmistress ‘had spoken out against the Catholic children’, and the master admitted to him that this was true.Footnote ⁹¹

Mrs. Moore, who was currently living in Kentish Town, repeatedly made the long walk to Brentwood on Sundays to see her children. She was deeply distressed to find they were being made to attend Protestant services once again. The eldest girl, Ellen, had declared to the school committee that she consented to become a Protestant; she admitted to her mother that this was not at all what she really wanted, but she was too frightened to say otherwise, since the committee had told her she must be Protestant, and she was being teased by the other children—and the guardians were now planning to consolidate her ‘conversion’ by placing her in service in a Protestant family. The schoolmaster and mistress tried to talk Mrs. Moore round and persuade her to drop her opposition, arguing that with so few Catholics in the school, it was surely best for all the children to be treated as Anglicans, but she went straight to the Catholic chapel to complain to Kyne about what was going on. He took down a statement, relating what Ellen had told her mother, and concluding: ‘and now I beg once more to declare that I decidedly object to my children being brought up Protestants. It grieves me to the heart that they are being sent to the Protestant church contrary to my express wish; and that I am ready to make any sacrifice for the sake of bringing up my children in the Catholic faith.’ After the draft had been read to her, Mrs. Moore made her X.Footnote ⁹² Despite such vehemently expressed parental objections, it took considerable effort by Inspector Farnall to persuade the Shoreditch guardians to back down, and as a face-saving measure they insisted that Kyne must once again produce documentary proof of the children’s Catholicity. The catechism classes were then reinstated, and the children were henceforth allowed to attend both morning Mass and afternoon vespers.Footnote ⁹³

One small storm had been weathered, but much bigger ones were looming. Opposition to the August Order was mounting, and the winter months saw both sides girding up for battle. At a council of war at St. Mary and St. Michael’s in late November, it was agreed to call a meeting on 5 December to which all the London clergy, north and south of the river, would be invited. Forty-six turned up, and a clergy committee was formed which included both Wiseman’s current vicar generals, Canons Hearn and O’Neal.Footnote ⁹⁴ It began to meet weekly at St. Mary Moorfields, and reported both to Dr Hearn and to Bishop Grant of Southwark: though known as the Westminster Clerical Committee, by agreement with Grant it acted for the whole of London. Manning, Kelly, Bagshawe and McQuoin formed a sub-committee to push things forward, together with Wiseman’s secretary, Canon John Morris,Footnote ⁹⁵ who agreed to act as secretary to the committee. Charles Russell, and the solicitors’ firm of Tucker and New which handled the affairs of the archdiocese, were lined up to provide legal advice. Next an appeal went out to all the London clergy to help track down and document the Catholic children in all the metropolitan poor law institutions, and all cases of refusal to permit Catholic instruction, or transfer of children to avoid honouring applications.Footnote ⁹⁶ A similar committee of prominent laymen, led by Charles Langdale, Lord PetreFootnote ⁹⁷ and Lord Edward HowardFootnote ⁹⁸ held meetings at the Stafford Club in Saville Row to discuss the best way to pursue the issue in Parliament.Footnote ⁹⁹ Outside the formal committee structures a small group of elite women headed by Lady Georgiana FullertonFootnote ¹⁰⁰ worked behind the scenes, fundraising and praying for the success of the campaign, and discreetly lobbying decision-makers.Footnote ¹⁰¹

The jubilation, which had followed the issue of the August Order, dissolved into frustration when the agitation against it secured an avowal by Villiers, early in 1860, that it would not be enforced.Footnote ¹⁰² The small successes so far gained were already proving hollow: catechism classes and Mass attendance could achieve little for children stuck in stridently Protestant residential institutions, and once the initial enthusiasm passed, both priests and children had begun to flag. At Forest Gate ten-year-old James Guilmartin was the first to drop out of McQuoin’s classes, and refuse to attend Mass with his sister Mary, despite their mother’s having made it clear that she wanted them brought up as Catholics. McQuoin complained to the guardians, but to no avail,Footnote ¹⁰³ yet he was in no doubt that James’ withdrawal was due to bullying.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Similarly at Brentwood, it was not long before the number of children attending Mass had fallen to two, and Kyne stopped trying to hold classes at the school because the atmosphere there was so bad, he feared it would do more harm than good.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

