Heritage Craft Schools and Hospitals, Chailey : 1903-1948. (21s.)
THIS is a book of magnificent photographs (chiefly taken by the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Photography) of the first residential school for cripples which combined hospital treatment with education and training. The Chailey experiment, as described here, grew out of the Guild of Brave Poor Things (the title from a story by Mrs. Ewing) founded for cripples by Mrs. Kimmins in South-East London in 1894. In 1903 (guided by her husband, for many years Chief Inspector of L.C.C. schools) she installed seven boys in ramshackle buildings in Sussex, and from that beginning has grown a widely-appreciated school treating and educating both crippled boys and girls. Chailey takes children under sixteen from all over Britain ; it provides an open-air life ; it is in the forefront with experimental treatment ; it gives formal education and a handicraft training. The photographs show the children at work and play, the visitors who come to see them, the objects they produce, the way they grow up. The text—prose interspersed with verse—is by a variety of commentators, including Sir Cyril Burt, who writes a preface, and Mrs. Kimmins herself. This is not a book of statistics. A minimum of facts is given ; the appeal is to the heart, not the head. But the book is charming for its pictures of a happy community and incidentally points to the individual unofficial idealism and energy which have played such a large part in British social institutions.
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