From 1846 to 1854, the president of the Manchester Certified Industrial Schools was an ex-mayor or rich private citizen of Manchester, but after 1855, the Mayor of Manchester took over the post. After 1875, the Mayor of Manchester and the Mayor of Salford served as joint presidents. As Figure 1 demonstrates, many officers were involved in the management of the schools. The General Committee, comprising around thirty honorary members, was elected at each annual meeting from among the subscribers and donors of not less than £10 6s. per annum. The General Committee elected a treasurer, secretaries, and the Executive Committee, consisting of a treasurer, secretaries, and no fewer than twelve other members. The General Committee also appointed a collector, auditors, a banker, medical officers, governors, and other school officers. The Executive Committee elected a House Committee for each school. The Executive Committee and House Committee ran the schools; the former committee met four or five times a year and the latter was established in each school to resolve daily problems. The management of education and training was entrusted to the governor and schoolmaster, while the schoolmaster and matron looked after the children’s lodging. Medical care and support were provided by surgeons/physicians and dentists. The Ladies’ Committee, consisting of almost thirty women, organized Ladies Associations to collect contributions from each district. This source of income became important, as Table 3 shows.
Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Industrial Schools submitted the results of annual inspections to the Secretary of State and to the managers of each school. According to the 1879 annual report, H. M. Assistant Inspector of Industrial Schools Henry Rogers, Esq., made the entry in the Visitor’s Book of Ardwick Green on 29 May 1879. Sir Henry Rogers came to inspect the school for the first time in five years, replacing Her Majesty’s Inspector Major W. Inglis:
After an interval of five years I have again pleasure of visiting the institution. I am very glad to find that the school is flourishing and going on well in all respects. My visit affords me great satisfaction. I notice improvement in every department. The arrangements are as perfect as the premises will permit, and, although still further
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improvement is practicable. I must admit that there is an aspect efficiency and useful adaption about the place which is highly gratifying to observe. The boys seem to be going on well. In my presence to-day I have seen nothing but good behaviour and orderly conduct. The school-room is well organized. The result are very uniform, and do credit to the ability and perseverance of the masters in charge. In the Workshops, the boys were diligently employed and were carrying on their work with cheerfulness and good order. I think that the present condition of the home is very encouraging. The generality of the boys looked healthy and well cared for.39
The managers and supporters probably felt relieved after reading this part of the report. Sir Henry Rogers also inspected Barns’ Home on the previous day and left a good evaluation.40 HMI Major W. Inglis inspected the branch for girls in Sale. His evaluation of the condition of the Sale branch was good, too.41
Figure 1. Organization of the Manchester Certified Industrial School
39 The 33th Annual Report, 1879, 13-14. 40 The 33th Annual Report, 1879, 20. 41 Ibid., 30.
Each school was also required to submit an annual report on the condition of each child to the Home Office, including the name, age, content of education and industrial training, results of examinations on the 3Rs by inspectors, health condition, remarks on conduct, and place of employment.42 The most noteworthy information concerned employment after school. The school had to submit the conditions of the children’s workplaces until they were nineteen years old, so the Manchester Certified Industrial Schools created the position of ‘visitor’ in 1877.43
Before the Manchester Certified Industrial Schools came under the Home Office’s jurisdiction, the school asked the children’s employers about their condition at work after leaving school because the condition of the children as workers was the greatest concern for school managers. According to the 1859 report, one employer in Salford stated in a letter to the school ‘that the moral conduct and general behaviour of S.F. has been all that we could wish for in a boy of his years. He is a civil, willing and industrious lad.’ Another employer at Oxford Road Mill said in a letter ‘that the three children you enquire after work in this factory, and their overlooker reports their conduct to have been unexceptionable.’44 The point of the evaluation was to assess the children’s morals and industriousness as workers. In the 1863 annual report, the committee stated that they were pleased with the fact that their ‘schools were truly Industrial Schools’, and that they ‘were giving industrial habits to [their] pupils’ and ‘the children were taught to love work.’45 It is important to note that they insisted that the moral reformation and acquisition of industriousness occurred through their industrial education, not their moral education.
Under the Home Office, school officers carried out more detailed investigations and became convinced of the effect of industrial education in the schools. In the Barns’ Home annual report of 1876, the schoolmaster reported the method of investigation as follows:
The supervision of discharged boys has been efficiently maintained and a communication as far as possible has been kept up between them and the schools. A system of monthly reports has greatly assisted me in doing this. It is managed by a printed report form being issued from the schools on the twelfth of each month, which the boy must get filled up by his employer or some respectable person, and which is returned on the fifteenth. This has had a most beneficial effect, which is proved by not more than a dozen bad reports having been received during the year. The difficulty I had in instituting these certificates has been overcome, as boys who are doing well are now quite anxious to send them, to show they are conducting themselves properly. Non-compliance with the rule is suspicions, and a visit is immediately made which checks any carelessness in the beginning.46
The results of the visitors’ investigations were satisfactory to the officers of the Manchester
42 Schedule A in the ‘Proceedings of the Industrial School Committee’, 15 September, 1871, 162-163, Minutes of
Miscellaneous Committees of the Manchester School Board, Manchester Archives, Manchester Central Library (RfNo.
GB127. M65/1/8/5).
43 The 29th Annual Report, 1875, 12. 44 The 13th Annual Report, 1859, 13. 45 The 17th Annual Report, 1863, 5. 46 The 30th Annual Report, 1876, 16.