The Westminster Clerical Committee nevertheless continued its efforts to identify Catholic children and gain access to them, lest it appear that the Catholics had ceased to care if their children were brought up as Anglicans, and its successes and failures were given wide publicity through a series of monthly pamphlets issued by Canon Morris as Workhouse Papers. All else having failed, Tucker and New threatened to take legal action against Stepney Union over the Cole children, whereupon the guardians caved in,Footnote ¹⁰⁶ but their procrastination up to that point meant they had won, because as William Kelly recorded: ‘when the priest did see them he could make no hand of these children, and they have, like hundreds of others, ever since been brought up Protestants.’ How could anyone be so naïve as to imagine that ‘children long under Protestant instruction, ridiculed, buffeted, and mauled by their Protestant pauper playmates, and enlightened, it may be, by the sneers of the schoolmaster and mistress, and repeated examination in the Protestant Catechism by the Protestant minister on the beauties of the Established Church and the horrors of Popery’ would ‘still have remained such Catholic martyrs and theologians’ as to hold steadfast to the faith of their baptism?Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Catholics undoubtedly comprised at least a quarter, and probably over half the total roll of the Limehouse school, but no more than thirteen were ever allowed to see a priest. Farnall did his best, spending two hours arguing with the Stepney guardians while Kelly waited outside, but they refused to see him and would not listen to Farnall. When the Inspector eventually emerged, he told Kelly it was a waste of time trying to talk to that board: the only answer was to obtain a change in the law.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Having failed to achieve any meaningful breakthrough in their campaign for religious rights within the poor law institutions, Catholics in the London area searched eagerly for alternative options. Many threw themselves into support for the Immaculate Conception Charity, launched in 1859 to ‘rescue’ children from the workhouse schools by sponsoring their placement in Catholic orphanages, and endowed with the proceeds of a grand bazaar at St. James’s Hall. Lady Fullerton was particularly active, not only in the ongoing fundraising but also in the time-consuming process of persuading some of the more difficult boards of guardians to hand children over.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Within two or three years nearly 300 had been ‘provided for’, but further outlays would be required on an annual basis for each child until old enough to become self-supporting and it would not be long before glaring gaps began to open between what could be raised afresh each year and what was being drawn down from the reserve to meet existing sponsorship commitments.Footnote ¹¹⁰ William Kelly was dismissive of these efforts, as he knew the Catholic community could not possibly raise enough money to maintain all the children in need of help. Even the existing orphanages were running seriously under capacity: North Hyde, for example, had accommodation for at least a hundred boys, but could only afford to admit seventy four.Footnote ¹¹¹ In his view, the answer was not to throw money year by year into supporting a few hundred children, leaving thousands more to the mercies of the Poor Law. Instead, the limited Catholic resources should be used to enlarge the Catholic orphanages, and the guardians be induced to transfer all the Catholic poor law children to them and pay maintenance.Footnote ¹¹²

Admittedly, all attempts to persuade guardians to do that had so far failed, but interest was now being expressed by leading members of the Workhouse Visiting Society (W.V.S.), a solidly Protestant association with several Anglican bishops on its committee, who wished to open residential institutions under their own management to provide training in domestic service for older workhouse girls.Footnote ¹¹³ They experienced no difficulty in persuading boards of guardians to transfer children, but thought it only right that the cost of their basic upkeep be transferred with them. Louisa Twining (1820–1912) sought clarification from the Poor Law Board, but was told that payments from the poor rates would not be legal.Footnote ¹¹⁴ If the W.V.S., with all the power and wealth of the establishment behind it, was so anxious to secure public funding to ensure the financial sustainability of two very small institutions, each for a few dozen girls, how did the impoverished Catholic community imagine it could possibly raise enough to support hundreds of children in London alone?

