PAUPER CHILDREN.*
'WHEN a few months since we called attention to Mrs. Senior's able report on the condition of pauper children, neither we ner our readers could have imagined the tempest that report was destined to raise. Mr. Tufnell, in a pamphlet which the Local Government Board has published, charges Mrs. Senior in no measured terms with suppressing evidence, with giving a garbled account of the simplest facts, and in short, with general untrust- worthiness and unfairness. With the discourtesy of the tone of that pamphlet we have nothing whatever to do ; the Local Government Board has seen fit, in the interests of truth, as, of course, it believes, to publish it, and will, of course, in common fairness publish also Mrs. Senior's reply. The very name of the worthy inspector who for thirty years has done his work so faithfully carries weight, and the Times has for the moment thrown its influence in this matter into the Conservative scale. It does not matter much. Par se muove might be written over many an apparently dead cause, and the free-play of thought which opposi- tion and misrepresentation have caused to arise around the whole subject will ultimately do more good than would perhaps have been accomplished by a quicker success. Meanwhile, Miss Smedley- has done good service in getting together in a small compass the. principal mass of official evidence on a very important question. That question resolves itself simply into this,—whether monster. institutions are or are not gigantic mistakes in dealing with the- young ? The ratepayers of this country have that question to. answer, and the solution of the problem involved in it is suffici- ently difficult. The British Government is responsible year by year for the well or ill-doing of, say, at a rough average, 35,000, ehildren. The first question which perhaps arises in the ordinary ratepayer's mind is how cheaply can this responsibility be met ?' But to consider this alone would be shortsighted policy indeed. As. we urged in a former paper on this subject, these children of the State are not responsible for the sins of their parents, and the true object of the State is therefore not to make life unpleasant to them, but to fit them so to take their place in it that their children shall not in their turn help to swell the national burden. Now, of course, deceptive as statistics too often are, the only means at hand of ascertaining the best system of public instruction, is to discover under which the largest per-centage of children turn out well. It is to elucidate this, that it is worth while to consider the point at issue between Mr. Tufnell and those who agree with him, and Mrs. Senior and the staff of voluntary helpers who assisted her.
For the moment, the question is really confined to the girls' schools. Mr. Tufnell asserts that in round numbers not more than four per cent. of the girls trained in the great district schools fail in after life to get a fair and honest living, and as he adds, to do well. Mrs. Senior, who (but for Mr. Tufnelrs pam- phlet), it would seem superfluous to observe, could have no possible motive throughout her arduous research but the elucida. tion of the truth, has arrived at the conclusion, from evidence received, that a very large per-centage of the girls so trained do very ill indeed. She recognises as fully, perhaps more fully, than any one else, the immense work which Mr. Tufnell has accom. plished in getting these district schools established at all, with all the immense improvement over the old system which they possess. But it is not to be wondered at, though it is unquestionably matter for regret, that one who has spent his life in improving the condition of pauper children, and who now would stereotype his life's work under the conviction "that nothing can equal or even approaeh the success of the plan for uniting the children in large schools arranged on the district system," should be im- patient of any criticism which points out that his work is still incomplete, and further progressive action still necessary. We venture to suggest that Mrs. Senior in her report has done no more than this,—has simply maintained, we think proved, that the millennium has not yet arrived for pauper girls. We notice that in his reply Mr. Tufnell quotes largely the successful careers of many of the boys, but this is a question with which Mrs. Senior in her official capacity had nothing to do. Putting out of sight for a moment the whole question of expense, to which we must of necessity presently refer, we would ask,—Does any wise father willingly send his daughter to a huge boarding-school? In the innumerable instances in which such fathers, clergymen or- others, are compelled to take advantage of monster benevolent institutions, is not the compulsion a subject of regret? Why? It is quite unnecessary for us to waste space in answering that question. But if it can be raised concerning large establishments, • Boarding-out and Pauper Schools: Being a Reprint of the Chief Parts of the Reports on Pauper Education in the Blue-book for 1878-4. Edited, with a Preface and Notes, by Mem*, B. Smedley. London: Henry S. King and Co. 1SIM where every influence is professedly refining, where the children