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Church, school and locality: Revisitingthe historiography of “state” and“religious” educational infrastructuresin England and Wales, 1780–1870Mary Clare Martin aa Department of Education and Community Studies , University ofGreenwich , London , UKPublished online: 13 Dec 2012.

To cite this article: Mary Clare Martin (2013) Church, school and locality: Revisiting thehistoriography of “state” and “religious” educational infrastructures in England and Wales,1780–1870, Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, 49:1, 70-81,DOI: 10.1080/00309230.2012.744070

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Church, school and locality: Revisiting the historiography of“state” and “religious” educational infrastructures in England andWales, 1780–1870

Mary Clare Martin*

Department of Education and Community Studies, University of Greenwich, London, UK

(Received 18 September 2012; final version received 23 October 2012)

The historiographical tradition which developed within the history of educationfrom the 1970s regarded religious organisations as distractions from the “real”task of developing state-funded universal compulsory education. Despite morepositive evaluations of voluntary agencies within the history of social policy,since the 1980s, the schools affiliated to the national co-ordinating religioussocieties are still regarded as potential agents of social control, inadequate innumerical terms, with poor standards, dull curricula and brutal discipline. Thisarticle seeks to redress the balance of this historiography by means of a case-study of part of the London hinterland. It will show how voluntary schoolsattached to national and international “modern” co-ordinating bodies might pro-vide sufficient school places, a curriculum which was structured, with resultsevaluated positively by inspectors, and could operate systems of rewards ratherthan corporal punishment. Comparisons with the period after school boards werefounded indicates that attendance rates stayed about the same, that the curricu-lum initially narrowed in one area, and that corporal punishment increased.While these factors were due partly to population increase, the evidence never-theless demonstrates how voluntary schools could provide adequately, evenwell, for local populations, and that rate-aided school provision might have neg-ative consequences.

Keywords: religion; state; standards; curriculum; discipline

Much historiography of British education, especially from the 1960s and 1970s, hasregarded religious organisations as distractions from the “real” task of developing astate-funded universal compulsory education system.1 This critique was reflected inthe determination of nineteenth-century working-class radicals to free the educationof the poor from clerical control.2 Within this paradigm, Britain fared poorly incomparison with, say, France, America and Prussia, as until 1870, the only nationalinfrastructure of day schooling was managed by religious societies, akin to modern-

*Email: m.c.h.martin@gre.ac.uk1A. Green, Education and State Formation: the Rise of Educational Systems in England,France and the USA (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), 208–307.2B. Simon, The Two Nations and the Educational Structure (London: Lawrence and Wishart,1960, reprinted 1981), 148–52.

Paedagogica Historica, 2013Vol. 49, No. 1, 70–81, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2012.744070

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day national charities, though subsidised and inspected by central government.3 YetJurgen Herbst has noted the localising tendencies within schooling in the UnitedStates and even Prussia from the late eighteenth century, and tensions between statesuperintendents and local communities.4 Moreover, Jana Tschurenev characterisedthe religious societies as “modern organisations” in being effective at diffusingknowledge, albeit while exercising surveillance and control.5 The Anglican parishwas the unit of local government responsible for dispensing poor relief from 1601,and was therefore an integral aspect of the state even after the New Poor Law of1834.6 While in 1977 Harold Silver criticised negative representations of voluntaryschools, and later noted the diverse nature of inspectors’ reports on school stan-dards,7 such schools are still characterised as intended agents of social control, withlow standards and brutal discipline.8 Indeed, the “discovery” by Philip Gardner ofsignificant clusters of “private venture” schools in Bristol between 1840 and 1870,run by working-class people for profit without middle-class interference, reinforcedthe view that these were the schools of choice for the poor.9

This essay will draw upon a case study of two “commuter villages” nearLondon between 1740 and 1870 to re-evaluate the place of the voluntary schoolwithin parish life, and within national education. The regional specificity of the