In February 1861 Charles Villiers moved the setting up of a Parliamentary Select Committee to look into a range of issues concerning Poor Relief in England, including religious grievances.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Catholic churches and chapels all over the country got up petitions, and by the time the hearings began around 200, with a total of 53,234 signatures between them, had been received by the House of Commons. 2,028 people had signed the St. Mary Moorfields petition alone, and 3,959 the one at St. Mary and St. Michael’s.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Hostile petitions were also submitted, mostly by boards of guardians rather than by the general public, though a show of public support was organised in some places by the holding of ‘no popery’ rallies.Footnote ¹¹⁷

From late-May through most of June 1861 the Committee interviewed witnesses on the issue of Catholic religious rights. Farnall initially proposed to the Catholics that he should present their grievances on their behalf, obviating the need for any of them to appear, but he was overruled by Lord Edward Howard.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Eight Catholics were called, of whom seven were involved with the campaign in London: John Morris, Edward Bagshawe, John Kyne, James McQuoin, the solicitor Francis New, Richard Swift and Edward Ryley; the eighth was James Whitty, from Liverpool. Canon Morris challenged Parliament’s statistics, based on the unions’ own returns, demonstrating convincingly that their relatively low figures for Catholic children must be grossly understated, and that there must be over a thousand in the metropolitan poor law institutions, yet only a tenth of that number were allowed to receive Catholic instruction.Footnote ¹¹⁹

The propensity of policy makers to construe the children of the poor as blank slates, belonging to nobody, resulted in a mindset that was resistant to abstract arguments, but easily challenged by anyone who could credibly evoke the children’s ties with their families and communities of origin. Previously, Catholic campaigners had tended to frame their approach in terms of general principles, but the priests who testified before the select committee talked about them as members of families, families from which they drew important components of their personal identity. They came across as thoroughly well-informed, citing precise facts, reading out case studies and readily answering questions, and they were able to provide detailed explanations of the realities of life both for workhouse inmates and for poor families generally, showing how impossible it was for them to claim their rights under the law as it stood.Footnote ¹²⁰

Inspector Farnall confirmed that the London Catholics had genuine grievances: some unions, such as the Strand, respected minority rights but other unions did not. He also concurred with Morris about the inaccuracy of the returns. Sandwiched between the advocates for strengthened protection of religious minorities, witnesses called to represent the opposition openly confirmed that it was the established practice to bring Catholic children up as Protestants, and argued that this was as it should be.Footnote ¹²¹ As Kelly commented, their evidence had inadvertently ‘done good service to our cause.’Footnote ¹²² While not testifying in person, Kelly had followed the proceedings carefully, and worked hard behind the scenes helping to assemble evidence: he and his assistant priests were the source of many of the case studies cited. Henry Manning also did not give evidence, but was present in the gallery throughout.Footnote ¹²³

Non-Anglican Protestants had rarely experienced the difficulties the Catholics had to grapple with, and besides were less likely to feel undue discomfort with the Anglican-dominated, but otherwise ‘unsectarian’ religious ethos of the poor law institutions. So the Catholics were left to fight a lone battle, though this did mean that the hoped-for legislation would be drafted primarily with an eye to meeting their special grievances. However they were not the only religious group facing problems. The Jews were traditionally opposed to letting any of their people be forced into the workhouse, where they would be unable to observe the precepts of their faith, and had so far managed to provide for their own poor. But they were feeling the strain and, since they paid their poor rates like everyone else (they reckoned their contribution came to around 1% of the total receipts for London), wanted a share in the benefits; they were also interested in making use of poor law machinery to apply a ‘labour test’ to applicants they considered undeserving. Accordingly they began making representations to boards of guardians to try to secure special arrangements, but to no avail.Footnote ¹²⁴

