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"RAGGED SCHOOLS"

Mr. Charles Dickens in an eloquent Letter addressed to the editors of the Daily News describes the places which bear the above name, as an effort "to introduce among the most miserable and neglected outcasts in London, some knowledge of the commonest principles of morality and religion; to commence their recognition as immortal human creatures, before the Gaol Chaplain becomes their only schoolmaster; to suggest to Society that its duty to this wretched throng, foredoomed to crime and punishment, rightfully begins at some distance from the Police-office; and that  the careless maintenance from year to year, in this capital city of the world, of a vast hopeless nursery of ignorance, misery and vice : a breeding place for the hulks and gaols : is horrible to contemplate.
    "This attempt is being made in certain of the most obscure and squalid parts of the Metropolis; where rooms are opened at night, for the gratuitous instruction of all comers, children or adults, under the title of 'RAGGED SCHOOLS.' The name implies the purpose. They who are too ragged, wretched, filthy, and forlorn, to enter any other place: who could gain admission into no charity-school, and who would be driven from any church-door: are invited to come in here, and find some people not depraved, willing to teach them something, and show them some sympathy, and stretch out a hand which is not the iron hand of the Law, for their correction."
    To these words of burning truth, we may add that this great work of reclaiming the Destitute Poor has now been in progress some three years and a half. The first systematic start was, however, made by a Society called "The Ragged School Union" formed in April 1844, at a meeting of the teachers of various Schools, held at the St. Giles's Ragged School, Streatham-street, in Bloomsbury. During the first year, two hundred of these Schools were opened, the rent and other expenses being paid, generally, by the teachers themselves; and, sometimes, by one or more benevolent individuals in the locality of the School. This was done by various denominations of Christians, without any concert or co-operation between the Schools; and the object of the Society is to create a Union between them, in order more fully and effectually to encourage such institutions; and, by small pecuniary assistance, extend their usefulness, and increase their number.
    At the head if this "generous band," is Lord Ashley, as Chairman of the General and Visiting Committee; and, according to the only Report yet printed, the twenty Ragged Schools then established showed an average attendance of nearly 2,000 children and 200 teachers : to one School, 5,783 had been admitted since its commencement; and there had been, during the winter, an average attendance of 250 children, of youths of both sexes, whose aged ranged from eight to sixteen years. In some cases, these Schools are only open on the Sabbath; but, mostly, one or two week-day evenings as well. At the date of the above Report, the operations of the Society had been much cramped for want of funds; yet, with so small a sum as £61 9s. 6d., they had contributed towards the formation of several schools.
    We have selected one of the Society's Schools for illustration, that in Jurston-street, Oakley-street, Lambeth; a locality where the work of reclamation and prevention is much needed. The School is opened on Sunday evenings at six o'clock; and the year's average attendance has been 250 children and 25 teachers. Several distinguished individuals have already visited the Schools in operation; amongst others Lord Ashley, Lord Robert Grosvenor, Lord Sandon, Hon. W.F.Cowper, Charles Dickens, Esq., Lady Troubridge, and Lady Alicia Lambert.
    Meanwhile the system is rapidly extending; for, where so much good can be effected at such trifling cost, the result must be successful. We gather from a lecture recently delivered at the Literary and Scientific Institute in Aldersgate-street, by the Rev. Mr. Ainslie, that the sum of £300 was raised, in one day, at Epping to establish there a school of this description. At Windsor, a school on "the Ragged" principle has been established by a poor chimney-sweep, "who," said Mr. Ainslie, "had himself been a bad and abandoned man, but who was reclaimed, and who now sat there, with his dirty face, teaching and doing more good than thousands of others of ten times his capacity." On Mr. Ainslie's visit to this School there were upwards of 100 young persons present, from the age of eight to ten, boys and girls, all behaving with the greatest decorum, and tolerably well clothed - "for educate the mind, and it immediately revolts at the body being clothed in rags."

from The Illustrated London News, 1846

LAMBETH RAGGED SCHOOLS.