3See M. Sturt, The Education of the People: A History of Primary Education in Englandand Wales in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), 32–6;D. Vincent. Literacy and Popular Culture: England, 1750–1914 (Cambridge UniversityPress: Cambridge, 1989); D. Wardle, Education and Society in Nineteenth-Century Notting-ham (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1971), 68–75.4J. Herbst, “Nineteenth-century Schools Between Community and State: The Cases of Prus-sia and the United States,” History of Education Quarterly 42, no. 3 (2002), 317–41; SchoolChoice and School Governance: A Historical Study of the US and Germany (Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 7, 31–62.5J. Tschurenev, “Diffusing Useful Knowledge: The Monitorial System of Education inMadras, London and Bengal, 1789–1840,” Paedagogica Historica 44, no. 3, June 2008:245–64.6K.D.M. Snell, Parish and Belonging: Community, Identity and Welfare in England andWales, 1700–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 12–32.7H. Silver, “Aspects of Neglect: the Strange Case of Victorian Popular Education,” OxfordReview of Education 3, no. 1, 1977): 57–69: The Education of the Poor: The History of aNational School, 1824–74 (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974); GoodSchools, Effective Schools: Judgments and their Histories (London: Routledge, 1994), 24–8and passim. See also R. Aldrich, An Introduction to Primary Education (London: Hodderand Stoughton, 1982), 80.8See J. Humphries, Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 306–65; H. Cunningham, The Invention ofChildhood (London: BBC Books, 2006), 171; P. Kirby, Child Labour in Britain, 1750–1870(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2003), 111–6; Robert Lee, Rural Society and the Anglican Clergy,1815–1914: Encountering and Managing the Poor (Boydell and Brewer: Woodbridge,2006), 131–56.9P. Gardner, The Lost Elementary Schools of Nineteenth-century England (London: CroomHelm, 1984), 89–90, 92–7, 161–9. Vincent, Literacy, 69–72. P. McCann, “Popular Educationand Social Control: Spitalfields, 1812–24”, in Popular Education and Socialisation in theNineteenth Century, ed. Philip McCann (London: Methuen, 1977), 9–31; S. Frith, “Socializa-tion and Rational Schooling: Elementary Education in Leeds before 1870,” in Popular Edu-cation and Socialisation in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Philip McCann, 74–9.

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London hinterland contrasts with previous studies of industrial areas or thecountryside.10 This approach facilitates the cross-referencing of a range of historicalsources, often fragmentary. These indicate that before the more intensive centralgovernment intervention of the 1862 Revised Code and 1870 Education Act (andsequelae), there could be found sufficient school places, a broad curriculum, arelatively humane approach to discipline and better attendance rates than rate-aidedschools. It will also show that the schools introduced from the 1870s and run bylocally elected school boards might not have been an improvement. Indeed,although the historiography of the immediate post-war era reflects faith in theability of central government to deliver mass education, since the 1980s, historiansof social welfare have positively re-evaluated the role of voluntary organisations.11

Recent work has argued that even in the early twentieth century, the central Britishstate consisted of a small core compared with those of many European countries,and its functions were delegated to local government and voluntary organisations.12

From the 1550s, the legislation and injunctions of the Protestant Reformationreinforced the close relationship of church and state. These prescribed weeklycatechising of the young in church by the clergy, and that schoolmasters were onlyto be appointed through the bishop’s licence.13 The Poor Law of 1601, “the onlynational system of welfare in early modern Europe”, established parish responsibil-ity for the administration of social welfare through levying a local rate for poorrelief.14 In the 1800s, the Church of England still regarded itself as the inheritor ofthe Protestant Reformation, responsible for the education of the people.15 However,by that date, religious minorities were allowed to worship without persecution, andsome were active in organising schools for the poor.16

The origins of the national co-ordinating religious bodies lay in the lateseventeenth century.17 From 1697 the Anglican Society for the Promotion ofChristian Knowledge provided reading matter and information about the progress ofcharity schools and workhouses.18 In 1808, the Quaker Joseph Lancaster foundedthe Lancasterian Society (renamed the British and Foreign School Society, or BFSS,

10For an overview, see W.B. Stephens, Education in Britain, 1750–1914 (Basingstoke:Macmillan, 1998), 77–97.11J. Barry and C. Jones, “Introduction”, in Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State,eds. J. Barry and C. Jones (London: Routledge, 1991, 2003), 1–13 and passim.12P. Thane, “Women in the British Labour Party and the Construction of State Welfare,1906–1939,” in S. Koven and S. Michel, eds, Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politicsand the Rise of Welfare States (London: Routledge, 1990), 343, 344–77.13J. Lawson and H. Silver, A Social History of Education in England (London: Methuen &Co, 1973), 100–2.14S. Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave,2000, 2002), 174–5.15Twentieth Annual Report of the National Society for the Promotion of the Education of thePoor in the Principles of the Established Church (London: Free-School Gower’s Walk,1832), “History of the Rise and Progress of Schools for the Religious Education of thePoor,” 1–3.16The Toleration Act of 1689 (for Protestant Dissenters outside the Church of England) andthe Catholic Relief Acts of 1778 and 1791. D. Rosman, The Evolution of the EnglishChurches, 1500–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 115–6, 130–133.17Tschurenev, “Diffusing Useful Knowledge,” 245–64.18W.M. Jacob, The Clerical Profession in England and Wales (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2006), 222–4.