After hearing the Catholics, the Select Committee listened to the views of the W.V.S. The testimony of the Honourable Mrs. Emmeline WayFootnote ¹²⁵ was to lead to a major breakthrough, prompting Sir Stafford Northcote and George Lyall to introduce a bill to make it solidly legal for boards of guardians to transfer children to voluntary homes and pay maintenance. The Protestant Alliance got up a campaign against it, lest it ‘facilitate the institution of Catholic establishments’, but Northcote said that if this did happen as an ‘incidental consequence’, he would be only too pleased.Footnote ¹²⁶

A considerable delay was to ensue before the Select Committee completed its enquiries. It continued to sit for several more years, while all the issues needing to be looked at were investigated. Northcote and Lyall’s Act passed into law, and William Kelly wrote to the Catholic papers to remind everyone of the urgency of constructing more orphanage accommodation.Footnote ¹²⁷ Norwood and North Hyde both set about building extensions and getting themselves certified to receive poor law children, despite growing suspicions that they would face insuperable difficulties in getting children transferred. Those suspicions proved well grounded: not one of the London boards of guardians would hand over a single child. Their refusals were however carefully documented, and the correspondence forwarded to the Poor Law Board, and thence to the House of Commons, as further evidence against the guardians.Footnote ¹²⁸

When the Select Committee Report was at last published, its conclusions and recommendations were overwhelmingly favourable to the Catholics’ demands, but Parliament showed no signs of taking action. Shortly before Christmas 1864, therefore, a joint meeting of clergy and laymen at the Stafford Club resolved to call for countrywide protests, and a petition to Parliament. No one present had the authority to make that an order, and the overall response was patchy, but Canon Hearn as vicar general issued a circular to all the missions in Westminster Archdiocese, and they duly began holding meetings: St. Mary and St. Michael’s once again took the lead.Footnote ¹²⁹ Plans for a general meeting were dropped following the death of Wiseman in February, but local rallies continued—the Oratory held theirs in March, presided over by the superior with Bagshawe as main speaker.Footnote ¹³⁰ On the last Sunday in March two petitions, on the prison and workhouse issues, were made available at all churches and chapels across the diocese to be signed by Massgoers.Footnote ¹³¹

On 6 April 1865 Mary Sarsfield died in Millbank Prison, having signed a will that was witnessed for her by two prison officers, leaving her three illegitimate children to Charles Langdale to see they were brought up as Catholics. The eldest girl was in service, and the others were in the Southall school belonging to the St. Marylebone guardians. He duly applied to take the younger two and place them in a Catholic school at his own expense. Although an unmarried mother was solely responsible for her children while she lived, she could not appoint a guardian for them after her death: Sarsfield’s will was therefore not legally enforceable, but it was a very clear statement of her wishes, and there was nothing to prevent the guardians from complying. Nevertheless they resolved to refuse. Langdale was astonished by the decision, which attracted widespread press comment because it made no sense: as The Universe expressed it: ‘had they been free from prejudice, and without any admixture of that miserable bigotry which too often distinguishes those who hold sway in the realms of Bumbledom, one would have supposed that they would, in justice to the ratepayers, have been glad to relieve the parish from the responsibility and expense of maintaining the children…’Footnote ¹³²

A wide range of sweeping recommendations had emerged from the Select Committee for changes in the working of the Poor Law. Most required major legislation that would require careful drafting, and during the first half of 1865 public opinion was being aroused over yet another far-reaching issue, by shocking revelations in the newspapers about the state of the metropolitan infirmaries.Footnote ¹³³ Villiers felt under considerable pressure to “do something”, yet it was the worst possible time to introduce a new bill about anything important, since Parliament only had a few more months to go before dissolution.