gathered together come from carefully-guarded nurseries and fairly good home influence, what must be the inner conviction of any enlightened ratepayer as he contemplates the bringing-together of many hundreds of girls from the lowest strata of society, and subjecting them all to a rule which can only produce order ' by destroying individuality ? The probability is, if a man of quiet sense, and not specially philanthropic, he looks on the whole system as a necessary evil, — an evil which the wise and tender labours of men like Mr. Tufnell have done much, very much, to mitigate ; but he will need no statistics to tell him that a large per-centage of these girls cannot, in the very nature of things, turn out well. It is singular that Mr. Tufnell, who so early in his own official career discovered, and to his eternal praise be it spoken, never rested till he remedied, the evil of permitting pauper children to be brought up with pauper adults, should so totally fail to see the natural and inevitable pro- gress of the principle he then set in motion. Mrs. Senior is but carrying that same principle a little further. She would not destroy district schools, but have them smaller. She does not pro- pose boarding out all children indiscriminately, but only orphans. And she would, as far as possible, place children exceptionally bad away from the others, and under separate teaching, by no means thus creating "a hell upon earth" (a remark, by the way, which cuts two ways) ; but by subjecting these natures directly to a higher influence, give them a chance of being acted upon which they have not in a crowd, while they have less chance of them- selves influencing others,—a possibility which only those who know what one really evil nature can accomplish will suffi- ciently dread. In Miss Smedley's book she has brought together a few of the principal points in which Mr. Tuf- nell misjudges Mrs. Senior, to the prejudice of the reform which she has (or but for illness, would have) in hand. First as to the question of the boarding-out of orphans, which is recom- mended wherever practicable. We confess the subject is beset with difficulties, like many another good thing, the plan is liable to abuse, and there arises the difficulty as to payment ; if adequate, it may be eagerly sought by unworthy people ; if re- duced to a minimum, which we certainly consider Mrs. Senior's estimate of three-and-sixpence a week to be, there is the chance of stinted food for the child, and the certainty that its home can only be in remote agricultural districts. But Mrs. Senior meets these and many similar difficulties by observing that she is not proposing any scheme for wholesale boarding-out, that she is aware the plan can only be carried out where the authorities or their delegates can find proper homes, and experience of no common kind leads her to know there are many such ; homes where worthy well-to-do people desire for various reasons to take charge of an orphan child,—some because they have no children of their own, some in the hope that the child thus temporarily adopted may in a few years prove useful, some because the payment, though small, helps in a way careful housewives, even while doing justice to the child, know how to take advantage of. To the labouring man who is in fair work, keeps a pig, has his strip of allotment-ground for vegetables, and is allowed to glean, poor as he may still be, a mouth more or less is not a matter of moment, but the extra shillings a week may represent comfort. Mr. Tufnell denies that in country cottages can be found the necessary appliances for the health, comfort, and accommodation of the boarded child, forgetting that for girls at least a small amount of mothering is worth a large amount of the very cold comforts of a life of dull routine, and he proceeds to quote from the official report of the present Bishop of Man- chester, in order to prove that the general condition of English cottages is "deplorable, miserable, and detestable." Is it quite in the spirit of that fairness on which Mr. Tufnell insists so much, to bring a report written to prove the necessity for reform in cottage-building in certain country districts as a wholesale stigma on the labouring classes of the country ? Of course, the greatest individual care must be taken in each instance to secure a decent home (and the trouble involved is at the root of much, though not of Mr. Tufnell's opposition). But to take one county, say Essex, alone, because the cottages in the Rodings are bad, are those in the three Colnes. to be branded also ? Mrs. Senior per- sonally visited every child boarded out in the vicinity of Edin- burgh; in each case the result was satisfactory : a large number in the Lake District, where she says the people were earning good wages, seemed doing comfortably, and certainly did not accept their additional responsibility simply as a source of income. But the boarding-out system on a large scale will not be accepted for some years yet to come, and it is therefore rather with the expe- diency of not having more than thirty or forty girls in one home
that we have to do ; and we think this course can be defended, not on philanthropic principles alone, but utilitarian ones also.