ON Wednesday, a handsome building in Lambeth Walk (close upon the South-Western Railway), which has been erected by Mr. Beaufoy of South Lambeth, for the education of the many poor and destitute children in that neighbourhood, was inaugurated at a public meeting of the friends of Ragged Schools in Lambeth; Lord Ashley in the chair.
    The origin of the school was related to the meeting by Mr. F. Doulton the honorary secretary to the committee, who stated:- In 1845, a few of the destitute and degraded children of Lambeth were accustomed to assemble for instruction, on Sabbath evenings, in a school-room in Palace-yard, near the Palace. In the following year, a few gentlemen in the neighbourhood, at the instance of Lord Ashley, formed themselves into a committee, and afforded the poor children instruction during the week. Soon after, the school was removed to one of the arches of the South-Western Railway Company, kindly granted for that purpose. About this time, the schools excited the sympathy, and attracted the support, of the late Mrs. Beaufoy; and, on her death, her husband intimated his intention of perpetuating her memory and fulfilling her benevolent wishes, by founding the Schools which were opened on Wednesday. The building has cost the sum of £10,000; but the munificent donor has further set apart £4000 for the permanent maintenance of the building. The expenses of tuition will be £250 annually, which is to be raised by subscription. There is accommodation provided in separate apartments for boys and girls, who are to meet for instruction during five week nights, exclusive of Sunday evenings, when religious instruction will be communicated. There is also accommodation for a daily infant school. The Schools are calculated to accommodate about 800 children. There are two large classrooms - one for boys and one for girls; there are also two reception rooms for the training of the children on their first admission, and there are four smaller class-rooms where young persons who show more than usual diligence are taught in the higher branches of education. In the larger class-rooms the committee have erected marble tablets, each bearing the following inscription:-

    This Tablet is erected by the Committee of the Lambeth Ragged Schools, as a grateful record of the munificence of HENRY BENJAMIN HANBURY BEAUFOY, Esq., of Caron-place, South Lambeth, by whom these Schools have been built and endowed; and also in grateful remembrance of ELIZA his wife, whose unspeakable private worth has here a fit memorial, and whose benevolence and special kindness to poor children will live in the gratitude of generations who shall enjoy the benefit of these Schools.
    "She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her band to the needy."
    "Children arise up, and call her blessed." -Prov. xxxi., ver. 20 and 28.

    The meeting was opened with prayer by the Rev. Mr. Wix; when Lord Ashley rose and addressed the assembly, eloquently advocating the benefits already derived from the Ragged School system, through which many hundreds had been taken from a state of filth and misery, and raised to one of honourable independence. "There was no reason whatever why Lambeth should not rescue itself from the present disgraceful opprobrium which attached to it. If they exerted themselves in the way he had mentioned, he saw no reason why this district should not vie with any other district in the metropolis, or even with the most favoured parts of the earth. His Lordship concluded by observing that he had no objection to the introduction of any amount of secular knowledge, but it must always be subordinate to moral training. "Let the great basis of all Ragged School teaching be true sound evangelical Protestantism. (Great applause.) Let them ever keep before the minds of the children the saying of the great Chillingworth, 'The Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants.'" (Hear, hear.)
    The meeting had now so greatly increased that Mr. Williams, M.P, for Lambeth, accompanied by other gentlemen, adjourned to the girls' class-room.
    The Rev. Mr. Christmas moved the first resolution of thanks to Mr. Beaufoy, for his munificent donation-The Rev. Dr. Mortimer, of the City of London School, seconded the resolution, and mentioned, as another instance of Mr. Beaufoy's liberality, that he had given as much as £10,000 to the institution over which he (Dr. Mortimer) presided and to found exhibitions at Cambridge.