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Certified Industrial Schools. Of the 180 children discharged from Barns’ Home from its opening in 1871 to 1876, 165 (92%) were reportedly ‘doing well,’ eight died, one was sent to a reformatory, and only six were convicted (Figure 2). The meaning of ‘doing well’ is unclear, and the Reports made no mention of the standard for this assessment, so it cannot be asserted that the industrial education at the Manchester Certified Industrial Schools was successful. However, I think it is reasonable to state that the officers regarded it as successful, as they knew the children’s whereabouts and that the children worked without trouble.
Figure 2. Discharged children from Barns' Home from 1871 to 1876 (180 children)
Source: The 30th Annual Report of the Manchester Industrial School, Ardwick Green, 1876, 16, Manchester Archives, Manchester Central Library (RfNo. GB127. M369/1/4).
Of the 180 children, seventy-one were discharged in 1876. I show the particulars of the children discharged from Barns’ Home in 1876 in Table 2.
Table 2. Particulars of 71 children discharged from Barns’ Home in 1876
Miners 10 Smiths 3 Painter 1
Farm Laborers 5 Bakers 2 Pork Butcher 1
Mill Hands 5 Carters 2 Tinplate Workers 1
Royal Navy 5 Dyers 2 Timber Yard 1
Army as Musicians 4 Tailors 2 Umbrella Maker 1
Pages 4 Grooms 2 Returned to Friends 2
Gardeners 4 Warehouse 2 Discharged by Disease 1
Shoemakers 4 Engraver 1 Died 2
Plumbers 3 Grocer 1
Source: The 30th Annual Report of the Manchester Industrial School, Ardwick Green, 1876, p. 15, Manchester Archives, Manchester Central Library (RfNo. GB127. M369/1/4).
The method of investigation by visitors became stricter after the school hired Mr. Samuel Newton as a visitor. He investigated 250 children on average each year. For the first year after discharge, a monthly visit was paid to each person, followed by one every two months for the second year and one every three months for the third and last year. At least twenty-two visits were paid to each child from the date of discharge until he passed from
92% 3% 1% 4% doing well (165) convicted (6) sent to reformatory (1) died (8) T
supervision by regulation of the Home Office.47 The managers of the Manchester Certified Industrial Schools thought that the investigation by making a visit was very important for children to be working. They expected the children to be workers and to keep their jobs after leaving the school. It was indicated in the words of the governor of Barns’ Home in an annual report that,
Although this department [visiting discharged children] has been growing year by year in efficiency, I think more might be done by establishing, in town, a place to which all old boys might go when requiring work, advice, or assistance, and where they could meet the visitor at stated times. He should be instructed to advertise that employers can be supplied with boys on application to him. This would not only find work for those wanting it, but would cause more demand for boys directed from Schools.48
Under the Elementary Education Act of 1870, most urban areas of the country established school boards, which were the local authorities on education. The act did not make elementary education compulsory but gave school boards the power to do so. At the same time, the act gave school boards the power to establish, enlarge, and maintain industrial schools and school board inspectors to carry out their own inspections of the schools in addition to those conducted by the Home Office.49 Therefore, the school board inspected and ordered the improvement of education and management at each industrial school in exchange for local grants to maintain the schools. The Manchester Certified Industrial Schools were inspected by the Manchester School Board inspector at least as early as 1878, except the Sale branch.50 The school submitted the reports not only to the Home Office but also to the School Board. In other words, the Manchester School Board received reports from all industrial schools in Manchester, namely two schools and three training programs, in 1880.51
In late nineteenth-century Manchester, there were the Manchester Certified Industrial Schools for Protestant children and the St. Joseph School for Catholic children, which was established in 1871. The St Joseph School had separate schools for boys and girls. There were not only Protestant children but also Catholic children among the vagrant children in Manchester. However, the Manchester Certified Industrial School was open to only Protestant children.52 In fact, of 440 children who entered the Manchester Certified Industrial School from 1866 to 1871, before the St. Joseph School was established, most were Protestant; only four children were Catholic.53 The reason for these four children’s admission was unclear. However, in view of the fact that at least 230 Catholic children from
47 The 41st Annual Report, 1887, 33. 48 The 39th Annual Report, 1885, 31.
49 Elementary Education Act, 1879 (33 and 34 Victoria, c. 75). 50 The 32th Annual Report, 1878, 14, 20.
51 ‘Proceedings of the Industrial School Committee’, 26 August 1880, 9-16.
52 ‘Bye-laws for the management of the Manchester Certified Industrial Schools’, 70-74.
53 Admission Register 8 June 1866-31 July 1871 of Manchester Industrial School, Ardwick Green, in Manchester Public Record Office (RfNo. GB127.M369/2/2/2).
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Manchester attended industrial schools in 1880, it is likely that more than four Catholic vagrant children were found in Manchester at that time.54 In Manchester, the demand for an industrial school for Catholic children was increasing; as such, sixteen students entered as soon as the St. Joseph School for boys opened.55 The School Board gave a grant to the St. Joseph Schools from the start. That is, the Manchester School Board supported the education and care of both Protestant and Catholic children.
The Manchester School Board received the reports of the Manchester Certified Industrial Schools and the St. Joseph School, as mentioned above. The zealous visits of Manchester Certified Industrial School personnel to children’s workplaces were rated very highly by the Industrial Schools Committee of the Manchester School Board. In 1880, the board compared the rate of children ‘doing well’ after attending the Manchester Certified Industrial Schools (83%) with that of the St. Joseph School (67%) and criticized St. Joseph’s officer because of the numerous children lost to view by St. Joseph’s in the fourth year. The board praised the painstaking visits of Manchester Certified Industrial School officials and ordered the St. Joseph School to improve on this point.56