The existence of the Poor Law Board was no longer under threat, and plans were being drawn up to place it on a permanent footing, but meanwhile another continuance bill was due. Villiers decided to add a number of extra clauses, in an attempt to implement some of the more urgent recommendations of the Select Committee, and particularly to give at least partial relief to the Catholics. But he ran into a firestorm in the House. In a long and impassioned speech he alleged that the opposition was motivated by anti-Catholicism, and—remarkably—went on to evoke the viewpoint of pauper parents, a group not ordinarily seen as having any right to a viewpoint: ‘Now those poor people did care whether their children were brought up as Roman Catholics or Protestants. Some thought, indeed, that the poor cared more for their children in this respect than the rich, but at any rate they had feelings which were entitled to respect.’ The opposing M.P.s pointed out, reasonably enough, that he had had six years to do something for the Catholic workhouse children: why suddenly bring it up at this stage? Nevertheless the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, assured Villiers that everyone who had spoken was in favour of redressing the Catholics’ grievances, only this was not the way to go about it. The continuance bill went through, but with the extra clauses thrown out.Footnote ¹³⁴

The General Election resulted in a slight increase in the Liberal majority, so Villiers stayed at the Poor Law Board. Inspector Farnall became deeply involved in the infirmaries campaign, and—as had happened with the Catholic campaign—was drawn into such close collaboration with the reformers that he became more their man at the Poor Law Board than a strictly impartial civil servant.Footnote ¹³⁵ On religious rights there were no further developments until early 1866, when the London Catholics got up yet another agitation.

Two meetings of the Westminster Clerical Committee were held, chaired by Henry Manning who had succeeded Wiseman as Archbishop: he then issued a circular on 31 January launching another round of petitions to Parliament.Footnote ¹³⁶ Charles Langdale drew up a ‘Summary of Catholic Grievances under the Poor Law, and Proposed Remedies’ and sent it with a covering letter to all members of both Houses of Parliament. The final point under the list of ‘Remedies’ was that it should be the duty of boards of guardians to transfer Catholic children to denominational schools. However a law simply requiring guardians to transfer children would be too blunt an instrument: it would be more appropriate to empower the Poor Law Board to review guardians’ decisions on applications for transfer and, if necessary, override them.Footnote ¹³⁷ Any proposal to increase the powers of the Poor Law Board would still meet with furious opposition, but the idea was no longer politically unthinkable. The Catholic press did its best to stir its readers to action: ‘The Cry of the Workhouse Orphans’, a pious tale by Frances Taylor, appeared in The Lamp and was followed up by a series of articles entitled ‘Facts Not Fictions about Workhouses’; while a two-part article entitled ‘De Profundis’ appeared in The Month and was subsequently reissued as a pamphlet.Footnote ¹³⁸ On 14 June Archbishop Manning launched the Westminster Diocesan Education Fund to fundraise and plan for a substantially expanded Catholic school system, to include residential provision for all eventual poor law transferees.Footnote ¹³⁹

A Liberal split over parliamentary reform led to the Tories forming a minority government, and the new president of the Poor Law Board, Gathorne Hardy (1814–1906), drew up a modest Poor Law Amendment Bill to put into effect at least some of the more uncontentious reforms felt to be needed. Even that would not be an easy task: William Golden Lumley of the Poor Law Board, who had drafted the August OrderFootnote ¹⁴⁰ and been following subsequent developments with keen interest, observed that the 1865–8 House of Commons proved remarkably resistant to acting on the Select Committee’s recommendations with regard to religious freedom.Footnote ¹⁴¹

Charles Langdale had retired from Parliament in 1841, and was now almost 80, but he asked the M.P. for Mayo, Lord Bingham, to propose a clause entitling the Poor Law Board, on application by the next of kin or godparent, to order a board of guardians to transfer children to a certified school of their own religious persuasion, with payment of maintenance. Gathorne Hardy expressed full support. Objections were raised that Catholics were trying to proselytise in the workhouses and poor law schools, whereupon Villiers stated forcefully that

The clause was duly included in the Poor Law Amendment Act, which was passed on 10 August 1866.Footnote ¹⁴²