Illustrated London News, Jan.-June, 1851

see also Garwood's The Million-Peopled City - click here

    Mr William Locke, Hon. Sec. of the London Ragged School Union since its establishment in 1844, giving evidence:— Ragged Schools originated a very long time ago; some think they were first begun when Mr. Raikes got ragged children out of the street into his Sunday Schools [in Gloucester, about 1780]; or when honest John Pound gathered a class of ragged children round him in his little shop at Portsmouth [for about 20 years until his death in 1839]. However, the Ragged School Union was established in 1844, when some friends and I, engaged in Sunday School teaching, found so many children excluded from the Sunday Schools in consequence of their filthy, dirty, and ragged condition, that we were very anxious indeed to have another class of schools in London at that time, and we thought it an excellent plan to have a Union so that we might arrange plans, and assist each other in carrying out so desirable an object as that of gathering in the outcast and destitute who were idling or doing mischief in the streets.
    Since that time the Schools in London have increased from 16 to 110; the voluntary teachers have increased from 200 to 1600; there were no paid teachers at first, and we have now 200; the children at first were only about 2000 in number; we have now in our day and evening schools about 13,000, which does not include the Sabbath School children, who amount to about half that number. We take the children at any age, but usually from 4 to 16, and even above that; we have adult classes for some as old as 20, and even 30. About half the children are under ten years.
    When they are first taken into the Schools, most of them are in a very ignorant, destitute, neglected condition... Many of them are quite homeless; many of them are entirely neglected by their parents; many are orphans, outcasts, street beggars, crossing-sweepers, and little hawkers of things about the streets; they are generally very ignorant, although in some points very quick and cunning ... We have children of convicts who have been transported; children of convicts in our prisons at home; children of thieves not in custody; children of the lowest mendicants and tramps; children of worthless drunken parents, a large class; children of stepfathers or stepmothers, often drive by neglect or cruelty to shift for themselves; children of those who, although suitable objects for a workhouse, prefer leading a vagrant life, pilfering when they can, sometimes in employment but oftener engaged in practices of a doubtful or criminal nature; children of parents who, though honest, are too poor to pay even one penny a week for a school, and who cannot clothe their children so as to obtain admission to better schools; children who have lost parents, or are deserted by them, or have run away from home, and live by begging and stealing; youths who, disliking the workhouse, have left it, and lead a vagrant life; youths who are at work during the day as ostler boys, labourers’ assistants, and in other ways, or who go about selling articles in the streets, such as fish, fruit, and vegetables, and who cannot therefore attend a day school, even if free admission be offered; girls who are driven into the street by cruel and worthless parents, and live by begging and selling water-cresses, oranges, and lucifer matches; children of Roman-catholics who come in large numbers to the Ragged Schools, and do not object to reading the Bible.
    The condition of admission ?—Destitution. In many cases, the children are admitted by personal application; in many other cases by the teachers going round and seeking for them, and by the assistance of the City missionaries [of the London City Mission], who have been exceedingly useful to us from the first, not only in finding scholars, but in getting the good-will of parents towards us and our operations
    The daily routine varies according to the kind of school. Some of our schools, which are day schools, are very similar to British or National schools, assembling at 9 to 12, and then to 2 to 4, dismissing the children then for the evening. In the same building where the day school is held we have generally an evening school for boys, and also girls, who cannot attend during the day, having to work or beg in order to get food to eat.
    In the day schools we have reading the Scriptures, singing, reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in some schools industrial classes; in the evening schools we have similar instruction; in many of the schools we now have industrial classes, both day and evening, for teaching the boys tailoring, shoe-making, carpentering, mat-making, brush-making, pocket-book making, and other handicrafts, and for teaching the girls to sew, knit, etc. In Liverpool and Manchester they make bags for grocers, and print reports for societies and bills for tradesmen; they have got a printing-press in the Manchester school, and in the Liverpool schools. In the latter they make clogs and also shoes, and have some garden-ground to work in...
    In many cases, because the children are so destitute that they cannot be taught, we give food—generally soup, occasionally meat, and good wholesome bread, sometimes coffee or cocoa, and bread and cheese. In one school they feed about two hundred twice or thrice a week... The children who come to the schools pay nothing; all the Ragged Schools are quite free, being intended only for the destitute...
    With regard to the results. . . We have had very many children, who were formerly very bad characters, reformed; we have many out in situations, and doing well, who were formerly quite a pest to the community... we have emigrated about three hundred, and from the letters which we have received from them from abroad they are all doing well—those children who, while they were here, were earning nothing; many were vagrants or pick-pockets, doing a deal of mischief, and cost the community a great deal of money by rtbbing tradesmen, and so on; they are now earning an honest livelihood in the colonies, and, on the average, they receive from l0s. to 20s. a week, as well as their food...
    Would [we] consider it an objection to take a boy if he had been convicted of offences—say, four or five times? No, we have rather from the first studied to take the worst. Boys of this description have often been of a very disorderly character; the teachers have been insulted and driven from the schools sometimes; I have myself frequently been driven out of the school, and obliged to run for the police to protect us against them; but it appears to me that nothing can withstand the influence of affection and kindness even in that very debased class, and in time we have managed to get nearly all into subjection... Kindness, Christian love to the children, and teaching them their duty to their neighbours and to their God, and making the Bible the theme of all our instruction ...

William Locke, Report of the Standing Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles, 1852

Thomas Archer on King Edward Ragged School and Girls' Refuge - click here

Thomas Archer on Ragged School movement - click here

RAGGED SCHOOL UNION,-office, 1 Exeter Hall,- was established in 1844, with the view of bringing a "plain" but sound education within the reach of even the very humblest classes, of providing them with gratuitous shelter from the inclemency of the weather, and stimulating them to industrial and prudent habits. These objects are provided for, as far as the resources of the society will allow, by ragged schools situated in the worst neighbourhoods of London, which already extend their humanising influence to 27,000 children; by penny banks connected with these schools, in which about 28,000 depositors annually place 4,500l.; and by eight Shoe-Black brigades (distinguished each by a cheap coloured uniform), comprising some 350 boys, who earned, last year, 4,647l., by cleaning 1,115,280 pairs of boots and shoes, and whose eager cry of, "Have your boots blacked, sir?-only one penny!" salutes the passer by in every busy metropolitan thoroughfare. In certain localities Refuges have been established, which afford to destitute lads and girls a night's shelter and a good supper and break fast. The society also interests itself in procuring employment for deserving industry, and in promoting the emigration of suitable persons. In a word, with a limited income (6,000l. yearly), this well-managed institution effects a vast amount of good, and its labours are not the less arduous because never puffed into an unwholesome notoriety.

