THE REDHILL FARM SCHOOL.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
Philanthropic Farm School, Red Hill, 16th May 1849. Sin—In the Spectator of Saturday I find some very useful remarks on our newly-instituted Farm School, and on the responsibility of those concerned in it, to carry out their plan of substituting agricultural employment and self-regu- lating discipline for the sedentary occupations and mechanical restraints es- sential to a London establishment, without injury or annoyance to the neigh- bourhood.
I have a good hope, Sir, we shall succeed in this. Whatever may be the aver- age of success we may meet with in our dealings with the lads themselves whose moral reformation we seek, I have no fear that our school will be in any way troublesom, to those resident in its vicinity: rather, indeed, I venture to hope that the spectacle of our boys working hard for their daily maintenance, and led—even from so early an age as ten or twelve years old—to do something for their own support, and to act on the rule "if a man will not work he shall not eat," will stimulate the managers of the parochial and union schools about us to make the training of the poor children under their charge more practical, and to make a garden or allotment of land as necessary an appendage to their school-houses as the desks, benches, and blacked boards, with which they are at present too apt to be contented.
I need hardly say that the statements of the author of the anonymous paper you quote from are in many points erroneous. Our boys are not smart London pickpockets taken "from the basest and wickedest classes of our modern Baby- lon ": for the most part they are country lads who have been led to break the law more from destitution and neglect than from any depravity of purpose or habit. Our system of daily industrial exertion as the price and condition of the boy's food and comforts, allows of no idle sauntering in the lanes and fields; and our regu- lations as to " visiters " only allow of the boy's more decent and respectable connexions seeing him, and these only at intervals and under careful re.trictions.
But, Sir, with reference to your remarks upon the great French institution at Mettray, and the instruction and encouragement which it affords, I should be glad to call your readers' attention to the very different position in which its ma- nagers and founders stand, as compared with the promoters of our Farm School, or any similar establishment in this country, with regard to the legal control which they possess over their inmates.
Mettray, Sir, as you are well aware, is rather a penitentiary, superseding the prison, than a refuge or asylum supplementary to it, and to be entered by the offender when imprisonment has ended.
Every boy in Mettray is literally (like the boys at Parkhurst) a convict, under sentence of detention for several years; liable to be sent back to prison if he mis- behave and certain to be sent back if he abscond.
On the other hand, the lads received into the Philanthropic Farm School are for the most part such as have suffered the penalty of their fault and are again at liberty. With the exception of the few who are sent to us under conditional pardons from Millbank Prison on recommendation of the Secretary of State, they are volunteers, admitted on their own application and request, and are free, so far as any legal restriction goes, to leave us when they will. This, Sir, is practically a most important difference, and one which must be borne in mind in judging of the results of our undertaking, and the average num- ber of those whom our agency succeeds in improving. Our only ho d upon the greater number of our boys arises from the personal influence we can acquire over them, and the sense of self-interest and self-respect we can awaken in them.
I do not know that I would altogether wish it otherwise—at least with reference to the lighter and more hopeful cases of delinquency to which our interference is in the Main confined: for undoubtedly, the reformations which we effect are more genuine and more lasting than they would be were the boys compelled to submit to the process which aims at their improvement; and the masters and teachers whom we employ are obliged to exert themselves more, to study the boys' cha- racters more deeply, to employ higher agencies in dealing with them, when conscious that if they fail to find the key to the lads' heart, and to get the mas- tery of his mind, he will become sullen and dissatisfied, and in some fit of temporary discontent will run away, and thus bring discredit upon those who are responsible for his care.
Yet our hands would be much strengthened, and the average of reformations greatly larger, were the laws relating to youthful criminals so altered as after the first or second offence to do away with the present useless system of short im- prisonments, and to place the offenders under control, both for corrective and educa- tional purposes, for eighteen months or two years; of which the last twelve or fifteen months should be passed in a reformatory school. Many a lad who now casts himself again upon the world, and is again swept down the stream of vice and crime, would be saved were there some check or restraint on him like this. A detention of several years would be too expensive to the community, and too long to excite his own hope and self-exertion ; but detention and industrial oc- cupation for twelve or eighteen months would at once preserve him from his own instability and prepare him to be practically useful to society on his discharge.
I ought not, Sir, to intrude longer on your valuable space; but there are three points in the system of Mettray on which, I venture to hope, we shall be able to improve in the development of our Farm School, and which I should be glad to
mention.
The first is the large number of officers employed. At the period of my visit to Mettray, in 1845, there were nearly ninety teachers, superintendents, and workmen, to about 456 boys. To each family of forty lads three officers were assigned, (the "Pere" and- the two "Sous-chefs,") besides the monitors or "Freres aines" chosen from the boys themselves. In addition to these, there were the chaplain, the extra schoolmasters, the teachers of the Normal School, the steward and his assistants, the master-workmen and others—numbering al together thirty-seven persons, exclusive of the labourers employed in the workshops and on the land, and of the Sisters of Charity who superintend the kitchen and the infirmary. It is true that the cost of these officers is not so great as it would be in this country; many of them serving without salary for their board and clothing only, having before them the prospect of appointments in the prisons and elementary schools. Still the expense is considerable, and in England would be ruinous. We hope to succeed with a much smaller proportion of official superin- tendence—by calling forth the boys' independent action and responsibility, and by closely connecting their industrial activity and personal good conduct with the privileges and advantages they are most desirous of enjoying.
The second point on which we hope to improve upon the Mettray system is in the employment of married masters. At Mettray, all the educational and disci-. pline officers are young men of between fifteen and thirty years of age. Putting aside many important moral considerations, the agency of the master's wife has been found by us to be very valuable in refining, softening, and attaching the boys. The domestic character of each family is also much enhanced by this element, and the artificial apparatus of a central kitchen and central diningroom dispensed with. Each family is complete in itself. A third point on which we hope the balance will be in our favour is the health of the boys. None who have visited Mettray can, I think, avoid being struck with the number of infirm and sick. I attribute this to the insufficient diet and the unnecessary minuteness of the restrictions and penal discipline employed. Had the boys more work and more substantial food, and leas drill and mechanical exercise, there would be fewer patients in the infirmary, and fewer deaths to re- cord in the annual reports.
I have the honour to be, Sir, your very obedient and faithful servant, SYDNEY TURNER, Resident Chaplain.
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