REDHILL AND METTRAY.
THE natural fear that the boys at the Redhill Farm School might become a nuisance to the neighbourhood, as idle loungers of an immoral character, is obviated by Mr. Sydney Turner's hearty acceptance of our challenge to make the new discipline colony equal if not superior to Mettray. If it equal Mettray in one of the first essentials, the system will induce so large an amount of labour as to leave the youths little time or inclination to walk about. We say induce, not compel, because inducement is the effect of a system as good as that pursued at the model colony. If the system at Redhill should fail, of course the establishment would be abandoned. The great anxiety should therefore be for the institution itself, and that is considerably relieved by Mr. Tur- ner's avowal that the example of Mettray must be surpassed.
The remnant of solicitude springs from the fact that Mr. Tur- ner appears in some respects to underrate his standard. He states, that when he visited Mettray, the boys seemed to be in a Poor state of health : but we doubt whether he does not go by an undue comparison. Perhaps he was not aware that the lads are selected not only from among the convict class, itself low in the scale of health, but also from among those members of that class who are most sickly, have suffered most from the confinement of
prison, and most need the change of air. But other visitera do not give an unfavourable report. Mr. Morgan visited the place in the autumn of 1845, and found the boys in very comfortable condition ; and we know from other trustworthy information that in the autumn of 1848 the aspect was generally healthy. Indeed, the return of mortality shows that the state of health cannot be very bad ; it is but a fraction more than one per cent. Redhill, therefore, has no very wide margin to count upon in that parti- cular; and it is as well that its managers should know as much. The exception taken to the discipline at Mettray seems to be based rather upon a preconception than upon the facts. Drill is not usually deemed an unhealthy-exercise ; on the contrary, its use is extending in our private boarding-scboola, with manifest advantage to the carriage and physical development of the boys. At Mettray it is employed with especial advantage to correct the cramping effects invariably attendant on hard labour : thus, after the stooping posture of garden-work, a short drill restores the
tone of the muscles, and of the animal spirits. That it seriously
impedes labour cannot be the case, since each inmate produces, on the average, what is worth about 81. a year; a large BUM, es- pecially if we compare it with the produce of our best-regulated prisons, those of Scotland, where the annual produce averages no more than 1/. 16s., and in England and Wales it is only 11. 4s.
It does not appear to us that the specific changes mentioned by
Mr. Turner are likely to accomplish the object which he so justly keeps in view—the improving upon the model adopted by the Philanthropic Society. Preference, no doubt, should be given to the married man, casterisparibus ; but at Mettray much has turned upon the personal character of the men engaged. The benevo- lence of the Viscount de Bretignieres de Courteilles is attested not only by his munificent gift of land, but by the personal at- tention that he bestows upon the colony ; and that personal soli- citude cannot fail to have a considerable moral effect on the bet- ter-disposed boys, perhaps on all. M. de Metz is a retired judge; he is in knowledge and judgment a man of the world ; in devoted- ness to his benevolent mission he vies with the missionaries of any time or country. One instance will suffice to prove this as- sertion. Offenders against the rules of the colony are sometimes confined in a separate room : in a room over this, M. de Metz has a small bedstead; when a boy is confined below, leaving his own comfortable mansion, the excellent man sleeps the night through on that bed, in order that he may in some sort accompany even the worst offender with a sense of the redeeming care that watches over him ; and in the solitude of the night, M. de Metz rises and addresses the culprit in words of exhortation, such as would issue from the lips of a man versed in worldly knowledge as well as ,pious reflection, and practised in the art of influencing the aber- rant mind of youth. This spirit of zeal and devotion has ex- tended itself to the subordinates, and we know that there has been no lack of the most beneficent personal influence at Mettray. On the other hand, the importation of youlig children belonging to another class—the wholly unconvicted class—is likely to compli- cate the arrangements at Redhill.
Another change, of problematical advantage, is the multiplica-
tion of kitchens. The great kitchen at Mettray is superintended by a person of trust and skill—a lady, we believe, belonging to the Sisterhood of Charity, who has made the art of cookery a special study for the service of the institution; so that even in the purvey department enters the same zeal that is shown in the whole esta- blishment: six hundred persons are provided with wholesome and nutritious food—for such it is—at the utmost economy of fuel and cost. That cost, however, is somewhat more than a franc a head every day. If each "family" had its own kitchen, fifteen kitchens would be required, with fifteen sets of apparatus, either equal to that used in the great kitchen, or of an inferior sort ; thus in- creasing the outlay, either for apparatus, or for labour and stores wasted.
The ratio of reformations at Mettray is calculated by Mr. M.
D. Hill, the Recorder of Birmingham, to be about 85 per cent ;* and it will be desirable to ponder well any changes in the system of management which would bring upon the Redhill colony the risk of presenting a less favourable return than that. Indeed, the return ought to be more favourable ; since, we repeat, the Philan- thropic Society has all the advantage derivable from the expe- rience of the gentlemen who have so nobly founded and con- ducted the colony at Mettray.
e Charge to the Grand Jury at Birmingham.
Previous page