Cruchley's London in 1865 : A Handbook for Strangers, 1865

City of London Ragged Schools
Whitecross Place, Wilson Street
LATE FOSTER ST., LONG ALLEY
On Monday April 3rd 1865,
THE 17TH ANNUAL MEETING
Of the above Schools, will be held in
FINSBURY CHAPEL, FINSBURY CIRCUS
The Chair will be taken by Saml. GURNEY Esq. MP
AT SEVEN O'CLOCK
Rev W. ROGERS, M.A., Rector of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate
Rev A. McAUSLANE of Finsbury Chapel, Rev. RICHARD ROGERS
of City Road Chapel, JOSEPH PAYNE Esq., Deputy Judge John
GREEN Esq., METCALF HOPGOOD Esq.,  CC.,
J. RICHARDSON.ESQ.  CC. R. STAPLETON, ESQ., CC.,
and JOHN GLOVER, ESQ. have kindly promised to be present.
TEA at 6 o'Clock Tickets 9d
THE SCHOLARS WILL SING SEVERAL PIECES OF SACRED MUSIC
And receive their Prizes awarded by the Ragged School Union

fly-sheet advertisement for meeting

This article gratefully copied from

The Informal Education Archives 
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~infed/index.htm

    During those eighteen months of apprenticeship, one would have thought the few hours of freedom from “The Den” would have been too precious to spend in aught but outdoor amusement. But the “poor little beggars” who crossed his path in his walks about the great city haunted him, and his heart cried out in overwhelming pity for them; also the sense of obligation to that “God for whom one has done so little” was urging him on to do what he could to bring others to the know­ledge of Him whose name is Love. “What do you know about God?” he asked two little urchins playing in Trafalgar Square whilst the church bells were ringing. “Why, that’s the chap wot sends us to ‘ell,” came the prompt reply. This and many similar incidents made a deep impression on his mind, and he had not been long in London before he went to Mr. Killick, whose parish embraced all the terrible slums where the Law Courts now stand, which were crowded with destitute poor, and said, “I want to work. I can’t do much, for I don’t know much, but can’t you find something for me to do? Please tell me how to begin; what can I do?” Mr. Killick, who was just about to leave the parish, suggested work amongst youths; but during his Eton days, Mr. (now Sir Mark) Stewart had taken him to a ragged school in Fox Court, on which occasion his class and the one adjoining it had caught up their forms and indulged in a pitched battle, the teachers finding themselves quite unable to restore order. The young Etonian had vowed then and there that he would never have anything to do with boys, as he couldn’t manage them! A vow which fortunately, not only for his own generation, but for all future generations of Englishmen, proved to be of a very mutable nature! For with the misery of the lives of those boys being borne in on him daily: the utter absence of any possible means of innocent recreation, of education, of anything that could turn them into God-fearing, respectable citizens, being revealed to his tentative inquiries, “I felt,” he said, “as though I should go mad unless I did something to try and help some of the wretched little chaps I used to see running about the streets!” There follows his own account of his earliest endeavours:
    “My first effort was to get a couple of crossing-sweepers whom I picked up near Trafalgar Square, and offered to teach how to read. In those days the Thames Embankment did not exist, and the Adelphi Arches were open both to the tide and the street. With an empty beer bottle for a candlestick and a tallow candle for illumina­tion, two crossing-sweepers as pupils, your humble servant as teacher, and a couple of Bibles as reading books, what grew into the Poly­technic was practically started. We had not been engaged in our reading very long when at the far end of the arch I noticed a twink­ling light. ‘Kool ecilop,’ shouted one of the boys, at the same moment ‘doucing the glim’ and bolting with his companion, leaving me in the dark with my upset beer bottle and my douced candle, forming a spectacle which seemed to arouse suspicion on the part of our friend the policeman, whose light it was that had appeared in the distance. However, after scrutinizing me for some time by the light of his bull’s-eye, he moved on, leaving me in a state of mental perturbation as to what the mystic words I had heard hollared out meant, and to ask myself what I, who a year before had been at Eton, was doing at that time of night under an Adelphi Arch? Afterwards, when I became proficient in ‘back slang,’ I knew that ‘kool ecilop’ was ‘look out for the police, spelt back­wards, the last word being evidently the original of the contraction ‘slop,’ a familiar nickname for the police of London to-day. Alto­gether I did not think my first essay a very successful one, and I cast about in my mind how I could learn the language of those boys, and ascertain their real wants and their ways of life.”
