The question, should industrial schools erected at the cost of the poor-rate be made available, (on payment,) to children not chargeable to the poor-rates? Considered in a letter to the guardians of the Oxford incorporation.
Oxford and London.
John Henry and James Parker, 1855.
First edition.
8vo.
14pp. Recent morocco-backed marbled paper boards, lettered in gilt. Very minor shelf-wear. Bookplate of Sidney Broad to FEP.
The sole edition of a pamphlet by Anglican clergyman and sometime college head of St Mary Hall, Oxford, Drummond Percy Chase (1820-1902) arguing that children of low-income households ought to be permitted to attend Industrial Schools. Such institutions had been established to provide industrial training and residential care for destitute and vagrant children, and throughout the latter half of the nineteenth-century were increasingly seen as a preferable alternative to reformatories. Initially these 'ragged schools' were funded solely through poor rates, though they became increasingly dependent upon subsidies from the state; Chase is keen to highlight here that allowing children of poverty-stricken families to be educated for a fee would relieve some of the need for money to be taken from taxation. Additionally, he suggests that the admission of other children 'would tend to the improvement of such schools...by depauperising them, and so raising their character'.
£ 150.00
Antiquates Ref: 22128