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in 1814) to promote the Madras or monitorial system, which was originallynon-denominational and was patronised by the King. Anglicans, concerned at theexclusion of the church catechism from the curriculum of BFSS schools, foundedthe National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of theEstablished Church in 1811.19 This became more successful within Britain, thoughthe British and Foreign School Society had extensive overseas engagement.20 New“Central” demonstration schools were founded in London to train teachers, andexisting schools wishing to be “in union” had to fulfil certain conditions.21 Billspresented in Parliament to support the education of the poor were rejected until theEducation Act of 1833. This only provided £20,000 to support existing buildings,to be administered by the religious societies, and thus benefited areas which alreadyhad resources.22 Yet, as Herbst has noted, early nineteenth-century public schoolingin the rural United States was also dependent on local resources and political prefer-ences.23 The 1870 Education Act established the principle of a school place forevery child, to be supported by the rates levied by a locally elected school board ifnecessary – although elementary education only became compulsory in 1880, andfree in 1891.24

Setting the scene

The two commuter villages of Walthamstow and Leyton, located six milesnorth-east of the City of London in Essex, with good communications by road andlater rail, exemplify a semi-rural location within easy reach of the metropolis.Between 1740 and 1870, the metropolitan mercantile and professional elite movedin and out of the London hinterland, according to wealth and life-cycle stage.Farmers and the labouring poor supplied the London food market,25 while artisans,craftspeople and domestic servants serviced the local elite. Leyton had fewer, largerfarms and more labourers, while in Walthamstow, until the 1840s, some had accessto their own land due to the survival of strip-farming.26 Considered healthier thanCentral London, it attracted many fee-paying schools – some residential – as wellas orphanages. Both parishes differed from nearby West Ham, long a site for“smelly industries”.27 In the 1840s the commons were enclosed and sold to buildsmall houses. The influx of London clerks and artisans accelerated after the comingof the railway to the centre of Leyton in 1856 and the centre of Walthamstow in1870, and the introduction of cheap workmen’s fares. The population doubled in

19Jacob, Clerical Profession, 236–40, 250–55.20Tschurenev, “Diffusing Useful Knowledge”, 245–264.21First Annual Report of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor inthe Principles of the Established Church. (London: Free School Gowers’ Walk, 1812) No.III, “Plan of Union,” 27.22Lawson and Silver, Social History, 268.23Herbst, “Nineteenth Century Schools,” 317–41; School Choice, 31–62.24Stephens, Education, 79.25Victoria County History of Essex, VI, 266–7.26Waltham Forest Archives, Walthamstow, London E17 (hereafter WFA) BaptismalRegisters, St Mary’s Walthamstow (1813–65), W83.1, RBp 2–5.27VCH Essex, II, 76–93, 201–2.

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the decade after 1870 and again by 1890, and the character of the area swiftlychanged from “commuter belt” to “artisan suburb”.28

Numbers

While Green argued that voluntary provision only ever accounted for 50% of theschool-age population,29Joan Simon found that parish-level school provision couldbe extensive, even in the eighteenth century.30 Schools initiated at parish levelmight be funded through endowment, individual benevolence, collections on“sacrament Sundays” or the annual sermon Sundays, in workhouses (from 1723) orby the clergy. Sunday schools could be a development of the clergy’s role incatechising the young.31 Prominent local families might facilitate school buildingand funding.32 While historians have argued that there were more Sunday than dayschool places before 1870,33 in 1818 the Brougham report showed that the reversewas the case.34 This changed in the 1830s, a period of rapid urbanisation,35 but by1861 the Newcastle Report estimated that there were more day than Sunday schoolplaces, and almost every child was enrolled in some school.36

The local enrolments at day schools for the poor were higher than was the casenationally, but not exceptional. A survey in 1807 recorded that Walthamstow hadthe second highest number of enrolments overall in Essex.37 In 1818, the proportionof the population attending day school in Leyton (1:11.29 of population) was higherthan the national average of 1:17.25, but in Walthamstow it was only 1:17.38 In1833, the proportion of day scholars to population was 1:7.83 in Leyton and 1:10in Walthamstow, compared to 1:11.27 in England and Wales.39 In 1824, the RevWilliam Wilson, vicar of Walthamstow from 1822–48 – who later published widely