    His cogitations resulted in the purchase of a second-hand suit of shoeblack clothes and outfit. He baked the former in the oven after the servants had gone to bed, as a precautionary measure. (His father, who was somewhat of an epicure, and very particular about his cuisine, was happily in ignorance of this episode.) Office hours over, he would sally forth to earn a few pence by holding horses, blacking boots, or performing any odd jobs that came his way. There is a pleasing legend that he once blacked his father’s boots which I should be loth to dispel, and at least it wears the garb of possibility, which is more than can be said for some legends! He used to get home in time for breakfast, and for some time Sir James knew nothing of the two or three nights a week when his son supped on “pig’s trotters” or “tripe and onions” off a barrow, and spent the night curled up in a barrel, under a tarpaulin or on a ledge in the Adelphi Arches, learning to know the boys he meant to rescue, making their life his life, their language his language, in the hope of changing their thoughts and lives. After a few months of this work, he and Arthur Kinnaird a room in “Of Alley”  (now York Place, Charing Cross) for which they paid the sum of £12 a year, and started the ragged school from which the Polytechnic was to spring. Mr. Killick, Lord Rad­stock, Tom Pelham and other friends were invited to the opening of the little room, furnished only with a rough table and a few chairs, and lighted with candles stuck in empty bottles. After the boys had departed the little band of workers joined in an “all-night prayer meeting, and the place seemed shaken with power, so overwhelming was the sense of God’s Presence and Blessing.” 
    The boys, though his chief, were not his only care; he used to visit in the district, seeing everywhere poverty and misery that urged him to more and more strenuous effort on behalf of the wretched inhabitants. In one place off Bedfordbury known as Pipemaker’s Alley, he found in all the houses but two bedsteads; the rest of the people, chiefly Irish immigrants, slept on bundles of rags, old brandy cases serving them for tables and chairs. He started meetings for the rough Covent Carden porters on Wednesday evenings, frequently held open-air meetings, was connected with a medical mission in Endell Street, had a mission hall in Hart Street and a class for flower girls. Concerning one of these, he told the following story— “Years ago when I had a class among the flower girls at Charing Cross, I succeeded in persuading one of them to promise to lead a new and better life, but she wished to postpone her amendment; she promised to give it all up six weeks later, but not just then. In vain I tried to persuade her, thinking it was but a subterfuge and an excuse to avoid making any immediate decision; but the girl stood as firm as a rock—she would do what I wished in six weeks’ time. Seeing I could prevail nothing, I desisted, very discouraged, and feeling almost sure that her excuse was only offered in order to be quit of my importunity. Imagine my feelings when at the promised time the girl came, neatly dressed and ready to carry out her promise. And then it leaked out, bit by bit, that at the time when I spoke to her, the friend with whom she lived was on the verge of being confined. It fell to her lot to support her friend in the hour of her weakness, and repugnant as her life had become to her, she actually carried it on for six weeks, till her friend was up and about again, sacrificing herself and imperilling her chance of a new life, out of loyalty to her friend. You can imagine, but I cannot adequately describe, how humbled I felt when this story came out. I had been judging her as one who was giving excuses, but in very truth she had been making a sacrifice of self, which might well bring into my cheek the blush of inferiority and shame. Verily she loved much; to her the Master could say, ‘Go in peace.’”
    Another of these girls tells how she was asked by her companions to go with them to Of Alley. She used to leave her basket in a restaurant and attend the night school. After she had been coming for some time, her father was taken ill and removed to the infirmary; while he was there her mother died suddenly, and Emma, a child of twelve, was left alone. She went straight to the Home and told her tale. She was put into a servants’ training home, and from there she went into service, and made herself so useful to her employers that when a young man wished to marry her, her mistress wrote to the Home imploring the authorities there to interfere, as they did not wish to lose the girl!
    The open-air services were frequently subjected to by no means friendly interruptions on the part of the inhabitants of the surroundings houses. One man appeared so enraged by the singing of a hymn that Mr. Hogg thought he was going to attack him. Suddenly some one in the crowd called out that it was “the cove as looks after the kids in Bedfordbury.” Instantly the man’s manner changed. “Beg yer pardon, guv’nor,” he said quite apologetically, “I never knew as ‘ow you were the bloke what gave my little Joey ‘is truss.” And in a rough but sincere attempt to make reparation he joined in the singing with such robust vocal whole-heartedness as to completely annihilate the voices of the rest of the congregation.
    One of the families he visited at this time prided itself on having gained the reputation of being “the wickedest family in the court!” a preeminence by no means easily attained in those terrible slums, veritable cesspools of iniquity and vice. With infinite patience and perseverance he strove to influence them; one of them is now a Christian worker in St. Giles, another a City missionary, another a nurse, and a fourth the matron of a hospital in New South Wales.
    But the young philanthropist whilst winning the name of “friend” amongst these unfortunates, won also for himself the reputation of being a determined enemy of crime, a persecutor of thieves and the like, and his work in consequence was not unattended by danger. He describes one of his adventures in a letter to a sister:- 
    “I nearly got potted the other night. I was humbugged into a room to buy photos, and they did their best to shoot and stab me. I only succeeded in getting off by a most determined resistance and the bursting of a shutter, the bar of which fortunately came down, shutter and all, when I wrenched at it in desperation.”