It was a provisional measure only; a down payment on more extensive reforms to come, and Gathorne Hardy was in correspondence with Archbishop Manning to see what should be the next step.Footnote ¹⁴³ Meanwhile Manning began writing to the London boards of guardians, citing the Act and asking them to start putting it into effect by transferring children. His approach to each union was very carefully prepared. Before tackling the Strand guardians he made a point of first visiting their separate school, and thoroughly praising it, so as to allay any suspicion that his request for transfers implied a reflection on its management. To his tremendous relief he at last got a positive response: the Strand guardians at a meeting on 18 September—called specially to ensure that everyone had a chance to be present—passed a resolution to comply with his request immediately, without waiting for an order from the Poor Law Board.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Although formal applications still had to be submitted by relatives for each child, and dealt with case by case, the Strand decision marked an important breakthrough, and shortly afterwards the guardians of St Luke’s Chelsea passed a similar resolution.Footnote ¹⁴⁵

Most of the metropolitan boards were not prepared to give in so easily. Characteristically, relatives would apply directly to the guardians for their children to be transferred to Catholic schools; the guardians would refuse; the relatives would appeal to the Poor Law Board which would take up the case with the guardians, asking for their ‘observations’; and finally, unless the guardians came up with a really convincing objection, the board could issue an order whereupon the child was supposed to be transferred.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ It was a cumbersome and time-consuming process, and the situation was not made any easier by the law officers of the Crown issuing the opinion that the term ‘child’ in the Act only applied to a legitimate child.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ The only children for whom there was any chance of securing transfer orders were the relatively small numbers who might have been successfully applied for to be allowed to attend Catholic instruction classes in the poor law schools. However there were very few places where the classes had achieved anything, or where the priests’ visits had been other than a heartbreaking waste of time and effort.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ By contrast, transferring children to one of the Catholic certified institutions effectively assured their religious upbringing, and made it safe for them to ‘come out’ as Catholics.Footnote ¹⁴⁹

The campaign for a change in the law had been conducted mainly by Catholics in London, where the local poor law authorities had proved particularly resistant to their demands—unlike those in Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, where relatively acceptable arrangements had been negotiated.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ But the legislative changes covered the whole of England, and other Catholic dioceses were monitoring developments and forming plans to set up their own certified school systems.Footnote ¹⁵¹ So was the Jewish community.Footnote ¹⁵² Meanwhile an order went round to the London boards of guardians to return figures for all the Catholic children received over the past seven years. The eventual returns showed that the vast majority were transients, but more than vindicated the Catholics’ contention that over a thousand Catholic children were in the institutions: 10,044 had been received, 7,776 subsequently discharged, and 1,740 transferred to the separate schools. William Kelly estimated the real number at nearer 3,000.Footnote ¹⁵³

After resolving the infirmaries crisis through the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867, Gathorne Hardy was moved to the Home Office and replaced as president of the Poor Law Board by the Earl of Devon (1807–88), who sat in the Lords. The 1868 Poor Law Amendment Bill was accordingly introduced first into the Upper House, where their lordships took their time picking it over. One of the most crucial clauses would make it compulsory to maintain a creed register in every workhouse and poor law school: every local minister of religion, and indeed every ratepayer, would have the right to inspect it; disputes could be appealed to the Poor Law Board; and the ministers could then visit any inmate listed as a co-religionist, without having to wait for a request. The provisions of the 1866 Act for having children transferred to denominational schools were extended to cover illegitimate children, and moreover the Poor Law Board would be empowered to order the transfer even of children who had no traceable relatives, should there be reasonable grounds for so doing.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ A motion for an amendment to delete the inclusion of deserted children, on the grounds that their parents deserved no say in their upbringing, was defeated when Devon intervened to insist that ‘the words were requisite to do justice to the various religious bodies, and to prevent a large number of deserted children whose parents belonged to the Roman Catholic Church from being sent to Church of England schools.’Footnote ¹⁵⁵