28Ibid, VI, 181–2, 198–9, 204–5, 244, 250–2.29Green, Education, 268.30J. Simon, “Was there a Charity-School Movement? The Leicestershire Evidence,” inB. Simon, ed., Education in Leicestershire, 1540–1914 (Leicester: Leicester University Press,1968), 59–100.31Jacob, Clerical Profession, 236–41, 246–50.32VCH Essex, VI, 232–4.33Kirby, Child Labour, 112–6; K.D.M. Snell, “The Sunday School Movement in Englandand Wales: Child Labour, Denominational Control and Working Class Culture,” Past andPresent 164 (Aug 1999): 122–68.34Parliamentary Papers: A Digest of the Parochial Returns made to the Select Committeeappointed to enquire into the Education of the Poor, Session 1818, Vols I and II (England)Vol II: containing Wales, Scotland, British Isles and Supplement of Additional Returns(Brougham Report), PP, 1819 (224), IX-A, Part I, 275. IX-C, Part III, 1463.35Snell, “Sunday School Movement,” 125, nn 14, 15.36Parliamentary Papers: Report of the Commissioners appointed to enquire into the state ofPopular Education in England (Newcastle Report),Vol I, Report of Commissioners, PP 1861[2794-I] XXI, Part 1,Vol I, 293–4, 595.37Essex Record Office, Chelmsford, “An Account of the Number of Day Schools, SundaySchools and Charity Schools in the Archdeaconry of Essex (1808),” entry for Walthamstow,No. 78, D/AE M 2/4 (1807): 113 day school and 66 Sunday school places.38M.C. Martin, “Children and Religion in Walthamstow and Leyton, 1740–1870” (PhD diss.,University of London, 2000), 85–92.39Parliamentary Papers: Education Inquiry: Abstract of the Answers and Returns made Pur-suant to an address of the House of Commons 24th May 1833, Vol I, Bedford-Lancaster.Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed (1835). PP 1835 (62) XLL, 282, 294.

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on infant education – founded an infants’ school (for two to seven-year-olds) in abarn, which the pioneer Samuel Wilderspin used as a base for teacher training.40

By 1838, the Walthamstow and Leytonstone infants’ schools were in union with theNational Society.41 Clergy estimated there were sufficient places at voluntaryschools in both parishes in 1815, in Leyton from 1818 to 1847 and in Walthamstowfrom 1847 to 1871.42 Even by 1834, the vicar of Walthamstow had claimed thatvoluntary and dame schools were accommodating the relevant proportion of theschool-age population.43 Even within this limited geographical area, provision var-ied. By 1871, Anglican schools accounted for about half the school-age populationin both parishes. In Walthamstow, which had several British (Nonconformist) andone Roman Catholic school, inspectors estimated that supply exceeded local needs.In Leyton, where the Dissenting school had closed in 1862, there was a shortfall ofat least 350 school places.44

Gardner argued that the poor rejected voluntary schools in favour of working-class private venture schools, run by individuals for profit, because these were moreflexible and less patronising, used the individual method and were more adapted toworking-class needs. His evidence was from Bristol, an increasingly class-segre-gated area where many voluntary school places were not taken up and many privateschools could be clearly identified as working-class.45 However, as the NewcastleReport found in 1861, most private venture schools were for the very young, oroffered a superior education to older children.46 Moreover, since churches fre-quently funded children at private or dame schools, it is inappropriate to designatethem as working-class private venture schools.47 Street directories indicate that mostprivate (i.e. fee-paying) schools were for the middle classes, while enrolments andinspectors’ reports indicate that voluntary school places were taken up.48 Populationdoubled between 1870 and 1880, and school boards had to be elected in 1874(Leyton) and 1880 (Walthamstow). From being a relatively well funded area, theamount per child in both parishes fell to less than the national figure or that of theLondon School Board.49

40A.D. Law., St Mary’s Infants’ School: A Brief History (Walthamstow: Monograph NewSeries, No. 43, Walthamstow Historical Society, 2011), 3–8.41National Society Annual Report (1838), 155. Leytonstone was a district of Leyton.42Martin, “Children and Religion,” 85–90; Appendix 2, 549–52.43Parliamentary Papers: Report of the Select Committee on Education, PP 1834 (572), IX,169/2221, 2238.44National Archives (hereafter NA), Local Authority Supply Files, Walthamstow BoroughCouncil, 1871–1921: Leyton Urban District Council, 1872–1921, Ed 16/77, 80, InspectorWyndham Holgate,45Gardner, Elementary Schools, 89–90.46Report of the Commissioners appointed to Enquire into the State of Popular Education inEngland (Newcastle Report),Vol I, Report of Commissioners, PP 1861 [2794-I] XXI, Part 1,Vol I, 79, 83.47Returns of the Returns to the General Inquiry made by the National Society, into the Stateand Progress of Schools for the Education of the Poor, During the Years 1846–7, Through-out England and Wales, Essex, 12–20, identified 108 places at dame schools in Leytonstone.48Martin, “Children and Religion”, 118–27.49S. Heard, “Attendance, Truancy and the Correction of the Young Offender in Walthamstow,1880–1918” (MA thesis, University of London, King’s College, 1987), 33–34. B.Farrar, “TheInfluence of Urbanisation on the Politics, Elementary Education Provision and Administrationof the Leyton School Board” (MA thesis, King’s College, University of London, 1982), 79.