    Another time the bait was a sick woman, but his suspicions were aroused by the innumerable tortuous passages and back alleys he was conducted through, and confirmed when he was eventually taken into a room occupied by a couple of ruffians, and invited to enter the cupboard leading out of it, in which the invalid was said to be. Instead, he made a sudden dash at the window, swept away the furniture with which it was partially barricaded, and smashing the glass, yelled “Police! Help!” with all the power of a sturdy young pair of lungs. Luckily for him, a couple of policemen heard him and, guided by his voice, effected an entrance through the window, and after a short struggle succeeded in rescuing him. Discretion being the better part of valour for the respectable in that neighbourhood, they took to their heels and ran until they found themselves in a familiar street. Next day a party of police, headed by an inspector, went to try and clear out the hole; but search as they might, the labyrinth of small rooms, nameless streets, and dark cross-passages baffled them, and the quest was given up in despair. But if those two policemen had not happened to be within hearing, the cupboard might have held another gruesome secret, probably by no means the first of that kind, as the inspector significantly hinted.
    The room in Of Alley was at first used only in the daytime, a female teacher being in charge, an earnest woman whose ambitions somewhat outstripped her capabilities. She begged Mr. Hogg to open it in the evenings for the benefit of the older lads, but with the vision of his only attempt at that kind of work before him, he refused to take any active part, though he sanctioned the use of the room and gas, provided she would undertake to keep order. Nothing daunted, the good woman eagerly accepted the offer and made immediate preparations for the commencement of her plan. It so happened that the evening the experiment was first tried, Quintin Hogg was in bed with a very bad feverish cold.
    “Suddenly” (in his own words) “about eight o’clock in the evening one of the elder boys living in Bedfordbury came racing up to my father’s house in Carlton Gardens (the house now occupied by Mr. Balfour), to beg me to come at once, as there was a row in the school with the boys, who were fighting the police and pelting them with slates. In about three minutes I had huddled on just sufficient clothes to suffice me, and slipping on an overcoat as I ran through the hall, I made for the ragged school as hard as my legs could carry me. On arriving there, I found the whole school in an uproar, the gas fittings had been wrenched off and were being used as batons by the boys for striking the police, while the rest of them were pelting them with slates, and a considerable concourse of people was standing round in a more or less threatening way, either to see the fun or to help in going against the police. I felt rather alarmed for the safety of the teacher, and rushing into the darkened room, called out for the boys to instantly stop and be quiet. To my amazement the riot was stopped immediately, in two minutes the police were able to go quietly away, and for the first time in my life I learned that I had some kind of instinct or capacity for the management of elder boys. From that day to 1868, when I had to go abroad for the first time, I scarcely missed the ragged school for a single night.”
    The boys used to come into the house in an undescribable condition, so that it was absolutely necessary to shave their heads and literally scrub them from head to foot before they were fit to associate with any human being; all of which unpleasant operations Mr. Hogg used to perform with his own hands.
    “The class prospered amazingly; our little room, which was only 30 ft. long by 12 ft. wide, got so crammed that I used to divide the school into two sections of sixty each, the first lot coming from 7 to 8.30, and the second lot from 8.30 to 10. There I used to sit between two classes, perched on the back of a form, dining on my ‘pint of thick and two doorsteps,’ as the boys used to call coffee and bread and treacle, taking one class in reading and the other at writing or arithmetic. Each section closed with a ten minutes’ service and prayer.”
    The classes over, he would walk home to Carlton Gardens with Tom Pelham or Arthur Kinnaird, and invite them to share a glass of port wine, and then to assist him in exterminating the black beetles to be found in the kitchen, by pouring boiling water over them!
    In 1865 a second room had to be added, and next year the house next door was rented for £30 and turned into a “2d. doss house.”
    “The intention was that the boys who had been picked up in the streets and started at the school, and who had no homes, should be kept from bad surroundings, such as thieves’ kitchens or low lodging-houses, and housed under respectable and improving influences. The house was in a state of utter dilapidation when we took it over, but the boys and myself set to work as amateur painters, carpenters, and whitewashers, and we were very well pleased with the result, though even to this day I cannot think of the job we made of the doors and, indeed, of our carpentering altogether, without laughing. I had a little room in the attic which had been inhabited by a man who used it for the double purpose of a habitation and a place to dry fish in. The smell of the latter clung about the walls in spite of all we could do, and the boys declared that to come into my room made them hungry for supper!”