The result to be attained is to make the girls thus trained at Government expense really useful members of society. We will grant a possible increase of expenditure, if such schools are to be thoroughly efficient,—though even on that point it would not be difficult to prove that ten smaller homes regulated on cottage scale if substituted for one monster institution would not cost more and would yield better results than the present system. Of course the difficulty and expense of providing an efficient schoolmistress and staff of pupil-teachers for a small number appears grave, but we see no reason why, given the small homes, the girls should not meet as day-scholars in a common schoolroom. The advan- tages of home life would still be secured, the elder girls would take charge of the little ones, and the evils arising from the machine-like life of these huge barracks would be avoided.
Occasion-ally in his enthusiasm for the existing state of things Mr. Tufnell proves too much. In answer to an observation about the food being tepid where there are hundreds to be helped, he replies that far from that, in some places the very tables are warmed. by machinery. Just so. And the girl who has sat at a table so warmed grows up without a glimmer of a notion how to keep a poor man's often necessarily unpunctual dinner hot. She eats, drinks, washes, cleans, all by the aid of machinery ; she is, in fact, herself a machine, one of the little bits fitted into the daily order. It is scarcely possible for many of the evils of this system to come under the ordinary official eye. When every allowance has been made for integrity and self-denying industry and ability on the part of the whole managing staff, matron, schoohnistress, &c., in these great institutions, there will yet remain by common consent an overwhelming desire to make all things appear perfect in the eyes of the "Gentlemen of the Committee," whoever they may be, Government officials or otherwise. A thousand things patent to an inspectress would never be brought under the notice of a male official. The present writer knows an instance of a lady who, looking with some surprise on some very beautifully executed shirt-mending which was shown to her in one of the best regulated. and most praised institutions in the county, inquired if there really were girls in the institution who could do sr2h work by themselves. The mistresss, in an aside, instantly answered, "No, but Mr. — wanted these done, and he has notions of his own on the sub- ject; he thinks the girls ought to be able to do it; we were obliged to undertake it, but / have done the difficult part." I would be easy to multiply such instances, and on far grave points. But Mr. Tufnell has seriously charged Mrs. Senior with want of veracity in the estimate she has given of the per-centago of girls who really do well under the existing system, and it may well be that the results of her careful investigation prove irritating to one who has distinctly asserted that only four per cent, fail to get an honest livelihood ; but his estimate; as regards the girls, is, as we have noticed on a former occasion, greatly drawn from the reports of chaplains, whose opportunities for knowing more than the children themselves are disposed to say must of necessity ho small when they have once fairly left school. One chaplain re- ports that out of l34 cases, "78 are unexceptionably good, perfect, faultless as servants,"—a kind of estimate which speaks for itself; while Mrs. Senior's careful note on the evidence she received is thus unfairly represented :—" P. N. was condemned because she was seen sitting on a doorstep." The rest of the note is sup- pressed, which says :—" She was like a wild beast when angry and would sometimes have a fit of doing nothing for a whole day. She had been seen in very questionable company ; said she was married, but had no wedding-ring (she had been seven years at school)." There is another girl mentioned in Appendix Gas last seen sitting on a doorstep in a most deplorable condition, with every sign about her of leading an unsatisfactory life, to which testi- mony Miss Smedley adds that this girl lost two places through violence of temper, and threatened to murder another servant (she had been nine years at school). In another instance, we find E. E. was condemned because her mistress was under the impression that she was of disreputable character, whereas Mrs. Senior's note adds, "She was a very worthless girl, sullen, obstinate, untruthful ; missed as quite impracticable" (she had been six years in school). It is the same with evidence which Mrs. Senior is accused of suppressing ; she has suppressed only such evidence as she could not verify, and more recent inquiries have but confirmed her pessimist view. Sn much of the whole question of necessary reform hangs on the trustworthiness of her report, that we hope all who are really inter- ested in the subject will carefully look through Miss Smedley's book, in which she has simply collected together and published with explanatory notes the principal evidence on the subject from
various official sources. We trust, in the interest of the pauper children and of the public generally, Mrs. Senior's own "Reply" will not be long delayed.
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