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Attendance and length of school life

Many have argued that attendance was so poor and school life so short before 1870as to render its educational function negligible.50 Boys often left school at the ageof 10 or younger in rural areas, depending on the local labour markets.51 By con-trast, literacy rates for the West Ham registration district (which included the twoparishes) were particularly good, as they were for parts of Surrey, Kent and Middle-sex, districts also affected by the spread of the population from London.52 The1851–71 censuses describe most children under 14 as “scholar”.53 Some pupils,both boys and girls, attended National schools until they were 14, which onlybecame the statutory school leaving age in 1918.54

Standards of attendance at voluntary schools (of 70%–80%) compare favourablywith those after the founding of the school boards. At the Ozler Free School(endowed 1697, built in 1710, for 14 children), average attendance was 70% in the1770s.55 From 1793–4 and 1814–19, attendance at Walthamstow Sunday Schoolwas 85%–96%,56 and in 1836 it was estimated at 85%–90% for Walthamstowinfants’ school children.57 From the 1860s, attendance at Anglican day schools was75%–82%.58 At the Boys’ British School in Walthamstow it was 80.5% in 1872.59

Meanwhile, the area experienced an influx of poor people from East London, aswell as clerks. By the 1880s problems in Walthamstow were compounded by over-crowding and insanitary buildings.60 In Leytonstone National schools in 1875,attendance was around 71% to 78%,61 but by 1876, in Leyton it had fallento 55.39% (boys) and 65.82% (girls).62 By 1896, it had stabilised at 80 to 86%.63

Overall attendance in Walthamstow from 1877 to 1896 also remained at 81.9%.64

Thus, whereas national attendance rates rose from 68% in 1871 to 82% in 1896, 65

in the two parishes discussed above they barely rose across the century.

50B. Madoc-Jones, “Patterns of Attendance and their Social Significance: Mitcham NationalSchool, 1830–1839,” in McCann, ed., Popular Education, 61–3, also 41–66.51M. Gomersall, Working-Class Girls in Nineteenth-Century England (Basingstoke:Macmillan, 1997), 54–60, 92–8, also 72 (for Lancashire, Suffolk). But see W.B. Stephens,Education, Literacy and Society, 1830–70: The Geography of Diversity in Provincial Eng-land (Manchester University Press: Manchester, 1987), 116–9.52Ibid, 83–4, 80, 70.53NA, census returns 1851, 1861, 1871. HO 107/1769, 1879; RG10/1060–1062; 1634–1637(bound copies at WFA). Not always reliable.54SC on Education, PP 1834 (572) IX, 172/2276. Minutes of the Committee of Council onEducation, PP 1850[1215] XLIII, p. 376, No. 213. WFA, Leyton Parochial Charities AnnualReports, 1865–73, L83.1/C18, e.g. (1867), 2. For 1918, see Lawson and Silver, SocialHistory, 384.55WFA, Ozler School Trustees’ Minute Books, L83.1/C01, 1710–1846.56WFA, Walthamstow Sunday School Attendance Accounts, W58.501, S9, 1793–4, 1814–19,57SC on Education, PP 1834 (572) IX, 169/2221.58Martin, “Children and Religion,” 102–105.59WFA, “Marsh Street, Report of Dr Arnold,” W58.51/B2.60Heard, “Attendance,” 64.61WFA, Leyton School Board Minutes, L58.01 M1, 23 Mar 1875, 86–7.62WFA, “Notes,” L83.1/PA23 (1876).63WFA, Leyton School Board Minutes, L58.01 M10, 103, 137.64Heard, “Attendance,” 160.65Stephens, Education, 91.