    But the necessity for extra accommodation was not the only encouragement, nor the only sign of progress. When the school first opened, five of the boys came absolutely naked except for their mothers’ shawls pinned round them, nor was this as great a hardship as the uninitiated might imagine, for one boy en­tirely refused to adopt any other costume, and for a long time remained obdurate to remonstrances and persuasions! Five separate gangs of thieves attended, all of whom were earning their living respectably (“more or less “) within six months. Pos­sibly the “more or less” is somewhat significant! Still the results obtained far outstripped the boldest hopes of the little band of workers, for the enthusiasm of the boy of twenty-two was so contagious that old Eton friends and present office com­panions found themselves caught by it and drawn into the work too. In 1864 the boys were ragged, unkempt, ignorant, without even the desire to rise; in four years’ time those same boys had become orderly, decent in dress and behaviour—had, in fact, climbed several rungs up the ladder of civilization and were anxious to continue climbing.
    During these years Quintin Hogg had also been a constant attendant at the Shoeblack Brigade. As his boys improved, he started many of them as shoeblacks, organizing a brigade which took up disused stations near the Strand, Piccadilly, Leices­ter Square, Westminster, and towards Waterloo. In 1868 he notes in the Shoeblack brigade diary that “thirty York Place boys came in for the first time.” This brigade grew to about seventy members, and after a few years was merged in the “Old City Reds” at Fetter Lane. His entries concerning the boys under his charge are very detailed; nothing, good or bad, is too insignificant to be noted, no trouble too great to ensure their welfare. Of one boy he records that a “gentleman writes to say that be gave S— 2s. 6d. instead of a penny. S— returned it honestly. He has done this before, and so has M—.” Two others had a row, and finding their fists unsatis­factory weapons, blacked each other’s faces and jerseys with the implements of trade! Yet another had to be punished for his excessive zeal, which led him to drag unwilling fares on to his stand by the leg! At one time, small-pox being prevalent, the doctor was summoned and “arrived with four or five babies and vaccinated all the boys.” (No conscientious objections permitted!)
    One summer there was a serious outbreak of cholera. Mr. Hogg describes how he gave up his holiday to Guisachan, and took up the duties of a city missionary, who had fallen ill.
    “There came at the moment an unbidden thought, though I chased it away as unworthy, that I was giving up some­thing very pleasant in surrendering this holiday. But almost the first day in the district assigned to me made me forget any feeling of regret I might have had. I found a little boy lying helpless, almost unconscious, sickening for illness. Taking an orange from my pocket, I squeezed some of the juice into his mouth, and tried to nurse him as best I knew how, though, poor little fellow, his condition was such as to make him anything but attractive.  Foul as to his linen, foul as to his body, foul as to his head, there was little beautiful about him except the childlike gratitude he had for, perhaps, the only kindly treatment he had known for many a long day. When I was going away, he put his arms up and said, ‘Do kiss me, sir. No one has ever kissed me since my mother died,’ and one forgot the dirt and uncleanliness of the surroundings in pity for the child.”
    The existing agencies were hopelessly overtaxed by the epidemic, and he was soon put in charge of a district of slums with two men under him. Here he spent his entire holiday, his family being for a long time unconscious of the risks he was running, believing him to be safely at Guisachan. On one occasion he was called to a man so stricken with confluent small-pox that he could not be touched, and had to be carried through the streets to the nearest hospital in the sheets on which they found him lying, Mr. Hogg taking one end and his helpers the other! He would be summoned at all hours of the day and night to patients, and would give them doses of Rubini’s camphor, put hot bricks to their feet and administer all the simple remedies he had been taught until the overworked doctor arrived or the patient could be removed to the hospital.
    Once a year the shoeblacks whose records were sufficiently unbesmirched, were taken for a day in the country. This is “Q. H.’s” account of one of these festivals:—
    “Started for station at 7 a.m. in deluge of rain; present Messrs. Kinnaird and Quintin Hogg. Mr. Stewart met us at the station, and we went away at 7.40 with everything damped except our spirits. Arrived at Southend, the rain cleared off, as also did Mr. Stewart, while the boys made a most effectual clearance of the very excellent dinner and tea provided. Returned by the 7.45 train, having enjoyed a nice bathe, varied by football, cricket, rounders and donkeys.”
    By now his entire family knew of his work; it was inevitable that they should do so, as it grew and absorbed more and more of his time and money. Occasionally his mother would come and climb up the dark, steep stairs to speak to her boy’s pro­tégés, her stateliness and refinement aweing them to respectful silence. Even Sir James, though he would laugh and grumble at “Quintin’s eccentricities,” saying that the proper course of action was to pay other people to do these things, was secretly very proud of him, and often when the “beggar boys” were proving a trial to him, his sense of humour would come to the rescue and dispel his wrath. He always had his own brougham, about the use of which he was very particular, and it was a severe trial to him to hear that his youngest son, to whom he had lent this carriage, had filled it with street urchins and driven them round Hyde Park at a most fashionable hour when the season was at its height.