At a meeting in July 1868 the St. Marylebone guardians affixed their seal to a petition objecting to the Bill’s religious clauses, and asked the two M.P.s for Marylebone—Harvey Lewis (1814–88) and Thomas Chambers (1814–91)—to present and support it.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ When the bill reached the Commons they both intervened strenuously, complaining that it had ‘come cut and dry from the other House at a time when there was not a fair opportunity to discuss it in this,’ and urging that it be dropped rather than be pushed through in a hurry at ‘the fag-end of the Session’ when the benches were half-empty and most of the M.P.s had left town and, moreover, at 3.00 in the morning. Having failed to derail the bill on procedural grounds, they did their best to object to the content, but here they were unable to offer plausible arguments. Their reiteration that it was unnecessary, because the rights of Catholics were already fully safeguarded by existing law, was easily refuted by Sir Michael Hicks-Beach (1837–1916), secretary to the Poor Law Board.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ Chambers, who had a past track-record of promoting anti-Catholic measures,Footnote ¹⁵⁸ cited a recent pastoral from Archbishop Manning, whom he alleged to have said that Catholic paupers knew their rights, but Lord Edward Howard riposted that ‘the Honourable and learned member for Marylebone had not stated the case fairly, he had used his powers of rhetoric to pervert the real facts,’ and other speakers confirmed that for the most part the Catholic paupers either did not know their rights, or were unable to claim them. Gathorne Hardy defended the bill’s religious clauses as embodying the recommendations of the Select Committee, and Villiers pointed out that all the issues had been very thoroughly discussed in the House of Commons in 1865, and there was no point in reopening that debate if nobody had anything new to say. Speaker after speaker stressed that the bill was not trying to create new rights, only trying to ensure the effective exercise of the religious rights which, it was agreed by virtually everyone (including, ostensibly, Chambers himself), the New Poor Law had originally intended to establish.Footnote ¹⁵⁹

The Marylebone M.P.s continued to fight tooth and nail against the proposal for a creed register: Chambers condemned it as an ‘outrage on the principles of religious liberty,’ on the grounds that it would entitle ministers of religion to inflict their visits on paupers who might not want them, and he persisted in his fulminations against the bill’s ‘spirit of intolerance’ despite ample provision having been made for anyone who really did object to refuse further visits. He then attempted to reinsert the amendment making the bill’s provisions inapplicable to deserted children, but Villiers argued strongly against this, saying it ‘would carry us back thirty years.’ Charles NewdegateFootnote ¹⁶⁰ sought to contend that according to existing law, ‘if a child became destitute it should be educated in the religion of the state.’ But Gladstone, now leader of the opposition (he would become prime minister before the year was out), asserted firmly that the intention of the existing law was that children be brought up in their own religion—that is, in the religion of their parents.Footnote ¹⁶¹ A few points remained to be settled the next morning, after which the bill passed into law.Footnote ¹⁶²

The principle that destitute children in state care should be educated in the state religion had in fact been advocated very strongly in Parliament during the early years of introducing and fine-tuning the New Poor Law, and though it was not supposed to override parental objections, it was considered applicable to a substantial category of children perceived as belonging to nobody.Footnote ¹⁶³ It could be argued therefore that the New Poor Law had not, strictly speaking, required that children be brought up in their parents’ religion, and that Gladstone’s statement reflected a reinterpretation of its meaning, due to a change in attitude about what it ought to have meant. Had the local boards of guardians made reasonable efforts to implement Section 19 as the legislators intended, things would surely have developed very differently. The Catholics would not have been driven to invest scarce resources in setting up their own certified school system, or so much energy into getting the law changed; large numbers of non-Protestant children would have been left to take their chances in the mainstream poor law schools; and the guardians might have retained discretion over the religious upbringing of those who were orphaned or deserted. Instead, the London guardians’ intransigence had created a cross-party consensus that all religious minority children must be made eligible for removal from their direct control, and machinery put in place to enforce that removal should the need arise.