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Standards and curriculum

While Horn and others have argued that standards attained in voluntary schoolswere very low, Silver’s analysis of inspectors’ reports is more nuanced.66 The “rev-olution” of the monitorial system developed by Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancastermeant that one master could teach 200 or even 1000 children with the aid ofmonitors.67Although by the 1830s this system had come to be heavily criticised,observers such as William Wilberforce (in 1814) could be very positive.68

Moreover, at local level, schools might not be large enough to follow the modelrigidly. Thus, in 1815, the Madras system was introduced into the Girls’ Blueschool, which had only 30 girls.69 In 1839 a national inspectorate was introduced,under the jurisdiction of a committee of the Privy Council. Frequently clergymen,these were appointed to specific districts and inspected all schools in receipt of agovernment grant annually, while diocesan inspectors inspected religious educationseparately. The Minutes of 1846 established a pupil–teacher system in order toimprove the quality and supply of teachers.70 By the 1850s the Walthamstow Boys’National school had parallel desks, as well as a gallery.71 Monitors were stillemployed in BFSS schools, but as paid assistants.72

While the curriculum of the National schools was based on the Church of Eng-land prayer book and the Bible, that of the Nonconformist British and ForeignSchool Society forbade the teaching of any particular creed or catechism, but wasstrongly Bible-based.73

Laqueur and others noted that the passion to teach children to read the Biblecould result in imaginative teaching methods.74 The model curricula of the BFSSand National Society were very structured, allowing children to achieve at differentlevels.75As reading matter was often religious in working-class private schools, thecontent of education was not noticeably different.76 Moreover, as Marsden argued,a curriculum structured round religion could be holistic, including the history of theBible lands, plants and flowers and geography.77 This approach was also promoted

66P. Horn, The Victorian Country Child (Kineton: The Roundwood Press, 1974), 46; Silver,Good Schools, Effective Schools, 24–8.67Tschurenev, “Diffusing Useful Knowledge,” 245–64; Lawson and Silver, Social History,241–6.68R.I. Wilberforce and S. Wilberforce, Life of William Wilberforce by his Sons, Vol. 4(London: John Murray, 1838), 197.69WFA, Walthamstow Vestry Minutes, W47.1/5, 27 March 1815.70Silver, Good Schools, Effective Schools, 22–30.71Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education, PP 1851 [1357] [1358] XLIV, 438.72WFA, WSBSLB, W58.518/1, 7 July 1869.73National Society, Annual Report (1830), 28–9; BFSS, A Manual of Instruction in the Sys-tem of Primary Education Pursued in the Model Schools of the British and Foreign SchoolSociety (1838), 58–9; Green, Education, 266.74T.W. Laqueur, Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture,1780–1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 113–9; A. Stott, Hannah More: theFirst Victorian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 124.75National Society, Annual Report (1845), Appendix, IV. P. and H. Silver, Education (53–4)reproduces BFSS schemes of instruction, 1845.76Gardner, Elementary Schools, 92–7, 162–5. Vincent Literacy, 1.77W.E. Marsden, “Recycling Religious Instruction? Historical Perspectives on ContemporaryCross-Curricular Issues,” History of Education 22, no. 4 (1993): 321–3.

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for infants by the Revd William Wilson.78 It reflects developments in elite schoolcurricula, from Thomas Arnold, who introduced Bible history and geography toRugby School, to the local Forest School, founded in 1834.79 Wilson claimed thatinfants could read the New Testament on leaving infants’ school at seven years old,and had copies printed in large type.80

As the century progressed, the curriculum broadened in many schools.81 In1849–50, besides the “3 Rs”, boys at Walthamstow National School were taughtAlgebra, Grammar, Geography and History, Drawing and Vocal Music.82 In 1857,at Leytonstone British School, both sexes were taught geography, Grammar, NaturalHistory and Object Lessons.83 It has been argued that girls suffered from beingtaught needlework every afternoon, while boys did more arithmetic.84 Admittedly,in 1818, the girls’ section of the Walthamstow (Blue) grammar school was makingclothing and linen for sale, and in Wilson’s timetable for infants’ schools, girls didmore practical work than boys.85 However, after 1870 there was much greateremphasis on domestic skills for girls, which arguably reflected less opportunity forintellectual achievement than the previous focus on religion.86 Moreover, Inspec-tors’ reports do not necessarily indicate lower expectations of girls. In 1868, Inspec-tor Gream commented: “Generally, girls succeed better in arithmetic than boys”.87

The Revised Code of 1862, imposed by central government, led to “payment byresults”, a more rigid, test and assessment-based regime, and funding dependent onattendance and intimidating annual inspections, justified on the grounds of account-ability.88 The churches objected that this would restrict the teaching of religiouseducation, while inspectors and educators also bemoaned the increasing rigidity ofthe curriculum.89 Vincent, however, argued that it was a response to parentaldemands for more instrumental education in the “3 Rs”.90 Nevertheless, some vol-untary schools continued to offer a wider range of subjects in the 1860s and 1870s,such as “Colours”, “Collective lessons on the duck and the spider”, “domestic econ-omy”, “drill”, Geography and Natural History.91 In 1871, at the Boys’ BritishSchool, the subjects taught “in addition to Reading, Writing and Arithmetic”included “the Scriptures, English Grammar, Composition, Geography, History,