    More trying still, perhaps, was it when he himself went out with his tormentor, who promptly invited one of the “home boys” they passed in the street to “jump in!” “God bless my soul, Quintin,” exclaimed poor Sir James, “I will not have it, I will not have it.” “Oh, all right, papa! Get on the box, then Charlie!” “No, no, Quintin, if I must have him, I’ll have him inside!” One’s sympathies are with Sir James! Another time Mr. Hogg and a boy were carrying some ladders and planks across from one home to another when the former saw his father crossing the road in his stately, leisurely manner. Mr. Hogg was at the fur­ther end of the load and, waiting till they were just behind Sir James, he forced the boy in front suddenly forward so that the planks caught the old gentleman in the back. Round jumped the victim, thundering out wrath at the unfortunate boy, who stood abjectly apologising, though fully conscious that it really wasn’t his fault at all! At last Sir James caught sight of the laughing face of his undutiful son at the other end of the obstacle. He made an effort to rebuke the real offender, but, as usual, the humorous aspect of the incident was too much for him, and his indignation trailed off into appreciative chuckles at his own expense.
    Annie, the sister who had first taught Bible stories to the fidgety little boy in Grosvenor Street, and who had always given him the keenest sympathy and encouragement in all his efforts, had taken over the sisters and mothers of these same ragged boys, and, assisted by a woman missionary, held classes for them in the upper part of the house. If it was rough work for the man who had served an apprenticeship as a shoeblack in some of the lowest slums in London, what must it have been for a girl straight from a luxurious home redolent of ease and refinement, to under­take?
    The girls were almost as entire little savages as the boys; they usually came in turning catherine wheels, whilst one arrived with a policeman in hot pursuit, and led him an exciting chase over the forms and desks. People were rather ready to shake their heads over the dangerous experiment of thirty or forty rough lads downstairs, and an equal number of equally rough girls upstairs! But the boy, who could be tender as a woman to any in pain or trouble, who would sleep night after night among the lads he wanted to rescue, sharing their food and lives, could also show an iron firmness when necessary, and administer correction as mercilessly as the most hard-hearted of disciplinarians. Never to overlook the smallest breach of authority, never to condone a fault, that was the only way to keep his ragamuffins in hand, and he knew it. “I would rather,” he said, “have ten boys behaving themselves than a hundred making a row.” A policeman was stationed at the door, emblem of the order re­quired to be maintained within; but it was not the arm of the law that prevented disaster in that hive of unruly boys and girls. It was the personality of the boy who ruled it. A look from him would often quell a rebellious spirit, if it did not, if in fact the power of the human eye failed, then the power of the human arm asserted itself. The smallest hint of impropriety of any kind was visited with a severe thrashing, and no misconduct went un­punished. “Always punish some one—of course the right some­one if possible,” he laughed to Lord Kinnaird once when dis­cussing the discipline of the home.
    One winter his manager got ill, and then every night after his City work was done, Quintin Hogg went to Of Alley (then be­ginning to be known as York Place), and slept there in a hammock, a precautionary measure against the vermin! Often he had con­siderable trouble with the boys whom he had taught to read  about their choice of literature. “I used to find penny horribles or ‘Bits of Blood’ secreted between the mattresses and lovingly tucked beneath the pillows. One boy I remember was ever­lastingly buying every bit of rubbish that came out, and appar­ently thought nothing worth reading that did not begin with murder and wind up with suicide. Do what I would, I could not persuade him to read anything sensible. Oliver Twist could not attract him, and ‘Sam Weller’ joked in vain. At last I got him to promise with a very doleful face that he would read one book that I should choose right through, on condition it was not a religious book. I picked out Kingsley’s ‘Westward Ho!’ and as be read of Sir Amyas Leigh and the men of Devon, his mind began to perceive beauties in Kingsley’s work which he had never dreamed were there. By the time he was through with West­ward Ho! it needed no persuasion to get him to read Dickens, Scott, and other healthy writers; nor had I again to confiscate from between his mattress ‘Young Men of Great Britain,’ or ‘Bits of Blood.’”
    He would rise at 5.30 or 6 to start the boys off to their work in good time, then he would rush back to Carlton Gardens and appear at breakfast, swallow down his meal, whilst his mother, full of anxiety for his physical welfare, hurriedly crammed into his pocket some hastily prepared delicacy for his lunch, which of course disappeared down the maw of the first hungry urchin he met. At times it was not only his own food that went. Dark stories are told of the family coming down to find the break­fast table cleared of all portable eatables. And that was the life he led for nearly five years after leaving Eton.

Ethel M. Hogg, Quintin Hogg. A biography, 1904