A history of English philanthropy : from the dissolution of the monasteries to the taking of the first census / by B. Kirkman Gray.

  • Gray, B. Kirkman (Benjamin Kirkman), 1862-1907.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of English philanthropy : from the dissolution of the monasteries to the taking of the first census / by B. Kirkman Gray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    neglected, whereas the charity schools, although they did sometimes supply food or clothing, did not chiefly exist for that purpose. Their policy was also a specialised one, being confined either to children who were orphans or to foundlings and illegitimate infants.1 The principle that function precedes organisation receives an illustration in the resolve of the religious societies to take charge of the young children of that poor widow, whose death-bed had been darkened by the fear that her offspring would be brought up by Catholic relatives.2 3 This was quickly followed by the founding in 1702 of the Royal Asylum of St. Anne, an out- come of High Church enterprise, due to the influence of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and intended for children of parents who had been in superior circum- stances. The more familiar type appears first at Edinburgh, where “ from an earnest desire to rescue from ignorance, idleness and vice some children whose parents either were dead or from indigence unable to maintain and educate them, Mr. Andrew Gardner, merchant in Edinburgh, about the year 1727, exerted himself to obtain benefactions for maintaining and putting to school as many children of that description as it might be found practicable to provide for.”8 The special need of this unfortunate class of children was making itself felt in England also, and although in bulk what was done in the way of providing for them was very little, they are of interest as another example in which the eighteenth century anticipated the more vigorously recorded charity of the nineteenth. The standard set up was not a high one, and the training was regulated with a strict view to utility, without any misplaced or excessive generosity. Children might be admitted as young as six and were main- tained until fourteen or fifteen. They were to be “ used to such labour ” as might be suitable ;4 the education was to be 1 The restriction was not in practice observed with absolute strictness. 2 Woodward, “ Religious Societies,” p. 92. 3 “Statutes . . . of the Orphan Hospital ” (1820 ?). 4 “ Orphan Working School ” ; “ The Plan of the Charity ” (1760).