78W. Wilson, The System of Infants’ Schools, 3rd ed. (London: George Wilson, 1826), 42–3.79D. Newsome, Godliness and Good Learning: Four Studies on a Victorian Ideal (London:John Murray, 1961), 64–5.80SC on Education, 1 834 (572), IX, 169/2221, 2238.81Stephens, Education, 16.82Minutes, Vol I, PP 1850 [1215] XLIII, 376.83British and Foreign School Society Archives Centre, Brunel University, Egham, NewcastleCommission File 3080, Circular D (Leytonstone British School), Query 29.84Gomersall, Working Class Girls, 66–69, 71, 76, 81–3.85Wilson, System, timetable at end.86Gomersall, Working-Class Girls, 91, 100–10.87Report of the Committee of Council on Education, PP 1868–9 [4139], XX, p.110.88Lawson and Silver, Social History, 290–1.89National Society, Annual Report, 1862, Appendix No XII, Revised Code. Ibid, 1869, 21;Lawson and Silver, Social History, 328–9, 334.90Vincent, Literacy, 86–8, 92.91WFA, Wood Street British School Log Book, (hereafter, WSBSLB), W58.518/1, e.g. 4, 6,11, 12, 13, 18, 19, 24; Higham Hill British School Log Book, W58.519/1, 4,6,11, 12, 13,18, 19, 24, 27 Aug 1869, 7, 27 April, 5, 10, 18 May 1870.

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Geometry, the higher rules of Arithmetic, Drawing, and the Tonic-Sol-fa system ofSinging”.92 In the 1860s, “a great many substantial persons” sent their children toWalthamstow National School, indicating that standards had risen from the 1830s.93

However, in 1877 the Leyton School Board voted to restrict the content of the cur-riculum to the 3 Rs (and needlework for girls – the six standards), and to exclude“extra subjects”.94 This reflected the concerns of the Newcastle Commission thatrate-aided funding of education might reduce it to the lowest common denominator,as with the poor law after 1834.95 By the later nineteenth century, however, a widercurriculum was being taught.96

Discipline

In “Aspects of Neglect” (1977), Silver criticised the assumption that discipline inschools for the poor was harsh and arbitrary because it was so in schools for theelite. 97 Yet Humphries has recently claimed that autobiographies reflect high levelsof violence in such schools. 98 However, before the advent of compulsion in 1880,schools for the poor needed to attract pupils, rather than deter them by strict treat-ment. 99 Eighteenth-century charity schools stressed the need to treat children withkindness, as did the early annual reports of the National Society.100 In Walthamstowand Leyton, the rhetoric of care and affection was strong.101 In 1825 the Revd Wil-liam Wilson, who considered the moral influence exerted by the master’s exampleas crucial, argued that the “first task of the teacher was to conciliate to himself theaffections of his charge”.102 He rejected corporal punishment as having a negativemoral influence on the children. Like Robert Owen, pioneer of infant schools, hedisapproved of rewards for academic success as encouraging competition, ratherthan “the spirit of unity”.103 However, systems of rewards which ranged from uni-versal benefits, such as uniforms, to annual treats, and more “targeted” recognitionof academic excellence, were recommended by educators as diverse as the Noncon-formist divine Isaac Watts and the Utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, and were usedwidely in Sunday schools, as well as in early nineteenth-century BFSS and National

92WFA, Marsh Street British School, Report of Dr Arnold, W58.51/B2.93Parliamentary Papers: Schools Inquiry Commission Report, Schools not Comprised Withinthe Two Recent Commissions on Popular Education and on Public Schools (Taunton Com-mission) Vol XIII, Special Reports on the Eastern Counties, PP 1867–8, 3966-[XII],XXVIII, Part IX, 86.94Farrar, “Influence of Urbanisation,” 72.95Newcastle Report, PP 1861 [2794-I] XXI, Part 1, Vol I, 302–3.96WFA, St Mary’s Infants’ School Log Book, W58, 5123/1, 251, 1882.97Silver, “Aspects of Neglect,” 63.98Humphries, Childhood, 359–64.99Laqueur, Religion, 18, 225–6.100J. Caffyn, Sussex Schools in the Eighteenth Century: schooling, provision, and scholars(Lewes: Sussex Record Society, 1989), 16; National Society, Annual Report (1839), 75;(1840), 137–8.101Martin, “Children and Religion,” 403–14.102Wilson, System, 13–7.103Wilson, System, 27–8; W.A.C. Stewart and W.P. McCann, The Educational Innovators,1780–1850, I (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1967, reprinted 2000), 71–2.

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schools.104 Clothing was given to all Walthamstow Sunday School children initially;from 1815, however, it was given on merit, and after six months’ attendance.105 In1825, it was awarded to girls leaving Walthamstow National School on the basis ofgood conduct.106 Rewards of one guinea for staying in one’s place in service a yearafter leaving school, as recommended by Isaac Watts in the early eighteenth cen-tury, were given by Walthamstow Sunday School from 1814 to 1819, by the Boys’National school around 1840 and by Leyton National daily and Sunday schools inthe 1860s. Bibles and prayer books were given to those who could read them from1814 onwards.107 Mark systems were introduced at innovative elite schools such asHazelwood in Birmingham,108 and from the 1800s, tickets were given in both par-ishes to contribute to a prize or other reward. A girl leaving Walthamstow NationalSchool in 1840 would receive “the money laid up for her in payment of the ticketsshe has gained for good conduct and regular attendance while at school”.109 In the1850s, Marsh Street Sunday school gave tickets for good conduct which could beexchanged for hymn-books.110 From 1863, when schools were obliged to keep logbooks, only limited references occur to children being caned or even punished, andthese were often for serious offences such as throwing stones or candlesticks aboutthe classroom.111 No punishments or canings were recorded at Wood Street Britishschool, only expulsions.112 Schools appear to have become more violent after 1880,as children were forced to attend.113 From 1882, Kirkdale Road Board School(founded in 1876) recorded “strokes” every day, even for offences such as talking,or idleness. However, indiscriminate assaults, as when a master boxed a child’sears, were not allowed.114 In Mayville Girls’ Board school, Leyton in 1890, onlyone disobedient girl was mentioned as receiving “stripes”.115

Conclusion

This essay has argued that a system of schools begun at parish level, attached tonational voluntary organisations and supplemented by state funds might have pro-vided a varied curriculum, satisfactory standards and sufficient school places before

104M.G. Jones, The Charity School Movement: A Study of Eighteenth-century Puritanism inAction (Frank Cass & Co: Cambridge, 1938, new impression 1964), 51; A. Tomkins. TheExperience of Urban Poverty: 1723–82: Parish, Charity and Credit (Manchester: Manches-ter University Press, 2006), 177–81; Stewart and McCann, Educational Innovators, 221–37.105WFA, Walthamstow Sunday School Committee Minute Book, 1814–17, W58.501/S1, 10Dec 1815.106Lambeth Palace Library, London, Howley Papers, 46, f.70, 1825, Rule 4.107Martin, “Children and Religion,” 421–7.108Stewart and McCann, Educational Innovators, I, 230–41.109W. Wilson, A Manual of Useful information for the Inhabitants of this Parish (London:W. H. Dalton, 1840), 47.110WFA, Marsh Street New Meeting, Minutes of Teachers’ Meetings, W85. 212/9, 21 Nov1857, 26 Jan 1862.111Martin, “Children and Religion,” 455–9.112WFA, WSBSLB, W58.518/1, e.g. 12 Mar 1867, 3 May 1872.113A. Hatley, Across the Years: Walthamstow Memories (Walthamstow: WalthamstowAntiquarian Society, The Walthamstow Press, reprinted 1954), 66.114WFA, Kirkdale Road Board school log book, L58.72/1, ff.76–179, Feb 6th 1882–July1883, f. 278, 1885.115WFA, Mayville Road Board school log book, L58.74/1, 9 May 1890.

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rate-aided universal elementary education. Attendance in these two parishes was ashigh before 1870 as it was in the 1890s. Punishment apparently became moresevere after 1870. However, provision of school places could differ even within onesmall geographical area, due to the presence of different religious denominations.This case study exemplifies how popular schooling developed in England andWales not necessarily through conflict between local and national structures ofpower, as in the US and Prussia, but through affiliation of local schools to“modern” national and international religious societies which diffused knowledge,expertise and a certain level of standardisation. However, affiliation was optional,thus allowing a certain amount of flexibility. This is not to suggest a return tovoluntary schools, but rather that historians of education need to understand theframeworks which might have successfully supported schooling in the past.

Notes on ContributorsDr Mary Clare Hewlett Martin is a social historian specialising in the history of children.She is currently Principal Lecturer and Programme Leader of the Childhood Studies degreeat the University of Greenwich, London, where she is also Head of the Centre for the Studyof Play and Recreation and co-ordinator of the London Network for the History of Children.Her current research interests include children and religion 1740–1870, children’s illness anddisability in international perspective from 1700 to 2000, and the history of the Girl Guides.She is completing a book entitled Free Spirits: Children and Religion 1740–1870 andworking on another entitled State, Hospital and Community: The Sick Child in HistoricalPerspective, 1700–2000.

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